you make me feel
a modern fairy tale
the princess is in the tower. the window is drawn with curtains, her face is curtained with hair. but if you look long enough, you’re bound to glimpse a curve of skin, a flash of teeth.
she’s not an exhibitionist. she’s a good girl, our princess. she has a remote job with healthcare. her dreams are demure, modest, about six feet tall. or 5’10”, 5’8”, she’s not picky. height doesn’t particularly matter: she wants a sensitive slender man, slightly older, who wears starched shirts & makes her feel pleasantly small. she imagines drawing back the curtains for him while blushing: ~ ~ ~ “it’s just that i’ve never done this with anybody before” ~ ~ ~
sooner or later she finds a suitable subject. there’s a guy who walks by the tower every morning on his way to … work ? probably ? & ohhhh she adores his perfect posture, the calm curves and lines connecting spine to neck to chin. ohhhh god. ohhh shit. uhhuh. yeaahhhah —
remember, this guy still doesn’t know that she exists. she lives in the tower, she’s never been outside. but she’s obsessed.
one morning she sees him kick a branch off the foot path while walking. later that afternoon she shimmies down the tower, finds the stick, and places it carefully on top of her nightstand, on top of a stack of fairy tales.
there's an age at which you can fall in love with a person over their posture, their hands, an inflection in the voice. it happens, and then it doesn’t happen anymore. love might not be the right word, but falling is. and for the first time in her young life this woman is falling, really falling: flying, burning, hurting, returning. and she’s arrogant and innocent enough to believe that all these f-e-e-l-i-n-g-s have a purpose, and that purpose, the sole reason for all this intensity, is to point her towards the simple and undeniable truth that this man whose name she doesn’t even know is in fact the man of her life.
and the whole fantasy careens along merrily like a wheel rolling down a hill until one fine morning, he’s walking past the tower on the footpath, and it’s the same footpath and the same posture as every other morning, but this time he’s accompanied by someone. a woman. the other woman is medium-pretty and studious-looking, and her hair is tied back in a ponytail. the two of them are holding hands.
and then he stops walking. a strand of hair has escaped from this woman’s ponytail. he brushes it back into place, and his fingers touch the top of her ear gently.
this does not escape the princess. but by now she’s seen enough. she turns away. deep in her ribs she feels a wild emptiness, a floundering helpless pain. she picks the stick off her nightstand and throws it in the fire. a month later, the tower she lives in has been listed for sale. three months after that, she’s in the city.
in the city she discovers: Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, cockroaches, espresso martinis, modern art (excellent), postmodern art (mixed), post-postmodern art (unsalvageable), great architecture, bad infrastructure, good matcha, treacly pastries, theoretical queerness, spirituality without religion, and dog poop. people can come to enjoy anything, she realizes. even dog poop. even the degradation of being a disposable hookup1. hands and knees on some stranger’s bed like an animal. night after night. people go to sleep lonely. people die in hospitals with no one to call.2
there are a few boyfriends. nice weeklong trips to this country or that. but she’s neither surprised nor particularly disappointed to find herself single at 45. she’s still popular on the apps, she’s done well for herself, has a good apartment in a great neighborhood. she’s been very responsible, very tasteful about the botox. and it is a mistake to believe that love can do EVERYTHING. anyone who knows the heart is bound to find out how wicked, helpless, pretentious, and blundering even the best and deepest love is. love destroys as often as it saves!3
her apartment has a wide front stoop, and tall double-hung sash windows with windowsills so deep they could almost be desks. when the window’s open she’ll wave to her neighbors: the frazzled mother, the persnickety grandmother, the painfully shy young man.
he’s .. maybe 9 years younger than her? maybe 10? ok, 16. his hair is fluffy and his eyes are soft and his teeth are very good. sometimes she glimpses him gazing out his high window with his laptop open. his apartment is one floor above hers. whenever he sees her, he asks if he’s being too loud, and she’s like no, no not at all sweetheart, and he goes red and he’s like, okay, well, let me know.
one day he’s out on the stoop with a book and she can’t believe it: he’s reading the same fairy tales that she used to read as a young woman. have you gotten to the one about the lost prince? that one’s good. oh, man, i didn’t know you liked this kind of stuff! what do you mean? this is my favorite book … etc.
not infrequently he lapses into spells of awkward silence. he’s either mind-bogglingly anxious or a dope. what now? she might be intimidated if she hadn’t been on so many first dates before.
and a woman his own age might assume that his averted eyes and restless left leg implied boredom or rudeness, but she understands immediately that it’s in fact the opposite.
side by side, the conversation continues, chastely, until their legs begin to cramp. hours later it’s sunset. the sky is a pink so delicate it’s almost unbearable.
“have you eaten dinner yet?”
this is a modern fairy tale. you know how fairy tales go. at the end of it our princess will have it all: the storybook wedding, charming IVF children, big idiot dog.
but before that, she’s in the mood for pad thai, and he’s free to come with, if he doesn’t have any other plans.
on the walk back from the restaurant he will gather up his courage and, looking away, ask her if she wants to um, you know, come over for a drink, or something
as he fiddles with the lock, new uncertainty, though he’s opened the door to his apartment a million times, he lets out a short adorable laugh:
“it’s just that i’ve never done this with anybody before ..”
@ inflammateomnia, twitter :)
alex dimitrov, “February”
nieztsche, beyond good and evil, point 269 (thank you Wes and Jacky)
This is very good and cute, I enjoyed it
lovely!