Crooks

"I'm gonna die of loneliness, for sure." -Devendra Banhart

Joel called me on it the other night after Rio's party, the party I did not make a fool of myself at, after Jim and Jonathan left. He set at my small lunch table trying not to finish my bottle of Pendleton, or not to appear so. A trick of the eye. With mirrors.
He said he thought I had been fooling around last year with many people, "getting around," I think he said, when I lived at the old place. When I had lived with Kevin for most of that time.
I had to disagree. But on the other hand, when Kevin and I broke up and we both moved to our separate flat/mother-law-studios blocks from one another, I had been getting around and made no secret of it.
Talking to Joel, twenty-two, who had slept with two, I wasn't sure what to make of myself, so I explained.
Certainly I would die of loneliness. Months passed where I was untouched by anyone. You don't realize how rare it is to be close to a person in this society without being intimate. It's fucking rare. The closest we get, it seems, is brushing by people in the aisles of grocery stores, always with a curt and whispered excuse me. Two ships passing in the night.
So I started fucking people because, because, because it was the only certain way to get someone to stay the night. And I wanted them to stay the night. Making up for months of sleeping alone.
Referring to Crooks in Of Mice and Men who wakes up not sure if his dreams are in his head or reality - he doesn't have anyone to wake up to to refer to. No one to play rummy with. No one to talk about the books he's reading (books are no good). "A guy needs somebody."
To say nothing of affection would of course be untrue. I loved the people I slept with with the love I had for missing the love of humanity. I miss them. But I cannot go back. Humanity is not the one I long for. I just want my baby.