the list of things i can live without grows longer.
Where the rot shows in the creases of the skin, called by wherever the flesh has darkened, is the propinquity of the end.
There was not much left in the flat to eat other than croissants and prosciutto so I made myself a cup of tea and sat diagonally under the ceramic tiled walls at my Air BnB, feeling like I was in an old oil painting. The morning chill was leveling off as I thought seriously about how I would spend my day. Johnny left me in Tuscany to finish up my offseason épée training and I realized it had been over a week since I’d heard anything more than, “made it back to the UK” from him. This was typical of our laissez faire love. I knew that when we did speak it would be a three hour long conversation where we would playfully throw digs at each other about how we spend our autonomy. “Have you met the man?” Johnny would say. In truth, we didn’t much trust each other, but these conversations always brought us to a truce.
Most my summer in Tuscany was spent between small towns with a close group from my fencing team, visiting Catholic temples and sparring in the town squares. Johnny came at the tail end of the trip for the last Il Palio horserace in Siena. It was a proper visit, but I have a deep feeling that Johnny is never alone; that there may always be someone on standby, and that could either be for the way he is, or the way I cope. For whichever reason, I keep my true accessibility from him.
Autumn was settling in. At 0726 in the morning, I am unconsciously telephoning.
“Hello?” Johnny picks up on what feels like the fifth ring.
“Hi,” I say, sleepily. “Are you still in bed?”
“No, that is the best time to long for you,” he teases.
“Allow it, then.”
“Why haven’t I heard from you?” Johnny dared to ask. He was quick to blame shift. My chest tightened with a confused amusement as I said: I've reconsidered the capacity of this relationship. I feel sick to my stomach knowing that I am much more deserving. We never did talk about the phone calls you stepped away to receive during your time with me here.
“I didn’t believe my phone would work there in the countryside. I never even thought to connect to the WiFi, for that matter. I spent the weeks full on you.”
“But that didn’t stop your phone ringing.”
“How could it?”
“Do you feel,” I ask, “that I have been given a fair chance?”
“Why do you feel dishonored?” he responds with a question. I was beginning to feel very desperate as the irritation in Johnny’s voice was exposed. “This is all you have allowed, Tilly. All along, you have cultivated this distant longing. What, is it not so fun now?”
“I quite liked it better in July,” I retort.
“Yeah? You're always busier in the summer, innit?”
“Christ, I’m not bored. I really like you, Johnny. I’m terribly sorry about it— to have to tell you— but I do. It’s because I have fun with you. But it’s mostly because you are a man with effeminacy. I’m attracted to the freedom you seem to have,” I say. Johnny pulls his head up from the sac he is arranging before catching the bullet train into the city. He draws back his shoulders and I hear his exhale as he tightens his belly, more conscious, now, of his stature. “I do pretty well with quelling my desires,” I impose on him. “So this won’t change anything. Unless, of course, we both share an interest in that. In any event, it’s just how I feel.” Johnny was hearing me with water in his ear, as if he didn’t know that I could feel. It’s true that this was the most deliberate I’d been.
“You aren't that shallow,” I continue, “to not know that I was not only fucking you for some bodily fulfillment. People… emotions… are immense. And you are so naturally a thinker, that could not be something you did not know. If this was meant as an idyll, I should tell you, I’d like for it to end here. I’m much more interested in making a life for myself sometime soon.” It all sounded beyond my will to say.
“Have you figured out, just now, all it takes to be a woman for a man?” Johnny asks laughingly. “You are a real slow burn.”
Being a woman has mattered to me, but I am not enough an ingenue. This is not to say I have never been the ruined, but that I am enough aware to know that to a man, every pussy is sweet, and in the new world: ripeness is nothing. Even our bodies go bad, with no true difference between the ripe and the rotting.
I have not long kept a disallowing gaze for any man, or kept them, really, ever at all. My independence (much like their own) had been the politic my freedom was etched within, but I watch this freedom become its own danger as the list of things I can live without grows longer. Since no good life can be lived in longing, I figure, I have to love right where I am. And I knew Johnny would be counting on my desperation to show up as it is. Men are always waiting on us to be desperate.