Endings (aka Closure For Dummies)
Closure comes as often as a woman having casual sex (almost never)
I once read about a woman who waited for a man to text for eleven days, which seemed like a death sentence. I wondered who had taught her to be so open and understanding? From where inside did she pull the strings to make her heart dance so easily to another’s beat? To not fold under the weight of it all? To not assume he had little more than a mediocre interest by the second day and, failing that, a lackadaisical distaste by the fifth day seemed a feat of heroism. Who could stand to be so not thought about? To watch the days without wanting pile up along the side of the road. Two years later he’ll type the words: I liked you as if that was a consolation prize. He liked me the same way he liked everyone, lazily, apathetically, whatever. He thought it was important to mention. He thought that I had assumed his lack of lust meant I lacked value, but I’d never thought that. Not really. Maybe sometime. Not mostly. It was hard to fathom so many men (my god, so many!) who couldn’t find my company worth their time and desire. They all wanted to fuck me, which only made it worse because it meant that even the fucking couldn’t make my (what had to be) terrible personality tolerable.
Andy #1 and I ended things on a Friday night. I was making Bolognese in my parent’s kitchen when he texted something low effort like, how’s it going? It had been two weeks since he’d fed me baby carrots, and I had given him an unreciprocated handjob. He didn’t know I’d already lost interest (or it never even occurred to him to care). Men were always dropping the ball and then trying to hand it back to me like, here, do you want this ball? and like, No I don’t want that fucking ball. You dropped it on the ground. That ball’s dirty. Andy wanted to touch base. Andy thought we were still doing something. Andy didn’t know he was the first of many Andys. I should’ve ghosted Andy #1, but I have this sick desire to understand men, or even just people in general, better. I wanted to know what the fuck he could have been thinking. I wanted to know how he could possibly think I was still interested in going out with a man I’d let cum into my chubby little hand and then not text me for two weeks. The true idiot in this scenario is me, though. It’s always me. Because how could I ever expect the kind of man who behaves this way to have both the self-awareness and eloquence to be able to explain himself. Instead, he said something about a busy schedule and how he liked me and blah blah blah who cares. I thanked him (a true Canadian at heart) for taking the time to answer and went back to my bubbling Bolognese. We never spoke again. The Bolognese was delicious. The secret is adding milk.