12
Here she is, in my brain, eating away at me—making me into something greater than myself . . . in a way we were merging together: so i had to stop thinking of us in terms of man and woman. What if Anna is simply part me in the afterlife? What if this progression toward Ursula was really about the unification of Anna and me in the life to come? That I, in the life to come, am a combination—just like I am a combination of something from the past and something from the future? Would this be any less exciting? Well, if I could cheat death by doing this—if I could reap the rewards of this merger in this life, then no, it wouldn’t be any less exciting. But in reality I wanted to be in a sexual relationship with a partner, such as Anna or whoever my Ursula, in this life, turns out to be. So yeah, it was great that i was changing the world one keystroke at a time—and advancing humanity toward a kind of heaven on earth—but, no, it wasn’t necessarily all that, because, well, the altitude here keeps me pretty busy—and lonesome.
But why torture myself with the notion that, eventually, I would unite with my Ursula in this life—when, clearly, I wasn’t ready for that yet—I simply wasn’t meant for it—I wasn’t making any fucking money. And my government, without my help, was a far cry from giving me a stipend that would make it possible for me (and others like me) to move in with someone and raise a modest family. So this is just the tradeoff of being me: yeah, I get to transform suffering into meaning to the nth degree, which makes me happy, but to be completely happy—well, I had to believe that i would be united with my Ursula so much that everything that came before that promised something exponentially better than I’ve ever experienced before. That, in the end, I’ll prove it all true, and, in being right, and in proving that I’m right—people will see that I’m right, and I won’t be, God forbid, lonely for the company of a woman.
So we found ourselves talking about Kamala Harris—the former vice president and ex presidential candidate, and how she might be thinking and preparing to run for the president all over again. I was basically saying, “If she didn’t want her vice president to be Pete Buttigieg because America couldn’t handle a gay man, then she definitely wasn’t going to set her sights on universal health care for everybody—she’d be too busy thinking about getting reelected, which is why, frankly, I didn’t think she was right for this country. She just wanted to be president to be president—she wasn’t going to change the world. And we needed somebody that was going to change the world, this shit has been building up for years, we’re going to fucking blow . . . etc. We need Ursula more than ever; so I told her that, and, happily, i think it made her feel better.
i’m not talking to you, or me what? so i was getting a little pushback, which was disheartening, because I thought i was making my best effort not to upset her. Who, then, was she talking to? Or was she saying, in general, I don’t want to have a conversation with you? “What’s wrong with you?” Nothing is wrong with me. I like to be alone. so what was this about? it sounded like she was trying to get back at me, as if I was the one saying those things; was she trying to tell me, without hurting my feelings, that we would never be together in this life because I wouldn’t want that? Because the real me is not lonesome at all? That I am only feeling lonesome because I am thinking that is what most people would feel if they were like me—minus the talent? I think that might have had something to do with it. So here I was, thinking, “You never get to go home.” And Ursula is telling me, “You’re fucking home already.”
Was she apprehensive, then, that I wouldn’t spend enough time with her? That my work would come before our relationship—if, that is, I had to choose? Would it be love, then? So she says—so I’m right, this isn’t about her being angry at me for trying to win her over; on the contrary, this is about her idea that love for another person didn’t mean two people exchanging information about the deep bulk through their backs—to get closer to our event, and, by extension, our God—but that love, instead, was an agreement between two people to overstate each other. Well, I wasn’t going to say that! That would piss her off. But her greatness was understood—telling her that she was great felt like backsliding or stating the obvious—when nothing, in fact, needed to be said. I get it. She wanted to feel the fires of heaven in this life, too, and she thought she could get that if she was loved beyond what another could control—beyond me being able to choose: “I’m going to paint first, and then we can hang out.” As opposed to, “We can hang out, have sex, drink a glass of wine, whatever, and then I will paint.” Now, I don’t think she would have expected that—but I think deep down she wanted my love for her to trump my relentless determination to be creative.
It was a little strange—since I think, in many ways, she felt the same way about her job that I did about my projects. But I guess she, like me, was a little restless for something heavenly to interact with, to reward her, to make her feel all the love that she was putting out there. So how did I respond to that? By telling her that I felt the same way? So I told her that—literally. I sounded it out in my head. That satisfied her, at least temporarily, and to be honest, it also satisfied me temporarily. A little. But yeah, I’d pretty much maxed out all the self-discovery that was coming my way—I was pretty much unstoppable when it came to the arts, and the only thing left for me to focus on was finding a partner and raising a family—and putting that into my work. But again, money was an issue, which is why Ursula’s job was so important—money would continue to be an issue even after she became president, but it wouldn’t be nearly as much of an issue if I didn’t have to pay 643 dollars a month for health insurance. So I had a long wait ahead of me, given the anticipation I was currently feeling. O, to be so close, and yet so fucking far away. But that is the nature of this life, isn’t it? And the longing one feels for the divine, a longing that can’t be helped no matter what happens, but, yeah, i think a real relationship would help, at least for a while, so long as we were in love, as opposed to gaining weight, farting in front of each other, and calling it a day.
I mean, come on—it’s just common decency to go into another room—such as the bathroom—and let out your gas in a neutral environment. Now, I hear you—sometimes we have gas and we’re uncomfortable and we can’t pass the gas and so if we feel like we might be able to pass the gas we need to get it out while we can—just like being a person that struggles with constipation. So yeah, you get around your partner, you feel safe and relaxed, you fart, you don’t have gas anymore, and voila! Everything is good, right? Except for me, it’s not. I don’t want to smell that shit, and I don’t want you to feel so safe with me that you become ignorant of the outside world—a world that can hurt us, especially if we think—we love each other, we know it’s ok to fart in front of each other. It’s not something to make a big deal about. Except that it is. When you fart on me you’re treating me like I’m a garbage dump. You’re effectively dumping your back on me, and enabling the illusion that you can do things like that and no matter what, you’re safe and protected from the outside world, which, I believe, anyhow, even in heaven, seeks to enforce the laws of the universe, laws that don’t know how to do anything but obey the law of love—which means, at times, putting others first, like when, God help us, we’re tempted to punish our partner for personal gain—an obscene level of fake comfort.
So what was the rush? I believed that Ursula wouldn’t dump her back on anyone unless she couldn’t help it, and, if she couldn’t help it, well, because being in love is one of the most important things you can pursue in this life, it would probably be better if we didn’t live together—if we were close friends, instead—I don’t know if that’s possible in the afterlife—it certainly isn’t on earth. Usually when we break up we need complete separation, don’t we? In order to move on? So was I privy to something that I didn’t let into my consciousness right now? Was Ursula? Was I trying to get my kicks in with Ursula before she became old and less attractive? Before she cut her fucking hair and called it quits? Was I trying to get to her before she gained a bunch of weight, like old people often do, even when they grow up skinny? Was I desperate for whatever I could get? And, in this case, was I desperate for what I couldn’t get? Was I so far gone that I couldn’t imagine myself with anyone but Ursula even if I knew that she wasn’t going to maintain the person that I was physically and emotionally attracted to?