All This Could Be Different

by Sarah Thankam Mathews

I was a consultant, or going to be. This despite my arty degree. A consultant in training. Three toddlers hiding in a suit.

I, meanwhile, sweated competence, a hungry efficiency. Waxed my arms, radiated deference, never met a Gantt chart I didn’t like.

At some basal level of emotion we were alike, even though Thom was a spiky version of what we called a bro, a man who would not veer from a masculinity at once laid-back and entrenched. He lived in sweats. Listened to death metal when he was not listening to yacht rock. Lifted weights daily to a podcast on Engels. Managed, with good humor, the flares of his irritable bowel syndrome. He gave good hugs. He called me his dude. I loved that.

Somewhere in their twenties, people like me become far too horny for interior design.

I tell you about my sexploits down to the queef.

Blurred by the wine she brought, by my own laughter, the laughter of the recently cheered-up,

I don’t know. I’ve never been in love. I don’t have it in me to, I think sometimes.

I had chosen a kind of colorblindness, particularly to myself, had over time absorbed a white person’s way of looking at the world.

But nobody consoles you after a rupture with a beloved friend. There are few movies ideal for watching while your tears salt pints of ice cream, no articles in women’s magazines that you can skim at the hairdresser’s. You have only the ache. No script to accompany it. No ritual to give it shape.