I have a friend whose parking tickets I will always pay without hesitation, and he, mine. I have another friend who tells me, “You look nice tonight” on the nights that I actually do feel like I look nice. I have a friend who walks me all the way home from work, even when he’s on his bike, because it’s on his way. 

I am too susceptible to small gestures. I blossom and unfurl at men’s flattery, but squirm under the complimentary scrutiny of other women. A man’s attention is easily won, freely given, valuable but unacknowledged, the air that I breathe without thinking. A woman’s attention is the chill in a sudden breeze, refreshing one moment, menacing the next. This is what happens when your mother was always jealous of your relationship with your father, says the part of me that doesn’t want to feel responsible for letting so many women pass in and out of my life. 

I thought it would be simpler after you’re married, when sex isn’t driving you. The surprising and completely obvious reality, of course, is that I still spend the majority of my time dealing with people who are not my husband, and that I still desire, no matter how benignly. It was never about sex, anyway. Before I tamped the flame of religion, I briefly toyed with the idea of becoming a nun; their rejection of sex, rather than forbidding desire, seemed to embrace it. I wanted to desire without restraint. I wanted desire without repercussions. Over time I tamped that, too. I no longer want to possess or be possessed. I want to see, and I want to be seen. I want gestures that accumulate into something meaningful, become more than the sum of their parts. I am starting to think that maybe this is the intimacy of men.

Last night I drove a couple of friends up and down Comm Ave. We passed cars packed with graduates, girls stumbling down the wide avenue, heels in hand, still in their red robes, flailing like they burned with an invisible fire. You’re not that bad of a driver, my two passengers assured me, a small act of solidarity that, in my sentimental mood of late, touched me more than it should have. As we circled for parking to the soundtrack of repetitive, jangly Indian pop on WHRB, I gripped the steering wheel harder. I imagined I must look like an actor driving in front of a green screen of an exotic locale. But it wasn’t exotic in the least.

We survived last call at one bar (a surreal thing when you’re sober), then headed next door to say hello to a bartender friend with a 2 a.m. license. I thought of an old friend who always used to take me to this place, even before I was legal. Here he introduced me to the first cocktail that made me think. Before I could pronounce the names of Czech liqueurs, long before I recognized 1 1/2-3/4-3/4 as a golden ratio, I tasted that drink and came alive. Lemon, honey, Becherovka: tart, sweet, mysterious. It was called a Metamorphosis. 

That friendship ended; ironically, the last time I saw him three years ago was in that bar. I drank a bourbon, neat. He asked about all the scars on my tanned arms that I couldn’t really explain. I was coming from covering an evening story, a freelance assignment. He said, “I know you don’t have a job, but you should feel lucky you have a way to make money. Most of us don’t right now.” We argued, guiltily, tiredly, over a $25 parking ticket that I’d gotten in a rental car under his name. The desire was gone. There were no small gestures left to give.