I'll never be Estella.

The Boy… all-right, I’m actually quite sick of not giving him a name, so Ethan; chiefly because I watched Before Sunrise, again, a couple of nights ago when I got bored with work, and it made me think of him and pushed me well into tears. That movie is just too raw, and real, and absolutely desperate. About the What ifs in love, and you know just as well as I the power that’s in those two words.

He called me up sometime in the middle of the night, (late evening for him, fucking 4 a.m. for me) to tell me how he’d felt about Phone Booth. And I couldn’t think of a better reason to have woken up for, honestly. It was a relatively short conversation because his pre-paid was running out and I had to wake up at 7 a.m. today, but it was oh, I don’t know. He’d asked me why’d I go writing, and then sending him something I knew would make him deeply sad and exceedingly emotional. So I asked him if he’d liked it, and of course he did, so that was his answer then, wasn’t it. He liked the tragedy of it all too, the sadness, because it was the thing that struck a chord. Sad, melodramatic stories are always consistently more gripping than happy, trite, ones. That was certainly agreed upon.

He told me that he’s imagined being with me countless of times, and during those precise moments, the distance doesn’t seem to exist. I know it’s all god-awfully clichéd, but it was simply beyond lovely for me to hear it. He’d said it was a strange sort of feeling, the mix of heightened eroticism and sadness. Tersely- Erection and tears. I smiled to myself. How cute.

Oh but that’s really one of the most remarkable feelings, sex and sadness, preferably with lots and lots of tears. It gets you completely lost in insanity; You’re self-absorbed up to the point where everything felt is just something else altogether. I’ve only done it a couple of times with the Ex. Now I think about it, it was all extremely ridiculous. Because we created the setting, set it up such that we’d cry and be stupid about it. And I swear, it was all his fault. But it was still something else, nonetheless.

And very, Very oddly, the other girl in the story, the one the protagonist was married to, had the same name as his current flat mate. I swear, I didn’t know that when I wrote the story. Dreadfully uncanny. But she has a black boyfriend, apparently. I couldn’t stop teasing him about it. ‘You only don’t dare to screw her ‘cuz you think your dick wouldn’t be up to the competition.’ He didn’t seem to think it particularly funny, but laughed anyway. Very sarcastically.

Martine e-mailed me after I came home today too. It was a relief. It reassured me of a number of things I wasn’t too happy about when the whole affair put itself abruptly on hiatus. He reprieved me of my selfish, insane behaviour by telling me something like he most certainly did not think any less of me because of that. That he was as much to blame for fanning my lust and libido, and knew very well what he was doing, certainly; only he couldn’t help it. But he’d no idea it’d cumulate into me banging on his door at 3 a.m. in the morning demanding to have my way. Apparently I scared him because he didn’t think it was ever possible to predict my behaviour. But it’s so boring being predictable! I thought no one liked that, and of course I would not be predictable, yet, we barely knew each other. Everyone falls into routine sooner or later, even me. My routine’s just a little more debauched, that is all.

He said something about being afraid to tell me that his position hasn’t changed where the sentiment he felt towards we were concerned. That he still thought I was wonderfully weird, sexy, etc, etc. Afraid? I told him I promised to practice more cognizance this time round, and swore I wouldn’t exploit it. Him liking me in all those ways is clearly no longer a green light to take liberties with him (oh man, I feel like a guy saying that. I thought only women had traffic lights on their genitalia). There was something about not being able to be together for more than just the practical reasons we had discuss prior, and about there being a bunch of moral reasons too. Even though I am still seriously wondering what they are. It’s impossible, so he said, however much he might have to regret ‘this’.

I liked the way he ended it all off. Something about how, when things ‘sorted themselves out’, and I still found that I had genuine feelings of affection and sympathy, then please, for that moment.

For that moment, indeed.

But please what? To go back and love you again?

You bet.

Of course I’m not desperate, but we did really share something, and while I am very much into Ethan; well… one can never be sufficiently selfish. The more people to have loved you, the better.

But Martine, why sympathy though. I adore you in too many ways to see you as needing such. The word just makes me feel so tender. And I bet you knew it.

My favourite storybook heroine today is Estella.

xoxox