Remise en question

       On Saturday night, afraid of being alone, I accepted an invitation to go to the movies with E and one of his friends. When I'm alone in moods like I've been in the past week, I tend to brood, and brooding gets me no where positive no where fast.

      It's been a long, hard road fraught with self discovery since college for me to come to the conclusion that being alone, which is an art I have mastered, is not the purpose of life and will not lead me to happiness, no matter how upset or angry I may be with the world, no matter how much my heart may be hurting: isolation is not the answer. It just leads me to bitter places with bitter thoughts. I credit this epiphany for my recent and scary descent from my Ivory Tower: for a good swarth of my young twenties I sincerely believed that my best way to handle life was simple not to live it but to plan it from high above my tower, safely surrounded by my books and my literary theory, where no one, no man on earth, could hurt me.

      This is not living, I decided. Then I made like Rapunzel I descended and set foot on the ground for the first time.

     Life is messy, but there is consolation in knowing its messy for everyone.

     So I went to this movie with E that ended at midnight. His friend had come on her motorcycle so we waited in the cold while she revved the engine and I did my own shiver dance while puffing vapor clouds out of my mouth. The metro I needed to get back to my studio and the way to E's apartment are one in the same ( we happen to share a metro line and are separated by only three stops, which made dating when we dated convenient ), so I walked with him.

     ¨Have you eaten dinner yet?¨ he asked.
     ¨No, but I'm not that hungry.¨
   
     He was quiet and I followed him with my hands in my pockets towards his place, which would eventually lead me one way to the métro. He stopped at the intersection and pointed out that going to said metro stop was shorter if I veered left than followed him straight.

     ¨Don't you remember? It's the way I walked you after our first date.¨

     And yet more references to us dating. Us dating was a joke. We dated for a month before I left for the summer to nanny for two months, and then I didn't know if we were together or not. The French don't do the DTR (Define The Relationship). Then, when I promptly returned the first week of September, after a summer of e-mails and phone calls, he ended it. I don't know about you, but I hardly consider that serious dating. He never even really gave it the chance to see where it would go. I was ready to see where it would go in September, but he didn't want that, and now I'm glad he didn't.

     ¨Yes, yes I do remember. But I figured I'd pass by your place to see you off and then go to the metro,¨ I said. ¨ You realize that I do know the way from your place, I've done it on my own enough times.¨ I tried to play it off with casual humor. Cracking jokes is one of my biggest defense mechanisms.

      I said nothing more of the sort about us dating. I do not say things about us dating. I do not understand why he feels the need to bring us dating up. Or why he feels the need to sometimes jokingly call me one of his Ex's. How can you call a girl you barely dated your Ex?

      We were silent and when we entered the station, I expected him to bise me goodbye and leave, but instead he went to the quay with me and waited for the train to see me off. When it came I promptly and platonically planted a kiss on his cheek and hopped on the métro.

      I sat down and didn't look back until the last minute, only to see him looking back at me as he walked slowly away, towards the entrance, with the same sort of lingering gaze he gave me the night we said goodbye in July, right before I left for the summer....