Equations: Dialectic Form (2021)

#40
Oddly, Jena reacts against my middle-class roots, as if they are distasteful
or deceitfully earned. Jena is demure and polite with my family; but there
is an edge of defensiveness to her reactions. She shuts down rather than
opening up, as Lisa does. When we sneak off to my bedroom to make
love, Jena takes it as a welcome break and respite to duties and obligations
she cannot, and will not, fulfill. She is proud of her family’s nobility and
simplicity; her ambitions involve maintenance of who she is, rather than a
climb towards a new self, via material means. The truth, however, is that
my family is far more friendly to Jena than her family is to me. Jena’s
family demonstrates no consonance with the arts; minimal conversational
skills; insipid tastes; and the same edge of defensiveness that Jena has. So
in-law miseries immediately begin to impinge on our little marriage. The
only way Jena and I seem to work is alone; we thrive when marooned on
little desert islands. We are so genuinely moved by each other’s bodies
that the relevant equation is simple: touch, touch, touch. I have more
extended sex with Jena than I ever have with anyone else: hours after
languorous hours, so that we are lifted up over our bodies simply from
having emptied them. We’re too young to realize how transcendental the
engagement is — you could call it just kids being kids. But at least, not
having delved into the normative crusts of ambition and betrayal, we do
these things with the ripeness and purity that they can only have once.
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