The Bachelor
by J.D. Strunk
"Trio" by Jean Wolff
It was a conversation that was always about to happen but never did. We danced around it with the skill of sinewy pugilists dodging blows. When we found ourselves approaching the topic’s borders, one of us would inevitably duck—generally me. On occasion Julie would land a glancing jab, but never a knock-out. The issue: She wanted children; I did not. On my side, avoiding the topic was a matter of self-preservation. I feared that to have the conversation in full would be to meet our demise as a couple. For even if that was our inevitable future, I was not yet ready for it. I loved her too damn much.
This was the same summer that the “trash fixation” began. The trash fixation was my burgeoning compulsion to read every piece of litter I passed—some unfathomable need to document the vibrant graphics of early 21st century marketing. Over the past year, I had considered going back on medication, or at least going back to therapy, but had done neither. Earlier that year a Faulkner quotation had taken permanent residence in my mind, like a billboard that only I could see: “A fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he's already got. He'll cling to trouble he's used to before he'll risk a change.”
In the evenings I would watch her read, steadily flipping pages at a pace that I could never hope to match. On occasion, she would catch me watching her—would look up and smile—before turning another page.
* * *
She knew I didn’t want kids from the first date. We were both recent arrivals to our early thirties, feeling the warm breath of Time on our necks while harboring slight misgivings toward the opposite sex. As such, we declared our intentions for the future within the first twenty minutes of the date—well before the entrées arrived. She had known she wanted children from a young age, whereas I had been unsure until my late twenties, at which point I realized I did not—would not. My reasons? Nothing she hadn’t heard before—fears and anxieties, some financial, some political, some environmental, some biological. Hereditary dispositions. As I finished, I could see the frustration in her eyes: Another pointless date, another wasted night. The slow drip of romantic disappointment.
And it was frustrating, as otherwise the date had gone well. There were ample smiles, as well as multiple bouts of genuine laughter. Given our divergence on procreation, I did not expect a second date. She gifted me one anyway.
Our second date was a walk around City Park, during which I tried my best to ignore every item of litter we passed. It was a challenge in our trash-strewn city, albeit one made easier by the quality of the conversation. Her intelligence was effortless. No hint of trying to impress—just an insatiable curiosity that had something to offer on any given topic. Her pontifications were always stated without a hint of arrogance—she possessed a humility that verged on aggressive. I could see the Midwestern calmness of my parents in her and knew she would make a great mother, one day. But it did not sway me on the issue. Why she had even granted me a second date when she knew our futures to be incompatible, I did not presume to know. Maybe she thought my mind mutable on the issue. Or maybe genuine connections are simply rare enough that you never waste them, no matter how ill-fated.
* * *
Each morning that first year, on my walk into work, I would fixate on Doritos bags, granola bar wrappers, and pizza boxes. No matter which side of an item presented itself, I would feel a desperate urge to see its hidden opposite. If I were granted the colorful face, I would be curious about the nutrition information. If presented with the backside, I would wonder what graphic design adorned the front. If the refuse were intriguing enough, I would even snap a photo, for posterity.
On occasion, I would notice a stranger noticing me taking pictures of random garbage. Sometimes I would tell them I was playing Pokémon Go. A 32-year-old man catching imaginary creatures on his phone seemed somehow less embarrassing than a 32-year-old man who couldn’t control the thoughts going through his own brain.
* * *
Following the walk in the park, the dates continued. We just clicked. That feeling of slipping together like puzzle pieces. It seems so easy when it happens, yet it happens so infrequently I knew it to be rare. At some point the dates stopped being dates—we stopped counting them—and we were just spending time together. She improved every aspect of my life—even those moments when she was not present. Some people are like that: they leave a residual glow that brightens your life. A FaceTime with my mother can calm me for hours, she burns so brightly. Julie was the same. Some days, walking home from her apartment, I was even too fulfilled to catalogue the garbage blowing past my feet.
It was around three months in that I told Julie about the litter thing. And then about the diagnosis at 12, and the years on Zoloft, Lexapro, and Wellbutrin. The side-effects. Stopping the meds after college. I told her all of it. She had suspected, which didn’t surprise me, given her inquisitive nature. She asked if I had considered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I told her I had looked into it on occasion. And I had. I was great at looking into things. I honestly didn’t know why I had never followed through. Maybe the fear that it wouldn’t work on me. That my flaw was somehow too unique to be remedied. Too deeply ingrained. Or maybe it was the comfort of having an untried option out there, versus the terror of running out of options altogether.
* * *
Prior to the trash phase, there was a leaf phase. An entire fall where I needed to step on every crunchy leaf I saw. It started as a pleasure—an autumnal joy. It ended in tragedy for the katydid I unwittingly snuffed out before I could command my brain to stop my foot’s descent. The bug had committed no crime but to look like a leaf, per nature’s directive. My disease had never before precipitated death. To say it troubled me would be an understatement. In an instant, I stopped stepping on leaves. As comeuppance for the katydid, I now avoided stepping on ants. I figure I’ve prevented the deaths of thousands of ants, by this point.
* * *
I attempted to change my mind on the kids thing. Tried to will myself the desire for children. If I could do it for anyone, I could do it for Julie. But inevitably I would picture them—our children—going through every trial of life: The panic of kindergarten; the trauma of being picked last in gym; the hormonal awkwardness of middle school; the petty meanness of high school. The familial separation of college. The inevitable hardening which accompanies adulthood. My visions were admittedly overly pessimistic—I pictured for them a harder life than the one I myself had lived. Still, the mere thought of our progeny pushing through it all exhausted me.
Life exhausted me.
She was the most patient person I’d ever known, Julie, but sometimes, when she drank—and she rarely drank—the frustration bubbled to the surface. Sometimes it made her sad. Sometimes it made her mean.
“You want certainty,” she would say, gin and tonic in hand, and repeating a familiar conversation that had started sincere but would eventually play out like theater, “but there is no such thing.”
“I know.”
“To exist is a risk.”
“I know.”
“But you still don’t want them?”
“I don’t.”
A fire in her eyes.
“You’ll die alone.”
“I know.”
The fire dies.
“I love you.”
“I know.”
When I imagined them—the children we would never have—I imagined how I would parent them. My tactics. I imagined inhabiting the endless patience of my parents. I had a friend in grade school whose father wouldn’t stop at rest stops on family trips—some bizarre instillation of masculinity through bladder control. Whereas my own father would query the car before each and every rest stop. We could have stopped every thirty minutes (and sometimes did) and my father would never have made me feel bad about it. Did my parents’ compassion make me soft? Too empathetic for my own good? Honestly, I don’t care. I would not give that part of me away for anything. Without that part, I would be someone else.
If Julie got mean when she drank, I got existential. My recurring bit was to ask her if she would attend my funeral. After some gentle admonishment, she always agreed.
“Not soon, though?” she’d finish on cue.
“Not soon,” I’d say, adding with a dark smile, “—I hope.”
* * *
We moved in together. An apartment at 17th and Pearl. Even after a year of dating, it felt somehow rash. But the economics of it were practical. I feared we would feel oversaturated, too much time with each other. It was an unmerited fear: we continued to get along fine. It did, however, expose her to my routines. For instance: Every day before leaving the apartment for work, I would take photos. Proof that the stove is off, the coffeemaker and toaster unplugged, front door locked. Without the photos, I was liable to panic midday, utterly convinced my absentmindedness torched a city block. I was embarrassed at first, and sought reassurance through levity, specifically by confiding in her that my computer contained thousands of such photos: More photos of stoves and toasters than of my family.
“I understand taking them,” she said, not smiling at my joke, “but why not just delete them the next day?”
I paused, genuinely shocked by the fact that I had never even considered this a possibility. “I don’t know,” I said, unnerved. “I guess I just like that they are there.”
Sometimes it took me ten minutes to leave the apartment. I would go from room to room, methodically checking each object in the apartment, like a teacher doing a head count on a field trip. Checking the stove again and again and again, my mind instantly disbelieving the truth my eyes just saw. It made us late for a movie once. Only by ten minutes, but with a movie, that is all you need. She didn’t make me feel bad about it. She never made me feel bad about it, though I know it frustrated her, my inability to help myself—to get out of my own way. But even then, I never considered making a change. It was becoming apparent I had a steadfast commitment to my own misery.
* * *
We had gone through two sets of birthdays together, but there was something different about 34—I could feel it. Though neither of us had ever discussed our age in regard to our relationship, 35 felt like a brick wall on a highway, and one I could see approaching from a long way off.
It happened after I got home from work one bleak day in February. When I opened the door to the apartment, she was seated on the couch. For the first time, I knew there would be no deflecting it. Not this time. The conversation had arrived.
“I’m going to have children,” Julie said. “I want to have them with you. But I’m going to have them, regardless.”
“What if it’s hereditary?” I said. “What if they have it?”
“If they have it, they’ll be perfect.”
“Perfect?”
“Perfect because they are ours.”
As she talked, I took notes on my phone. For six months I had been obsessing over the nature of internal monologue. Consequently, I would routinely go hours recording every single thought I had in sequence. Later, I began transcribing other peoples’ dialogue, as well. Just in case I needed to revisit it at some later date. My notes app had over 200,000 notes.
“I promise I’m listening,” I said as I keyed her words, verbatim, into my phone. “Keep talking.”
“That’s all I have to say.”
* * *
Prior to living with Julie, it had seemed to me that apartments tended to look bigger when empty. But ours looked smaller, somehow. We had only been there two years. Not even enough time to accumulate clutter. So maybe that was the reason: the apartment didn’t look empty now because it had never truly been full.
It ended on good terms—the relationship. We were adults about it. We promised to keep in touch, but I knew deep down that no matter the depth of our connection—and it was heart-wrenchingly deep—time would slowly work its magic, turning us from lovers to friends. From friends to acquaintances. From acquaintances to mere specters haunting the other’s past. A time that was once as clear as the present moment would grow blurrier each year. On the timeline of her life, I would be a smudge.
I was still sweating from the move as I gave her a final hug. Our breaths danced in the winter air as we lingered in an embrace. I was shocked to find she already felt foreign in my arms.
“I know I’ll see you again,” I said, my breath fogging the air above her shoulder. “Do you know how I know?”
“How?”
“You’ll be at my funeral.” I smiled into her auburn hair. “You promised.”
She pulled back and looked into my eyes. “But not soon.”
I nodded. “Not soon.”
It took five minutes of readjusting items before she finally had room enough to sit in her car. All the while I watched from the brick steps of the apartment building. Just as she closed her door a final time, a Cheetos bag drifted into the stairwell. As I watched her car disappear down the street, I told myself that I was not going to turn the bag over—that I was not going to catalogue its insignificant existence.
And for a few seconds, I didn’t.
J.D. Strunk was born in Boston, Massachusetts, grew up in northern Ohio, and has a degree in English Literature from the University of Toledo. His fiction has appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, The Louisville Review, Necessary Fiction, The Coachella Review, Allium Journal, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for the Bellingham Review’s Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction, and his story “Fresh Coffee” was nominated for Best American Short Stories. He lives in Denver, Colorado. Instagram: @jdstrunkwriter
Jean Wolff has had group and solo exhibits in various galleries in New York City and internationally. In addition, she has published 145 works in 96 issues of 58 magazines. Born in Detroit, Michigan, she studied fine arts at the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit and at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, receiving a BFA in studio arts. She then attended Hunter College, CUNY in New York, graduating with an MFA in painting and printmaking. She is now part of the artistic community of Westbeth in Manhattan.