The Story of the Girl and the Boy (allow for slight variation)

--They meet. Something about each alarms in wonderful ways the heart of the other.
They tell each other their stories; who the world thinks they are; who they really are; where they come from.
Heat runs between them when they touch.
The first few times they have sex each of them feels for entire half minutes to be in love.
As the glorious novelty of fucking burns away they spend more time doing other things.
They go for walks outside and they wander around Wal-Mart and Best Buy and she burns him a cd and he buys her a dozen clichés or a box of them.
They watch television programs together.
They begin to develop more deep seated affections.
Perhaps they cohabitate, but in any case, they sleep often in the same bed.
The pressure of the world is stressing him and she wants to help.
She never received the love she deserved and that implications of that frighten him; or, she received it to well and knows what to want and that frightens him too.
But she is beautiful and she may complete him in some way and he’ll see it through.
She sees his soft side.
He sees her strength.
They have their argument.
She understands that he can be cruel.
He understands that she can be cold.
The part of himself that he kept separate, that his daddy kept separate before him and that men have always been keeping separate, glows.
It says: I told you so.
He plants the seed of his bitterness there, where it will be nourished.
And she takes the disappointment to heart.
She says to herself: perhaps it is me. I bring this on myself.
But somewhere she knows that isn’t true.
However, she insists on the truth of it, at least for a time.
She tries to teach him how to treat her by treating him that way.
She buys him little gifts.
She complements his appearance.
She asks him about his day.
He gets annoyed.
She takes the little insults as they come.
He sees himself wrestling with the weight of the world; it is, he imagines, reasonable to insist that she not ask too much of him.
Perhaps he begins to fuck around with another woman.
If so, he will treat her with the affection that he seems no longer capable of showing to the original girl.
The new woman might very well be in some stage of the same story with a man not unlike him.
But perhaps he doesn't start that yet.
In any case, if they go on like this for long, he will.
You’re always stuck in something, she says. It is a screen or a book or something he calls hobby or work or addiction.
He has a blindness.
She does too.
Neither of them can really see the balloon that is forming in her heart.
When it bursts, its contents will change, in almost an instant, the way she feels for him.
Something will pour into her that will not erase but invalidate the thing she is calling love.
He can’t imagine that because as a man he doesn’t operate like that. There are no balloons.
She can’t imagine it because if she did she would understand that there is no security in this world, not even in terms of what she can known about herself.
He seems to grow harder and more distant.
They quarrel over little things.
They quarrel over big things.
When he throws her crumbs it is in his weak moments.
When he throws her crumbs it is so that she will put him at ease.
She doesn’t understand that he can’t see that she feels as if she drowning--it seems so obvious to her.
He does not think as much can go on in her heart or mind as goes on in his.
He tells himself she is simple.
Sometimes they have a perfect afternoon, or a perfect morning, a perfect minute, and they both know what it could be, what it should have been, what it is not.
She is alone; she never wanted to be alone.
He becomes more convinced his world is more complicated than she could ever guess.
Her job is to greet him when steps from it. And for that he will give her the warmth of his body and perhaps the shelter of his roof.
And he will mold the future; he will sculpt it; he will take responsibility ultimately for the two of them, their bodies in the world, their hungers for food and things.
But he will not listen to her for very long.
He is too tired and what she says means too little.
And he will not hold her for very long.
He wants to fuck when he wants to fuck.
When she does, she hardly knows how to ask, and after several times of being rebuffed, she won’t ask, or not easily.
She will remain awake while he sleeps tired, and oblivious.
The end of the world is swirling through her mind.
She’ll meet a man.
That man will listen to her.
That man will say in conversations that are becoming less and less veiled that she is beautiful and unique.
He will affirm that she is a rare thing to be treasured.
He will tell her good things about her outfit; about her hair.
And the other man, the original man, will tell her when she gets home: I don’t like your hair like that. You look strange in that sweater.
She will start to peel away.
As she begins to, he’ll think he wants it.
Let her go, he’ll tell himself. You really want to be alone anyway.
And secretly the weakness that is the center of all men believes that he is in control.
It can’t imagine a world otherwise.
That weakness that doesn’t want to envision chaos will tell him the decision is his and will always be his.
But he has lost the rights to such a decision.
The balloon breaks.
Her heart changes. It happens so quickly.
She doesn’t respect him or what they have anymore and therefore can never partake of it again, not naturally, anyway.
When that comes clear to him, the weak part will get honest with itself, because it must.
It will recognize that she has the control.
And it will recognize his need for her.
Get her back, it will cry.
And all the visions of love that he’d started to hide from himself will come slamming into the forefront of his mind.
He’ll cry on the telephone. Come back to me, he’ll say.
She cares for him. She feels something.
But she is gone.
That’s what she tells him.
There is that other man, that new man.
She’ll start again.
Maybe he’s starting again too.
Maybe they’ll work it out.

You know this story. You’ve played one of these roles. Over and over.