Boyfriend Panic

My new roommate has a boyfriend. They’re a couple. They act all coupley. They do coupley things like help each other move into apartments and pick out paint for their bedroom walls and order take-out together. And pretty soon they’re going to spend the night here together. And the walls are kinda thin.

Suddenly, I’m in a panic. I need a boyfriend! I can’t be the single guy in the house. I don’t want to be the one in bed alone trying not to listen to someone else’s sex noises. That used to be my old roommate! Actually, that’s been every roommate I’ve ever had, and they were always my sex noises.

So now I’m thinking I need to find a boyfriend, and quick! Which is weird, because I don’t really want a boyfriend. They’re like pets or children. You have to make time for them and worry about whether or not you’re mistreating them. I don’t want to have to think about someone else that much. I don’t want to have those weird little tiffs in bars and subway stations where it’s not really a fight, but you’re just annoyed with each other and not communicating properly. I’d much rather have a really intense flirtation or unrequited infatuation, something that burns really brightly, but only lasts a few seconds, like fireworks. It’s not love, it’s adrenalin, and there’s nothing domestic about it. It exists at night in a pristine world of cocktails and dazzlingly vicious repartee and you never take it home, because, baby, who cares what you’re like when no one else is around?

Maybe I could do a prolonged transcontinental affair where we only see each other once or twice a year. The phone calls and the love letters get us through and somehow we both know that it’s real, that this is it, we’ve found each other. We know it like we know that too much chocolate brings on a head ache or how to ride a bike even though we haven’t been on one in years. We know because we’ve been there, we’ve felt it, and we will never, ever forget. We know because of, not despite, the fact that neither is willing to relocate. That’s the kind of relationship that lasts. It should be open-ended, no climax, no resolution. It should leave questions. It should leave me still in love.