At first he was a fairy tale. Later an addiction. We met the old fashioned way – on a Muslim dating app. I swiped right. Because he had kind eyes, or because a random sentence from his profile appealed to me. Because he understood the difference between ‘your’ and ‘you are’.
Not because I thought he and I would ever meet in person. Not because I thought we had potential. Because we didn’t.
Our exchange started off unoriginal when he said, “Hey, what’s up?” and I said, “Hey, not much.”
I had no expectations. I was in New Jersey; he was in Massachusetts.
The next evening he said, “Is it bad that I’m already planning my trip from Boston?”
Nice, if a little premature. “You should probably vet me first. I could be dangerous.”
“Do you want to FaceTime?”
I do not have. I had just come home from work. I hadn’t eaten. I had already washed off my makeup and changed into an oversized T-shirt and sweater. But I said, “Of course.”
I had recently recovered from a series of lectures from my mother on how to focus on my personal life. She said that when I was 30 I was getting old. It was time to get married. And I agreed. I wanted. I just hadn’t met the right man. I was trying. “It’s hard here,” I said.
My mother was not interested in apologies. I had been focused on my medical training for almost the past decade, but the end of the training was approaching and I had to re-prioritize.
He was eating when he called. For a few minutes I tried to be pleasant and sweet. I nodded at everything he said. I thought I’ll try to keep it short. But soon I wasn’t tired at all. With every word he spoke, I was more mesmerized.
He was handsome, educated, successful. His voice had just the right amount of grind. He made me shy but not nervous. Comfortable but not bored. And he seemed to adore me, almost immediately. From that moment on I longed for his worship.
A pandemic gave us an accelerated form of intimacy. When we talked about FaceTime, it never took less than four hours. We ate together. Fell asleep together. Daydream together.
He told me about his father leaving when he was a child and about his mother’s struggles. I told him about my history of eating disorders. He recited Urdu poetry and sent me compelling romantic Bollywood songs. I tried to convince him of TS Eliot’s merits. We agreed on Hemingway and Fitzgerald. I hadn’t felt this much with someone in a long time.
I wasn’t sure how this had happened. Or why he liked me. I didn’t think I was his type. His Instagram account was full of comments from voluptuous women in carefully applied makeup, in the world, fun and outgoing and uninhibited.
I was flat-chested with underwire and didn’t have a single piece of lingerie. I chose to read novels on my days off and still bit myself every time I tried to shave my knees. I had never been in a real relationship and I didn’t believe in premarital sex. Knowing all this, he still looked at me as if I were an undiscovered planet. And I believed that look.
Two weeks after we first met online, he drove up to me. I took him to the only place in town that I knew had grilled cheese, his indulgence of choice. We ended up on the same side of the booth so we could watch the presidential election on the television by the bar.
During the car ride back, he took my hand off my lap and pressed his thumb into the doughy part of my palm as if he were hollowing out a spot to plant a seed. He intertwined his fingers with mine, held my hand to his chest, dipped his chin, closed his eyes, pressed his lips to my knuckles.
I was afraid to move. I was afraid he would let go. I felt like I was holding his whole world in my little fist, and I wanted to hold him there for as long as possible.
But if the pandemic had left us with an isolated dream world, it would have created some smoke screens too. In the end we fought. He was the only person I wasn’t afraid to get mad at, and that felt powerful. He was lax in making plans. Unreliable about call back. Inconsistent in his affection. Too mysterious for too long.
He said there were things he hadn’t told me but would eventually do. I had already discovered his real age through a perfunctory Google search – 41 not 36. Honestly, I knew before I knew it. He was too full of anecdotes and advice, too successful and a little too jaded to be 36. He wasn’t the first to lie on a dating app, and an 11-year age difference didn’t bother me, but I was scared of what else was waiting to be discovered.
I found what I was looking for in the archives of a Facebook page. I hadn’t gone there with the intention of investigating. It seemed only natural that after being with him for months, we would at least be friends on various social media platforms. But when I found and scrolled his account, I stepped on a crack in a glass floor and fell through — all the way to 2014.
A woman had tagged him in a photo of a child handing out water bottles in a mosque. He had no nieces. I was a little disappointed. I clicked on the woman’s profile and scrolled to a message that read “People, mail your goddamn RSVPs or stay home…yeah, it’s Bridezilla talking!” under which he had said: “I’ve got your back girl!”
Another message read, “School, exams, wedding…stressed out,” under which he had written, “Don’t worry, honey…I’m coming.” There were more. He told her that he missed her that day or that she was more fun than some Bollywood actress. He called her “candy.”
My heart sank deeper with every word.
I wanted to be furious. I never wanted to have anything to do with him again. But instead I felt physically ill, with a kind of unshakable fear. The fear of being left alone on the first day at a new school. The desperation of waiting for the results of an exam that you know you’ve failed but amplifies to the point of despair.
He had a child? And an ex-wife, or maybe a wife? Please, no wife. Had it all been in my head? Had he been playing with me the whole time? Who was I to him anyway? I still wanted him to want me. To choose me. And I no longer knew why I wanted those things.
He called half an hour later. He moved through his kitchen and sauntered over something. I could barely register a word. I nodded in agreement. I was mostly quiet. I’m not good at pretending I’m okay.
“What’s the matter with you?” he said.
“Have you been married before?”
He stopped moving. “What why?”
“I found your Facebook page.”
“I was married and then divorced.” He looked away, dipped his head in his hand, pushed back his long hair. “You know everything now,” he said with a sigh. And then his phone died. Or he hung up. Or the connection was lost. I just knew he was gone. I kept trying to call him back until I realized it might really be over.
For days he ignored every call and text. I felt like a diver constantly trying to get up for air but getting sucked back down again and again. How could someone who was nobody to me in September become so indispensable in January?
I had grown up consciously independent. Unshakable in my certainty that I could rely only on myself, that I had everything I would ever need. I knew I didn’t need it, but somehow the line between necessity and desire dissolved. I wanted him because I needed to be this less inhibited, more liberated version of myself, and I wasn’t sure how to do that without him.
A few weeks later he called. Or I called and he eventually picked up. Finally he apologized. Or I apologized and he said something nice, and I almost forgot what I wanted to regret. It was true – he was divorced and father. But somewhere along the way, this had become my rendition of Prince Charming.
We talked for hours. It felt like I was back home after walking aimlessly for days. There was nothing left to hide. Maybe that’s all there is to hope for. Maybe that’s all love is. An attachment that does not depend on anything.
Not all love is meant to endure. Ours doesn’t. But it is never completely lost, though it can be carved in a finite moment in time. An extinguished fire whose embers glow quietly within us.