Love Song

I am the perfect girlfriend for a criminal mastermind, I told you. Or any kind of dreamer or artist or feet-not-on-the-ground types or evildoers. They create their art or hatch their plans or raise their hell, and I keep things together. And it's not anti-feminist. Now if it was an accountant or a lawyer, THAT would be anti-feminist, but because there's hell-raising involved...

You laughed. Exactly.

And sometimes I get to join in, and that's even better, I said.

Long pause. You just have to be careful not to lose your identity in something like that, you said.

I think my identity is strong enough that it can't get lost, I told you.

Yeah, well, you said. I thought mine was too.

And one of many things I didn't say was this, though I wanted to: Sometimes that's best. Sometimes you get tangled up with one of those people who suck the identity right out of you, and those are the hard times, the ones that take years to get past, like what you went through with your ex, or what I went through with mine. But sometimes you give just a teeny bit of who you are, and the other person takes it and gives you a little bit of who they are, and things start to spin between you, and so you give a little more and they give a little more and pretty soon you've got this vortex, you see, and the bits you've given merge with the bits they've given and in that vortex, you do lose some small piece of your identity, yes--but you don't so much notice because what you lose is so much less than what you gain. And if all goes well, if something massive and awful doesn't intervene, this vortex builds and builds and all the things neither of you could have done alone, things that would have been impossible, suddenly become almost easy. You find yourself immersed in magic, surrounded by wild and majestic acts. And you hang on to those moments like grim death, because they are few and far between and when they're gone you'll miss them more than you can imagine.

Yes, I didn't say. There's always a little bit of danger. The best whirlwinds carry the tiniest twinge of self-destruction; fragments that, if mishandled, form the seeds of their own demise. But that's the spice that makes them worthwhile, as well--to feel the edge of the cliff under your feet and to know that you could fall at any moment--WOULD fall, if you were doing this alone, and might fall still. And then to still be standing--still immersed in magic, still surrounded by those wild and majestic acts, still clinging to that partner in crime.

It's just a matter of finding the right one, I thought but didn't say.

We talked about our exes for a while, and later on you said You know, there are three people I'm really glad to have met while working here. And I was one of the names you named.

I wonder sometimes if I'm imagining things. And then I wonder sometimes if I'm not.