Cling Wrap

"It can be," I pause, looking for the right words, " a difficult need to articulate." 

It's one of those balmy summer evenings that make you wish you had a glass of bourbon, a Miles Davis album, and a cute boy. At present, I don't have any of those things, so I'm sitting on the front steps of my apartment building with a glass of lemonade and my cell phone. 

I can hear the smile in her voice as she says:  "You're so articulate that I never would have thought it would be difficult for  you to say "I need a hug."" 

I  shake my head, even though I know she can't see it. "It's different. It's different than just needing a hug or sex or even someone to hold your hand while you're walking down the street." 

"How?"

"It just is."

"That's not helpful."

"I know. It's just . . ." I trail off.

"What?"

"I don't want to be needy."

***

"Girl could give Saran Wrap a lesson."

The group cackles.

We're in the midst of a not-terribly-sororial Girls Night. There's wine and good food. We've spent the majority of the evening talking about work and what we're reading, but as we've gotten farther into the wine, the hairpins have started to drop. Now we're curled up around the fire, gossiping and talking about sex and relationships.

It's a group of women I know well, who I've known and loved since our college years. And we've reached that comfortable point in a friendship where they can read the week's events on my face when I walk into a room and I can tell them just about anything.

Tonight I'm talking about how I'm worried that my desire to keep from being clingy with other people keeps me asking for the things I need and that I suspect my anxiety over, well, having anxiety and OCD prevents me from forming new relationships. Being crazy is hard enough. I don't want be rejected for being crazy.

They're comforting, as I knew they would be. They fill my wine glass and remind me of a mutual acquaintance who was ohboy crazy and (in)famously, ridiculously, cryafterbreakingupwithsomeoneshewasdatingfortwoweeks clingy. We laugh, tell a few stories, and then move on. But even in the midst of an amusing story about someone's first trip to a local, um, feminist shop, there's still a tiny voice whispering in the back of my mind.

Ms. Saran Wrap still managed to find someone. 

***

I've been looking at weighted blankets.

Yes. Those weighted blankets.

Let me back up.

Things have been incredibly busy since March. And life has been good, it's been really good. The problem is that one two separate occasions I've stumbled over the line from "exhausted and in need of some time to myself" to "overstimulated to the point of a meltdown."

I hate that point.

The issue is that most of the time I know how to deal with feeling a little frazzled. I am perfectly equipped to take care of myself. I've been doing it for most of my life. Unfortunately, when I hit the overstimulated phase, all my self-reliance goes out the window. When I get to that point what I want, what I need isn't to be alone. It's isn't a cup of tea or silence or to space out in front of a video game or the television or any of the things that I normally need when I'm short on introvert time.

I need someone to hold me.

Ugh. Trust me, I realize how stupid, how needy it sounds. I'm looking for the hole under my chair to crawl into.

I am, as I've already written, complete and utter shit when it comes to real intimacy, real vulnerability with new people. As a result, it happens to be something with which I am obsessed. It's uncomfortable to admit, but when I'm in the process of having a meltdown the only thing I want is to have someone wrap their arms around me and just sit with me until I calm down. I wish I could explain how soothing it is to feel someone's hand on my hair and hear their heartbeat and breathing when I'm upset.

It's better than Xanax.

But it's a need that's hard enough to write about, it's harder to express out loud, and (outside of dating) it's impossible to get someone on speed dial to come over for overstimulated snuggles. It's something I literally don't know how to ask for, and can't decide if I'm willing to learn how to ask for it. Or if it's even an appropriate thing to ask for. Because in the process of asking Hey, can you come over and snuggle me until I fall asleep? I'd also have to say Hey, I need you. 

So I'm looking for a weighted blanket.

Crash

Mom and Dad think that I'm lonely.

It's nearly midnight. Mom has collapsed on my bed, Dad is sitting in my armchair drinking a beer. They've driven up from Wisconsin to spend the weekend with me. I'm about to throw a big event for work and they wanted to be here to support me during it.

Yeah, they're pretty sweet sometimes.

We're having the conversation we always have when we get together. They, having had roommates (usually siblings) for all of their unmarried lives and then having one another, cannot fathom why I choose to live alone, and how I've managed to live alone so long.

They're surprised, and try to hide it, that I've managed my anxiety over the coming event, my normal work schedule, my volunteerism, my social life over the past month.

Mainly they're surprised to find that the apartment is clean and I've managed to feed myself.

"Don't worry," I observe. "I'll crash hard on Sunday."

***

"Sweetie? Kels? Hey. . . "

I sit up with a start, wiping my face and eyes. "I'm here, I'm here. What is it?" I squint at the laptop, wondering why it's still in bed with me.

"You fell asleep."

It takes me a minute to realize that my Skype session is still open. We've been having trouble finding time for one another recently, and despite being flat-out exhausted, I refused to cancel.

"Was my mouth open?"

He laughs and my heart breaks. Again. "You were also snoring."

"Shit."

"Don't worry. It was actually really sweet."

"Oh, shut up. Snordorable is not really what I'm going for. What time is it?"

"11:00."

"I should hang up." I yawn. "I have an 8:00am and then a 12 hour day."

"Glad to see you're taking it easy, and making sure to take care of yourself."

I snort and answer without thinking. "That was supposed to be your job."

"You're the one who left."

I wrinkle my nose and he knows he went too far.

"I'm sorry."

"I gotta go. Early day tomorrow."

I hang up before he can say "I miss you." 

***

I wake up with gritty eyes, a pounding head, aches all over, sweatily wound up in the sheets. I squint at my cellphone, even that tiny bit of light hurting my eyes. 4:00PM. On a Sunday. 

This is not a hangover. Well, not really.

I've spent most of the past few weeks coordinating an event. It was busy, there were lots of moving parts, and I slept very little during the time period. It was also the kind of event that required me to be extremely social and outgoing. About 72 hours ago my inner introvert just sat down in the corner and started to cry. I kept running on fumes, finished the event, came home, and crashed. 

I groan, push my hair out of my eyes, and start hunting around for my bathrobe before I remember that it's in the laundry basket, with about three weeks of clothing that I haven't been able to get to the laundromat. My hair is damp so I start looking for the towel from my shower and . . . nope. Left it in the bathroom. Exhausted, I wrap the sheets around myself and stumble for the kitchen. 

The fridge has some cold press coffee, half a pack of Sugar Free Red Bull, a beer, and some hot sauce in it. 

The cupboards and freezer aren't much better.

I've dated, I've loved men who have wanted to take care of me. Who waited at the door with a three course meal. Who ran a hot bath of us at the end of an an excruciating day. Who wanted to be at the finish lines of my races, text me jokes in the middle of the day when I'm stressed, accompany me to nonprofit events and crack jokes and charm my peers.

I left them. I left them because . . . well, I left them because I left them. Because (among other reasons) at twenty-two or twenty-five I wasn't ready to be taken care of. I wasn't ready to have someone who knew that I (somehow) manage to sleep with my mouth open and snore, lightly, when I'm exhausted. I was hung up on the idea of independence, of being able to take care of myself. At thirty it's not that I regret those choices, I don't even know if I would make different choices if they were presented to me today. 

But right now, wearing a sheet, standing in an empty kitchen, debating whether or not I can skip dinner with seven loads of laundry in the closet,  is where I start reconsidering my choices. 

Book Club

"She flirted with the moderator. That's how she got the list."

"I did not! We talked about Neil Gaiman and comics. And science fiction/fantasy." I pause. "And Brian K. Vaughn. Talking isn't always flirting."

"You maintained eye contact with a virtual stranger!"

We're on our way home from book club and I'm getting raked over the coals.

"Listen. It wasn't flirting. It was being articulate and witty and charming. I can do that sometimes. It's like a mutation I haven't learned to control. And besides. If it was flirting, rest assured that's the super power I only use for good."

"Yeah, what good is that?"

"Getting the list of the next year's worth of books ahead of time."

The car groans. Collectively.

I love book club night.

***

I'm thinking a lot about Neil Gaiman these days.

We're reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane for our July book club. It's nearly the one year anniversary of my first reading of it, and it's almost a year since I met Neil Gaiman and told him he saved my life. 

Ufff. I got a little teary just writing that. 

When I say I've been thinking a lot about Neil Gaiman, what I mean is that I've been thinking a lot about The Ocean at the End of the Lane. I have a funny relationship with that book. I've read all of Gaiman's other work (with the exception of Sandman, which I'm just not ready to face again) multiple times. But I haven't been able to pick up Ocean again. It may be that while I was reading it my life was so unsettled and I haven't wanted to revisit that feeling. Maybe I secretly liked it a tiny bit less than his other work. 

Whatever the reason, I never picked it back up. Until it was announced as our book club's July pick and I realized that I couldn't just walk into the room and start enthusing about how wonderful Neil Gaiman is, that I would actually need to say something substantive about the book and the writing. 

I reread it in a day.

***

"I don't think I'll be able to go to book club in July."

"You know your schedule that far in advance? It's May, for godssake."

"No. I mean, I loved Ocean at the End of the Lane so much that I don't think I'd be able to handle a bunch of jerks ripping it apart." He looks in the rear view mirror. "Close your mouth, Kels, you look like a trout." 

I've been surprised to learn that among my immediate circle of friends, a number of them have read at least some Neil Gaiman. Many of them have read Ocean at the End of the Lane, of those who have read Ocean, all of them read it after hearing me gush about it all last summer. 

All of them kept it a secret.

They had varying reasons for keeping it a secret. Some of them didn't like the book. At all. And they didn't want to go thirteen rounds with me over why they didn't like it or listen to me try to convince them they should. Some of them didn't finish it and didn't want a scolding. But by far the biggest number of friends read it and loved it.

They still kept it a secret.

Anyone who has sat next to me during Joss Whedon's  Much Ado About Nothing or taken me to historical site of some personal meaning (sorry for making you tromp through all those cemeteries) knows that I have a hard time keeping it together around things that I love. I have actually jumped up and down and clapped my hands. (Do not do this standing in front of William Tecumseh Sherman's grave. Trust me on this one) On more than one occasion, I've kissed someone out of sheer emotional overflow. Let's call those reactions my baseline enthusiasm. Now multiply that baseline enthusiasm by Neil Gaiman. 

Yeah. Okay. 

***

I have a hard time sleeping on book club nights.

Obviously, it's stimulating for an introvert to be in a room full of a hundred people. It's even more stimulating to ask for the mic and to get into conversations with strangers. By the time I get home I'm usually vibrating and a little bit wild. 

It's not my inner introvert freaking out. 

There are few things in life that I enjoy, that I love as much as talking to people about books. Don't get me wrong, intellectual sparring in any capacity winds me up. Here's the thing, though, books have been my lifelong companions, my way of escaping when things become unpleasant. They've taught me the sheet music of stars and the history of modern medicine. I've cried over the deaths of hundreds of characters and still sigh a little bit when Mr. Darcy proposes to Elizabeth Bennett. 

I'm shy in big groups of people. I have to pep talk myself before dinner parties where I don't know a lot of people. Sometimes when I'm meeting new people or hanging out with people I haven't seen in a long time, I have to go hide in the bathroom for a few minutes because my hands are shaking. And, sure, these things might make me a better candidate for the Mars mission, but they aren't helpful in my real life. 

But ask me about Seamus Heaney? Solicit my opinion on the Sandman Slim series? Question why I think adults can read YA without being embarrassed by it? I forget that I'm shy and (more than) a little bit awkward. I'll have an animated, articulate conversation with you without stuttering once. I love talking about books with strangers and I'll happily chat up someone who asks me about the book I'm reading at a bar or while I'm perusing the shelves at Magers and Quinn. 

As a result, it stings a little when I realize that the same intensity that makes me articulate and funny at my book club is what keeps people from talking about Ocean at the End of the Lane with me. Talking about books makes me feel like the best possible version of myself and I want to be that person around the people who have seen me sick, tired, and crying. I want to share the books (and music and television) I love with them and not have them have to worry that I'm simply going to steamroller over them with excitement and delight. 

I want to use my super powers for good. 

Every Damn One

Somewhere during the first few weeks that he gave me a bucket.

We were still very much in that light-headed, breathless, noyouhangup period of the relationship. I've always liked that part. He swore he couldn't believe his luck. I swore that I couldn't believe I'd let him see me naked. I walked around with a permanent smile on my face. He texted me well into the early hours of the morning.

Then, the bucket.

We were dressed up and about the leave my apartment for dinner and a concert. Time had sort of slipped away from us (what can I say, I'm a real sucker for a skinny guy in a suit) during the course of that slow afternoon, so I was puzzled when he stopped me outside the car and made me close my eyes and hold out my hands.

He put a bucket into them.

"What is this?"

He smiled his crooked smile and if my hands hadn't had that bucket in them, I would have pulled him back into the house, reservations and Bach be damned.

"You know. For when you bail."

Retrospectively, it wasn't very funny.

***

"Let's move to Chicago."

It's a text I send Michelle while I'm walking home, a little drunk, extremely tired, and unbelievably maudlin. 

Mental illness is a funny thing. I just had a fantastic night. Wine, cornhole, and long conversations with friends in the backyard of someone's new house. It's dusk, it's warm, the city actually smells like jasmine and roses, and I'm walking home through my city, the place that I love beyond comprehension and I never thought I'd want to leave. 

But, in that moment, I do want to leave it. 

I send the text because at this particular moment, I'm pissed at myself. It feels like I've never taken any chances, that I've never made the kinds of stupid mistakes you're supposed to make in your 20s. I've done some interesting things, but none of them feel like the kind of knock-you-out accomplishments that I thought I would have by 30. I'm still single, I don't even have a dog, my job eats up most of my time, and I'm nowhere close to having a down payment on a house. 

That's not what has me pissed and sad. That's not why I'm texting Michelle about moving. 

***

I still haven't seen the final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

It's not because the writing in the final seasons is less good than it was at the beginning. I didn't stop watching because I found another show I like better. God knows it isn't because I have less free time.

I don't like endings. 

***

With the exception of my first boyfriend, I've ended every one of my relationships. 

Every. Damn. One. 

And sure, I sentimentalize them when they're over. I cry, drink, listen to Patsy Cline. I gain break-up weight, run a half marathon (seriously, how do I manage to do both?), try everyone's patience. 

I still ended every damn one. 

I don't like the idea of being left, of being the one who trusted too much or loved too deeply in the relationship. As a result, the second things are less than ohmygodyou'resoperfect I take off. Then I drink. And cry. And wonder but what was wrong with me? 

As if I wasn't the one ending things.

***

The night that I text Michelle about moving to Chicago was tricky.

It was the first time I realized, really realized that my life is on the cusp of some intense changes. Friends are likely to start moving to the suburbs soon. The couples I know are planning to have kids in the next few years. The people I love are getting promotions and settling down.

They're moving on. 

And while I know (the non-lizard part of my brain, that is) that I'm not being left behind, it sure feels that way. Despite being promoted at work, crossing things off of my 30x30 list, despite the fact that I am living a life I love and in my rational moments wouldn't dream of trading, the panicky, unwell side of my brain is busy screaming:

They're going to leave you. 

So I text Michelle about leaving, about ending all these relationships before things change, before people leave me. And I walk home a little drunk, extremely tired, and unbelievably maudlin.

And when I walk in the apartment, and put my shoes in the closet, I see the bucket that ex gave me all those years ago. 

Every. Damn. One. 

Hurt

I let out a noise midway between a gasp and a groan.   

I’m stretched out on the mat in gym shorts and a tank top while my physical therapist is pushing me  into contortions I didn’t know were possible, chattering the entire time about my lack of flexibility and how I need to work on strengthening my hips. He’s giving me notes on stretching and how aforementioned weak hips are most likely the source of my iliotibial band issues. I’m sweating and my hands are grabbing the edge of the mat and I’m having a difficult time breathing. 

Eventually, he notices. 

“Are you all right?” 

“It hurts.” I manage to squeak out. 

***

I’m tucked in with a cup of tea and my copy of Sailing Alone Around the Room when the photo grid falls out.

It’s one of those grids that shows a tiny printout of all of the photos from a memory card. I’m squinting at the pictures, trying to remember when any of my friends would have been drunk enough to pose like this, when I catch the name printed on the side of the grid.

It belongs to an ex.

And not just any ex. It belongs to the most gut-wrenching, devastating, cried-so-hard-I-threw-up breakup I’ve ever gone through.

It’s a funny thing to stumble across, mainly because I tossed everything related to the guy. I redacted him and our relationship so quickly and thoroughly it was like we had never been a part of one another’s lives. Like he had never made me Eggs Benedict while we listened to the loons on the lake and I had never fallen asleep with his arms wrapped firmly around me and his voice in my ear.

With the clarity of some years between us now, I’m mainly bemused by the fact that I loaned my (signed) copy of this book to him. I love, love, LOVE to give away my copies of books that made an impact on me, but I would never have even seriously considered giving this book away. Even the mere fact that I let it out of my sight for long enough for this photo grid to end up in it is puzzling.

What had I been thinking while we were together?

***

I want you.

  

Is there an expression in the English language that’s more frisson inducing? If there is, it’s probably best that I haven’t experienced it. 

Whispered across the table during a few stolen moments at a dinner party, texted in the middle of a long Monday, growled in the ear after teasing someone a little too much, keeping them waiting a little too long. 

I shiver just remembering it. 

***

“Hey, where are you?”

“Bathroom.” 

I can hear his light footsteps running up the stairs. 

“How was your . . .”

He stops in the doorway of the bathroom. I’m in my bathrobe, dumping about fourteen pounds of ice into the huge clawfooted bathtub. 

“Uhhhhh?”

“It’s an ice bath” I say, running cold water into the tub. “I just ran thirteen miles. I have a recovery run tomorrow. I can either ice right now or be miserable tomorrow.” 

“I thought you wanted me.” He’s not even trying not to pout. 

I don’t bother to respond. He turns to leave. I drop my robe and slip into the icy water. 

It’s the cry that stops him. It’s not entirely unfamiliar.   

It feels like a thousand ice-covered knives are slicing into my legs. “I will want you,” I manage to gasp. “In about ten minutes, I’m really going to want you.” I close my eyes and grab the edges of the tub. I can hear the smirk in his voice and picture his single raised eyebrow. 

“Yes. I imagine you will.”

***

I'm thinking a lot about desire lately. Romance novels describe it as an ache (often accompanied by the word “throbbing” but we’ll just leave that to the side for the moment), and it’s one of the things I think they get right. Desire hurts, but not acutely.

Or, perhaps, not for most people.

Somewhere along the line the literal and figurative wires in my brain got scrambled. Emotions became things that hurt somewhat less figuratively. Desire particularly became an actual ache, and then more than an ache. It became something that could leave marks if I want it. 

Combined with the urge to have someone lean in and whisper I want you it is a need as urgent (and unfulfilled) as any that I’ve experienced. 

I want it. 

***

Looking at the photo grid I think again about how our relationship started out as something simple and sort of sweet Hey, want to come by and listen to This American Life? Russell Banks reads a story that makes me think of you. I remember how crazy and out-of-my head he could drive me with an well-timed remark or a glance across the kitchen table. I try to remember why my reactions to him were always so visceral (in all kinds of directions). I wonder how feelings for someone can end up having such sharp, ragged edges, and I wonder about the parts of me that needs those edges.

Body Pillow

"What was that?" I ask from the bathroom.

"I wondered why you took your cell with you."

Apparently I'm not quite as good at sneaking away as I thought.

"I thought you were about the fall asleep and didn't want to wake you back up with the light." It's a lie, and a half-assed one, but I just need enough time to give the cab driver the address. I turn on the shower to stall and wonder briefly where certain articles of clothing ended up. When I get a text that my cab is two minutes away I snap the shower off, move through the apartment at warp speed collecting belongings, and head for the front door, stopping briefly in the bedroom to kiss him goodnight and murmur something about an early run in the morning.

As I slide into the back of the cab, I sigh.

We've been dating for three months.

***

I’m sitting on the couch with a friend of mine. It's been an emotional few months for our group of friends and we're talking about the small ways that we were there for one another, and how much that had meant. After a long pause I say "Here's the thing. I'm shit at asking for what I need and I will never, ever tell you how I’m feeling when something major happens. So in the event of a terrible break-up or a death in my family or some huge event, these are the things I'm going to need."

We make a list.

If I had to pick one thing that isn't going quite as I would like it, it would be that I'm having what might be called intimacy issues.

It's not a new topic for me. I've never been very good at letting people in under my guard. It's why I hang out with the same ten people, part of the reason why it takes me so long to make new friends, and absolutely one of the reasons I loathe dating.

***

I had a boyfriend who liked to stay over after our extracurriculars.

More than that, when we were finished he always wanted me to fall asleep with my head on his chest.

Or he wanted to sleep wrapped around me. Like I was a sweaty, annoyed, insomniac body pillow.

I get it. We like physical intimacy in the ways we like it, but really?

We didn't last very long.

***

I never learned what you do after.

I never learned what you do after you've had an intensely vulnerable moment, be that the instant after I burst into tears in front of someone or in the moments immediately following sex, I never learned what happens next. It's my own doing, the result of years of believing that vulnerability was a weakness and should be absolutely avoided. That conditioning, combined with a deeply rooted fear of doing or saying something wrong means that I am constantly bolting after opening up to other people.

I hate it.

God knows I have a thousand reasons to be skittish about vulnerability and other people, but I want to know what it feels like when your immediate response to opening up to another person isn’t fight or flight.

I doubt I’ll ever get to the point where I enjoy being someone’s body pillow, but maybe I’ll be able to get to a point where I don’t immediately call a cab home.

Beauty #14 CHVRCHES

I’m wearing my Holly Golightly sunglasses into the office, carrying a blueberry smoothie in one hand and a huge glass of iced coffee in the other.

I nod to my assistant, drop my beverages on my desk, and head to the bathroom. Removing my sunglasses, I assess the damage.

I’ve got to stop wearing waterproof mascara to First Avenue.

***

I suffer amnesia when it comes to shows.

I forget, every damn time, what it feels like to hear a band play your favorite song. I fail to recollect how amazing a good bass line feels when it’s thudding in your chest. I disregard or downplay the sheer visceral pleasure in being closely packed in with other people, all sharing the same experience.

The amnesia is a blessing in disguise, I think. It keeps me going back.

***

I didn’t think I could be surprised by live shows.

It’s not that I’m not moved by, impressed with, or enjoy live shows. It’s that after fifteen years of attending everything from punk shows to jazz clubs, I couldn’t imagine a scenario in which a band could surprise me.

For someone so smart, I can be a real dummy.

A few days ago, Nick texted to ask if I wanted to use an extra ticket to the CHVRCHES show at First Avenue.  I tried for tickets when they went on sale, but the show sold out super quickly and I’ve been bummed by the prospect of missing it.

The show was sort of an unusual one for me to want to attend, as I avoid anything that even remotely smells like electronic music. Unsurprising, I suppose, considering my favorite bands tend toward banjos and complex harmonies.

Regardless, when Nick offered the ticket, I jumped at it.

One of the themes that keeps coming up in my writing is the slipperiness of describing attending a show. It’s hard to nail down because it’s such a confluence of physical sensations and emotional responses.

CHVRCHES was like that, except moreso. I didn’t expect to love the show as much as I did, to dance so hard I woke up with inexplicable bruises this morning. I never anticipated hugging Nick in a sheer overflow of emotion over hearing the lyrics: finally/we agree/no place for promises here.

I didn’t think the experience would keep me awake into the early hours, and leave me with dark circles under my eyes this morning.

I’m glad it did.

A Story, During a Slow Day

A conversation, in a Riverside bar.

"Did your ex ever tell you that he thought you were beautiful?"

I'm drinking PBR Tallboys with a friend and the question takes me by surprise. It's a rowdy bar, one we've come for an event, and I wasn't anticipating anything heavier than normal late-Saturday-night conversation. I think for a moment before answering. It's not really the kind of conversation you want to shout across a bar table.

"Nope. None of them have."

"Really?"

"I mean, they had parts of me that they liked to compliment, but yeah, really."

"Is that something that's important to you?"

I set my beer down and study her for a moment. If the question surprises me, the conversation that follows stuns me. This woman is one of my closer friends. God knows she's heard me spill my guts hundreds of times, and we've never had this conversation.

More than that, she's pretty.

Not pretty enough, not pretty-in-the-right-light. She's just pretty.

I would have never thought she would need reassurance.

***

A text, during the middle of a long work day.

"I've got an extra ticket to CHVRCHES tomorrow night and  I know you're bummed that it sold out before you could get a ticket. See you at First Ave at 7:00."

***

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about wants and needs lately.

The conversation in the Riverside bar doesn't exactly help. It's late, late, late when I get home, but I'm wound up and everyone else in the world is already in bed. I spend most of the rest of the evening up, journaling, and thinking about relationships. It leads me to thinking about what I want from a partner, the qualities I'd like him to find in me and the things I need from a romantic relationship. 

I make a list.  

There are the obvious, immediate things. I'd like my partner to think that I'm funny, bright, and interesting. Beautiful would be nice, but I'd rather have sexually desirable. Getting along with my best friend is a non-negotiable. A desire to continue to learn and a certain level of excitement over learning something new is incredibly important.

Then there are the less obvious things that are also important to me. Understanding why I love First Ave. so much or how there are certain songs I always have to hear to the end or I feel like I missed something. Knowing that after a really bad day I want to go for a run and then eat a bunch of gummi bears. Learning to run interference when I'm staying with my family so I can have a little time to myself. Leaving me to myself when I really do just want to stay in and read. Appreciating that the real way to my heart is bringing me coffee in bed on a slow Saturday morning. 

***

A phone call, late.

I squint at the number through my sleepiness and pick it up.

"Hello?"

"Kels?"

"Yeah, are you all right?"

"I thought your phone would be on silent! I'm sorry. I just called to tell you that I love you."

I smile through my sleepiness. "There's a rule on my phone to always ring for certain people. You're one of them."

"That's sweet. I love you. Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

***

"Have you had the experience of talking about Us at work?"

I'm walking through South Minneapolis, holding the hands of two of the girls from the gang from the neighborhood. 

Let me back up. I have a group of friends I see, on average, three times a week. We have impromptu weeknight dinners together. We run together. We go to shows and one another's work events. I do my laundry at their houses and they have the keys to my apartment. I snuggle with them when my heart's broken. I plan my vacations with them. Most of us live within walking distance of one another in the same neighborhood in South Minneapolis. When something goes wrong or I've got news to celebrate, they're my first call. 

Anyway, I'm walking through South Minneapolis with two of these people. I'm talking about how the fact that I live in the Cities still hasn't gotten old, that I love being able to get together with them on a random Wednesday, and that it's good to have people to talk to over the course of the week. That sparks the question about whether or not I've talked about the gang at work. 

Of course I have. I already said that I spend all my free time with these people. They come up in my conversations with my coworkers frequently. But I know what's actually being asked, because it's an experience all of us have had. When you tell your coworkers that you spend all of your time not with your spouse or significant other but with a group of six-to-ten close friends, the reaction tends to be the same:

"That's not normal."

***

An email, on the bus ride home.

"We're running tonight. You're stressed and not dealing with it, so you're coming over, we're running, I'm making you dinner, and then we're going to snuggle up and watch House of Cards.

I have gummi bears."

***

It's pouring when I leave the bar. 

The walk back to the car is well-lit and not necessarily unsafe, but the guys in the neighborhood are inclined to catcall and my dress is not exactly modest. I ask one of my more broad-shouldered friends to walk me back. Despite his lack of an umbrella, he cheerfully accompanies me the six blocks or so. On the way I talk a little about how nice it was to get together tonight and thank him for being sweet enough to walk me back through the deluge. We're stopped at a crosswalk when he turns to me.

"You know I'd do anything for you, right? We all would."

It occurs to me then how lucky I am. Some of those more subtle needs, loving Metric's Synthetica album and realizing that sometimes my favorite way of being with people is to be in the same room reading separate things, are already being met. It is, I suspect, one of the reasons why I'm happy being single. 

***

A moment, outside a Riverside bar.

I give my broad-shouldered friend a lift back to the bar so he can catch up with the rest of the gang from the neighborhood. When I pull up, he hops out, shuts the door, and opens it and sticks his head back in.

"What's up?"

"I just wanted to tell you that I really like your dress. You look beautiful."