I call him Turd-Man, because its a delicious pun on his last name (Tyrmand) and an incessant attempt to regain distance in the crushing gravity of our relationship. But all the while that I push him away, I cling ever closer to this shimmering ideal/illusion of him, of love, of what we could someday be. He, saint that he is, provides me the opporunity to pine away in this fairy-tale land by darting about in far-off New York, only calling me often enough to feed me more fantasy (Mrs. Turd-Man, he calls me).
Yes, it is indeed lucky that he is far away, because he is too selfish, I am too self-absorbed to make a relationship work otherwise. This way, instead of butting heads, I can dream away in the empty space created by the lack of a relationship. Think: snowdome, a mostly empty space flurrying with illusion. So a complete biosphere is created by our mutual lack-thereofs. So by way of circumstance and inadequacies, we are perfect for each other.
But let me backtrack in my cynicism for a moment: Yes, we're perfect. We have to be. How else can you explain this shortening of breath whenever I think of him, the opalescent sunshine of my days whenever we're in the good? How else can you explain the sacrifices I've made, my irrational out-of-character behaviour? It makes me happy to think of him. I want to talk about him all the time, but of course, I restrain myself. I want to talk about how one night as we were falling asleep, he grabbed my hand and held it, and how that was the most intimate gesture in the world, much more intimate than sex, because he's such a distrustful person, so distrustful that he used to sleep facing away from me, and I understand his distrust because I understand his history and I understand that he'd have sex with any number of girls but I'm the only one he'd hold hands with as he's falling asleep, and I'm the only one he's ever loved this way. And that makes me feel... that makes me feel that we're perfect for each other. For now.
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