The first few dates are fine, but somewhere around the fourth or fifth date, there’ll be a couch and a T.V. – this will be in her apartment, not mine, since I have only a couch – and I know how nice a couch is and I know how nice sitting close together and touching is, and I know how much we deserve to sit and rest and let someone else do the living for a little bit, and I know how much it feels like living when we can talk about what we are watching, in a way that we couldn’t talk about a book or a song on the radio, and it is like everything is laid out nice and easy, the two of us on the couch together and all that life on the television screen, everything is laid out nice and easy except for the world, except for just that one thing that asks you to be small at first, unlike the television, which tells you that you can be big right from the start, big enough to see all of life and death and war and peace from where you sit, and I never know how to suggest if we couldn’t sit on the couch and look out the window instead, because I’m only just barely big enough for that. When it comes to the world being a place where two people can sit on a couch together, sitting close together and touching and raising the possibility at least of love, I’m only just barely big enough to look out the window, at a world that is standing still, or at least that is not moving with any story other than mine, or ours, and I never know how to ask how I’m supposed to follow the story we’re watching from the couch when I barely have a handle on the story right here on the couch, and usually I’ll try to ask it in a kiss or an embrace, and usually she’ll respond in a way that is saying, yes that’s very nice but now is the time for watching television, and I’ll have to laugh to myself and to the world, and I’ll look out the window and think, okay, I’ll get back to you later, even though I know the world isn’t going to wait for me, even though it’s going to move on with all its beauty and tragedy whether I am watching television or not, and I’ll tell myself to remember that this is the world right here too – the actors acting and the characters living and a woman dreaming a little as she watches, but still I can’t help but feel nostalgic towards the time when looking out the window was the only thing to do while sitting on the couch together, which was not a time that I actually lived in myself, but which is a time that I carry around with me as the good old days.
