I want to write a bit about the girl I’m going to call Myrna* before I end this blog. I’ve written about a lot of girls here, but this is a unique case. We were never in love, I never spent days struggling not to think about her, and she certainly has no strong feelings about me. But she was the first girl I ever made love with, which has everything to do with who she is.
*Note: I’ve named her after Myrna Minkoff, a character from John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, one of my favorite books. Ms. Minkoff is a friend of the hilariously disgusting main character, and in the end cures him of being an asshole by taking his virginity. I’m still an asshole, but the analogy is close enough.
I can figure most girls out. I understand, for example, how Zelda became who she is. Her father left her family when she was 12 in favor of a Chinese mail-order bride. Now Zelda prefers guys who are below her, who are easy to control, who she knows won’t leave her. It’s not so hard to understand.
I could never figure out Myrna. Nothing strange about her background, and she isn’t messed-up in any way that I can detect. She does have her little neuroses, but they’re quite minor. I’ve never met someone with such a strange mix of simultaneous emotional eccentricity and stability.
Myrna is a glowing Being of positivity; unafraid of other people; constantly discovering new things about herself and the world; driving the evolution of her own personality; and courageously fighting her inner saboteur all the way.
If I had to describe her in one word, it would be “Soul.” With a capital “S.”
This is why it was a wonder for about a trillionth of a second that Myrna said she could not reciprocate the feelings that I, a soulless cretin, wrote about earlier.
Getting over it was like a mere formality this time around, the outcome was so expected. So in that sense, I don’t feel bad about it. (What really sucks is that I’ve lost the last person I talk to about important things.)
But a question buzzes around in my head like that goddamn fly you can’t kill.
I cannot figure Myrna out.
It begins with this: I cannot compute the positive things she said about me in light of the fact that she has no romantic interest in me.
I understand in certain ways. In fact, I think I already know what her answer will be. I’m too much of a skeptic, too left-brained, I live too far away, etc. This is all predictable.
But something else lurks underneath that. I can see its outlines, its shadow—but I don’t know what it is.
The inside of a person’s mind has never been such a mystery to me.
I want to understand because, for me, she is a step closer to the type of girl with whom I could actually have a sustainable relationship. Way closer than the messed-up girls I usually pick. I feel like there’s some insight to be gained here that will be useful in the future.
I also want to understand because things have changed between us. I feel like we’re starting to go our separate ways. The obvious reason for this is that I expressed feelings that she couldn’t return, which is a bit of a friendship-killer.
I don’t know how sex figures into the equation because I’m only experiencing that for the first time now.
What does my gut tell me? That she’s moving on. I get the sense that I was interesting to the person she was prior to our liaison, but not the person she is now. She’s not discarding me as a friend; she wouldn’t do that. She’s evolving, she’s moving forward. Perhaps she feels that our interaction as people has already yielded all it can.
This isn’t another “I liked you until I got to know you” girl. She didn’t think of me that way in the first place. Which makes this all the stranger to me.
I can’t write clearly about this because I don’t fully understand. The fact that I don’t get it is probably connected to the reason she can’t feel anything about me.
As clear as I can be:
There’s this shining moment, this brief window that opens up while a girl slips out of my desire. In this moment, I break free of the emotional bonds that warp thought and skew perspective—but this girl has not yet lost her significance to me. It’s a moment of clarity. It is in this moment that everything that’s special about a girl comes into focus.
Every girl is special in this moment, each for different reasons. Her quirks, her habits, her fears, her desires. All her aspects and nuances come together into a unique gestalt. This is when that beauty comes through that women don’t even know they have. They don’t know because it is created in the minds of men. It’s so difficult to compress into words, all I can say about it is this: it is the type of beauty that makes men feel that there is something worth fighting for in the world.
I get to see Myrna in this moment now. She has a distinct mix of the same things the other girls have, but there’s something else in there too.
Something. I don’t know. I wish I understood.
Note: Myrna, if you’re reading this, you don’t have to say anything. If you want to, that’s different. Say what you like. But the reason I put this into a blog entry instead of a message is because you’re not obligated to say a word about it.
