15/12/2017

15/12/2017

The party happened yesterday. I was foolish to ask him to come with me.

I loved it at first. Everyone was in awe at the dress. At me. I am by no means modest in temperament or nature, I love to be looked at. To be Seen. To be admired. It fulfilled me in ways I forgot possible. I went around introducing Viktor to everyone. My friends. Barbara, Genevieve, Margaret, their husbands and wives, everyone. Because I wanted them to see him and love him like I loved him.

I thought about myself too much. I enjoyed myself too much. In just an hour, I could tell he no longer wanted to be there. His smile was strained now, and he was drinking more champagne than I know him to like. Viktor doesn’t like these kinds of parties. He doesn’t like to socialize to this degree. And I had… I had chosen to forget. So I did the best thing I could think of. I know Barbara’s niece’s husband’s sister-in-law was an engineer, so I found her and that would be the last person I introduced to him. Their conversation was good, and I could see that they got along great. That they had a shared interest, one that I know to fuel him as opposed to draining him. And with that, I excused myself and left him to converse with someone like-minded.

I thought I did something good. I thought that that was the best decision for him. Even though it had me alert all through the rest of the evening, always subtly trying to see that he was enjoying himself, worrying that he wasn’t, planning what to say to excuse us both if that was the case. Without even realizing it, I became a ”caretaker” again. I only noticed it when the party was over and we were back home, and I let out a sigh of relief. And when I realized it with horror, I shamelessly hoped that he didn’t. I didn’t want him to. But he was unusually quiet as we both undressed, and I felt like he did. I asked him if he enjoyed it, the party. He said he did. With no indication in his tone that he was speaking to me honestly. And then all my concern turned to… irritation. We both knew that he did not like it, the party. So why couldn’t he just tell me plainly? What was so hard about it? I asked him why he was lying. He didn’t need to pretend. He said he liked it once more, this time much more evenly, like as if he was trying to soothe me. He was just tired after a long day. And yes, that was most likely true, but the way he held his eyebrows, knotted ever so slightly. That was not tiredness. Maybe I should have let it go. I think he wanted me to let it go, then and there, but I asked him why he could never tell me the truth.

And then he did.

He asked me how he was supposed to do that. Was he supposed to look me in my eye and tell me that he despises standing around in a room full of strangers, chatting with people who he did not know and did not want to know, about things he did not care about and did not want to care about? That he hated having to handle so many people so rapidly, one after the other, people who talked to him about stock markets and business trends and fashion trends and political trends and social trends, things he did not care about, but he would do it so that his husband was happy because that’s what I liked to do? But even that was not enough. I was not satisfied with him. I was never satisfied with him. And so I had to herd him away, place him with a fellow “Scientist”, like a parent carefully placing their child into a playpen with a toy so that they were happy, only to then anxiously watch them from afar, monitoring. I couldn’t even let him handle that “nonsense” on his own, nonsense he was enduring for me. I couldn’t even let him deal with his own situation. I could never let him deal with his own situation.

He has never spoken to me like that. Never exploded like that. No, perhaps “exploded” may not be the right term, because he barely raised his voice. But he spoke with a harshness that made me think that I would rather he shouted at me. So I apologized. Apologized for asking him to come to an event that he wouldn’t like. It occured to me too late that he would not enjoy it, or perhaps I let it occur to me too late, I do not know. I had just wanted to make the good moment we shared earlier last longer. I just wanted to introduce him to the people I call my friends. The people he “didn’t care about”. My hands felt numb. I felt numb. I felt stupid for all this. I should have let him stay home. Then instead of this, we would have reunited happily after I had a great night out. I should have chosen wisely instead of greedily. I was never “satisfied” with him. He spoke again, different this time. He was trying to explain further what he meant. He looked strangely frustrated, yet regretful of the way he spoke. He apologized for his tone. Explained to me what he meant, explained and explained. But I already understood. So I nodded because finally, finally he was speaking to me after months of wanting him to. He was speaking to me, and my brain felt like someone had turned the lights off. Shut everything down. I think… I had not been expecting to hear him speak like that, and I suppose it took a long time to process that. All I knew at the time was that I didn’t want him to be bothered by this. To lose sleep over this. He had work tomorrow, so we had to sort this out today.

So I told him that I understood. We were just… different. We liked to do different things. Liked different kinds of people. Handled things… differently. I had wanted us to enjoy the night, but failed to consider these things. Failed to consider the differences in what we would actually enjoy. It was fine. I don’t remember what his face looked like as I said this. I was looking at him, past him. At a lock of his hair that fell behind his ear. He was oddly still, I remember that. I couldn’t explain to him any more than that. Because it was true. We were just different, and even though I loved him and every aspect of his being, his thoughtfulness, his passion for his work, his humor and wit and smile and occasional awkwardness, he did not believe that I was satisfied with him. We were just different. And so, with that understanding, we prepared ourselves for bed, said our goodnights and went to sleep.