As a broke, nose-in-the-books student who called herself a Marxist and spent her spare time converting to Judaism, my classmates at business school didn’t like me very much. I took advantage of my invisibility to be an anthropologist and quietly observe others from the outside. Suffice to say I noticed him years before he noticed me…
Tall and witty, he had an easy smile and a slightly hunched back a la Hugh Grant. He lived in one of the houses that had all the parties, the ones where they ask you to pay $50 to participate in the purchase of booze. I didn’t go, both because I couldn’t afford it and because I had no idea how to sympathize with people working in private equity.
So I got used to the idea that he and I would never talk to each other.
And then last spring, five years after graduation, I flew from Chicago to our prom reunion in California. I was shivering by a dim gas fireplace when I heard his voice over my shoulder asking if the seat next to me was taken. And suddenly, against all odds, we were talking together.
Total celibacy
First we nodded vigorously over our respective positions on the war in Ukraine, Palestinian nationalism, the failure of institutions, and our own failures in political action, and then our conversation drifted to the topic of love.
I told him that I had spent eight of the last thirteen years in total celibacy, without even exchanging a kiss with anyone. I have to say that I had decided, in my 25s, that I wasn’t interested in dating, unless they were the kind of person I could spend a day locked in an elevator with without getting bored or angry. This had apparently limited my chances of dating to close to zero, especially as I wanted said person to be attractive, younger than my father, and single.
I told her I was thinking about dropping my need for physical attraction, as desire may come with time. She then she looked me straight in the eye to tell me I didn’t have to give up the attraction.
He told me about the more serious love affairs he’d had and how he had come so close to marriage. I asked him what went wrong. He told me that was the creepiest thing: he just couldn’t say it. But as wonderful as those relationships had been, in the end, there was always something missing. If he had known a name for this missing thing, he could have searched for it, but he found himself searching for a lost object whose size or characteristics he did not know.
In fact, I’m not a point of reference when it comes to helping men locate missing feelings.
99% perfect.
When I was 23, my boyfriend of four years left me in a
