I went over to my ex's apt. to watch NFL. In the four hours I spent there, I asked him "who are you?" and he told me that he had sex with a woman in Paris for eight hours straight. "She was an animal" he said with a remembered glint in this eyes. I expected to feel a surge of pain. I felt nothing. So I asked him if he was trying to woo me again with his presents and appropriate calling on occasions like my birthday. I assumed he is not--for he doesn't quite know why he does certain things except for the fact he wants to be at the center of attention of older and newer women at all times. Even if he was wooing him, he wouldn't know how to express the thought for its done on an impulse, from a remembered time of togetherness. He denied wooing me just as I expected him to. I then told him that there are no third chances to which he gave a short smile as if he really had been wooing me but expected me to woo him back because of it--not tell him what I did. I think I took him aback with my assertion. I know this because he agreed to my proposition an hour later--to revisiting the idea of us, together when we are both 50. He didn't even hesitate. So, yes, I know. He was wooing me, even as he continues to pursue other shiny or not so shiny objects of pleasure in this city called body buffet. When he said that he pursues certain women not for the sex but because ultimately we are people who want to be liked and heard--I blew a slight gasket. No, sir. I started. You don't date women because they are people but because you want to continuously remind yourself that you are boy whose idea of self is attached to the idea of as much ass licking as is humanly possible without suffering a heart attack. It is how he thinks of himself as a young boy in heat. This is also how a brown boy from India living in NYC imagines himself white. Screwing white women makes a brown man white--at least in his own mind. But not just any white woman but a woman who professes to some celebrity status--class and race are intertwined. I told him that I don't see him dating ever a black woman from the Bronx--yes, race and class are intertwined. He agreed. Ah! the joys of knowing the ins and outs of a boy from a past. In this whole time, I observed myself the most. How I laughed and joked and appeared happy when on the inside nothing touched me in the region of my heart. I felt like I was watching myself feel nothing at all. I felt strong for it but also sad. I don't want to not feel. I want to feel everything through the depths of me but it is also my undoing. I cannot handle emotion. I feel so much that it is scary. It takes me to the edge of reason and then I fall through the gaping hole, always falling, never arriving. For now, not feeling anything is fine. I have felt enough last year. I am exhausted. I need reprieve. I also need my life to right itself right now. Enough is enough. My ex will remain an ex. For that is what he wanted. Deep down what you want is what will manifest. I manifest an alternate reality where I have what I really, really want--justice in life and love.