The Twenty-Hour Romance
Emma Long
I understood myself best when I was most insular. Alone, surrounded by strangers who were together, armed with my headphones, loud music. I’d drift around the city watching other people live: families at the playground, couples kissing under the overpass. I slipped through art museums saran-wrapped in solitude and cried looking at Georgia O’Keefe’s early abstractions. In the park, I lost myself within the portal of my phone, my nose in a book I was reading in an effort to prove something to someone who wasn't there. There was always a group of girls within earshot, a sense of gravelly darkness that edged their tone of voice, speaking about some boy they were seeing. I’d hang on the edges of their deep-toned whispers, wondering what it must be like, to always have something like that in your life.
I was for the most part, living for the moment. Everything was about passion, chasing emotion, feeling as much as I could in any instant. It was why I drank myself into varying states of loudness, swimming in the music, fumbling over a key in the bathroom stall, feverishly flitting between friend-groups. It was why I pursued men so failingly. I’d do anything to feel those fleeting moments of elevation. To feel like things were swirling, spinning. To feel that cosmic confluence of emotion: the fiery heat of blood under skin, the firmness of the crux of their shoulder under my lips, the feeling of slightly oily hair slipping between fingers.
They could hold so much. I read Rooney and she said none of it mattered, nothing but the moment—that feeling of being wrapped up in them, the immediacy of affection. All of the nothingness surrounding it was worth it for that instant of gasping tenderness, when you could feel them against you, so softly. When they’d play you an old bossa nova song, mouthing along to the Portuguese on the train, holding your chin in their hands. When they’d reach across to your bar seat, gazing into you, hand sliding underneath your damp coat. It’s raining outside. They want to take you to theirs. Sex at 4 am. Sitting with them by the fire, laughing, still a post-coital rosiness lingering on cheek. Kissing on the subway platform, hand in hair, hands across your hips, when they whispered that you were theirs from above.
I often caught myself performing for the spirits of these men, imagining them watching me. God-like eyes, they had. Their silhouettes stretched across the city, trailing me, whispering through my skull in their own perfect ways. I lived in the panopticon of their interests, their desires. Wondering how I would look to them in my new dress, how I looked dancing, looking at art, reading, walking to work, nodding my head to music, alone. I was feverish in my dedication, imagining what they might think of me at any instant. Fingering an upper rib bone, carving my fingers into the hollow of my navel, thinking of them, experiencing myself through them.
I adored these hallucinatory types of men: the ones who left me. The best moments were the ones that could never be repeated. To only have a sliver of them left: a concert wristband, a bottlecap from a beer they bought me, a yellowing bruise. Certain places that held nothing before were ignited by their shadowy footprints. In their absence, they became more than they were, better than they were. They erupted in absentia. Fiery things. I’d play something they sent me, close my eyes, think of them, and nothing felt better.
Twenty-Hour Romance, I called it. The duration of a day passed together. It was nothing to him. It didn’t have to be anything to me, if I had let it. Instead, as I like to do, I let him overtake my psyche. For a brief moment, everything swirled around him. Imagine: frantic, inhalation, wheezing in, spinning, inflation, inflation. A symptom of economics, maybe. I needed to make things bigger than they were, so I could live off of them for longer, stretching those salivatory moments across time to sustain my appetite. Aloe vera nicotine on his breath, strong Roman nose, slipping into the native tongue on the edge of sleep, deep brown eyes.
Telling me it was fate we met. There were so many other girls out there on the apps. Yes, it was true, I supposed. Random, being with him, out of everyone. We sat in a red-lit room at the back of the venue, on some sagging Victorian ottoman. I watched him in profile, telling me about the insufferability of the artists’ ego. I liked to imagine him back in Paris, drifting across friend groups, never quite fitting into the mold, lost like me.
He was beautiful, and they often weren’t really, not in the way I found him to be. A sort of Mediterranean luminescence to him. Sun-kissed, sun spots on the bridge of his nose, laying out on a terrace in Marseilles. That was where I imagined him. His eyes were deep, hazel things: shimmering and soft, welling within his skull. He wanted to move by the sea, hated the grayness of the city. Broken English, googling what ETA meant. Quit his job because it wasn’t right, wasn’t meaningful in any way. He wanted to take photos, talk about art. The thrifting here is bad, he noted. Yes, it is, I agreed: the price of everything inflated.
He was unsure with himself, where to place himself within the capitalistic structure. Studying anthropology, quitting the job, preoccupied with the meaning of where we were all going. He understood photography as a real artist would. Wanting to document a friend of a friend, who lived alone in the countryside and did nothing but paint all day. They wanted to be the next Picasso, he shrugged. An interesting project, he thought.
While he was in the city he photographed businessmen in Midtown. The images were these underexposed, inky renditions of some navy suit on the phone, polyester strained across belly, dangling cigarette. Murky shifting figures, alone, square-shouldered, hunched over the screen. They were portraits of a real solitude, a desperation in post-industrialism.
We walked along the edge of the island, looking out to the Hudson, moving out along man-made peninsulas filled with joggers and nannies with white babies. Was it what you expected? Wind brushing through my hair. One of the last summer days of the year. I chose to wear a shirt from an aquarium my family used to drive to on spring break, in Monterey, by the gray Pacific Ocean. Raggedly cut hem around the neckline. He had never been to America. I sipped absentmindedly on the americano, iced, he bought me. He drank chai, iced, commenting about the inevitability of the triumph of the far-right in France. The election looming, looking out towards New Jersey. Nothing of interest over there. I laughed.
At the museum, I always wanted to be next to him, seeing each piece together, wondering what he thought of it all, what he thought of my favorite artists. He cared about the art, considering it all with an aching sincerity. I pointed out the big ones, the ones I liked. Wanda Gag. See how the interiors shiver and shake? With earnestness, he told me about photographic experimentations, people who used the medium in the best ways. I forget their names now.
He carried two cameras, old family film thing, compact digital, stopping on odd occasions to capture a composition. Eyes shone, looking out at the skyline. Always a dream of his to visit this city. Yes, the view was beautiful. I felt my accent with a startling embarrassment; the harshness of the American dialect; a certain abrasiveness in my tone. I liked to talk about the architectural flow between floors of art museums. He understood. Inviting me to the concert of a friend of a friend. I flushed, yes, I wanted to go.
Sitting outside with them, leg bouncing absentmindedly. That feeling of being inside someone else’s friend-group, being the outsider, existing within this sort of wavering dissimilitude. Conversation that drifted past you, not through you. Ah, I wish I spoke French, really. Discussion was about the U.S. Open, punctual tones, shifting between French and English—mostly English. The sports conversation was foreign to me, and to him too.
The awkwardness of meeting someone from the internet. Jittering anticipation standing outside the station, trying to look as cool as possible while waiting. Not wanting to look so mindless on my phone, spinning around with each passing figure. A fumbling American and European introduction: a hug, half-kissed cheek. Those preliminary moments of a date, which I think I’m better at than the actual rest of the thing. I could transform myself into this chatty, grinning loudness of a person. Edging at the corners of confidence, projecting certainty in myself.
While we waited in line for the bathroom, again, he struggled to find a word in English. Language faltering. I felt a deep affection for that, funny to have that barrier between us. How different he would seem, I wondered, if I spoke his language. We laughed, in that soft, buoyant way. Nothing heavy, nothing unsettled about it. I don’t know how to flirt, he told me, how to talk to girls. I laughed, rolled my eyes at it. He was beautiful. I was sure he was always getting laid, knowing men. It didn’t matter if I believed him or not. I fell into a sense of ascendency as he whispered to me how I made him feel: like a teenager again, so glad we met. Couldn’t stop looking at me. I really like you. I really like you. I told him. We kissed for the first time, losing our place in line.
I could feel the most in love when I was at concerts. He told me that concerts were the places where he felt the most alive. I was almost faint after my second beer, not much food in the stomach, nerves. I laughed at myself, how I ended up here with him: that infernal app. A portal to things untouchable. He took some film photos and I closed my eyes and sunk into soft music, purple lights across my eyelids. I bubbled with joy anytime he turned to say something to me, to run a hand across my back. I couldn’t stop gazing at him: his profile, his features. He looked perfect through my eyes.
In my room, alone with him. I trailed off mid-sentence while speaking about Susan Sontag’s On Photography and kissed him. Wavering on top of the duvet, those moments perched on the edge of sex, speaking, wondering when it would happen. I had lost many hours over the years, babbling endlessly on different beds, not caring about what was said, both too shy to kiss the other first.
His first New York pizza, on the edge of a fountain in a meager triangle of a park. Raclette pizza with potatoes was his favorite back home. That, and pepperoni, always a classic. Depression Cherry by Beachhouse as his phone background. Makes me seem like a teenager in 2014, he laughed at himself. Searching for a bathroom— a constant. The train ride to Ridgewood, where I had been the previous weekend, having an anxious ecstasy trip amid all the cool Bushwick people, under the misters, to the rattling ceaselessness of house music. We passed the phone back and forth. Musical exchange, wired together by his airport earbuds. Nilufer Yanya, The Strokes. He saved all my songs.
Fawning, fawning, thinking of his breath against mine. An open mouth, desperate oral contact. The poorness of sleep entangled with a stranger. I awoke in the middle of the night, with a sudden flush of realization—of this strange man in my bed—this person I didn’t know existed at the beginning of the day. It was a twinge of fear, but mostly this warm welling, understanding that the world would continue to be unpredictable in such ways. Chance moments, the beauty of a day born from nothing, watching him speak under the red lights of the bar.
We held each other endlessly, an eruption of physical neediness, staring at one another in stretches of buoyant sincerity. He held me in his arms and I disappeared inside his denim jacket. Waiting for the G train, kissing me across my cheeks, in front of everyone on the train. Desperate desire on the return, playing me soft love songs,
Blue Angel by Hermine. Singing to me, holding me, Roman Holiday by The Fontaines. Wasn’t much need to talk about anything now.
Awkward, tangled fingers on his face, washing it with some creamy French brand, his eyes closed, laughing. I leaned back against the shower wall, my hips against his and watched him look at me, picking stray strands of hair off my chest. Under the water, running hands across shoulders, the sturdiness of bone, laughing at how the drizzle blinded us. We gazed towards one another, quietly. Water pooling while he brushed droplets off of my body, the air charged and fuzzy between us.
I wanted to see him again. He never texted me back. Flew home a week later. Fucked me in the morning, as soon as I dressed myself. Dark-wash denim shorts, taken off as soon as they were put on. Afterwards, we sat on the edge of my bed, undressed only from the waist down, breathing in, the softness, an unbalanced feeling afterwards. I walked him to his friend's place, the sun a bit too bright, tank top in September. We kissed, embraced, pulling away, gazing at me, arm outstretched, holding his hand. I turned around and went home in a profound state of joy.
I was forgetting it bit by bit every day. Locked into a sense of chastity by the specificities of my taste. I clung to the past-tense. Nobody was quite right, and it felt better within my skull, sculpting my memories into perfection, remembering the ones who made me melt. Nostalgia was delicious, the past a sensuous thing.
Alone. Writing about him in a coffee shop a block from where we said goodbye. Seeing desire in his gaze: yearning misplaced. An overabundance of choice. The rise of the right, the brimming undertone of fascism in the West. Having sex again, and again, and again. Debating the morality of tourism, hating the meaninglessness of real work, only caring about creation. We could both feel it. Things were looming abstractly.
Chewing the interior of my cheek; rawness, strips of skin peeling back. These apps, these screens made me sick. Stillness, nothingness, a compulsion to open them up. It felt better to be alone, drifting down Greene Avenue, playing music he recommended to me so loud that I disconnected entirely from everything around me. A head floating above. Wrapping myself in saran wrap, yes, relief, it felt right. Everything was fleeting, for the moment.
The Twenty-Hour Romance was the best place to be. Yes, like a good drug, it sent me to places of ascendency. It made everything glow. They’d watch me from afar forever afterwards. It was true, the internet was the only reason he drifted in and out of me. Blaming it, knowing I owed it everything. Digital presence, binary connection, artificiality in togetherness. I was best through the filter of virtuality. Not wanting to see me again, liking all my things. Existing within the blue light. Panoptic girl, making myself into a digital object for them. Pursuing myself through the screen.
Alone, where I feel the most myself, watching everyone around me fall in love. The trees are turning brown now. I smile at a couple kissing under the green light of the train station. The unpredictability of it all, I feel, looking up at the sun shining through leaves. The currents from my phone, my phone, my phone. That which expands everything. The portal to him, to sex, to everything. And hating it, knowing I wouldn’t be myself, wouldn’t have lived my life without it. I listen to La Femme and watch the trees die, wrapped up in myself, living off of it. The world shifting by, everything beginning to turn.
