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Sparkle (0)
“It's like this – let's take an extreme situation,” I say to him. “You meet someone and they're amazing. You have the heists, the car chases, the explosions. You're Bonnie and Clyde. You're enthralled. It's you against the world and you're on top. But you're fugitives.”
Charles takes a drag from his cigarette. He doesn't know where I'm going with this.
“You leave it all behind – you go away together, on the run.”
“To India. It's always India.”
“Yes – why is that?” I laugh.
“Do you really think you could do that?” he asks. “You're a big talker. A few minutes ago I couldn't get you to turn off your phone for dinner and now you're saying you'd leave everything. Could you really? I mean, really? Everything means just that: everything.”
“You don't think I can?” I ask. “I'll show you. Let's throw our phones into the ocean. Right now. Let's go.”
“You know damn well we'd be at the AT&T store tomorrow,” he replies, putting out his cigarette. “The only reason people like us throw their phones into the ocean is because we want new ones.”
I take a long drag of my cigarette.
The restaurant door opens and the maître d' steps out, all apologies. They've searched every bakery in Los Angeles for a dessert I'd mentioned to Charles in passing and failed to find it. The maître d' wants to know if anything can be done – have they ruined our dinner? They're so concerned over this cake.
I laugh as we make our way to our table.
“At the end of the day,” Charles says to me as we sit down, “I love being somebody.”
That's the bottom line. That's why we can't throw our phones into the ocean and why we never became anything. To be a couple you need to become “us” and no matter how adversarial our relationship with our public personas, we refuse to part with the “me” we have come to know as ourselves.
Earlier that week, Charles had sent me a message that said, simply, “While I was away, I realized I am actually in love with you.”
“We need to talk about this.”
Our relationship – once a friendship that enjoyed the benefits of a physical relationship whenever we shared a zip code – was fractured after I'd met a man who'd made my world explode. Being unable to focus on anyone but Tristan, I'd ended every other relationship I had at the time, including that with Charles.
Time had passed, now here was Charles. No more “I almost love you.” Now he actually loved me.
“We should be dating,” he said.
“Will we ever get back to that place we used to inhabit?” I asked him. “Ever since you sent me that message I wondered what it would mean to date you – really date you. Would it be what we wanted? Would we know how? What if it isn't enough?”
Earlier that day, I'd been on Facebook when I'd chanced to see a friend's profile photo of said friend kissing his girlfriend.
I've never done that – I've never put up a picture on my Facebook profile kissing or holding anyone. Even when I was married, my Facebook never had any representation of this relationship. My relationship status says I'm married – to my best friend.
Facebook official, that's what they call it when you make these overt displays on the social network, these displays that say, undoubtedly, “I'm with someone.” I've never done that.
“Let's do it,” I say at the table as appetizers of bacon-wrapped scallops and oysters arrive. “Let's put a photo of us on Facebook making out.”
The idea makes me feel so uncomfortable, I can hardly say the words, but I do. I want to break this standstill. Is it fear? I don't know what it is.
A relationship exists whether people know it exists or not. But a picture on a social network is the modern equivalent to an announcement on the newspaper and an announcement like that is a social commitment. It doesn't strengthen the relationship, it simply makes it a part of a social circle's consciousness. It forces the world to accommodate itself, to create a space where it's not just you, and someone else, but you with someone else.
Suddenly, I understand the social implications and reasoning behind marriage. Suddenly, I feel a little bit ill.
Can I do it? Can I put something like that on Facebook?
“I didn't bring my camera,” Charles says, picking up an
