The Horrified Look (a love story in too many words)
continued

The appointed half-hour came and went, and she ordered another coffee, this time with alcohol in it. He felt that possibly that would loosen the situation a bit. The conversation turned to relationships, and she, just having left one, had things to say on the subject. He trembled, sitting not two feet from her, on the very topic that had consumed him for months. The third Mistake was not long in coming.

She spoke of the restrictions she had placed in the way of her previous relationship. He had heard, from the very person with whom he had committed the second Mistake, about these restrictions, about how she had made her lover wait two months before being allowed to kiss her, about how she seemed to have no real sexual desires, about how she regimented her emotional life. At the time of first hearing about this aspect of her, he discounted it as exaggeration, as attributable to something having been lacking in the lover, as a ploy to win him for herself. The objections had been hollow, but served a higher Purpose, and so were allowed to stand.

In the final analysis (so his reasoning went), even if all of this were true, there were powerful forces militating on his behalf, which would make of him an exception to the rules. First, they had been plumbing each other's intellectual depths for more than two months, and there was an undeniable connection between the two of them that was sure to overpower her reticence. She just hadn¼t felt the real thing yet, he thought. What we have is too powerful for mundane obstacles.

He thought of her exposition as a preamble to an ultimate declaration that she was, finally, ready to love someone (hint, hint), and that he would then be able to ride into a shared, blissful future on the strength of her self-reversal. The Mistake was in several parts, although it was a unity. When she not only failed to repudiate her standards for the future, but reaffirmed them, he was stunned. Did she really mean to say that, were he in the running, he would have to wait two agonizing months for a kiss? When she said that she was asexual and had no lust, did that mean she really hadn¼t felt anything for him?

Reeling, he fought clumsily against these pronouncements which denied him his object. The alcohol had dulled his wits, and he flailed about, intent on winning an indulgence from her. The first part of the mistake. He was not respecting her convictions. That would have been necessary before it would be possible to overturn them. His roommate challenged her also, partially to aid him, and partially out of his own incredulousness.

He became still more careless. He mentioned his liaison and said that he hadn't found her at all interesting. Mistake Three, part two. She countered that, of course, he must have found her interesting (having slept with her, after all), or was trying to. With an unfathomable depth of misunderstanding he said emphatically that, no, her friend was not at all interesting to him, and that she was only a momentary thing, that what the liaison was all about was no more than simple sex between two consenting adults. When she was made to finally believe this (and she had held on admirably, he sees in retrospect, attempting not to believe that he could be so low a lifeform as such an admission made him in her classification system), she visibly flagged.

Her next pronouncement was that she would never entertain the idea of any romantic attachment with someone who had dated any of her friends first. This arose, she said, from her last lover having briefly dated both of her roommates, and she did not want to experience again the feeling that it had given her. Weakly, he postulated that one sexual experience might not constitute 'dating.' Down came the hammer: yes it did.

Somehow the conversation continued for some time yet. He became resigned to the state of affairs (or lack thereof), and had another beer. Under wholly inappropriate circumstances, he had as much as admitted his feelings for her, in the wrong tone of voice, and with facial expressions more suited to a fistfight than to a declaration of love. Later, he began to think that last category of rejection may have been, wittingly or no, a bitter expression of her disgust for him. As the conversation sputtered toward extinction, he looked at her with more longing than ever. More even than when he positively bathed in the radiance of her smile, what seemed like an eternity ago. They left.

The cat was finally out of the bag, and it was pissed. He raged and cursed and wrote and recovered his breathing and calmed down. He began to feel relief that it was over, at least, and he wouldn't have to face the seemingly-impossible restraint and eternal best-behavior he now knew were required to win her completely. He wondered whether she might have been more than a little disappointed, whether he had carelessly trodden under a tremulous green shoot.

Occasionally he didn't think about her, and occasionally he did. He transferred a piece of his now ruined ruminations to contemplation of how she would react the next time they met. He consciously avoided her and her friends, and was imperfectly content to await the inevitable opportunity. It came before he thought it would. When out one night, he saw one of her roommates and one of her friends in the street. They told her that she was in a bar not far away, and that he and his friends should come there with them.

They followed them to the bar, but the only people he recognized were her other roommate and some other peripheral people. She was nowhere in sight. He was sure that she had attended the dinner in order to see him, as he had to see her. Now, it seemed that she was avoiding him, although he didn't know for sure. If that was the case, things were truly over. Nobody gets to make three big Mistakes like that and gets another chance. Unless...unless she had felt as he did, and, though she approached things from an entirely different angle, was potentially irresolute.

He tells me he has no intention to allow himself to think such things, but still does, anyway, swatting them away in a rage when they appear. He cannot imagine that they will not see one another again, and wonders how awkward it will be when it finally comes to pass that they are again in one another's company. He says he still loves her, through it all, but says he is resigned to whatever fate cooks up.

Lately, he has become certain that the situation between them can only be resolved to the accompaniment of a horrified look on her part. This will come about, he maintains, either when she sees him, perhaps unexpectedly, and telegraphs a desire to flee, or, should they resume cordialities, if he quotes to her from the book of her Life, and her rejection is reconsidered.

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