Chapter 16

Emily sat there, looking at me expectantly; not sure of what I just sat through, I was silent, trying to process what might have just passed.

“So…come on…what was that? You look too shocked for him to have been delivering you good news, but not depressed enough for him to have delivered you bad news…”

“Well…” I paused. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to say it; saying it out loud made it clear that I considered it a possibility. I didn’t know if I wanted to confront it. “Well…if I didn’t know any better, I’m going to say that I was, maybe, complimented…”

“Complimented? Being complimented by a professor leads you to look like that?”

“Well…yes…if the compliments are more, well, personal than professional…”

I looked at Emily’s reaction. She seemed startled for a second. And then she broke out in a fit of laughter that seemed to echo all over the room.

“He hit on you?! Well that makes it clear why you look so uncomfortable.”

See. Having it stated like that, out in the open, made it something that was now tangible. An idea had been given form, been made concrete, by putting words to it. And that made it something that had to be dealt with.

“Well…no…no…well…I…I don’t really know. He said he was afraid he had driven away ‘one of the most interesting students he had the pleasure of teaching’”.

“Um….well…wow. I’d say it was pretty clear.”

No, it didn’t seem clear to me. It made me uncomfortable. It made me wary, cautious. I felt foolish for entertaining the idea, yet undeniable drawn to it. If it was true, IF he had, as Emily put it, “hit on me”, then he would be the first. The First. There was something so compelling about that; he would be the first person to express interest in me. There was a hazy glowing romance to that thought that was overwhelmingly attractive. A reachable dream. Well, in a distorted sort of way.

“Emily, that’s a HUGE leap…and it doesn’t seem likely at all. I mean, does he strike you as someone looking for a) a guy, and b) a student?”

“Well, I don’t know him, so I can’t make any evaluations on that end. I think the more important question is what you think about the possibility of him hitting on you.”

Pointed, direct – Emily at her best, and why I usually found her company so comforting. This wasn’t one of those times. I wasn’t interested. Hell, following this direction would lead me a far way from the life I was suppose to find for myself – the life I had promised myself to seek.

“Well, as I am not thinking of switch hitting,I think that question is moot.”

Emily looked at me for a moment. She grew more serious that I had ever seen her.

“Are you sure of that?”

I eyed her carefully. A loaded question. My answer could either silence everything or explode the situation into numerous hot topics of endless discussion.

“What are you implying by that?”

“Nothing. I just don’t know. Come on, think about it. In all the years I’ve know you, not once have you been out with someone, expressed interest in someone, even looked at someone and said something objectifying. I don’t know who your type is, what your type is. So that’s why I have to ask.”

“To be honest, I never thought about it.”

Emily stared at me, disbelievingly.

“Well, alright, abstractly. Everyone thinks about it at some point, I guess. I mean, we’re forced to think about it right? Everywhere you look, you’re told that your life is incomplete without experiencing love. Experiencing companionship. But, beyond thinking that it might be something I want in the future, no, I haven’t thought about it.”

“Not about the type of person you want to be with? Not about what that person might look like? What might attract you?”

“No.”

“Seriously.”

“Seriously.”

She was quiet for a few minutes, and I didn’t feel like saying much. I wanted to slink away and hide for a while. This wasn’t something I wanted to deal with, now or in the future.

I had spoken the truth. I hadn’t thought about it. I hadn’t thought about it because I had never imagined the possibility. I knew who I was: I was that solitary figure on the fringe of perception. That wasn’t someone who went noticed, who attracted attention.

I had figured on being alone. It was a natural conclusion and one that rarely gave me pause. I didn’t understand how romance worked, much less how to actively engage in the process. Being on the fringe, existing outside those conventions were liberating, in a sense. It freed me from evaluating myself in relation to how others might.

But, as I thought about saying these things to Emily, I realized how they might be interpreted. Rationalizations. Justification to hide a heart yearning for something more. And even as I struggled with the words, I knew how hollow they might sound. I couldn’t communicate how, in the split second in which Emily verbalized the unspoken, she had shattered a naivety I had towards the world – a naivety that kept me asking the other questions that would naturally follow. Blissful innocence had been destroyed. From this moment on, I would be constrained to the rules that, until know I had been oblivious to, ignorant of. Questions of sexuality, of preference, of self-definition, of self-identity. They all had to be answered, now that this situation had been given structure. And I resented it.

I sighed. Started to speak, started to explain. And then I just gave up.

“You know what? I am going to just leave it alone. I don’t feel like making an ass out of myself. There isn’t anything that proves one thing or another, so why bother?”

Emily nodded, hesitated, started to say something, then went silent. She tapped her fingers for a second, and then stared at me.

“We’ll forget it, then.” And we did, at least for that night.