Unavailable Woman Quotes

I would be a horrible girlfriend at this point in my life, because I’m both needy and unavailable.

The traditional gender ideals of the strong-silent man who plays his cards close to his chest and the mysterious woman who disguises her feelings with coyness go so far as to make a virtue of being unavailable and secretive. But wholehearted intimacy can develop only where two people are equally forthcoming and self-revelatory. To take the risk of loving, we must become vulnerable enough to test the radical proposition that knowledge of another and self-revelation will ultimately increase rather than decrease love. It is an awe-ful risk.

I’d never slept with a woman before, though I’d spent most of my teens and college years obsessed with one or another. They’d all had boyfriends, or girlfriends, or else they were just patently not someone who would ever fancy me. When I told Edith this, she asked if I thought I’d gone for unavailable people because I knew I’d never have to face the reality that being with them would not solve all my problems. I told her she had no business saying something that perceptive.

Every woman should know how to curse in another language since polite society has deemed English unavailable to us.

Well, why not? My dream woman has always been been unavailable to me. What difference does a mere three-quarters of a century make?

Mr Unavailable’s inadvertently complicit partner is you, the Fallback Girl, the woman he habitually defaults to or ‘falls back’ on to have his needs met while selling you short in the process. Accommodating his idiosyncrasies and fickle whims, you’re ripe for a relationship with him because you are unavailable yourself (although you may not know it) and are slipping your own commitment issues in through the back door behind his. You get blinded by chemistry, sex, common interests and the promise of what he could be, if only he changed or you turned into The Perfect Woman. Too understanding and making far too many excuses for him, you have some habits and beliefs that are standing in the way of you having a mutually, fulfilling healthy relationship…with an available man. Pursuing or having relationships with Mr Unavailable is symbolic of your need to learn to love yourself more and to set some boundaries and have better standards.

Oh, it is true enough. I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb (an old country saying, not of much account, but it will do for a rough soldier), and so I will speak my mind, regardless of your pleasure, and without hoping or intending to get your pardon. Why, Miss Everdene, it is in this manner that your good looks may do more harm than good in the world." The sergeant looked down the mead in critical abstraction. "Probably some one man on an average falls in love with each ordinary woman. She can marry him: he is content, and leads a useful life. Such women as you a hundred men always covet—your eyes will bewitch scores on scores into an unavailing fancy for you—you can only marry one of that many. Out of these say twenty will endeavour to drown the bitterness of despised love in drink; twenty more will mope away their lives without a wish or attempt to make a mark in he world, because they have no ambition apart from their attachment to you; twenty more—the susceptible person myself possibly among them—will be always draggling after you, getting where they may just see you, doing desperate things. Men are such constant fools! The rest may try to get over their passion with more or less success. But all these men will be saddened. And not only those ninety-nine men, but the ninety-nine women they might have married are saddened with them. There's my tale. That's why I say that a woman so charming as yourself, Miss Everdene, is hardly a blessing to her race.

Mr Unavailable blindly assumes that he acts as he does because he’s never met the ‘right’ woman. His ego forgets to remind himself that in his unavailable state, he’s not the right man – for anyone. By playing silly games (even if he doesn’t think he is), he gets to let himself off the hook and continue looking to the future where he thinks that his perfect woman exists. He’s failed to recognise that his resistance in relationships isn’t caused by the women he’s involved with, but by himself.

I once heard a woman who'd lost her dog say that she felt as though a color were suddenly missing from her world: the dog had introduced to her field of vision some previously unavailable hue, and without the dog, that color was gone. That seemed to capture the experience of loving a dog with eminent simplicity. I'd amend it only slightly and say that if we are open to what they have to give us, dogs can introduce us to several colors, with names like wildness and nurturance and trust and joy.

In her utmost need she did what she had so tyrannically forbidden others to do. Giving up the attempt to save Gilbert Eddy by the powers of mind, she called in a regular practitioner, a “confectioner of disease,” Dr. Rufus K. Noyes. For once, she capitulated to reality. This representative of official medicine prescribed the appropriate remedies for a failing heart, but these likewise were unavailing. The patient died on June 3, 1882, the third husband of the woman who had declared illness and death to be nothing but error and illusion.

women are socially conditioned to believe that they need a man in their life pretty much as soon as they become adults, whereas men are programmed to sow their wild oats and spread their options. Unfortunately while he’s terrified of missing out, his friends all drop off the radar and settle down, and after a while he becomes the odd one out, clinging to his bachelorhood and claiming that he hasn’t met the ‘right’ woman yet and that they’re all ‘psychos’ or ‘too needy’. At some point he’ll likely have a midlife crisis and panic himself into his version of commitment to some poor woman who thinks she’s hit the jackpot.

The importance of context is also shown by the attraction tactic of acting coy or unavailable. Appearing indifferent to a person one likes and playing hard to get are judged to be more effective for women than for men. Furthermore, these forms of coyness are more effective for women in the context of long-term as opposed to casual mates.33 This outcome meshes perfectly with the sexual strategies of both women and men. The coyness tactic works for women seeking committed mates because it signals both desirability and fidelity. Men think that if a woman is easy for them to get sexually, then she may be easy for other men too.

Girls, I was dead and down in the Underworld, a shade, a shadow of my former self, nowhen. It was a place where language stopped, a black full stop, a black hole Where the words had to come to an end. And end they did there, last words, famous or not. It suited me down to the ground. So imagine me there, unavailable, out of this world, then picture my face in that place of Eternal Repose, in the one place you’d think a girl would be safe from the kind of a man who follows her round writing poems, hovers about while she reads them, calls her His Muse, and once sulked for a night and a day because she remarked on his weakness for abstract nouns. Just picture my face when I heard - Ye Gods - a familiar knock-knock at Death’s door. Him. Big O. Larger than life. With his lyre and a poem to pitch, with me as the prize. Things were different back then. For the men, verse-wise, Big O was the boy. Legendary. The blurb on the back of his books claimed that animals, aardvark to zebra, flocked to his side when he sang, fish leapt in their shoals at the sound of his voice, even the mute, sullen stones at his feet wept wee, silver tears. Bollocks. (I’d done all the typing myself, I should know.) And given my time all over again, rest assured that I’d rather speak for myself than be Dearest, Beloved, Dark Lady, White Goddess etc., etc. In fact girls, I’d rather be dead. But the Gods are like publishers, usually male, and what you doubtless know of my tale is the deal. Orpheus strutted his stuff. The bloodless ghosts were in tears. Sisyphus sat on his rock for the first time in years. Tantalus was permitted a couple of beers. The woman in question could scarcely believe her ears. Like it or not, I must follow him back to our life - Eurydice, Orpheus’ wife - to be trapped in his images, metaphors, similes, octaves and sextets, quatrains and couplets, elegies, limericks, villanelles, histories, myths… He’d been told that he mustn’t look back or turn round, but walk steadily upwards, myself right behind him, out of the Underworld into the upper air that for me was the past. He’d been warned that one look would lose me for ever and ever. So we walked, we walked. Nobody talked. Girls, forget what you’ve read. It happened like this - I did everything in my power to make him look back. What did I have to do, I said, to make him see we were through? I was dead. Deceased. I was Resting in Peace. Passé. Late. Past my sell-by date… I stretched out my hand to touch him once on the back of the neck. Please let me stay. But already the light had saddened from purple to grey. It was an uphill schlep from death to life and with every step I willed him to turn. I was thinking of filching the poem out of his cloak, when inspiration finally struck. I stopped, thrilled. He was a yard in front. My voice shook when I spoke - Orpheus, your poem’s a masterpiece. I’d love to hear it again… He was smiling modestly, when he turned, when he turned and he looked at me. What else? I noticed he hadn’t shaved. I waved once and was gone. The dead are so talented. The living walk by the edge of a vast lake near, the wise, drowned silence of the dead.

But between the pleasure of a kiss and of what a man and woman do in bed seems to me only a gradation. A kiss, for instance, is not to be minimized, or its value judged by anyone else. I wonder do these men grade their pleasure in terms of whether their actions produce a child or not, and do they consider them more pleasant if they do. It is a question of pleasure after all, and what’s the use of debating the pleasure of an ice cream cone versus a football game—or a Beethoven quartet versus the Mona Lisa. I’ll leave that to the philosophers. But their attitude was that I must be somehow demented or blind (plus a kind of regret, I thought, at the fact a fairly attractive woman is presumably unavailable to men). Someone brought “aesthetics” into the argument, I mean against me of course. I said did they really want to debate that—it brought the only laugh in the whole show. But the most important point I did not mention and was not thought of by anyone—that the rapport between two men or two women can be absolute and perfect, as it can never be between man and woman, and perhaps some people want just this, as others want that more shifting and uncertain thing that happens between men and women.

Hunding, stop skulking in the hallway and get in here.” The bellhop poked his head around the doorway. “I wasn’t skulking,” he said defensively. “I was lingering.” “Come in. I need you to do three things. One: Find a way to track Thor’s FitnessKnut. Report his whereabouts at all times.” “Won’t he just circle the worlds in order?” I made a face. “Thor’s sense of direction is terrible. His path will likely be erratic. Moving on. Two: Have squads of einherjar launch surprise attacks on the Bifrost. I want to know that Heimdall is on guard.” “Very good, sir. And the third thing?” “Inform the thanes that as of tomorrow, I will be unavailable for a while.” I transformed my appearance from a rugged one-eyed god of wisdom to a beautiful two-eyed woman clad in chain mail. “I will be living with my Valkyries to decide for myself which of them deserves to be captain.” Hunding raised a hairy eyebrow. “An idea from Utgard-Loki, Lord Odin?” “Wisdom can be gleaned from any source if one only looks hard enough.” I paused, thinking. “Let’s put that on a T-shirt. And, Hunding?” “My lord?” I transformed back into my true form. “Download cute baby goat videos to my phablet. I must learn what all the fuss is about.

Between the pleasure of a kiss and of what a man and woman do in bed seems to me only a gradation. A kiss, for instance, is not to be minimized, or its value judged by anyone else. I wonder do these men grade their pleasure in terms of whether their actions produce a child or not, and do they consider them more pleasant if they do. It is a question of pleasure after all, and what's the use debating the pleasure of an ice cream cone versus a football gamme--or a Beethoven quartet versus the Mona Lisa. I'll leave that to the philosophers. But their attitude was that I must be somehow demented or blind (plus a kind of regret, I thought, at the fact that a fairly attractive woman is presumably unavailable to men). [...] The most important point I did not mention and was not thought of by anyone--that the rapport between two men or two women can be absolute and perfect, as it can never be between man and woman, and perhaps some people want just this, as others want that more shifting and uncertain thing that happens between men and women. It was said or at least implied yesterday that my present course would bring me to the depths of human vice and degeneration. Yes, I have sunk a good deal since they took you from me. It is true, if I were to go on like this and be spied upon, attacked, never possessing one person long enough so that knowledge of a person is a superficial thing--that is degeneration. Or to live against one's grain, that is degeneration by definition.

CONFESSIONS OF A CLING-ON If a man is walking in a forest and makes a statement, but there is no woman around to hear it, is he still wrong? Or if a woman is walking in the forest and asks for something, and there is no man around to hear her, is she still needy? These Zen koans capture some of the frustrations people have with the opposite gender. And where is the dividing line between someone simply having a need, and someone being a needy person? Is it written in heaven somewhere what is too much need, too little need and just right amount of need for the “normal person?” Ask pop radio psychologists Dr. Laura, or Sally Jessie Rafael, or any number of experts who claim to know for sure, and you’ll get some very different answers. And isn’t it fun to see the new sophisticated ways our advanced culture is developing to make each other wrong? You better keep up with the latest technical terminology or you will be at the mercy of those who do. Whoever has read the latest most recent self-help book has the clear advantage. Example: Man: “Get real, would you! Your Venusian codependency has got you trapped in your learned helpless victim act, and indulging in your empowerment phobia again.” Woman: “When you call me codependent, I feel (notice the political correctness of the feeling word) that you are simply projecting your own disowned, unintegrated, emotionally unavailable Martian counterdependency to protect your inner ADD two year old from ever having to grow up. So there!” Speaking of diagnosis, remember the codependent. Worrying about codependency was like a virus that everyone had from about 1988 to 1994. Here’s a prayer to commemorate the codependent: The Codependent’s Prayer by Kelly Bryson Our Authority, which art in others, self-abandonment be thy name. Codependency comes when others’ will is done, At home, as it is in the workplace. give us this day our daily crumbs of love. And give us a sense of indebtedness, As we try to get others to feel indebted to us. And lead us not into freedom, but deliver us from awareness. For thine is the slavery and the weakness and the dependency, For ever and ever. Amen.

in our present state of society woman possesses not; she is under possession,” referring to laws that barred married women from owning or inheriting property. From girlhood, “woman is educated with the tacit understanding, that she is only half a being, and an appendage.” Once married, she “spends life in conforming to” her husband’s wishes “instead of moulding herself to her own ideal. Thus she loses her individuality, and never gains his respect.” After becoming a mother, “she is only the upper nurse,” whereas the father is “the oracle. His wish is law, hers only the unavailing sigh uttered in secret.” Through it all, “she looks out into life, finds nothing there but confusion, and congratulates herself that it is man’s business, not hers.

In addition to everything else working in Bedlow’s favor, there was his status as “citizen,” an identity that was unavailable to Lanah Sawyer and all women in early national New York. At the opening of the trial, one of the defense attorneys referred to him as a “fellow citizen.” Raising the specter of a false accusation, he warned the jury that rape “is an offense … so easily charged by the woman … putting the life of a citizen in the hands of a woman, to be disposed of almost at her will and pleasure.” This statement transformed the case “into a dispute between a citizen and an outsider,” which Arnold notes was “potent rhetoric in a post-revolutionary climate in which the glories of citizenship had been so recently hardwon.”45

Getting more into one-on-one therapy helped. It helped me to keep going, and it helped me to quit drinking. I almost feel it’s mandatory in my position. C’mon, buddy, you’ve got to get your head shrunk. Because your head gets so big, you need to shrink it. You need to go to some guy who’s going to tell you what you already know about yourself and pay attention to you for an hour straight. Which we all like. We all need a little attention. The first time I ever considered therapy was back in Boston, during my run in Richard III. I was staying at our director David Wheeler’s house for a few days, and he came into my room one morning to share some good news with me. “Hey, Al!” he said. “You just won the National Board of Review!” It was my first major film award for The Godfather. I said to him, in the softest voice I could summon up, “I was going to ask you, David, do you have the name of a psychiatrist? Because I need one.” That was my answer to him. Not that I was unhappy about winning such a prestigious award, but there were just other things on my mind. I saw a psychiatrist in Boston first, and then I went and got myself a guy in New York. I fell in love with the process, and I got to a point where I was in therapy five days a week at certain times. I highly recommend therapy if you’re at all leaning in that direction. Maybe you don’t need it five times a week, but give it a whirl. There’s an old story: A woman goes to a therapist for years. It’s her last appointment, because she feels she’s come to a great place in her life and is ready to move on. She wants to congratulate her therapist and say goodbye. So she tells him, “You’ve done so much good for me. I love my husband so much. Every day with my kids is just a joy. My work is going off the charts. I’m seeing a whole new side of life. You’ve been so wonderful. I never hear you speak. You just take it all in. Please tell me, how did you do it?” The doctor looks at her and says, “No habla inglés.” That’s an interpretation of therapy too; you need to talk and get it out. When I was living with Jill, before I ever went to therapy, I used to just sit in the bathtub alone and talk about things. I cleared my mind to myself. It’s an unusual relationship that you forge when you find a good doctor, someone you feel has that kind of commitment to you. And then they take some colossal amount of time off, and you don’t see them for the whole summer. I had one of those episodes when I couldn’t find my doctor. I might have been spared about twenty years of tsuris if I could have avoided it. It’s a good idea that when your psychiatrist goes away, you know where they are and you can call them when you’re in trouble. They need rest too. I can deal with, “Hey, my daughter’s graduating college, I’ll be out for a few days.” But going up a fucking river somewhere, to not be available for, like, six weeks? Come on, my life was capable of going right off the rails in far less time than that. I used to have recurring dreams in which I go to my psychiatrist’s office but can’t find him anywhere. He’s in the building, but he’s unavailable. I’m at the door, but there’s not even a buzzer I can press to let him know I’m there and no way to let me in. That was my dream. Now I have that feeling about my agent.

To the extent that power is the result of idol making and idol playing, it will almost always distort our deepest relationships. That distortion does not necessarily have to take the form of divorce; for every family visibly broken by a powerful member’s incapacity to keep his promises, there is another where spouse and children know the equally cruel reality of unavailability and unreliability. As the funny but also sadly cynical T-shirt puts it, “Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.

Just remember what happened the last time you went after an unavailable woman.” As if Mitch could forget. He spoke through gritted teeth. “It’s not like that.” Charlie shrugged. “It’s close enough to be cousins.” A hot poker of anger jabbed in his stomach. “It’s not remotely the same.” “You have a thing for unavailable women,” Charlie said, his expression as flat as his tone. “And Maddie, as cute as she is, fits the bill.” “I don’t have a thing for unavailable women,” Mitch insisted. Charlie’s mouth firmed into a hard line. “Do I need to give you a list?” A completely irrational, stubborn defiance had Mitch clenching his beer bottle hard enough to shatter. “I know who I’ve slept with, and this isn’t the same. Maddie’s not married.” “A technicality,” Charlie said. “I know what I’m doing.” What a joke. He didn’t have a clue. Charlie put his own bottle down and rested his hand on the counter. “The last time you knew what you were doing, you went down in a blaze.” The reminder was like an uppercut to the jaw. This wasn’t the same. Besides, he had nothing left to lose. He leveled Charlie with a hard-eyed stare. “Do you really want to start comparing fuck-ups?” Their mutual history covered a lot of sordid ground. “Hey,” Gracie said sharply before Charlie could answer. “Let’s not start rehashing the past. We like Maddie. We just don’t want to you to get hurt.” “Don’t be dramatic. It’s a couple days.” How much damage could she do? It wasn’t like he was getting attached. He just wanted to keep her for a little while. Was that so wrong? Sam sat forward, resting his elbows on the worn table. “Save your breath, he’s a goner.” “I am not,” Mitch said. “And why is this any of your business?” Charlie’s expression darkened, his mouth firming into a hard line. Mitch ground out, “Leave it. Alone.” Charlie gave him the look he used to intimidate criminals, and Mitch took a sip of beer with a laziness he didn’t even come close to feeling. “Stop it,” Gracie said, poking her friend-with-benefits in the ribs. “He’s being an idiot,” Charlie said, and the stubborn set of his jaw made Mitch want to take a swing at him. He put down the bottle and cracked his knuckles. Actually, violence sounded damned good. Gracie’s

-§ But just because we grew up in that kind of a culture does not mean we need to keep creating it in our present relationship. I recommend we ask different questions, like, “How could I make your life more wonderful?” and “Would you like to know how you could make my life more wonderful?” and “What are your needs right now?” and “Would you like to know what I need right now?” Now if none of this appeals to you because you prefer a relation-dinghy to a relationship, here are some suggestion to help you prevent your relation-dinghy from growing into a relationship: 1. Keep your attention focused at all times on who is right or wrong in a discussion, fair or unfair in a negotiation, selfish or unselfish in giving (it helps to keep a list of who has done what for whom), kind or cruel in their tone of voice, rude or polite in their mannerisms, sloppy or neat in their dress, and so on. Be careful not to realize that your attempt to be right is really an attempt to protect yourself from thinking you are wrong and then feeling shame. 2. If you need some support for this I recommend certain selfhelp groups who can give you the latest scoops on the most powerful, politically correct labels with which to overpower and confuse your partner. Members of these groups will collude with you in validating that your partner really is a man or woman who is commitment-phobic, emotionally unavailable, counterdependant, needy, spiritually unevolved, dysfunctional, immature, judgmental, sinful, bi-polar, OCD, clinically depressed, or adult-onset ADD. It is important to keep your consciousness filled with such terminology to prevent any fondness from developing. This also helps in keeping you caught in the “paralysis of analysis” and clueless about what you or your partner are needing from each other. 3. Adopt this test for love: If your partner really loves you, he or she will always know what you want even before you know—and then give it to you without your having to go through the humiliation of actually asking for it. And your partner will do this regardless of the sacrifice it requires. If your partner does not give you what you want, choose to believe it means he or she does not love you. 4. Ask for what you do not want instead of what you do want. I heard of a man who asked his wife to stop spending so much money shopping. She took up gambling on the internet. 5. In case your relationdinghy starts to grow, here are a few torpedoes guaranteed to sink it again: “It hurts me when you say that.” “I feel sad because you…fill in the blank (won’t say ‘I love you,’ or ‘I’m sorry,’ or won’t have sex, or won’t marry me, etc.)” If you really want to choke the life out of any relationship meditate on “I need you.” Then you will know how I felt for about thirtyfive years of my life. I felt like a drowning swimmer and I would grab hold of anyone who came near me and try to use them as a life raft. Now I want relationships to be flowers for my table instead of air for my lungs. When I Come Gently To You by Ruth Bebermeyer When I come gently to you I want you to see It’s not to get myself from you, it’s just to give you me. I know that you can’t give me me, no matter what you do. All I ever want from you is you. I know your fear of fences, your pain from prisons past. I’m not the first to sense it and I’m plainly not the last. The hawk within your heart’s not bound to earth by fence of mine, Unless you aren’t aware that you can fly. When I come gently to you I’d like you to know I come not to trespass your space, I want to touch and grow. When your space and my space meet, each is not less but more. We make our space that wasn’t space before. Chapter HEALING THE BLAME THAT BLINDS

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… you want me to lead it,” Holden said. “Yes,” Avasarala said, “because literally even UN Naval officer who wasn’t dishonorable discharged is suddenly unavailable! For fucks sake, Holden, I have crates of anti-Herpes drugs that are more legitimately UN Navy that you are.” The old woman shook her head in disbelief and disgust. Holden’s scowl was matched by a rising blush. Bobbie tried to hide her laughter, but Alex had to admit it was a little funny. Even if just to himself.

It's not until Uncle Ronnie returns from the grill with the final plate of burgers, settling into a seat at the head of the table, that it hits me. He makes himself a plate then gazes down the table, his eyes coming to rest on me and Deja. 'So how is school for you girls?' 'Grades okay?' And then I realize: he sees me as a child. It's like a bolt of lightning snaking down electric from the sky. Almost every day since I was thirteen, since my body first began to transform, I have moved through the world surrounded by men trying to convince me and themselves that there is no such thing as too young for a woman, or too old for a man, that there is no such thing as an unavailable female body. I have been moving through the world feeling like a glowing green light, green for go Go GO and Deja's uncle Ronnie is the first person in a long time to see me, not the red of my hair, but me and decide on his own to stop.

The hemp plant entered Mexico, as we have seen, after Washington and other Virginia planters enthusiastically spread it around the southern United States. As early as 1902, anthropologist Carl Lumholtz observed that some of the Indians in northwestern Mexico were using its leaves in religious rites whenever the peyote cactus was unavailable. They called it rosa maria (Rosemary) but whether they anthropomorphized it and considered it a goddess (like Peyote Woman) is not clear. In the Tepe-hua region, rosa maria became santa rosa (Saint Rose), but elsewhere it became maria juana (Mary Jane) – and, hence our modern name, marijuana. Under the latter title it was celebrated in the famous marching song of Pancho Villa’s rebels during the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920:

I once heard a woman who’d lost her dog say that she felt as though a color were suddenly missing from her world: the dog had introduced to her field of vision some previously unavailable hue, and without the dog, that color was gone. That seemed to capture the experience of loving a dog with eminent simplicity. I’d amend it only slightly and say that if we are open to what they have to give us, dogs can introduce us to several colors, with names like wildness and nurturance and trust and joy.

I wondered: dies any man ever fully know any woman? He thinks he does--she is the girl living down the lane, the girl fetching water from the communal well, the girl who speaks in accents familiar, and suddenly one day, he finds out that she has been a stranger all along, a dreamer of dreams he never suspected, a poet of verses better than his, or a more effective physician, or a saint, ultimately unavailable to him or any man. [Tony]

On one of those nights in January 2014, we sat next to each other in Maria Vostra, happy and content, smoking nice greens, with one of my favorite movies playing on the large flat-screen TVs: Once Upon a Time in America. I took a picture of James Woods and Robert De Niro on the TV screen in Maria Vostra's cozy corner, which I loved to share with Martina. They were both wearing hats and suits, standing next to each other. Robert de Niro looked a bit like me and his character, Noodles, (who was a goy kid in the beginning of the movie, growing up with Jewish kids) on the picture, was as naive as I was. I just realized that James Woods—who plays an evil Jewish guy in the movie, acting like Noodles' friend all along, yet taking his money, his woman, taking away his life, and trying to kill him at one point—until the point that Noodles has to escape to save his life and his beloved ones—looks almost exactly like Adam would look like if he was a bit older. “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.” – William Shakespeare That sounds like an ancient spell or rather directions, instructions to me, the director instructing his actors, being one of the actors himself as well, an ancient spell, that William Shakespeare must have read it from a secret book or must have heard it somewhere. Casting characters for certain roles to act like this or like that as if they were the director’s custom made monsters. The extensions of his own will, desires and actions. The Reconquista was a centuries-long series of battles by Christian states to expel the Muslims (Moors), who had ruled most of the Iberian Peninsula since the 8th century. The Reconquista ended on January 2, 1492. The same year Columbus, whose statue stands atop a Corinthian custom-made column down the Port at the bottom of the Rambla, pointing with his finger toward the West, had discovered America on October 12, 1492. William Shakespeare was born in April 1564. He had access to knowledge that had been unavailable to white people for thousands of years. He must have formed a close relationship with someone of royal lineage, or used trick, who then permitted him to enter the secret library of the Anglican Church. “A character has to be ignorant of the future, unsure about the past, and not at all sure what he/she’s supposed to be doing.” – Anthony Burgess Martina proudly shared with me her admiration for the Argentine author Julio Cortazar, who was renowned across South America. She quoted one of his famous lines, saying: “Vida es como una cebolla, hay que pelarla llorando,” which translates to “Life is like an onion, you have to peel it crying.” Martina shared with me her observation that the sky in Europe felt lower compared to America. She mentioned that the clouds appeared larger in America, giving a sense of a higher and more expansive sky, while in Europe, it felt like the sky had a lower and more limiting ceiling. “The skies are much higher in Argentina, Tomas, in all America. Here in Europe the sky is so low. In Argentina there are huge clouds and the sky is huge, Tomas.” – Martina Blaterare “It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same--everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another’s existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same--people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world.” – George Orwell, 1984

The crude communal myth about black men is that we are in some manner unavailable to black women—either jailed, dead, gay, or married to white women. A corollary myth posits a direct and negative relationship between success and black culture. Before we actually had one, we could not imagine a black president who loved being black. In The Audacity of Hope, Obama describes his first kiss with the woman who would become his wife as tasting “of chocolate.” The line sounds ripped from Essence magazine. That’s the point.

Kristen and I never touched. Not since the piggyback ride almost two weeks ago. I wanted to touch her. Hell, I thought about it almost constantly. But her boundaries were well laid. She never sat too close. I never caught her looking at me. She never gave me even the smallest indication she was interested. And why would she? She had Tyler. The second day I’d stayed the night, he’d called, and I heard her tell him the entire situation about the prowler and me staying in the guest room. She was honest with him. He didn’t seem to get upset. He trusted her. He had every right to, at least as far as I was concerned. I clearly wasn’t a threat. How had I gotten myself into this? Falling for an unavailable woman. And that’s exactly what I’d done in the last two weeks. I’d fallen. I’d fucked up. I was going to pay for this when her boyfriend came back and it all ended. I should have been more careful, spent less time with her, said no sometimes when she wanted to hang out. I should have gone on dates, looked at other options. But I couldn’t do it. Even as I felt myself tumbling down this rabbit hole, I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t even fucking want to.

Alby had a gruff, unavailable way of teaching. He did the action as he wanted it done and your job was to copy it. He didn’t suffer questions well and preferred to increase the work rather than stop and clarify technique. It was early March when I started. The only other students were a myopic woman, who was clearly better suited to yoga, and Crazy Chris. Alby called him this openly. Chris didn’t mind. He was crazy. He couldn’t generally remember his right from his left and anything past the most basic punches was beyond him. It didn’t stop him talking constantly about how he was going to join the Turkish army. It didn’t stop him hitting anything he could as hard as he could whenever he could, either.