phd (unfinished)

We're talking about the weather. Spokane, your town, is burning. Surrounded by a circle of fires, too centrally located for just one. "I walked outside and I couldn't breathe," you say. What does it mean when the air itself is choking? 

It's been a quiet night. I've come to a boring short story in the anthology I'm currently reading, so the slowness has been particularly grating. "I'm sorry, I took up so much of your time." You seem to understand that I am here for a job to do. Right now, I'm doing the dishes. It's clear that I'm trying to close the bar for the night. I shrug off your apology, the way I've been trained to shrug off most apologies. It's not a lie to say that I don't mind your company, that many of my customers don't express much of an interest in conversing with me. 

But of course, it isn't as simple as having a conversation with the bartender. We've both felt them, haven't we? The palpable pauses when I can tell you are chewing things over in your mind, walking through scenarios where you ask for my number, where you ask what I'm doing later, where you bridge the connection between bartender and customer into something less formal. You finally settle on "don't worry, I'll come back and say goodbye to you before you leave." I'm elbow deep in soapy water, and it tires me to think of another task before I can get in the car and drive home. 

I was reading a short story the other day where a girl starts hanging around a devout religious boy who finally gathers up the courage to touch her lightly on the knee, leaving his hand there as if it's the most natural thing in the world. When she hands him his hand back, he sees a flash of pain in her face. The boy doesn't understand quite where the look of pain comes from, but takes it personally--she must be disgusted by him, he must be straying yet further away from God. But I understood the pain of the girl's look immediately. When the compliments you get the most have to do with your body, it starts to feel like that is the part of you that has the most worth. 

I thought of this phrase in the elevator on the way up to my apartment yesterday: I like you but I don't want you to touch me. I still like having conversations, still feel urges to touch and to feel desired, but lately, the thought of an interaction with a man turning sexual feels lazy, contrived, like work. 

Why can't that be the end? Why can't sometimes the touching me part just not come up? I've been feeling this way more than a little lately, each interaction with a hint of physicality, of sexual undertones, a strong affirmation. I don't want to be touched for the sake of being touched, my body an instrument. The main instrument. 

The last person I was close to dating, he left me voicemails and voice messages and little pictures of his plants. He smiled when he picked me up from the airport and I held his hand in my lap. He was glad to see me. But then I went away for another two weeks, and he stopped responding to my messages. The last time I saw him, the last time I heard from him, he was in his friend's car, dropping off my bike rack. He hugged me under his armpit, tried not to make eye contact, nodded with relief when I didn't push conversation. The physical connection was "gone", he told me. He was too busy, maybe we should take romance out of it. He couldn't return my calls anymore. 

The thing about my body is that when you cannot directly see it, touch it, drink it in like water you fully deserve to taste, I disappear entirely. Do you understand what I mean? 

I like you because you are fascinating, Emily. You're smart as shit. But do these things count if they aren't foundation? The guy at the bar, I thought we were talking about the weather, I thought we were commiserating about climate change, I thought we were agreeing on the disappearance of culture from large cities like San Francisco. And in a way, I suppose we were talking about those things. But we were also talking about the fact that I am beautiful, that I deserve a partner, that he would come back later and "say goodbye to me" before I left. 

When I was stuck in Arizona without a ride to the airport three hours away, a guy offered to see if his friend with a car could give us a ride. He couldn't, but I so appreciated the offer. He checked in the next day to see if I had made it home safe, and when I said that I had, he asked if maybe we could hang out sometime. He wanted to get to know me better. 

Am I human? Am I real? Am I more than this body and what it can do for other people? Today on the street a man honked his horn and yelled "damnnnnnn" so loud that me and the people in front of me turned around--a couple, they seemed startled--and when I rolled my eyes looking for a sympathetic look they turned back around and the man in the truck pulled up next to me as I was walking. While I was on the phone with my mom, a guy on the street said "wow you are so beautiful. Wow. Can I give you my number?" And I said no, I am on the phone, and I don't take people's numbers that I don't know, and my mom said "who was that" and I said someone on the street was trying to talk to me and she said "Oh, Emily."