Monika left. There were not the usual scenes that we have been used to for some time. And indeed, our sleepless nights, the accusations that screamed in our faces for hours and hours, have left us for a while. And we didn’t realize it. They were probably a sign, but as we were too busy with other things, we missed it. Monica left and doesn’t tell me about the empty closet or the sink full of water and my hair like it happened in the TV series. It’s back toilet paper that I didn’t straighten. There is a correct way to insert toilet paper in the roll holder so that it slides better and does not jump out of the wall on which it hangs when torn. Which is the right way, I support it because my father supported it and it’s one of the things that lives on because of me. This and a few other goodies. For example, cheese. You don’t cut your tip because what’s left for everyone else? Since he’s been gone, I’m the one who cut off the tip of the cheese, the one who turns the toilet paper inside out. I’m doing it for Monica.
I do it for me, to convince myself that Monica is still here, that she just went out for a while, shopping, to the dentist. He’ll be back soon. Go back, throw your bag and coat on the sofa. Let’s watch the movie, he will choose it, as always. Then she falls asleep on my shoulder just a few minutes before the closing credits and then I slowly tell her the end, the end whispered in her ear that slips into her dreams and mingles with the ghosts of the day. That’s why Monica is the one who doesn’t have her feet firmly on the ground. I met her on the course. I was very active at the time. I attended an I Ching reading club, a movie club, a dog club, a Mexican cooking class, and a human rights discussion club. The prettiest girls were in the Mexican cooking class, the most intelligent in the cinephile group, the most jealous of the dog lovers, the angriest in the human rights class, the most interesting to readI Chingand Monica was among them. Monica is all here: green eyes and curly hair. The greenest eyes I’ve ever seen. The curliest hair I have ever seen. She was passionate about reiki, family constellations and primal breath, maybe still is. I don’t know, we never talked about it again.
Lately we’ve been talking about lunch, dinner, cleaning shifts around the house. The first few times after we met, our group participation doubled. I took her to a movie club, she took me to reiki, I took her to Mexican cuisine, she took me to tantric pulsation. I was happy, I felt alive with all these things, I was alive looking into her eyes and alive at the thought of making love with her tonight. Because in the meantime, Monika showed the same interest in me that I felt, and that caused a short circuit of enthusiasm. That was the best time: when everything he said seemed brilliant, effervescent or, at worst, the same thing I would say. This is our “home” season. We felt at home, safe, in love and fuck the world. Fuck the job, fuck the university I didn’t go to, fuck my mom and dad who never understood me and dad who died in the meantime, fuck all the things I don’t have the strength to face. I have Monika and I don’t want to waste time, in fact I don’t even know what time means anymore. I have Monica. Monika has me. Two years they say the stupid newspaper, the one I wouldn’t buy even for torture, but then you turn on the TV and there is a program that copies the top article to the stupid newspaper. Falling in love lasts two years, then it inevitably goes downhill. Two years have passed. And one thing that annoys me more than the passing of time, the regret that remains, the envy of others that always wins in the end, is that The I Ching will never get us and the stupid newspaper will.
They write nonsense to fill the heads and empty the wallets of disgruntled housewives and they write the truth. Two years passed and Monika and I pretended nothing had happened, but for example we didn’t love each other like before. Before we did it every day, even several times a day. Then not anymore. First even in the bath. We screamed even though the neighbors could hear us. Then not anymore. Yet I still wanted her. I wanted to have her next to me in bed while I cooked dinner while I ran in the park. I wanted her, I swear, but now I resented how she filled the house with incense or how she always quoted the same verses from Krishnamurti when we had friends over for dinner. And it bothered her that I would drink straight from the water bottle after returning from a run or leave sweaty, smelly sweatpants scattered around the house. Monica was the most beautiful girl I knew, the sexiest, but for a moment I began to look at our friends in a different light, a new light. Or old, depending on your perspective. I think I understood exactly where we were in the parable of our story one afternoon last month when Monica came home hostage from a panic attack, soaked with rain, trembling. Monica accidentally drives off in her car and comes home terrified that she hit someone. When this happened to her for the first time since we lived together, something dissolved here, at the level of my heart. I hugged her tight on the couch and my fingers gripped her ribs just under her shirt. It felt like I was stroking the baby of a new species, a small, labored-breathing creature. My face was lost in his hair the whole time it took to say it. Then with his hand in mine we walked down to the garage like two brothers doing an inspection before confessing to their parents. We are still considering the hypothesis that in the case of minimal damage, we can keep quiet about what happened. And that something that had melted before now re-materialized in my chest and pounded very loudly right in my ears. I was afraid that I would find the windshield broken by the shape of a man, that Monica would be taken from me, that she would be locked up in a prison that didn’t look like her at all, that some stupid stumble of chance would make her disappear now that I had found her.
“But no, look Monika, the body is fine, the windshield is also fine and the headlight lenses are where they always were, nothing happened. You didn’t kill anyone. Let’s take a shower and then I’ll cook you papas y chorizo, I’ll make it a little spicy this time, okay?” Instead, Monica came home terrified last month, leaving her keys in the outside lock of the door (and I asked her not to – how many times?) , tried a few steps, when I looked at her she said: «I’m afraid». And I don’t do anything. I don’t get up, I don’t hug her, I don’t stroke her hair or her ribs under her shirt. i stay still She adds that this time it’s different, she drove on a circuit, you go faster on a circuit and she’s afraid she didn’t notice. And I still have nothing, I still am. I feel like I don’t have the energy for his paranoia anymore. Let her solve them herself. And she understands and goes to the bathroom, nervously drying her hair with a hair dryer. I turn up the volume on the TV because it’s ending Sunset Blvd Nothing and no one should ruin it for me, but I can still hear her sobbing. And no papas y chorizo for dinner. Soup heated in the microwave for dinner. The truth is, it wasn’t Monica who let me down, but me. It is my peacock tail that has a limited lifespan, an expiration, like Cinderella’s carriage. I’m not someone who goes to class every night all week. I’m not a genius, a forward-thinking progressive, someone who runs with a pedometer and the latest anti-shock device on their feet. I run to leave a lot of things behind, not to reach somewhere. And Mexican food gives me heartburn after a while. After all, dogs all look the same to me. The I Ching will never get us. And even cinephiles tire me out with all the rivers of ink on the sequence plan The fourth power. So I don’t go anywhere anymore. I lie on the couch and look at myself again From now to forever and I’m waiting for Monika. It’s very late, it’s true. But I have a feeling that he’ll come back soon and we’ll watch a movie, he’ll choose it even if he always falls asleep before the end, he’ll choose it because that’s how it works between us.
Sara Benedetti