How I See It

KATHY CHETKOVICH

First, before I knew what he wanted, I wanted him.
Of course, I may have been responding to the signal, deep and ultrasonic, that he wanted me. That’s usually the way it goes, although I’m often unaware of it and think what I’m responding to is the thrill of a deep voice or an unexpectedly sweet smile. And even then, I usually tell myself what I’m responding to is the erotic pull of a man’s mind. Well, it’s true I’ve been involved with some very intelligent men—but not one of them was homely.
What it felt like, then, at first, was that I wanted him. I didn’t know what I wanted him for, what I wanted to have with him, what the full nature and limits of the wanting were, but the want itself was so strong that before I had him, he was often all I could seem to think about. When I barely knew him and thought I might never see him again, I felt bereft, as though I had lost something already dear to me. I was on a bus, traveling away from the place where we had met, and my head was filled with all the things we would never do together, so real they seemed more like memories than dreams. 
That was how it started: going into the future to make up a past that I could feel sorry in the present for never having had.
I told myself, as I always do, that I had never felt anything like this before. But that was indeed how it felt.
So I pursued him. I want you, I told him—though not, of course, in those words.
He wanted me, too, it turned out—only he had a few reservations, about where I lived and what I did and what else I wanted, besides him. Whether we really wanted the same things in this life or whether the only want we had in common was each other.
For a time, these doubts of his organized my own wanting into an effort to prove myself worthy of his wanting. I did not want to be found wanting in the wanting department. So for a while I was the one wanting and he was the one deciding.

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