The first thing you have to understand is they’re not like us. Catching attractive strangers’ eyes, they -- without deliberating, without consciously deciding anything -- hold their gazes. They smile. It’s just instinct to them. That’s how completely different they are from you and me. In hotel lobbies, in international airports, in uber-hip bars we could never even find because their entrances are in dark alleys we’d be afraid we'd be mugged in -- they hold strangers’ gazes. And smile. They do these seemingly simple things we like to tell ourselves we could do if we really wanted, that someday we will do when it’s more appropriate, when we're less encumbered, when we’re feeling bold or electrified or horny. Though we won’t. And so they open up to themselves realms of possibility that remain closed forever to the likes of you and me.
Forever. That’s a long time.
It is a long time. And for that portion of it we’re alive, we get to contemplate daily the pain of our alienation from that place they inhabit.
That place. That psychological state.
That’s right.
Not a geographic locale.
Well. Strictly speaking, no. But it’s a psychological state that sometimes articulates itself in geographical terms.
Actual physical space.
Yes.
Major urban centers, of course. And coastlines.
Of course.
It goes a long way, doesn’t it, towards explaining the discomfort we feel when visiting those places.
Yes.
Proximity, of course. The abject pain of being so close to a world we’d like to inhabit but are barred from utterly. It’s just behind that garden wall. It’s just eight stories up, behind that window with the glowing Japanese paper lanterns. It’s just at the end of that pier there, behind that locked cabin door.
Yes.
Oh lord. They’ve only just met, just three hours ago, but they’re in that cabin at the end of that pier having the type of sex we spend our whole lives fantasizing about, stimulating our sad little parts while thinking about, trying to tell ourselves no actual human beings ever experience it in actual reality anyway, shamelessly and without even asking permission doing things to each other we won’t ask even our chubby and slightly asthmatic partners of all these years to do, licking things we’d never dare lick, saying things we’d never dare say, making bold and thrillingly rude gestures to these strangers they’re with, staring hard and unembarrassed at the particular parts in motion.
Yes.
Thinking and saying simultaneously. Reaching
