I want to forget him. I want the vapors of my infatuation to fade and each time I see him again, days, weeks, months pass and there it is again, that same giddy drop in my stomach, I am launched back to the moment I first laid eyes on him and when his eyes landed on me. It is thrilling, that moment, and I don't even remember out of nostalgia, it is just a visceral pull of myself to a moment I nearly forgot until I see him again.
He was sitting across the bar. He was all smile. Seriously. His smile was huge and wide and bright in that dank place. His hands tried to hide the bigness of his smile, but they just shyly covered the mouth and not the smile. I felt the electricity of his stare before my eyes adjusted to the dimness of that place. I'd arrived and was being heartily greeted by my friends, all of whom were happy to see me, and his sister, who seemed most pleased to see me. When I turned to look at him, not because I was scanning the bar to see who was there, or to wonder at who this new man with the smile was, I was merely aware from my periphery that someone was staring at me very intently and very bemusedly. And our eyes met. And his smile walloped me from across that space, as if no one else was there and we were not thirty feet apart but standing nose to nose. His smile arrested me; I remember not being able to move for a moment, paralyzed in his gaze, like a deer standing in the woods suddenly startled by a foreign sound. And he was foreign, he was new, and it settled into my consciousness that he was different and interesting and interested in me. I was aware of it that fast, no questions, no concerns, just a knowledge, fast, quick and hard, that he was very much so interested in me. And that was how it began.
The people around us disarmed him and for a while he was just a figure in the shadows, known to everyone but me, can you imagine it? I didn't even know he was due to arrive, I had no idea she was his sister or he her brother. We began the task of drinking ourselves into happiness and slowly the room began to settle back into focus. Details of his presence emerged like messages in a bottle--first it was his laugh that he bellowed out like a foghorn, then it was his gestures, wild and unpredictable and then it was his words, a series of vague grunts at first, something that resembled language but not familiar until I realized it was because he was like her, he was like him (the crow) and that was when the beating of my heart began to ring out in my ears, because it was a show, it was a hunt and I was his prey.
I shrank in fear. I knew enough to know that I wasn't ready yet, I think I knew that instinctively and I began to panic, hoping he would talk to me and then worried about what I would say if he did, then hoping he wouldn't talk to me at all. I try to remember when they lifted the confusion, but it was a while before I realized who he was, that he wasn't just some new regular, some new guy, a visitor, but part of the web of people we knew there. I know it was a while, at least an hour before I knew, and his cajoling and laughter were like delicious pain, searing across my face from that distance, his eyes smiling at me then, his smile overt and unobscured by his hands and shining in my direction so brightly.
Once I realized who exactly he was (her brother), I felt some sense of relief, I stopped feeling adrift and grabbed onto something solid and was able to quiet the panic in my body, enjoy myself and even talk to him about nothing. And I assumed that intensity I felt was one sided as usual as I noticed his smile was wide for us all, not just me, and I let it go.
Later, I moved closer to him and finally began to make out the details of his face, the proportions of his body. He was very lean, with a swimmer's build and had a balding hairline and thin wire frame glasses. It wasn't his body I liked at first, but the way he moved it, almost as if he was a marionette and his limbs were being controlled from a separate place. He moved like a soccer player, light and smooth, but most of all with ease. The ease he wore was evident from the big grin plastered on his face all night. He was at peace with the world and he smiled like the buddha and I wanted to feel that, I admired it, I adored him for it and the thing I didn't realize is that he was only like that because of me.
Sure he was happy to be there, on vacation, visiting his sister, but most of all, as he would tell me later, he was completely startled by me and how beautiful he thought I was and how smart and amazing and pleasant he found my company. I see it now, and I know how he felt because he told me, but it never occurred to me then.
And the night fell away, his laughter echoed mine, his appreciation of me was almost unbelievable, I remember that I found it all heady and surreal. I don't remember if he left before me or if I left before him, all I remember is that when he wasn't there (having gone to the bathroom or outside for a smoke) the room fell flat and time felt stagnant and then crackled into aliveness when he returned.
At one point we found ourselves outside together and I told him how much his arrival must mean to his sister, for she'd been speaking of it for weeks and we had the kind of conversation that is deep and meaningful without being awkward or strange (something I found happened a lot to me; still does on occasion).
His gregariousness was infectious and soon the entire bar rested on his voice, alert to his noises, he became our forest. We sat close and talked; helped grade papers for my friend's fourth grade class and he made it a game with me and we played there for a while. I had often wished to have such fun, especially there, but never had before.
That was almost a year ago now. He has moved on, having loved two women he chose over me and I try to feel some sense of relief that I wasn't chosen because it would have most certainly been like being adrift at sea with no hope of survival. He would have drowned me and been a terrible person to have in my life; he is reckless, a drunkard, a foreigner here illegally and worse than all that, he is not well regarded by his friends anymore, or anyone anymore.
So why when I see him do I still search for that smile and why when he sees me does he give it to me? Not her, the girl he's with; not her, the prettier woman sitting next to me. Me. And why won't that feeling go away? Despite what I know, the ending that we had, the nothingness we share (we can barely muster up conversation together now) why do I still feel like I'm being pulled inside out and I don't care? I want it to stop, so I will continue to do as I have done, to avoid him and the web, to keep away.
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