Sharp Shooter

On July 4th, 2011, I could be found in San Ramon, California, sweating over the molten racks of fireworks I was nimbly lowing and wiring with quick fingers. I am a fan of explosions, you see. As an undergraduate, I became involved with a rag-tag bunch of pyrotechnic enthusiasts known as UC Cannoneers who loved nothing more than to blow shit up--pyrotechnics is not so much about target precision as it is about making things go BOOM--in the name of our national holiday, and I was happy to be amongst their company. I was in transition, home for one month to change my visa status at the French Consulate of San Francisco, and spending time with people I loved. Some of my best friends are among these pyro junkies, and I was eagerly recounting my foreign adventures to them as sweat precipitated from our brows. 

They were, however, surprised I had not brought a Frenchman home with me, nor that I had no real speakable French liaison of which to discuss.  I was not. I had deliberately avoided Frenchies given their reputations. 

It was then that my friend Pat blurted out: 

¨ It's ok, you'll meet a Frenchie, it'll be your first real serious relationship, and that'll be it for you. Done and packaged. You'll marry him.¨

Oh how you knew and know me Pat, I must admit. But he was damn spot on. I am a sharp shooter. 

I have never been one to conceive of myself as needing to take lots of shots at the proverbial target. I don't need to drag myself through the endless strains of long term relationships, feel no need to chain together one three year relationship by another three year relationship. I am a woman who knows herself inside and out, and consequently knows what she wants. The result is that, as I have said before, I have not run myself through the gauntlet nor the crucible of these long, drawn out affairs. I have tended to date casually looking to see if something could turn in to something serious, and when I or the other party has figured out that what we have cannot, we have parted amicably. 

There is one exception to this rule, but even he knew that I was, and still am, a sharp shooter.  On the death bed of our relationship, one night in his truck, pouring my eyes and my heart out on his leather seats, I exclaimed to him:

 ¨Look, I know if we start something, i won't end us. You won't either,¨ and while gasping for air I detailed to him how I could see myself with him for good, with two boys and a backyard. 

¨I know,¨ his voice was grave. ¨I know.¨

The only thing was he wasn't ready for a sharp shooter, didn't want one, and it all ended with a bullet to my metaphoric heart.  I pulled the trigger on him, on us, on myself and my illusions. I shot myself. 

*  *  * 

E has not seemed to grasp yet that I am a sharp shooter. Why would he? He is my opposite, a seemingly lost serial monogamist who has admittedly, in his words, let more than one woman get away, calling one in particular, with a ponderous epithet, ¨the woman I loved.¨

We grabbed coffee on Thursday afternoon under a bipolar sky whose mania left us under  pristine grey light one minute and depression left us sopping the next.  He was ambivalent about going to the pool and lackadaisically sipped an espresso at one of those tiny tables you find in cafés nearly only in Paris. 

We were on the subject of his Ex…again, because as I put it, he needs to suck out the venom. And venom he is sucking. But then he paused and poignantly elaborated that usually, it takes him at least three weeks to figure out if he really is interested in a woman. And that this is his problem: by the time he's figured it out, she thinks he's not and she moves on. Oh, indecision. He then paused to ask me how and why it was that I had become interested in him in the first place. 

¨You see,¨ he said, ¨when we got drinks the first time in June, I thought it was nice and all, we walked around, but I hadn't originally thought of it as anything romantic.¨

¨Me neither,¨ I said. ¨ I wasn't sure what it was, simply that I had fun.¨ This is true. I did not think we'd become involved, things were very unclear, I thought simply that I was going to get drinks with him and have a pleasant evening. But then he walked me to the metro and invited me to his place the Wednesday after and that, ladies and gentleman, was all his own initiative. How was a girl to think anything else but that he was interested? 

¨Why then?¨ he posed the question then, looking across at me with the neon lights of the shops just beside us glimmering in his pupils. ¨I was surprised you opened up to me so quickly.¨ This is a complete oxymoron given the fact that he still does not know many crucial things about me. 

¨ You see, E,¨ I started.  ¨ I don't throw myself into a lot of relationships or at a lot of people. I chose wisely. I am loyal to the death,¨ and then elaborated on my father's infidelity, my parent's subsequent divorce, and my lack of ease with the long term girlfriend for whom he had left my mother. I had decided mid-conversation to be very, very frank. ¨But I know who I am. I know what I want, what I need.  I have solid instincts.¨

¨Ok,¨ he nodded.

¨ I had an impression of and an instinct about you,¨…that apparently was all wrong…¨ and I so I leapt. You were someone I thought  I could have really worked with.¨ Of this I am still partially convinced, but I don't do emotionally unavailability and you've pushed my trust. 

He went silent. 

¨Ok.¨

We left it at that. 

 The more I know about his history--past and present--the more I come to sense that I am what he knows he should want, but cannot bring himself to want. 

I have had my own ¨shoulds.¨ I have been other people's ¨should¨ before. This is why I am careful. This is why I'm a sharp shooter. I have been looking for that one person,  and am still looking, to the extent that when they eventually come around I sense I will want to latch on and never let go. I am afraid I have been, and will perhaps be, The One That Got Away. I'm at a point in my life where I'm starting to tire of that. I no longer want to be any one's ¨should.¨

Give  me my target. I'm ready to shoot.