the phrase "emotional bandwidth"

or Five Reasons This Affair Will Never Work Out

1. Your inability to make plans until just moments, moments after you and your woman have come off this ugly, wicked argument, and you can't get past it, can't put up with any shit right now, right after you tell each other to fuck off and she slams the door and leaves you home, alone, to contemplate the abyss, that's when you call me, and you're all wound up, or wounded, but either way you're looking for love, looking for love and I am one of those wrong places, honey, don't you get it, this is an affair, not an ego stroke, not a heart massage, not a soothing, sympathetic embrace of all your tender little nerve endings. `Cause if that's what you want, you've got the wrong girl. I'm not one of those girls, those angel girls, those lovey-dovey, star-eyed sycophantic hangers-on, the ones who cancel everything and wait by the phone helplessly hopeful, the ones who melt with such gratitude when you finally call, the ones who'll take you in no matter how much of your shit is raining on them. No, you and I are equal in this, not partners but equal, and you are to come to me exactly as I come to you, not battered, not beaten, not sulking or needy or brimming with domestic dissatisfaction, but to deliver the goods. We are here for a mutually advantageous roll in the hay, a mid-day fuck, a nighttime nuzzle, or a grope in the car at the very least if time's running short, and moments after a bruising, stinging, fuck-off conversation with her is not the time to be calling me. Remember that, my little playmate, remember that. It's not the time to be calling me.

2. You're a tongue-kisser, one of those guys who lap at any available surface, and because we're not a couple per se, and because I see you once a week for maybe an hour or two, we don't have the luxury of time, or practice, or discovery, the luxury of you discovering that I'm not, in fact, a big proponent of the tongue kiss. And so when you launch into me all eager beaver-like, relieved to be out of the house, the job, the relationship, whatever burden of responsibility is lying heavy on you these days, you end up licking everything, and it's kind of not sexy after awhile, you know, spit drying on my eyelids, my ears, my neck. It's not an entirely pleasant feeling. But there's never really been a good time to tell you, and now it's probably too late, since I've decided this will be short, this affair will be short, and so I'm thinking it's not worth it anyway, running out of time and all that. But I'm wondering, I guess, if someone told this was the way to go with women, that above all else we loved the feel of a man's frenetic tongue against our skin, and that French-kissing ranked right up there with, say, ice cream sundaes and red roses and newborn puppies. You kiss me that way, as if you really and truly believe it's one of the best things out there, as if you're convinced I wouldn't have it any other way, as if you believe that's what keeps me here. And I don't know, I just don't have either the heart or patience to instruct you otherwise, to tell you how I'd want it for real, how I'd want it the most, I think it's too late to tell you that and a part of me just doesn't want to ruin it for you.

3. You talk way too much about her, your woman-spouse, your live-in girl, whoever she is, and even though I might look like a great candidate, I am not your fucking therapist. I'm not your hairdresser, your car mechanic, your dentist, proctologist, drinking buddy, second cousin, roommate, or any other category of confidante that includes – in its basic job description – the ability and willingness to overprocess and overcogitate your troubled relationship. I don't want to hear about it, sexman, don't want to hear each and every item on the laundry list of complaints you can muster in your after-hours fall into domestic lunacy. The mad rumblings and ramblings of a man in the heat of turmoil. As your mistress, this isn't my bag, baby, not my burden to bear, not my shit to shoulder. I want you coming to me clean, sane, dutiful. `Cause you don't see me carting my overhead-sized Samsonite full of tired, poor me's, don't see me begging for condolences or angling for your adulation, don't see me tumbling into the room with overwrought, hyperbolic despair, slinking to your side for any words of hope and lightness you can throw my way. And so when you slink into my room, expecting, expecting, it is with great, Herculean restraint that I keep myself from lunging at you with the Yellow Pages, all 3200 therapists earmarked for your reading pleasure.

4. I could never introduce you to my sister. It's not that you're not presentable or charming enough, and it's not that she's unfriendly or distrustful of Gentiles, but I just can't imagine subjecting her to the dark underbelly of my dating life. It was bad enough telling her I'd had unprotected sex, once, years ago, when I thought I had the world under control at age 21. It was terrible, then, peering at her from under my eyelids and confessing this slip, believing her to be the virtuous shareholder, along with Glinda the Good Witch, of the safe sex kingdom. But certain topics appear to be universally off-limits. The x-rated outfit I wore to Folsom Street Fair, for one. She'll never see that picture. Or the number of people who might have seen me naked at Burning Man. So I definitely can't tell her about us. It's just that she's so happily, unambiguously married, and I suspect her baby sis's dubious practice of non-monogamy would present a complicated hurdle. I think she'd think I was cheating on her, which is of course ludicrous, but somehow being in the vicinity of our affair would probably make her nervous, would make her tighten the reins a bit on her hubby, who would so never cheat on her it's not even funny. And so even though it might look like I get off on the secrecy of this, that ooh-we're-being-bad-and-we-know-it part of the affair, that feeling like we're Bonnie and Clyde on the run from the domestic partner police, it's too hard to be on the phone with her, once a week when we give our little updates. It's too hard to keep you out of the picture, which in some weird way means keeping me out of the picture, and I couldn't be out of the picture too long before I'd miss me being there.

5. The phrase "emotional bandwidth." You said this the other night, when we went out to that bar, to hear music. I had no idea what you were talking about, but because the music was loud and there were a gazillion other people jostling for a view of the stage, I just nodded like a doll and gave you one of those smiles that's supposed to say, "Don't worry, someone out there really gets you." But then you said it again, on the way back to your house, after we'd made out in my car in what was probably one of the most dangerous areas of town, the streetlights giving off this lurid, drug-induced glow. And when you said it that second time I was forced to listen and acknowledge you saying this to me, no grunge-rock or sweaty crowds to blame, and I still don't know what you meant. But it was the phrase itself that did me in, finally, this strange pairing of words, the marriage of sociology and technology, and I got this terrible preview about what life with you would be like, how you'd be expressing yourself down the line to relatives, to children, to me, which means that in some tiny little space I'd actually been thinking this was going somewhere, I was making a space for you, imagining – even if it were vague and filmy and obtuse – something of a future with you. But when you said those words, "emotional bandwidth," it didn't even matter to me what you were actually talking about, whether it was about us or about you or about me. I didn't care what you were trying to say. I tuned the rest of it out. I only heard the phrase "emotional bandwidth" and something in me just died right then, my fascination with you, I guess, my fascination with us. I thought, "Could I really have sex with someone who uses the words "emotional bandwidth?" It sounded too much like "gynecological visit" or "fruit fly infestation" or "chemical sealant," and in fact maybe I heard wrong. Maybe you were saying "Placido Domingo" or "Kuala Lumpur" or "French Polynesia."

Maybe I wish you'd said those things. But the thing is, I think you did actually say "emotional bandwidth" and I think my own emotional bandwidth narrowed right then, recoiled into a microscopic splotch of grey matter, and you became grey and then you became just matter, and then you just didn't matter, and when you finally left my car, it was like I'd snapped out of it, unclutched myself from the hasty, tongue-kissing, therapeutic, lonely arrangement of us. And when you looked back over your shoulder after you'd unlocked your front door, when you gave me that smile, that smile that seems to say "Please don't" and "I'm sorry" at the same time, my engine and I were already running.