Thinking about power

Dec 07, 99 | 3:04 am

"Am I calling you too much?"
"No. I like hearing from you. It's reassuring."
"Reassuring like I'm not out carousing with other women?"
"Well. Yes."

---

I loved him. I always had. But it's not about that anymore. On the surface of it all, he fits. Better than Arthur did, anyway. And he understands me in a way that Arthur never did, mainly because we come from the same place. There's a certain elegance about Robin that Arthur lacked.

I don't exactly know to phrase this without coming off sounding sexist or patronizing, but I really prefer that the men I date be smarter than I am. If he's not smarter, then it's nice if he has some sort of talent that sets him apart... music, art, mechanical skill, whatever. I guess it seems a sort of throwback to the whole "better provider" thing, but I believe it ties more into how lonely I am because I don't have anyone clever to talk to.

The only thing I miss from my six years with Arthur is the companionship. We'd pick up the telephone a hundred times a day, sometimes having conversations that were two sentences long. But he was intelligent and funny and I really miss being able to pick up the phone and bounce stuff off of him.

I have no-one to bounce my car or apartment problems off of. Well, no one whose opinion is more valuable to me than mine. I really hope my friends that are reading this will not take offense. I think they'll probably understand what I mean.

I am really really bad at being single. I feel like half of me is missing. And this is not because I think less of myself as a human being as a single woman or anything of that ilk. I just don't know what do with all of this extra stuff.

I'm thinking lately about power.

Robin began living in my head again when I was thinking about marrying Arthur. Arthur was a decent, respectable guy, and still, I held Robin up as the measure. Arthur and I had some serious problems, which probably lead to me romanticizing Robin. But had Arthur and I gotten married, I have little doubt that we would have stayed that way. For a whole host of reasons that aren't really relevant here.

I still look back at my time with Robin with a sense of awe and wonder, because we were terrible and wonderful and completely in the moment. I didn't much think about the future. The past was too horrible to contemplate.

Jesus. What the hell was I thinking? Was it because I knew that someday I would be a respectable, contributing, tax paying citizen who wanted some really wicked memories to look back on? Of a seventeen year old girl who wore no panties under a wrap dress in February? Of smoking opium at RFK stadium in 1986? Of a boy who used to buy me roses before every Dead show to twist through my hair?

Or was it because I knew that if I lived to be the same age as my father, my life would be half-over by my twenty-sixth birthday? Or was I merely a garden variety self-destructive idiot?

Maybe I am an adrenaline junkie. Thinking you might die is an enormous rush. You get to sort of hang over the side of the cliff, waiting for the fall, wanting to believe you're going to make it out because you've bailed yourself out so many times before. And then, when the danger is long past and you're still alive, you look for ways to replicate that charge… maybe take midnight swims in a rooftop pool during a Category 4 hurricane or run your bike off the track after turn 1 at Willow. It's almost as good as the drugs.

With Robin and me, during our early years together, he had the power. He could hurt me without even trying. A night without a telephone call, a dismissive comment, and I would spend hours mulling, wondering, hurt, worried.

On the flip side, a smile, a kiss, a compliment would keep me reeling for days. Of course, at sixteen, I hadn't any defenses built to protect me from a Robin. It never occurred to me that how Robin made me feel was largely up to me.

I didn't want him to hurt me. And now, with all of the information I have amassed in the years that followed Robin, I know, logically, that this is a power only I can assign to him. That of his own volition, how he makes me feel, how any man makes me feel, is largely up to me.

I gave him the power. And now he doesn't have it anymore. I do. He rings me carefully, makes light conversation, and I hear it in his voice. He's looking to me for cues. It's amazing. And it makes me wonder. Why couldn't I just make that critical shift in my thinking happen on my own? Why couldn't I, at 16 or 19 or 23, suddenly wake up and decide that I was in charge now? Why can't we force that sea change? I have defenses now, against boys like Robin.

I'm still friends with a lot of the guys I used to date. Part of this is simply growing up in a small social universe, where the people I went to school with tend to go back home and marry each other, after spending the requisite five years in the "real world" of New York City. Part of it, too, is my tendency to look back with rose colored glasses, making it easier for me to forgive boys the transgressions of youth.

And part of it is that when I was younger, and dating in a frenzy, there were few scenes and recriminations when relationships didn't work out. I learned very young that you can't force a man's hand. If he doesn't want you, no amount of begging or pleading is going to change his mind. So why should I make myself look like a jackass? And why should I act like I care that we're breaking up? The only thing I want to take with me when I leave is my pride.

But as I get older, I find it harder and harder to forgive men who are careless with my time, my feelings, my life. But at what point does chalking it up to being human stop, and the anger and recriminations begin?

I stop seeing a relationship in terms of romance and love and start seeing it as conquest and corruption.

It would almost be nice to marry him for nostalgia's sake. As a toast to what my life might have been. It's like my parallel fantasy universe just crashed into my real world. and it isn't necessarily a good thing.

But marrying Robin would require me to admit something about myself that I am not particularly proud of. I have a tendency to base part of my sense of self worth around whomever I am dating. Part of it is the chameleon effect, and part of it is just plain snobbery. Robin was pretty impressive when I was in high school. It takes a lot more to impress me now.

The problem is that I don't worship him anymore. The rush is gone, the thrill of the chase. I have the power now. And I am 100% sure that I do not want it.

---

Life in a Northern Town comes on the radio in the master bath. I'm putting on my ancient plaid bathrobe and tying back my hair before I wash my face. There's a bathroom tumbler full of warm scotch resting in the soap dish.

Robin is brushing his teeth in the other bathroom. He comes out, toothbrush in hand, when he hears the song on the radio. I don't see him until he's standing behind me, reflected in the mirror.

"They're playing our song." He slips his hands around my neck, takes the clip from my hand.

I slide around in his arms, turning to face him. "Do you remember? It was so cold in the room."

"My parents were away. Dream Academy on Johnny Carson. After midnight. You're not going to school tomorrow." He's smiling right down at me, and at this moment, I love him so much that I remember what it was like. The rush practically knocked me off my feet. The words are right on the tip of my tongue. "I love you," he says.

I don't answer anymore. And we're standing there. My head buried in his chest, listening to the song.