Oscar falls in love the way I pretend that I don’t. He sees someone and their life together flashes before his eyes. When he falls in love it is always head first with his heart not far behind, and his penis even closer. I have always wanted to fall in love in an equally dramatic fashion, sans the penis. It feels that sex leads Oscar’s quest for love, and my own path has always had an aversion to that.

I like to make jokes that I don’t fall in love, because I cut my own heart out. In reality I’m just uncomfortable with my judgments on the people I have tried to love in the past. I won’t give a rundown of every person who has left their hand resting for a touch longer than normal on my arm or the times I have made elongated eye contact with someone who made my heartbeat rush to fill my face with a blush. These moments don’t define my own experience with love.

The love I have felt has often been surrounded with hesitation and too little too lates. I never want more unless they have already given me something I could rely on, something to wander off with in my mind. It has always been easier to create what ifs and could have beens in my mind, the way Oscar created heroic rescue missions. I have not wanted to put myself in a place for people to see the creature that lives inside me. It seems easier to create something that won’t ever be real, than to let myself be seen. Oscar is admirable in that way for me, he put himself into the world to be seen and sought out love, where I never could.

The last time I fell in love was with a girl who wanted to fall with me, but like me had a creature in her mind she didn’t want to define her. We built the what ifs together and circled the creatures we had shown each other, while still too afraid to let them go. To let them no longer define how we sought out affection. In the end our emotions became too much too fast. There was no too little, and it wasn’t too late. Just too soon. 

So for now, I will continue to joke about my self imposed heartlessness, and hope in secret that there will be no too little or too soon next time. 

And that there will be a next time.