About Another Him

A psychological autopsy of a long-awaited surrender: the tragic moment a goddess steps off her pedestal and becomes just like every other woman.

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September 12, 2018

I remember how deeply it hurt that I left her standing alone in front of the café entrance. I told her to leave me alone and walked inside, full of myself. I kept imagining a scenario that perhaps never even happened, but in my mind, it remained that way forever. So... she sat there for a few more minutes, searching for answers while staring fixedly at the floor. She lit a cigarette, still unwilling to leave. She wanted to come inside and either hug me or slap me across the face—it wouldn't have mattered, she would have felt the exact same either way. The cigarette hadn’t even burned halfway down, and she was already on her way home.

​There was a certain haze in some attic of some house. The two of us and a baby. A baby she was taking care of, while I was thinking about a bicycle. I don't know why a bicycle consumed my thoughts back then, but I know I desperately wanted to think about her and the baby instead. At one point, she grabbed me by the hand, told me we all had to hide, and took the baby with us.

​The following summer, she reached out to me from the seaside. She said she was just checking in to see how I was, still worrying about me. After that, she reached out to wish me a happy Slava and a happy birthday to my brother; she never forgot to do that, no matter how badly we had drifted apart. Though we weren't fighting, we just hadn’t spoken in a long time. Then, after two years, she found me on Facebook, just a few days after I had heard the news. I asked her if it was true, telling her there wasn't a mouse hole on earth where she could hide without me finding her. Yes, that’s when she told me they were expecting a baby, that she was happy, and that her husband was, as I put it, a towering giant of a man. I was happy for her, yet my heart burned as though I still loved her—and I did, I loved her even eight years after that. Every time she would come around, I heard she was there, but I pretended it didn't matter, though I always greeted her with pure enthusiasm. She saw right through it. Once, we were messaging on Facebook, and she told me things I had never known, things I hadn't even suspected, and right then I realized that she was married, and only then was I certain of how much I loved her.

​Shortly after, I went out to sea on a ship, and everything changed because I changed. I was important and significant, both to myself and to everyone else. When I returned, everyone wanted to hang out with me. Everyone was there, even when I didn't invite them. I was happy because she was there too, but she had been there even while I was on the ship, in entirely unknown countries that were, in themselves, completely unfamiliar worlds to me. She was there—her comment beneath every single photograph. And that is why, that spring, I decided to dedicate a picture of daisies to her on Facebook. She knew they were for her, even though I never said a word.

​And then, after ten years, it happened—she sent me a message to meet her by the stage. We were in the same café, she with her friends, I with my crowd. She was so beautiful, so happy—I don't know why, but I envied her. Until that moment, I thought I had everything, and then I caught sight of her. She used to text me constantly, but the messages were always innocent and tender; sometimes she would tease me, but I knew she was in the company of her girlfriends then, telling them: "Watch how, even after all these years, he’s still going to drool over me." This time, it was different. She sent a message telling me to meet her there. She didn't even ask if I wanted to, if I could, or if I dared. She simply wrote that she would step out five minutes after me. Many more minutes passed, but she was tipsy, so to her, it felt like five. I didn't go to the stage; I waited for her by the stairs of the schoolyard. I didn't believe she would actually show up. I thought she was joking, that she would flake on me, mock me, but I went anyway. I saw her while she was still by the little church, and my heart began to skip beats, my throat went dry, and I was scared shitless. What now? Here she is! Walking gracefully yet so resolutely toward me, while I just stand and wait, not knowing what to say. I looked down at my shoes, then at the ground, then at her—she was about ten paces away from me, slowing her pace because of the incline. I looked at my fingers, then raised my head and met her gaze, looking into her gorgeous face. She hugged me and asked: "Shall we walk like this, or should I take your arm?" She asked me—meaning it mattered what I thought. I don't remember what I answered. We joked as we walked up the stairs, and then she stopped in the middle of the street and began to spin around. It seemed as though the song in her head was so good that she couldn't control her own body, or perhaps she wanted to summon the rain. I held my chin between my thumb and index finger, and I was so close to joining her. I didn't, only because she stopped and turned toward me. We reached the stage, and she lit a cigarette; she wanted to sit on the concrete slab, and I anticipated it, taking off my scarf and placing it under her seat. She smiled and thanked me. We were silent so quietly that you could hear the paper of the cigarette burning away. She killed the silence with cruel words, in which all the revenge ever invented was hidden—its seed and its fruit, its conception, and everything else. She walked away from me, leaned against the railing of the little bridge, stared into the distance, and abruptly turned around. She gave me a piercing, benevolent look, and then said: "You know, we could kiss and have sex right now, but that wouldn't change the fact that I am married, and neither of us would gain anything from it." I was struck dumb; I didn't know what to say to her. She was right, yet at the same time, I was hoping for something because... why were we here if we both already knew that? She approached me, hugged me, and I walked her home.

​After her, I never had a serious relationship; they would all last a couple of months and come to an end. She would often write to me after that meeting by the stage, and I always replied. Once she came—it was on some completely foolish date, somewhere between January and February, or between March and April, sometime before the floods; let’s say it was the end of March. By then, I was resolved on what I would write if she messaged me. I told her where to come and how to find me there. We each drank a beer, and I couldn't endure it for another second. I had her, finally, after so many years, I had her—and she belonged to everyone but me in that exact moment. I don't know how to describe the feeling that overcame me because I had her. No, I wasn't happy. I was disappointed—not in her, but in myself, because she, who was so special, so many years awaited, was right there at the moment when I was completely hers, and she was...? What??? Everything that other women were. Ah, so special, yet just like everyone else.

​I never called her or ran into her again. That summer, I got married.

Since I've been a waitress my whole life, I feel like I must have a tip jar even here.