Equations: Dialectic Form (2021)

#7
Mindy, like Marie, wants my streams. The difference is that this has
nothing to do with eventual parturition. Mindy loves thrill seeking and
joyrides; she wants to experience things fully; she has the temperament of
an artist. So that our sex is never quite perfect; I pull out, thinking prudent
thoughts. Mindy is left serviced but undernourished. There are strange
gaps in her mind; it doesn’t occur to Mindy what the disasters of
unwanted pregnancies amount to. I know (I am thirty, she is nineteen)
that a stream from me will undo our successful narrative. The narrative
maintains an edge of longing based on calculations I do that she will not.
And the spaces between our major encounters are filled with text
messages, because cell phones are now part of everyone’s relationship
equations. Cell phones are a flush; they break up narratives into crumbs.
Fortunately, both Mindy and I know how to employ cell phones and text
messages in successful ways. They are a sauce on an entrée. But as
successful as our narrative is, Mindy is left hankering after an innocence
that I don’t have. She wants the wild looseness I have left behind to make
my way in the world. I have high art consonance and a stern disposition;
my publishing life is serious and on the up and up; the bar crawls, bashes,
and orgies of my past have been left behind. Our time together is, must
be, short: I hunger too much for things she doesn’t understand yet, she
hungers for behaviors I’ve abandoned.
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