Somehow it always comes in the night: 26 de febrero de 2015

I knew I’d win the psychological war. Somehow it always comes in the night.

The sky is gray and the tip of this microfiber pen is sexy and fresh. There are black soaring pinpricks way high up: birds in the mist. I can feel the moisture flicking off their wings in my mind as their color fades into gray and then darkens again. They disappear and reappear; the cloud cover thickens and hovers and moves on. Johnny Cash plays from the hostel speakers. Rain droplets drip off the metal chairs on the patio. The hidden sun faintly brightens the sky and a ripple of wind passes through.

Now Manuel seems so immature to me. He liked me initially because I had such admiration for him, his mind, his seemingly calm intelligence…And did he also like me for “me”? Did he find my mind to be a great psychological puzzle whose piecing together may bring a sort of enlightened understanding? I’m unsure if I’ll ever know, if I even care to find out.

He came over to the hostel the other night to visit me. I heated him up like a teapot on the stove, and you know me, I often don’t finish what I start: I turned the burner off before the boiling point, before anything could happen. The next day in a text message he tells me he left the hostel a bit angry that night.

He said, “Algunos trenes solo pasan una sola vez, ya vas a ver,” as if I had lost some grand opportunity to be with him. As if I made a mistake not having sex with him. As if I were some ridiculous child that would learn an important lesson in the future that he was now warning me of for my own benefit. No, I just know what I want. Or rather, what I don’t want. I don’t want to fuck you.

I told him all men are the same, they think with their penises. And I don’t know why I continue to hope for something different, for someone to come along that has absolutely no desire to have sex with me. Someone hilarious and interesting and intelligent, of whom I can be enamored without it being returned.

Without your love I have the freedom of a cage with the door recently opened, I have a mind without worry about things that may happen, about chains that may tie themselves around my wrists, about sexual energy pressuring me, trapping me, putting me in that box men put women in when they aren’t related to them.

He didn’t reply, and I gave it no thought, because I knew he would eventually, they always do. They always return, directed by that thing between their legs that they all become slaves to in puberty. I just have to wait. Patience wins the psychological war, always.

And it came in the night, as the big things often do. He texted me around one in the morning, said he wanted to return my water bottle that was in his backpack the night we got robbed. (Did I talk about that night?) I asked him if he wanted to see me, and he said yes. I said I didn’t want to see him if the only thing he wanted from me was sex, because I’m bored of that, I’m bored of men with obvious intentions.

I like the psychological games but it’d be incredible if I didn’t have to play them, especially with a man. Complete honesty would be so refreshing. He just got defensive, told me I’m blocking both our sexual energies and that I don’t want to learn another point of view. Does he know who he’s talking to? All I want is to know a perspective other than mine, and the one reason I was so attracted to him in the first place was his mind, his thoughts and ruminations and ideas.

I told him I don’t want to have sex until I’m comfortable, and that I do want to learn another point of view, I just prefer doing it without having to involve the penises of men I hardly know. Is that so strange? Probably in the minds of horny assholes. And then he blocked me on Facebook.