i would rather be real and wrong

the dance between mystery and intent

Drowsy, eyes heavy-lidded, I lift up my body from under the warm sheets. It’s 6:10 am. An hour earlier than normal. Yesterday I spent half a day coworking with you. I did less work than I should’ve, so I woke up early to finish off my tasks.

I regret nothing.

Fifteen minutes later, I stand bare in the bathroom, phone weighing heavily in my hand, to text you something I deem important. My head whispers, “wait, don’t, you’ll regret it.“

Yesterday you told me what happened some years ago. Being entangled in a dance of love and rejection. You spoke in a heavy, low voice, unmasking the gravity of that story and how much it still costs you.

And now I want to tell you I don’t intend to get you into anything like that.

My thumb hovers, and somewhere inside me, a debate begins.

---

A big part of me screams: send it.

And then there’s another part. The tactician. A man I recognise, stepping onto the scene with a penetrating gaze. He’s a stoic mirage of someone I used to know. He’s wearing a white shirt and a necklace of a saint that looks over the men lost at sea; his face is tanned, his beard scruffy. He says, “Don’t be hasty. Don’t double-text. You remember what happened last time.”

And yes, I do. I remember being put on hold, cut off, cold turkey, met with imperviousness to my advances right at the moment I felt vulnerable enough to share things that were more than banter and flirting.

When the door shuts right in front of your nose, when you thought you could enter, your nose bleeds from the hit, and you look like a clown.

The mirage leaves, and I seem to have made my decision. I go back into my own world, where it’s safe.

---

I shut off my phone. I write little sentences, I draw lush eyes and naked people, I read a Russian book, which I barely understand. It uses these diminutives of names, like Aleksander becoming Alyosha, or how Dmitri becomes Dimka; it also uses words like vertes and muzakh, and I just feel stupid. I love it. It keeps me busy.

Then the moment comes when I think about my other school of thought.

Not the mirage’s teachings. Not the one that manages proximity like a resource. The other one.

Kundera, Duras, Plath. Who expose love, darkness and shame until there is nothing left to hide. None of them seduced by disappearing. They never told me that attraction came from being less yourself. They pull people closer by becoming so honest and authentic that anyone looking away feels like a loss.

I’ve lived the other way too, though. I know what effect distance and mystery have. There was a dark time when I moved with a powerful pace, unhurried and rare, the next step always more distant than the one before. The more I withheld, the more people leaned in. Some wanted to stay. But we burned quicker than dry twigs.

I held the distance too long, so I became the mirage myself.

I don’t want that anymore. I don’t want to be the kind of man who is good at being interesting from a distance. I prevented myself from becoming a man who can only be real when no one is watching.

---

My mind freely flows into worlds with white roses, the exact scent of your living room. I’m back in your place, rewinding our last conversation.

I go back to the message I wanted to send you earlier. I sent it without double-checking.

It’s quiet.

I hear the creaks of my mental door open once more. The mirage enters, “Great, now you’ve lost your chance to show you can be your own man. You can’t even wait for a day. Pathetic.”

I close it.

I refuse to live like a tactician, like there’s a guideline, a method, or a framework to all of this shit.

The framework is me.

My anxious little neurons shooting electricity from one corner of my brain to the other, bringing in reports on how your eyes wrinkle when you laugh at my jokes and on how they replenish my soul. The framework is my body, big bones carrying my muscles around until it notices you. Then it shudders like a fawn fresh in this world.

That says enough.

I don’t need to be mysterious. I intend to be the alleviation of your pain, the whisper before the moan, the touch before the toe curl, the smile after the tear.

My mirage carries mystery around in rolled-up maps as if he were going to war. It tries to force its way on me in every passage of my life, but it’ll never carry over what I’ve learned from Kundera, Plath or Duras.

---

Bits and pixels arrange my words onto your screen. I hear my phone tremble on the table. I glance over and read:

“I know, Jef, thank you. Have a nice day, and see you very soon 😌.”

I let out a sigh I apparently held for some time, and I deflate on my sofa; the world seems simple again.

The tactician will never understand that presence and honesty lead to the real replies. The real answers in life come from being straightforward.

I would rather be present and wrong than distant and right.

I would rather be myself than be for everyone.

I would rather be.