The Museum

There are moments in our shared history that feel like museum exhibits in my memory. Perfectly curated and preserved, they loom, threatening fresh hell to me if I fail to unlock their hidden lessons. In wallowing I stroll among the artefacts and try to decrypt the enigmatic puzzle of my sorrow. I replay conversations, and relive intimacies, recalling with acute agony the decadent fulfilment of needs. Such cruel irony that those very pleasures became the fine edge of a blade upon which I repeatedly throw myself, heart first. This exposition brings me no pleasure to patronize, but I suspect somewhere in my psyche a choice has been made in favor of suffering over you rather than finally letting you go. So I scroll backward in our chronology, allowing myself the disappointment to which I cling, with the higher goal of completing this catharsis. With any luck I will find peace from the tormenting thoughts of you on the other side.

What a thrill the beginning was. From across an ocean we spotted one another. I could see you. You could see me. We both remembered meeting backstage in a dressing room what feels like a hundred lifetimes ago. When you said, "I was wearing four inch heels and still had to look up at you," you salved a tenderness in my ego. My insecurities withered under the full sun of your sincere admiration. You reminded me the pleasure of being consensually objectified, and I found it in myself to flaunt my most underappreciated qualities for you, while basking in your ogling. You adored all the things I despised about myself, and amazingly enough it was reciprocal. Essentially both of our least favorite attributes were the subject of the other's paraphilia. It was perfectly symbiotic...quixotic, even.

Only the greatest loves of my life have felt as present as you were. Waking nearly every morning to recordings of your rich voice; hearing the narrative of you wrapping up your day, and welcoming me to my own; you daring me to begin my morning with a smile; every detail of the fabric we wove together was a priceless textile; a foreign delicacy. We shared so much joy that I can recall with perfect accuracy the crescendo of your laugh when I said something you found particularly compelling. We were personal. We were political. We were deviantly sexual. Together we were an endless conversation.

Like a pair of pioneers we navigated the discovery and negotiated the exploration of sexual boundaries effortlessly. There were so many interlocking edges that I lost count. When and if we were ever finally able to act on these desires, it became clear that there was a mutual willingness for me to transactionally possess your body and satisfy both of our delight with an extensive endurance test of our profound sexual drives. For how long can you remain receptive to my sadistic lovemaking? For how long can I draw out the pleasure before allowing the release? For how long can I dominate you? What will it take for me to make your body sing? To play you like an instrument of ecstatic pleasure? And how will it feel to finally surrender control to you when I'm exhausted? What catalytic sexual energy! When you and I connected in this way I felt like it was not a far leap for me to accept the power and efficacy of sex magic if it originated in feelings such as these, because it absolutely felt alchemical and supernatural. It felt like you and I together could change the world just by fucking.

In retrospect it all sounds absurd now. This promenade down memory lane has intentionally heretofore omitted all of the warning signs I ignored, in the same sense that they were obscured from my direct awareness until it was too late. It was far too late for me to recover unaffected by the time I realized you were not capable of being honest with yourself about what we were doing. You lied to yourself and thus lied to me. When you tell this story to others you will give them the acceptable version of events, that you turned me away to protect your other relationship, except you will not tell them that your other relationship required no protection from me. You will give them the redacted report with the particularly inflammatory embellishments you texted me about how I was "lashing out" and that "our expectations didn't align." I cannot tell you how sorry I was to read your revisionist perspective. There is no amount of spin that can erase the catalog of media and communications I have of our affair. You cannot take it back from me. You can cauterize our connection and stuff all our memories deep into the inky black abyss that must be your inner shadow, but you cannot disabuse me from my memory. We may have never gotten our real, live, face to face date, but energetically speaking I know that our connection was fast and deep. I know I fucked you like you always wanted to be fucked, and you let me fuck you the way I always wanted to fuck. That isn't arrogance. That was real. I know it. I know we were falling in love, regardless of the distance between us, and however terrifying it was for both of us.

You know how I know it was real? You told me in so many ways. Your time and attention were significant. Your physical response. Your trust.

You did make me doubt it for a time, after I acknowledged to myself that you only showed me what you wanted me to see. At that point everything you said became suspect, and required reexamination. But I have this fucking museum of our shared history etched into my heart and mind that has been my taskmaster for the last 2+ weeks. After several days of trapping myself in there to study it, I emerged knowing what we shared was about as real as anything could ever be. You ranting to me that "monogamy is death" a mere two days before you closed your relationship was not my imagination. I still have the recording, actually. I still have everything you ever sent me. Every photograph, every voice text, every word uttered in SMS. My phone is a museum, too. I've moved them so I don't see them anymore, and I certainly don't plan to open the tomb of our text thread anytime soon, but it's all still there. I haven't been able to get rid of it yet. So while I am happy for you if you've convinced the people who matter to you that your latest version of events is true, I will always know how you felt about me. I know that you crawled as far out onto the limb as you could, clawing toward the life that you most crave, and I know that you got scared, tucked tail, and returned to the arms of your possessive fiancé, slamming the door closed on your polyamorous proclivities till death do they part. GROSS!

Was I a bit of a crush blind fool? Perhaps. I fail to see the harm in that, except to myself. For that you can be sure I have already thoroughly repented and will continue to self-flagg-urbate.

I've catalogued here the most iconic highlights of our short yet epic chapter. I've been working very hard to let it go. I'm trying to release my frustration and forgive you, forgive myself, forgive the universe. I know that I don't miss you as much as I miss the way I felt when we were connected. I miss the friendship, the laughter, the heretical and sexually provocative nature of our interactions. Unfortunately however, you have left me with little but memories, a cache of sexually perverse media, and scorched earth. You are not what I want back in my life. I want the feelings again, but certainly not from you. You have hurt my pride sufficiently enough for me to pass on that, thank you.

For what it's worth, you might like to know that I think I am close to forgiving you for treating me the way you felt about yourself. I'm sorry I got caught up in your self denial and broken dreams, but I suppose it was worth it for everything I learned about myself. I will always be grateful for that evolution, and for the memories that I have of us which remain unsullied by our abrupt ending. I really, truly, deeply hope that I'm wrong about the inevitable dumpster fire you're going to have to put out when you realize these sacrifices were made in a vain attempt to repair a relationship that could not be saved. I hope that you can paradoxically forget every word you ever said to me about hating monogamy and requiring freedom, for the benefit of your pending nuptials. I hope it doesn't feel like settling. In fact, I hope for both of your sakes that it feels better than anything you and I ever shared. I, too, would like to create some new memories, and let this museum go on to collect dust.