The human body - its wants, its needs - I am not sure where the line is between those two, though am certain that there probably does exist some line, as porous as it likely is to be.
Friday night, I partied hard. I went to some party at a club out in Bushwick. As soon as I got there, I saw a certain someone that I have been trying not to have a crush on any longer, my lack of success with him making me feel insecure and slightly crazy. He was flirty and cute as hell. He immediately came up to me and started talking in some intimate manner that confused me but also made me happy, made me think that this person actually did like me, that I could hook up with him, that we could have some cute romance. Really, though, the reason he was talking to me was because the party wasn't that crowded yet, that there weren't yet other people willing to give him attention. He wanted attention, and I was too willing to be that person who gave it to him, smitten yet again.
At some point our nights diverged and I went to some rooftop party with friends. I got further drunk, further high, and danced to music on some old rooftop that I imagined collapsing under the weight of so many people. I danced as the sun came up. I talked to some cute boy unsuccessfully, some boy apparently with a boyfriend. I left the party with my friends soon after daylight started to appear. They were going to take a taxi back to their apartment and try to find a bodega still selling booze. I said goodbye, wanting to walk home and enjoy the sunrise.
It was such a beautiful walk. The sky kept on getting more and more beautiful, purple into pinks into fiery reds, explosions of color on the eastern edges of the sky, glimpsed down the ends of blocks, glimpsed over high school football fields, glimpsed under overhead subway tracks.
And because my body had all those wants that night, the desire to party until daybreak, it had a lot of needs on Saturday, needs that perhaps might have been wants, again the line never too clear. I slept a lot and lied around the house for too long. I chatted with the crush on Facebook even though I shouldn't have, said it was nice to run into him at that party. He was at work and had gotten barely any sleep. He mentioned wanting to cuddle. He said he would text me later in the day and we could hang out and watch movies and cuddle. And I wasn't expecting him to necessarily text, had my doubts he would, but certainly hoped he would, and definitely was disappointed when he didn't. My body then told me it needed pizza, which might have been a want, but my body was absolutely demanding it, saying it needed it. A hungover body is in some ways what I imagine a pregnant body to be: having very particular demands that it insists it needs.
I ordered Domino's and listened to the Smiths and watched an eighties teen movie. My body wanted this other body next to me, believed it needed it. I ate pizza instead and listened to one particular Smiths song again and again, feeling slightly sorry for myself. The song title was what I wanted to tell myself, that the story was too familiar, this frustrated longing, this tease of him saying we'd hang out, not hearing from him, and for some reason still hoping for different results. That I know how the story goes and yet I keep thinking it will play out differently.
So please, go ahead, stop me, stop me. Stop me if you think you've heard this one before.
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