LUDIC LOG

for Elizabeth Ellen

Our anniversary is next Wednesday. One year together. I think I'll tell her then. I don't mean I choose to tell her then; I mean, I have a feeling that's when she's going to ask.

I guess I could just not tell her when she asks. She does that all the time. She's great at it. I'll ask her what she did today, or what she's thinking about, or what she meant by some offhand comment or another, and she won't answer. She'll just pretend she didn't hear the question, knowing that I'll let it go. Or else, she does that thing where she tilts her head: it's a strange motion -- she leads with her chin, and her long face looks like it's being drawn along on wires. She tilts her head away from me and laughs this expectant, questioning laugh, like it's funny I would even ask her things. It puts me on the defensive and I always try to come up with an explanation of why I was asking her the question, and so in the end of course I never get my answer. I don't think I could get away with that, though. She's more curious than I am.

That's why I'm sure she'll ask on Wednesday. Because she's more curious than I am, and because she likes to hear stories about herself. Sometimes she acts like she doesn't live inside her life, and she always seems delighted to hear about things that happened to her from someone else's perspective, like it's a biography. I wouldn't ask her the same question in a million years. I'm afraid of the answer. If I ask her "what made you fall in love with me?", I'm pretty sure the answer would make me feel guilty or stupid or insecure. Most things do. With her, it's usually just guilty (that she's better than I deserve) or insecure (that she'll figure out that there's nothing that special about me, and she'll leave me for someone better looking with more money or a longer car or something). She never makes me feel stupid. Well, not yet at least. Next Wednesday, though, she's going to ask me "what made you fall in love with me", and I think I'll tell her then, and I'll feel pretty goddamn stupid.

This week I practiced saying it, telling the story. I figured that if I actually made the words, if I actually heard the sounds of them coming out of my mouth, they wouldn't seem so ridiculous when I really said them to her. I don't think it's working. They still sound pretty ridiculous. There's certain ideas that, no matter how you communicate them, they're not going to sound good. Like "I have to go to the bathroom" or "your dog is dead". There's just no way to say those things and sound cool.

When I think about it, it's really not all that bad. She won't care that what first made me fall in love was something physical. She's beautiful and she doesn't pretend she isn't, for which I am grateful every day. She won't mind that I'll be talking about her body. She knows that I love her for more than that, that I love a million things about her: the way she and I will read the same book at the same time without arranging it in advance, and she'll notice something entirely different about it than I did. The way she laughs so easily at everything and never makes me feel afraid to make any kind of a joke. The way she gets along with her family -- I think that's crazy sexy, and she doesn't understand why, but she loves it when I tell her it's so. Hell, I love her handwriting, the clothes she goes running in, her fuckin' job. I love everything about her and she knows it. Plus, it's really a compliment. It should really give her a thrill to know how much I wanted her, even back then. I could even say "the thing I first noticed about you was that you have great tits" and she'd just smile and laugh and I wouldn't feel uncomfortable at all because she wouldn't take it in a way that made me feel uncomfortable.

But this...it's hard to explain. There's no dignity in it. There's nothing but a dumb backstory about how I grew up in Alaska, and how I don't have sisters, and how it happened to be June when I met her, and how people dress differently here, and how I went to parochial schools. And it has one of those words in it that just makes you seem inherently foolish whenever you say it. And there's something about it, about saying it, about thinking it, about the fact that it happened in the first place, that smells like an '80s teen comedy. I'm afraid of what's going to happen once she knows it. She's going to know everything. She's going to look at my thing about armpits in a whole different light's she's going to feel self-conscious about wearing sleeveless tops; she's going to reconsider all her wardrobe choices, really. I don't say it's going to mess everything up; it's a year we've been together, after all, and it's love, and you don't mess that up so easily. Still, I'm not looking forward to Wednesday. I should, but I'm not.

She goes to work early, so I have all morning to say it to the mirror. The mirror doesn't want to hear it either, and the face in it keeps looking back at me with this pained, beleagured expression every time I say it. I hope this isn't as nuts as I'm making it out to sound, but maybe it is. I hear her asking it in my head: "what made you fall in love with me? what was the very first thing?", but if I keep up this high-strung shit, I'm probably going to end up asking it myself to the mirror, in a scary falsetto. In a way, I'll be glad to get it over with. It'll be a relief to say it to her a lot more than it was just to say it.

I rinse the shaving cream out of the corners of my mouth, and I look in the mirror. I hear her voice in my head, asking. And I practice saying it again:

"You were the first girl I ever met who didn't wear underwear."

The face looks back at me, unhappy. Maybe she won't ask.