After the meeting on Thursday, I went home with a guy from the alien encounter support group.<\/p>\n
There was no attraction between us. We sat on the edge of his queen-sized bed, sipping extra-chilled cans of beer and watching his fish tank like it was a TV. He told me about the fish, their countries of origin, things like that. It was difficult for me. I wasn\u2019t used to interacting with men who weren\u2019t my college ex-boyfriend.<\/p>\n
“What\u2019s your experience with extra-terrestrials?” I asked, after finishing my first can.<\/p>\n
“I don\u2019t have any,” he said. \u201cMy ex was seriously into that stuff, though. She believed she\u2019d been abducted and everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo kidding.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cApparently those guys use a lot of recreational drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019d never seen him with a woman, and I\u2019d been going to meetings for six months. From the first time I saw him, I\u2019d wanted to find myself attracted to him. I\u2019d had visions of us stumbling into a hotel room kissing and gripping each other’s faces, and me later, trying to explain the relationship to everyone I knew.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you not believe her?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
He shrugged. \u201cI know those guys exist. I\u2019ve watched a lot of alien dissection videos.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIs she okay now?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh yeah, she\u2019s fine. She went to teach English in China.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh.\u201d I\u2019d half expected him to tell me she\u2019d overdosed on highly restricted alien drugs.<\/p>\n
He handed me another beer from the twelve-pack on the floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe weren\u2019t right together,\u201d he said. \u201cShe was always telling me I should be with a man, instead.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe thought you weren\u2019t into women?”<\/p>\n
\u201cShe thought no man could feel real love for a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, okay.\u201d<\/p>\n
I wondered if my ex had felt real love for me. I doubted it. Did I feel it for him?<\/p>\n
Things pretty much fell apart after I dropped out of college. I was on new medication, doing nothing but sleeping and taking one twenty-minute walk each day where I\u2019d roam round the block in sweatpants, watching people walking towards me, overtaking me, dressed in all kinds of outfits; then one night I was lying awake in bed and I said, \u201cI don\u2019t think I want to be a lawyer anymore\u201d into the cool semi-darkness of the room, and he said, \u201cOkay.\u201d I didn\u2019t know what I wanted, then, but I knew that the relationship was over. We were going to be a lawyer couple, we didn\u2019t have one of those together-through-whatever-life-throws-at-us relationships.<\/p>\n
I finished my beer and tried picturing my ex with a man until my vision blurred. I lay back on the bed, my feet still touching the floor. When my doctor had asked me why I\u2019d given up on law school, I\u2019d tried to explain that I was no longer interested in the options it opened up for me. I was a fundamentally jealous person, and I couldn\u2019t see anyone with a life worth being jealous of anymore. \u201cThere are more options than you seem to be aware of,\u201d he\u2019d said, and I\u2019d said, \u201cThank you, that\u2019s something to think about,\u201d but I\u2019d never listened to a doctor\u2019s words in my life.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s your alien experience?\u201d the guy asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s second-hand, like yours,\u201d I said. \u201cMy sister married one.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSeriously? I had no idea they did that kind of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah. She\u2019s pregnant now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWow.\u201d His eyes were clear and sharp now. \u201cHow\u2019s she holding up?\u201d<\/p>\n
I shrugged. \u201cWe haven\u2019t spoken recently.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah.\u201d He hesitated. \u201cShe must have a lot to take care of.\u201d<\/p>\n
I knew what he was thinking, but he was wrong. I could feel heat radiating off me in slow waves. The doctor was right, though it was really only when my sister ran off with an alien, and I saw the excitement in her eyes, that I realized there maybe were still some lives out there worth envying.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy sister\u2019s a smart person,\u201d I said, unsure if this was true even as the words left my mouth.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy ex was smart too,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe that\u2019s what attracts the aliens.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked over and he met my gaze, eyes cloudy. I counted five beer cans at his feet. I was still on number three.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour hair is very beautiful,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
Someone in the next flat started playing an instrument, maybe the cello. Slow and hesitant scales. I let my eyes fall shut again and listened to it with every cell in my body, and by the time the music stopped, I felt drunker than I\u2019d ever felt in my life. The whole room was trembling. Like I\u2019d taken something more complicated than alcohol. The guy had rolled his desk chair right in front of the fish tank. His skin was greyish now and he was sweating.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, I\u2019ve tried, but I\u2019ve never met a woman I could respect,\u201d the guy said.<\/p>\n
The sun had set at some point in the last half hour. I should have left a while ago, but I couldn\u2019t find the energy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d I said. \u201cMaybe one day.\u201d<\/p>\n
I understood why he was lashing out, he had no clear vision, nothing to work towards. I\u2019d been there, but my mind was clear now.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know if you\u2019d told me you were an alien, I probably would\u2019ve been attracted to you,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
He laughed and said, \u201cYeah, I can tell.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cWe weren\u2019t right together,\u201d he said. \u201cShe was always telling me I should be with a man, instead.\u201d
\n\u201cShe thought you weren\u2019t into women?\u2019
\n\u201cShe thought no man could feel real love for a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":25187,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[192,1353,3483],"class_list":["post-24198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","tag-aliens","tag-lgbtq","tag-ufo","writer-devika-kaul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24198"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25188,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24198\/revisions\/25188"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}