I don’t date men who believe that they’re men. I date men who think they’re tiny gods, little superheroes, mini royalty. “I’m Iron Man,” they say. “I’m Indiana Jones; I’m the next Charles Bukowski."
I date men with heartbeats like drumbeats, men who use my vital organs like voodoo dolls. They poke me with pins and light me on fire and grow angry when I bleed on their carpet. “Silly girl,” they sneer, eyebrows raised. “Who told you that I was your home?”
I date men who say they love my writing, like my words are sexier than my ribcage. "Write about me this time,” they plead with their clothes on my floor. “Promise me you’ll never write about that other guy again.” This lasts a month, usually, sometimes, maybe, two. Then it’s, “I hate that you said that I used to do coke, I hate the way you compared me to drowning.” I don’t know how else to ask you to behave better, how to tell you that you never really loved me at all.
I date men who ask me to be their night sky, and then get mad when I swallow them whole. If they wanted to save a girl from her sadness, they shouldn’t have tried to save me. They should’ve picked someone who isn’t comfortable in her melancholy, someone who wants to be rescued.
“I can’t do anything right,” they scream when I’m sulking. "The ceiling’s always falling with you.”
Where I sit, darling, there is no ceiling. Only Jupiter and her 67 moons.
I date men who say things they don’t mean like, “The first time I saw you, I felt like how Alexander Fleming must have felt when he discovered penicillin.” Things like, “I want you to meet my mother, my sister, my high school English teacher.” Things like, “I wish I had known you when we were both kids, then maybe you’d have never been lonely.”
I date men who think I’m difficult to love. I date men who ignore me until it’s convenient, usually around 5am when they can’t sleep. I date men who make me feel like Kronos, like Frankenstein’s monster, like a cannibal. I date men who compare me to a bottle of whiskey: “You were fun last night, honey baby, but I feel like shit this morning.”
But I’m not a cannibal, you know. I’m not a monster or a people-eater or even Johnny Walker Gold. I’m made of the same stuff that the universe is made out of; atoms and molecules and moonbeams and stardust. And you? You’re not a miracle or a saint or even Mick Jagger.
You’re just a man. Someone should have told you that by now.
