What Currency Is a Day

I guess I hadn't really realized how quickly everything had been moving. Maybe it's the distance, maybe it's the mode of communication, maybe it's that I'd been aware of his existence for quite a few months, regardless, it hasn't really been as long as it's felt, as it feels. If "feel" is even the right word. Feelings are fleeting. Feelings are things that wisp over the surface of things that are. Better said, it seems so much more intense than the currency of a few weeks can afford, for most people I guess. The certainty I have about it. About him. About us. About really trying to make it work and about the objective being that we live in way closer proximity, even so much closer you might be able to say that we live in the exact same place and not be even a bit technically inaccurate when saying it. I guess that, when I realized it, I might've had a bit of a panic. My heart might have sunk a little bit. I might have considered the possibility that my shiny novelty had struck again, this time it had struck the heartstrings of a bear who lives three thousand miles away. Suffice it to say, I'm used to being the ultimate fad of men's love lives, the temporary most amazing thing ever. I am actually "The One That Got Away" dozens of times over, which is amazing how it's not my perspective on the matter at all. The way I see it, I am actually "The One Who Got A Bit Boring After A While, Thus Was Expelled From The Here And Now Relationship's Next-step." Chock it up to perspective. Chock it up to over a year's worth of the Memoirette and almost a decade of relatively romantic memoirettes in print. I think I can make a case against being "The One That Got Away."

When I tell The Bear that I'm writing about him, it's barely 8 a.m. where he is. He texts me whenever he wakes up from sleep, even for a little bit. He texts me hoping that I'm awake. He texts me to tell me how much he misses me even though I know it. Of that fact I am certain since, in reality, all we can do is miss one another because we're so far away.

When I tell The Bear that I'm writing about him, he responds, "About what a silly boy I am?"

I respond, "About what a silly girl I am about a magical boy who's silly about me."

When he texts his response, I know he is chuckling about it. He writes back, "That is basically us."

The issue of relative time hit me when I asked something about the last girl he'd been "seeing" though that's not how he'd describe it. The way he describes it, he might've just been exchanging physical intimacy in an arranged noncommitted, insignificant way. Considering I know the feeling, I take absolutely no issue with the nature of that nonrelationship, of that arrangement. The issue of relative time hit me when he told me that the last time he'd banged her was on the night he'd returned from Salt Lake. Under a month ago. Earlier that weekend was the first time we'd gotten to talk, actually talk...on the phone. I had been waiting to get stood up again at The Bar. Waiting with a triple-sized Kettle One and tonic, I happily sat on the phone with The Bear getting to hear his voice for the first time, falling in love with it with every breath and every reverberation of his vocal chords. It's true that so much attraction can be told by the reaction one has to another's voice. It's so true. Like a man's hands, a voice is so integral to the entire process of dissecting the person. I had absolutely no problem walking out of The Bar before my would-be-suitor would show, only partly because he was so late. Mostly, I had no problem walking out because The Bear had banged on the gong of my attraction and, even though it would be only aurally that night, I knew that the guy who was about to show up couldn't hold a candle to him. I haven't told any of this to The Bear, but it's true. It's totally true. His voice made me sure that the other guy wasn't worth the wait.

This was all just barely a month ago, hardly four weeks. Everything kind of rolled down the mountain soon after. Then was video chat. Then was IMing all day. Then was talking in bed when I woke up and he woke up. Then was talking while we were out and about, doing things without the benefit of one another's tangible company. It just kept snowballing down the mountain. It just keeps on doing it. Every day, every hour, every minute, it becomes more and more important. More significant. And I become more certain. Add to it that every day, every hour, every minute, it becomes more and more difficult to be apart.

"I think," The Pens tells me, "that the minute you guys see each other in the airport, you're going to fall in love. If you're not already, that's when it's going to happen."

Of course, I think she's right. The penetrating thought of the limited time span of this, how it's only barely just begun won't be a consideration anymore for worry, for concern. Really, it's not even now. Even if The Bear has become worried that it might be cause for me to slam on the brakes. Even if a part of me thinks that it should be cause for that very thing. Because there's no point really. No point in the worrying or the What ifs that The Bear has all too often caught me mid-way through.

"What do you want us to do?" he asks me. "Would it change anything? Would you want to change anything?"

He knows that the only thing that could be done any differently would be to just stop this altogether and he knows that's not what I want. It's certainly not what he wants. It's precisely in diametric opposition to what we want, for us. And it's good to feel that. To feel and know that we want something for us and that we're on the same page. God, for the first time in my life, I am a part of a "we" that is on the same page about an "us." For all of my What ifs and for all of my verbalizing anxieties that, by the way, are just a part of my condition, just a part of my general make-up, I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that this is what I want. What he wants is what I want and what I want is what he wants. Even if, for the time being, we're apart. Even if his ticket to Miami is set for less than two weeks from now and I'll have to wait that long to hear it said to my face and to say it back to his face: This is what we want. We want this for us. Because it's so much more than the currency of time. If time is measured out in pennies, sometimes, it's not being measured out in pennies for us. For us, each second is a five dollar bill. For us, each day is a twenty. For us, each week is a thousand.