Member-only story
Summer, 35
On giving into emojis
A few nights ago while I slept beside my partner, I almost went to bed with a woman who was not my partner. I don’t know who she was; she was no one. Too young for me, milk skin, long dark hair, wearing a short black dress. I had conjured her.
We sat at a two-top, this woman and I, in a fancy cocktail lounge — the sort of place I generally don’t go in real life, even when I can afford it. I had the vague sense that I was not in the city where I live and was traveling for some reason, maybe a conference. As in: I was relatively anonymous and free to misbehave.
The woman seemed to know this, too. As I looked at her pretty face, she asked me questions. I said things about myself in what I assume was incomprehensible dreamspeak and she was clearly impressed by all of it. She smiled a lot.
As I looked at her pretty face, she asked me questions.
Even as we talked, I knew our conversation could lead to sex, was in fact designed to lead to sex. I didn’t allow it to lead to sex. I thought of Maggie and decided no. Part of me wanted to, of course, but another more convincing part of me didn’t want to — or didn’t want to deal with the consequences. You know you’re very boring, or committed, or both, when you can’t even cheat on your partner in your dreams.
<3
Maggie spends most days asking people not to touch irreplaceable art; oils in skin can degrade paint and even stone. Once a woman kissed a Rembrandt. I teach and write and often feel I’m failing on both counts. Between us we have two master’s degrees in the arts, a car (leased), semi-affordable rent, a roommate, no pets. Our lives are stable, in a month-to-month, lower-middle-class way. We’re a white, straight couple in a liberal city. There’s only so much that can go wrong.
<3
Back when I worked at a bakery, one of my very young coworkers — she was eighteen, doing a gap year before college — said she’d heard that when you turn thirty, your body stops regenerating and starts to decompose. By then I was already thirty, and she knew this, so I’m not sure how I was expected to respond.
I laughed. I said, “That makes sense.” We were rolling cold pucks of pie dough…
