The Idea of You

by Robinne Lee

She was fearless, and I loved that about her, envied it even. I liked that she took risks, that she did not wait for permission, that she followed her heart.

“He thinks you are beautiful and he thinks you are smart,” he’d surmised about Daniel, that first weekend I’d brought him to Boston, when we had been dating for seven months. “But he has no real appreciation for what you are passionate about, who you are on the inside.”

“The best artists, they are like this. You don’t shock just to shock. You create beauty, you create art. You don’t do it for attention.”

“I’m falling in love with you. I’m just going to put that out there, because I can. Because you told me I couldn’t if I was sleeping with anyone else, and I’m not, so there you have it…”

“Do you know what they’ve said about me? I’m gay, I’m bi, I’m sleeping with Oliver, I’m sleeping with Simon, I’m sleeping with Liam, I’m sleeping with all three at the same time. I’m sleeping with Jane, our manager, who is attractive, but no. I’ve slept with at least three different actresses I’ve never even spoken to. I have ruined no fewer than four marriages on three different continents, and I have at least two kids … I’m twenty. When the fuck would I have crammed that all in?”

“You afraid?” he asked. I nodded. “So am I. But I’m all right with that. If I get hurt, I get hurt. It happens, right? Someone always gets hurt. But I don’t want to miss out on us because I was afraid.”

“I think aging is hard for everyone.” Amara swiped a red bliss potato with crème fraîche and caviar off a passing tray. “But it’s definitely harder for women. And I think even more so for beautiful women. Because if so much of your identity and your value is tied up in your looks and how the world responds to your physical appearance, what do you do when that changes? How do you see yourself then? Who do you become?”

“It’s art. And it makes people happy. And that’s a very good thing. We have this problem in our culture. We take art that appeals to women—film, books, music—and we undervalue it. We assume it can’t be high art. Especially if it’s not dark and tortured and wailing. And it follows that much of that art is created by other women, and so we undervalue them as well. We wrap it up in a pretty pink package and resist calling it art.”

But in the end, I just put down my phone and walked away. They could not reach me if I did not let them.

Well, maybe you are more French than I thought.”

“It could have been so much worse, Solène. You could have been the one going down, and he could have been the president.”

“‘I just want to fuck her mouth.’” He said it slow, soft. “Did he tell you that? ‘Did you see that mum? I just want to fuck her mouth.’”

I laughed. “I was just making sure it was you, and not the idea of you.”

“Because … I love you. Because this is perfect and I don’t want it to end.”

Love, she said, was not always perfect, and not exactly how you expected it to be. But when it descended upon you, there was no controlling it.

“I do find it sweet that you’re rather loyal. You get points for that,” Oliver said, stepping out. And then, just before the doors closed, he turned back to me. “Because most of the others … weren’t.”

“How did we get here?” I heard myself say. “This was only supposed to be lunch, remember? This was only ever supposed to be lunch.” “You,” he said, his voice frayed, foreign. “Me?” “You. You let me unfold you.”

“Love is this very precious thing, Izz. It’s this precious, magical thing. But it’s not finite. There’s not a limited amount of it out there. You just have to be open to allowing it to find you. Allowing it to happen.”