There’s nothing I remember quite so vividly as the summer when I was seventeen. I spent the days sleeping in, both relishing and hating the heat, then sorting through boxes of bills and tickets in Manolo’s office until the bando rang through the speakers outside. I can still smell the gasoline and rubber mingling with my sunscreen and the orange blossoms from the fields outside. Home was a dark and lonely cage, my parents always out, my brother always missing. I napped on the floor in front of the sofa. It was cooler there, soft skin against hard marble. And all through the day, I waited for the frission of a missed call, of a text message.
Remember when a missed call was in and of itself a message? I was trembling with anticipation for those late nights online on MSN, listening to Radio 3 and trying to get Nick to come and hang out around the horrible little town where we lived.
We walked around the empty streets. The night air brightened our wilted spirits, and we flirted, and we dreamed, and sometimes, if I was bold enough, we fucked in the darkest places we could find, in the fields full of orange trees, under a bridge, in construction sites and in parks. I swear I can still taste sweat and the coppery blood of a thousand swatted mosquitoes, still feel the asphalt under my knees, the grass near my fingers.
But mostly, we talked. From Baudelaire to Calvino, from Hard Candy to Some Like It Hot, from Palestrina to Pearl Jam, our nights were filled with poetry, literature, music and film, obsessively analyzing every quote, every lyric, every chord.
One recurring conversation was about stability versus freedom, about the choices we make and how they free or trap us. We rambled endlessly about everything we give up to truly decide what we do at each and any point of our lives. I’d just discovered polyamory and anarchism, I was all for responible, conscious choices and the freedom inherent to chaos. For me, the question wasn’t even about whether freedom was the better option, but how to make it ethical and respectful. I could care less about stability, about selling my soul to institutions like Marriage, or Career, or Identity.
Of course, I felt tempted by them, and I already spoke about my failures to adhere to the cults of Career and Identity, but this next one is really hard for me. So hard, I’ve meandered around talking about Lady Chatterley and Belle Du Jour, saying nothing at all about my heart and how it works.
Love with every stranger, the stranger the better
At that point, polyamory was a hypothetical at best. No one’s poly at seventeen in a small town. It took me another five years to have my first experiences with multiple partners and it turns out, freedom in love comes with a lot of work, and most of it is not even remotely rewarding. Good news, though! You can avoid it by just… not giving yourself to love. I got really good at loving everyone just enough, being the fabled unicorn, or the lover, or the other woman, or just not very present for anyone ever. For a while, it was enough: my curiosity and my sex drive were satisfied. I could break my heart a thousand times and still come out of it with a smile, because really, what did I risk? A dinner here and there? A good fuck? That’s nothing when you can make your own pleasure. I could fall in love with someone new at any time, so why waste my time with old loves better off dead?
But the truth is, was, still is… I’ve had two great loves in my life. They were both hungry, visceral, terrible. My hands shake and I had to put this post away for some time, because I get ugly about them. They made me want things I cannot have, because I cannot give them. I was willing to do the impossible for them, dissolve myself into us, and isn’t that scary? Enough to make me nauseous.
I’ve tried, in many ways, but it was never enough to try. And it turns out, love is not enough.
What is, though? I’m not sure, honestly. I don’t want to be defined by who shares my bed and in what way. And I’m not even sure I have another one of those great loves in me. Statistically speaking, the older I get, the harder it will be to find someone with enough common ground to even like, much less love like when I was 17. I’m getting more and more specific, too, and even though my edges are rounder, there’s more puzzle to my piece than at 29. Sex may be wasted on the young, but love definitely isn’t.
I’m not settling, though: not for madness, not for safety, I won’t have anything less than both and a healthy dose of challenge. Who knows, maybe third time’s the charm, right?