About Him... Nine

When the intensity of being truly seen becomes too terrifying, the easiest escape is into the arms of a cage—leaving the only version of yourself that ever mattered hidden in a white box under the bed

I saw her immediately, on the very first day she arrived, and I wanted everything—her attention, her gaze, her presence. I had heard that someone would be coming on the day I found out her mother had died. She was a wonderful woman, always smiling, with a gentle face; I often bought underwear from her. My mother, father, and sister absolutely adored her. It was a shock to all of us when we heard the terrible news; we didn't even know how old she was, she always looked younger. We worked with her—well, I only worked on Saturdays, but my parents had been working with her at the market for years. When I say years, I mean ten-plus years.

​And then I met her. Alone, lost, sad... with a smile that had to be there because of the job she was doing. She took over her mother’s market stall and worked, without even knowing what she was doing or how. All the market vultures flocked around her; they needed a new face for gossip, fresh blood to judge for every single smile because... how dare she, her mother just died. I stood to the side and watched. I wasn't keeping my distance because of corona—it was already the third month since that damned virus had appeared—I just wanted to notice her, in a purely human way.

​Regardless of the loss and all the pain she experienced from that grief, I saw a glow in her; I saw her as someone I had known for years. A beautiful pale face, long blonde hair, subtle makeup, and black clothes. She was beautiful; she was a magnet for me. Right there on that first day, I went to buy the most expensive underwear she had, just so she would notice me and remember me. Soon after, I found her on social media, and every time, I couldn't wait for Saturday to see her again. I would arrive early, among the first at the market, to open the stall and catch the morning buyers. That was my mother’s stall and I respected her rules—before, I did it because she forced me to, but now, it was because I desperately wanted to see her. She would arrive later, sometimes even three hours after the rest of us. Slowly, casually, she would open her stall, and people would buy from her, visit her, and greet her, while she smiled through her tears every time someone mentioned her mother.

​At one point, waiting for the next Saturday became too agonizing. My mother had gone to Greece because of the apartments we own, so I decided to take my annual leave and work in her place. Of course, I didn't do it for the stall; I did it for the attention I had noticed for the first time through the pupil of her eye. The way she looked at me—no one could ever imagine or learn how to look like that, and that's where I fell. I fell for her even though everyone said she was older, nine years older than me. To me, she looked just right; age has never meant anything to me. And then, on the exact day she was painting her apartment, we were texting on Instagram, and I noticed that something existed, that she wanted something from me. Until I convinced myself that she only wanted sex. I felt bad that she saw me that way, but honestly, I didn't want to miss the chance with her, even if she only wanted us to stare at a single spot on the wall. That's when I took matters into my own hands and said the exact same thing—that I only wanted sex, too. She noted that it all had to be a secret out of respect for my mother, whom she said she loved more than me. And that's how it all began, rather naively.

​She invited me to her apartment, and I went. I felt as if I had known her for many years. But I didn't know myself from the moment I stepped into her apartment. That someone wasn't me—or perhaps, that was the first time I truly met myself. We talked, we talked for a very long time, had a little sex... wait, wasn't that why I came?!—and then we talked again. And every time I went to her place for what was supposed to be 2 or 3 hours, it would last late into the night. Those few hours would turn into five, six, or nine hours. We had a million topics that we could never seem to finish. She was a rare person who could listen, truly hear what I was saying, and I... with her, I was a person I was meeting for the first time, a person I believed existed and whom I wanted to live out. Only with her did I know how to be exactly that me, the real me. The one who is heard, seen, and felt. And her—she was her own person, completely different from everyone else, but entirely her own, and I wanted her to be a little bit mine, too.

​Our seeing each other continued for 9 months. She had periods where she would block me, delete her Insta just so she wouldn't text me, and then she would return whenever I begged her via SMS to do so. We were together for those 9 months; we texted from morning till night every single day, and we saw each other on Saturdays and Wednesdays, all while swearing and promising each other that we were only together for the sex. It was the eighth of March, she had corona, and I wanted to order her the most beautiful bouquet of flowers—not roses, I know she never liked roses—and then I changed my mind. I sent her a flower sticker and wrote that real flowers would mean something more than the relationship we were in.

​After nine months, she left me. Exactly two weeks after I had sent her voice messages for the first time, with songs from a café where every single track reminded me of her. She left me because she couldn't be what she wanted us to be; she couldn't just be my sexual partner and have us live those kinds of lives. She worked multiple jobs, she was a single mother, divorced for many years, and she had some long-distance relationship with a man she hadn't seen for a year at that time. I was jealous of him; he used to call her often when we were together, but she never answered him when she was with me. I used to say I would leave so as not to interrupt, so she could talk to her boyfriend. Of course I wouldn't actually do it; I was just testing how thin the ice was that I was walking on.

​On the other hand, summer had started, I was out partying all the time, my best man came back from Japan, and it was all about nights out, craziness, partying, and my best man grumbling because I was constantly on the phone with her. I think I even told her that, and I think that’s why she left me—because she didn't want to be just an option. At first, I couldn't understand, because her initial insistence was that what we had wasn't a relationship but just a fling, something I later wanted to accept as my decision, not hers. But despite everything, she moved me—not in a sexual sense, but in the sense where you realize that something greater than the ordinary exists, that something beyond what has been experienced exists, that something more than sex exists, and that "more" has no definition.

​She left me in July, and by the fifth of August, we were both at the sea. Each at their own sea. I would post stories, and every single one was directed at her; I knew only she would understand them. And she posted a song where she said she was left craving me. Shortly after returning from the sea, I realized something. One thing was that I couldn't run away from her because we worked together on Saturdays; the other was that I couldn't run away from her because she was in my heart and in my thoughts. I urgently had to find a solution, and I found it—I fled into the arms of the most possessive girl ever born into this world. I had to allow her everything just to unstick myself from her—from the woman with whom I had met the real me, and that exact real me, I threw into the trash can. We still followed each other, and I couldn't help but look at every post and every story she put up. No matter how much I ran, she pulled me even closer to her, without doing a thing. I posted pictures with my girlfriend, on purpose, because she refused to watch my stories.

​Then came my birthday. It was October 11th, in the morning hours. I was sitting with my girlfriend in the apartment when I received a call from an unknown number. I answered, and the delivery man told me I had a package. I didn't want my girlfriend to see anything, so I went downstairs to pick it up personally. It was a pure white box with a ribbon on top, and I knew it was from her, but I didn't know what to do; at the same time, I wanted to spend hours opening that gift with full attention, and I also wanted to just hide it and run back to my girlfriend. I thanked the delivery man and smiled at him as if I were smiling at her, went to the car, hid the gift there, and went back to my girlfriend. I couldn't wait for her to leave; I was only thinking about the gift and the white box. Night fell, and she went home to get ready for our night out—we had a restaurant reservation for my birthday. I quickly ran down to the car, took the gift, and looked at it as if it were the Holy Grail. I was afraid to open it, afraid the desire would vanish—a desire I don't know how to explain. Nothin meant anything to me, I craved nothing, but that—that attention directed at me—was the greatest gift for me. I opened the box and saw a small note inside, which was the greatest present of all. The note read:

​"I know no one has ever given you this. I am gifting you time, because time is what you have always lacked."

​It broke me. Inside the box was a beautiful wristwatch, not too expensive, but not too cheap either—certainly an expense she couldn't afford. I was furious and happy, but most of all, sad. I didn't reply to her at all. I waited a day, two, and on the third day, I wrote her a message saying I would return the watch, that I am not someone who likes or needs to be bought expensive gifts. I also told her that I had a girlfriend. She viewed the message and never replied to it. For a month and a half, she didn't come to the market; I know she didn't come because of that, so I wouldn't return the watch.

​Then, one Saturday, she appeared. She arrived a bit early. Ever since I got a girlfriend, we had stopped communicating, but we never stopped looking at each other. That is the kind of gaze that is more valuable than air, water, or rays of the sun; I couldn't help but look at her. And on that day when she appeared, I waited for the end, for when we started packing up the stalls, to approach her and thank her for the watch. I walked up to her, and she was absent in all her presence, both in heaven and on earth; she looked at me politely, and I felt welcome to say what I had to say. I told her:

"You really shouldn't have spent money you don't have on me! How did I earn this, I am not worthy at all, and I cannot accept such expensive gifts."

​Her gaze was lowered as she folded her merchandise, and then, like an arrow, she pierced me with a look—as deep as the ocean and as resonant as a siren's wail. She said:

"I really don't know who did this to you or why, or rather, how you can think you aren't worthy of expensive gifts? Oh yes, you are incredibly worthy! How worthy you are cannot be surpassed by any gift or anything material. Fuck the watch, it's only there so I could deliver the message to you. At first, only the note was supposed to be the gift; the watch came along with it."

​Her words still echo in my head, and the watch from her stands like an altar in my room, hidden under the bed. Sometimes, when I am completely alone, I open the box and talk to the watch, and I often ask it what the time I received as a gift has brought me—what did it mean, when it separated me from her forever?

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