Coagulated Bitterness

What they were fighting about, she can't even begin to remember.

It was one of those arguments that had taken on a life of its own. Stupidly they had both invested far to much in their unnecessary difference of opinion to back down now.

They sat parked in the driveway. It was her car, his house. Finally the argument came to its inevitable close. He gets out of the car, slams the door and stalks into the house. She curled up over the steering wheel, biting her hand. Tearing at the skin without cutting it, until it's blue and red and white and dimpled with the impression of her canines.

Of course he comes back, he always does. Apologizes, pulls her to him so that she can finally let out a shuddering sob and wipe the tears that had silently crept out of her tearducts on his t-shirt.

She can't help but think that one day he's not going to come back to the car. Yet she always relies on him doing so.

Therein is the essential, irreconcilable bifurcated views I hold on the relationships I form with people who would be, if I was interested in reproducing, considered mating potentials.

I have been ingrained with the expectations that my potentials will excel. That they will all perform the equivalent of returning to the car and letting ones t-shit soak in tears and snot. This prevailing belief may be go a long way to dictate how interactions with potentials go. But I have recently had to come to terms with what I knew all along. Eventually, everyone stops coming back to the car.

So where do I find attractive potential? How do I reconcile the imperfections that are ubiquitously distributed through my world view?

It is my supposition that one must always come to terms with this at the age where nobody strongly attracts anymore but the slow creeping fear of a lonely death begins to set in.

Of course, the true source of the restlessness of recent months is not the male gender. Sex, love, lust, all immaterial but still the easiest (and perhaps only) way to articulate my muse's insinuating fear of life.

But if nothing else, I plan for a nice casket.