No Strings

Chapter 50--Half a Proposal

Pathetic was when I realized that my new friends were using me and I was letting them. Pathetic was holding their place in line in the cold while they snuck off and slept in the car under false pretenses.

I had a report due in the morning, sleeping outside in the cold while my back hurt and I began to believe I was a sucker. What did I do to deserve this? What did I pay a therapist for? Did I need more? There was a pair speaking what sounded like Spanish behind me. I didn't need to be here. There was nothing I wanted.

And then that's when I texted them. I got up off of my butt and started walking. I walked and walked and walked. I tolerated an hour of hurting feet while I wound my way down the streets. The bath of yellow, white and strip malls filled my view as the street light colors changed.

At the end of the first hour, I thought, "Why didn't I do this with my second boyfriend?"

I swung my purse freely. The weather was cold and the adrenaline was pumping through my veins.

The second hour, I was mad at my friends. My vision was clearing. I could see what they were trying to do. My feet were hurting every step. I took a break. I wished I had gotten more exercise. I whispered, "Damn."

The phone rang telling me there was a message. An hour after I shut off my phone. I would walk it home if need be. I had no allegiance to them. If they wanted to leave me in the cold waiting in line for them, then I had no problem walking home on my own and leaving their stuff to be stolen as they pleased.

The third hour, I was in the home stretch. I felt my spirits rise. Maybe paying a few thousand for psychiatry paid off. My feet had blisters, but they were so numb from the rhythm of walking that it didn't seem to matter anymore.

I could go home now. I could make it. Panting, I reached my door. I collapsed outside and on my knees I opened the door. I crawled in and took off my shoes. I walked across the carpet to the bathroom. God, I needed to go. I went and sighed in relief.

I slept for five hours before I realized I had the report to do. I typed it up as quickly as possible on my laptop in the dark. I slept a little late and had to rush to work the next day. I recieved a phone message on my cellphone. I listened to it.

"Hello... where did you go... why didn't you stay? Call us back, OK?"

I never called them back and they didn't call me either. We weren't friends anymore. But I was better off for it.

#

"It takes two to tango, do the foxtrot, and to do a concerto, but only one to screw up a relationship."

I was drinking beer from a local brewery. William was in tow with a bunch of our friends. They were incapacitated already and not saying much. The designated driver was off trying to collect men's phone numbers. William held up his glass too. He took a sip of the darker beer. I thought that one tasted nasty.

"That I feel I can disagree with. Both of them lead to the point where one of them screw up."

"You mean my boyfriends and I worked together to make me miserable?"

The girls cooed and glanced at William.

"In a word, yes."

He wasn't dating anyone at the time. Girls seemed to have a radar for successful single guys.

"That's quite harsh," I said before taking another sip of beer.

"You said you went through therapy and could fully blame your parents now."

He was joking on the surface, but I knew the joking was only a cushion for the deeper truth of those words.

I nodded. I wanted to burp. I hadn't swallowed properly. I let a small one rise up.

"Then you should know what I already know."

"Yes, triggers, finding by neuroses and not knowing better."

I sighed. The screwed up relationships were and weren't my fault. They weren't my fault in the way I'd come to think, but I still had to take the blame not recognizing the warning signs. I was always compromising myself. If only therapists could help choose a spouse too. I didn't want them to say, "Try your best, I've taught all you need--now go forth my disciple and find yourself A husband."

Even with therapy, I couldn't regard every man I fell in love with as anything close to safe.

"No, that you as you are is best. You shouldn't have to change yourself--"

"...for any guy. Yes, I've heard that. But I still envy the couples that hold each other's hand in the park with their white hair smiling at each other."

I was a bit irritated. I couldn't trust this guy I'd known for so long not to turn into an irrational pig after a month. Not that I was interested.

"I was about to say to serve the guy's never ending ego."

I was a little drunk now.

"I'm twenty-what? You talk this game but no one ever lives up to it. All three guys I dated were sweet in the beginning in different ways. I did like them. I loved them, but they were always the same or worse."

He knew better than to tell me about the fish in the pond when I was in such a foul mood.

"Then what do you want?" he asked.

"To be safely thirty, married without love, have a house and no strings attached."

"Marriage is a string," he said.

A woman next to him chimed in, "A noose." Her face was red. I didn't know who she was.

"I never wanted this crappy existence. I wanted simple things. I can't get them the harder I try. Besides, if I buy a house then it will feel empty without someone there with me. Someone I like and won't run away. I want someone to look after me as a friend, but not have to have love. Like a lifelong roommate."

The bartender took away my beer. He clearly thought that these late twenties blues and bemoaning my eventual status as a thirty year old was due to intoxication. But he didn't look like the type that had ever been a woman looking at her thirtieth birthday with despair. And he'd never been a secretary with an associates degree in advertising trying to climb to the top. He wouldn't be the type of secretary that didn't get a stinking card on secretary's day.

"I'd do that. Might be fun as long as there is a possibility for divorce if the relationship goes sour," William said in such a nostalgic voice that I thought he'd thought up the idea. He was as drunk as I was. The bartender reached and also took away his drink.

"I don't want love or to be involved in that other person's life. But someone who understands me enough to know what I want done in a hospital--if that happens."

"It is utopian."

"You're only a few months older than me and you've had plenty of girlfriends. Why would you want to do something like that anyway?"

He shook his head, "I like the thought of it. I don't think it could be done in practice."

"I was daydreaming anyway. Don't take it seriously," I said in one of those drunk-sober moments.

William's friend found us with a notebook full of men's numbers. She was so lucky. She helped us into the car. I envied her though I knew that you shouldn't pick up guys in a bar. I had the worst hangover in the morning and I smelled like something that came out of a dumpster, but the idea that I had in my drunken stupor stuck in my head. However, I didn't talk to William for another six months.