She hadn’t texted back in over four hours. He was suicidal.
But freezing to death wasn’t as painless as he had hoped. Turns out there was no drifting off into some permanent numb. No, it happens from the inside out.
Arctic atmosphere entered his lungs one breath at a time. Blood freezing into atomic razor blades. Tiny cellular slices gradually reducing him to a pond of icy flesh.
He picked himself up off the -14-degree shoulder and got back in the Subaru. He had only lasted eight minutes away from it’s heated leather seats.
She wouldn’t let him take her out. Wouldn’t accept money. Wouldn’t let him rub her feet. This last offer a ploy to steal secret sniffs from between her toes whenever she looked away.
On occasion, stalking would pay off and he would ‘bump’ into her at the coffee shop. She would make him sit at a different table. Would buy her own coffee. Work diligently. Make him text her from two arm’s length away and wait until her submittals were complete to reply.
45 minutes later, ‘I’m just in my phone down era, what are you doing to better yourself?’ Thirteen seconds of eye contact then back to work.
She was an impenetrable fortress. Pussy locked up so tight prime Khan couldn’t penetrate.
Yet he had persisted. He was just interesting enough to get her response rates down from two days to under sixty minutes. He didn’t care how demeaning it felt. She was the last female on earth worth living for.
But now she was drifting away and he was at the edge of yet another mid-life crisis looking down into an abyss forty years deep. He had been here before.
***
He married young and had kids like you’re supposed to. They had bought a house together. A minivan. Maxed out 401ks and 501cs. Sam’s Club Sundays after church. In-laws close by for date night Thursdays to avoid the weekend rush.
In the begining even the sex was sublime. Her body count was two, he was three, and they took it to 1000. Lewis and Clark fucking and feeling their way west into the great unknown.
But not even his square jaw, chiseled abs, and full head of hair could overcome his lack of earning power. She came from money he didn’t understand. His $75k engineering salary not enough to keep her wet past menopause.
By the time their third child turned one she was fucking the resident physician between shifts at the NICU.
He knew but couldn’t bring himself to confront her. Felt too much like failure.
He entered into a secret competition with him. Read up on tantric techniques to up his dick game. Started writing poetry again. Would surprise her with home-cooked candle-lit dinners at the end of her work week.
She picked up extra shifts and came home with strange seamen inside her. Let him taste it before rolling over and turning out the lights.
But she didn’t leave him until his sister died. Seeing him weep was the last straw. She told him she had no choice that he made her do it. He signed the papers, gave her everything, and checked himself into a psych ward.
That was the last time he was suicidal, almost ten years ago.
***
But things were different now. He had hard fought wisdom on his side. He had braved the post-thirty dating wasteland, taken licks from his share of aged-out single moms, and learned to channel his desperation through his writing.
Nobody read him but he imagined future generations finding his hard drive in a post-apocalyptic rubble heap. A half starved blue eyed youth with bony fingers would hold it high above his head in front of circling savages.
‘We are not alone in our suffering, if he can find a way forward, so will we!’
***
And then, a ding. It was her. ‘How are you?’
Fuck it. What’s one more ride on the merry-go-round? He had a self to sacrifice to the furnace of the future.
