While we chatted about the movie, William glanced past me and noticed a framed photograph hanging on the kitchen wall. The picture is of me standing by a handsome, fit, mustachioed guy who has his arm around my shoulders. The guy is my firefighter brother, Marty, but William didn't know this. Much later, I found out William's thoughts: Ahhh, there's the boyfriend. And he looks like the Brawny paper towel guy.
Will you be able to come to the set? I asked. I suddenly wanted him around all the time. I was scared and he wasn't.
Do you mean I have the job?
Have the job? Of course you have the job. You're perfect and you get what I'm trying to do, you get it. Yes, yes, yes.
Great, but I have one weekend when I'll be away.
Oh?
Yeah, a college friend's wedding. He said this with a slightly disgusted sigh.
Sounds fun.
They're dropping like flies.
You're not into marriage?
Nope.
Now, on the page, this should have flagged: perfect for you. Instead, even me? fluttered through my brain like a trapped butterfly. I'd already handily slithered my way through two disastrous marriages and more boyfriends than anyone should be forced to add up to their therapist. My issues of commitment were not garden-variety. I could commit to living with a fellow and marrying him. My inability rested in a lack of commitment to the person. I liked the institution. Loved the concept. The homey, secure-ness of it, but I wanted the "husband" in the equation to stay in another room. This was my fifty of the fifty-fifty responsibility of failure in those relationships. After much angst, I needed exile to figure this out and went for it. I had to learn to drop my romance with marriage. Thus, no dating. My dating drought would be a self-imposed time-out. Certainly that's how I liked to think of it. I'd taken a necessary sabbatical and I learned this fact: I was better off single.
However, nobody asked. No one asked.
Dinner? Lunch? Coffee? Movie?
No. One. Asked.
This was a bruising truth. So much for self-discipline. But I could stomach the truth of this after steadfastly weeping through years of therapy and, once on the other side, I appreciated single life. A lot. William's dark view of marriage shouldn't have mattered to me one bit. But then why did I perk up in interest? Why did my gaze leave the papers on that dining table and rise to meet his? Why did I feel instantly threatened? I shouldn't have been bugged in the least at his opinions on marriage. I should have stuck to the tasks at hand, namely making the movie.
Never? I pursued.
Can't see that happening.
Even me? I thought again.
He disengaged our eye-lock and returned to the pages on the table. He doesn’t seem gay, I puzzled. I forced myself back to the work. The film. The fears.
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