I’ve never found myself in a relationship I was unsure about. I’ve never not known that it was what I wanted. I’ve never had to date with uncertainty. I’ve just known. With some deep-cell-like tingling sensation. This is going to happen because it’s supposed to happen and I don’t really have much control over it at all except to say my lines, go through the script, play my role in the game. Rules were already set. I’ve slipped from one thing to the next in this serial monogamy, the same way most people do.

I watch my friends go on dates that last three months, four months, a year, and then there is some simple thing that breaks them apart. They realize that their partner doesn’t like cheese. I suppose they must have always known they didn’t like cheese. Perhaps they never went to get pizza, never ate a cheese sandwich, never poured over the politics of brie. I like to question if this fact was simply ignored. If all else in life felt so perfectly perfect except for the cheese. And they thought to themselves that “it would be perfect if they just liked cheese” but shrugged that off in hopes that maybe one day it would feel right. I’ve never wondered about these little things. I’ve never asked myself “maybe it will be okay without these things.” They never mattered.

There’s never been some arrangement of dates. No, are we dating? It always goes like this. Just like this. We feel the same thing at the same time. We don’t have to say that we feel it because we look each other in the eyes and it’s painful. We’re stuck. We’ve got each other. We’re not necessarily sure what to do about that but, like I said, there’s not much doing. Things just start to happen. You spend time together.

You’re minding your own business and someone walks up to you and gives you something precious like a kitten and says don’t fuck it up.