To E.E. (people to try and forget)
Part one in a series of writings where I reminisce on past loves and encounters.
I wasn’t looking for anything in particular when I met E.E.
It was one of those days where the air feels weightless, where conversations with friends seem to stretch into the soft golden hours. We sat outside the Glass House, a group of us riffing off each other’s jokes, the kind of camaraderie you don’t realize you’ll miss until much later. Then, as if out of nowhere, a peculiar boy approached. He had a quick confidence, the kind of presence that announces itself before any words are spoken. He asked a friend for a cigarette.
I didn’t smoke. Smoking was anathema to me, a habit I’d grown to detest after watching my parents try and fail to quit countless times.
Smokers are fucking lame, I thought, though I didn’t say it aloud.
My friend offered him one anyway, and soon he was sitting among us. He blended into the conversation seamlessly, and when he eventually walked away, my friend turned to me, smirking.
“He was totally into you.”
“No, he wasn’t,” I replied, half-laughing.
“He couldn’t stop staring at you.”
I was 18. He was 20.1
It didn’t take long for us to start texting, a constant back-and-forth that carried me through my first fall semester break. When I got back from an extended ski trip, we met up for coffee, and from then on, we were inseparable.
Our next date is etched into my memory. He drove us to a mountain pass, a clearing where the horizon seemed endless, the trees framing the setting sun like a painting too beautiful to be real. We stood there for what felt like forever, until the stillness gave way to something electric. We kissed, and for the first time in my life, I felt a kind of certainty about another person.
We dated for two years.
Most of it was without incident, or at least that’s how I choose2 to remember it now. But then, things shifted.
One evening, sitting together in the quiet of our shared apartment, I felt a tension I couldn’t name. It wasn’t anger or sadness, just… something unresolved. I turned to E.E., unable to hold back any longer.
“Are you gay?” I asked.
“No!” came the reply, sharp and immediate.
“Then what is it?”
E.E. hesitated, their eyes searching mine for understanding. Finally, they said it: “I feel more like a woman than a man.”
I nodded, trying to process. I was bisexual3 anyways.
This revelation shouldn’t have mattered to me. And yet, it did. Not in the way I expected, though. If anything, I found myself drawn to her even more as she began socially transitioning. I loved the way she seemed to come alive, shedding layers of discomfort like old skin. But at the same time, I felt her pulling away from me, leaving me alone more and more in our apartment.
I was struggling too. My sister had another cancer scare, and this time, it felt more real, more urgent. I was juggling multiple jobs, a full course load, and an athletics team, all while trying to keep up the facade of a relationship that was unraveling in slow motion. I spent hours out with friends or locked in my room, drowning in my own loneliness. But no matter how bad things got, E.E. never seemed to notice.
I tried to not notice my own growing dissatisfaction.
“My transition’s been really hard on me,” she said one night. “I just need you to be more positive.”
I tried. God, I tried. But it wasn’t enough. By then, my best friend had started dating someone new, and that someone had a friend who found me “really hot.” Their name was C.O. We began going on dates, though I told myself it wasn’t cheating. After all, E.E. and I had an open4 relationship, didn’t we?
Still, deep down, I knew it wasn’t right.
Thanksgiving came, and E.E. asked if I wanted to go to Breckenridge with her.
I declined.
Instead, I spent the holiday curled up in bed, watching sad YouTube compilations and feeling the weight of my own dishonesty. By this point, I had fully began hooking up with C.O. I was becoming excited to see them, excited to message them, and run into them at parties. I couldn’t pretend anymore.
We broke up shortly after she returned. Less than 24 hours later, I slept with Sycamore. E.E. found us, but instead of anger, silence. That hurt more than anything else.
We split amicably5 when our lease ended two months later. For a while, we didn’t speak at all. Then, one day, I saw a comic on Twitter about the imbalance of emotional labor in relationships. Without thinking, I shared it with her on Messenger.
She read it.
And she took a while to, but she apologized. I never did6.
Sometimes, I wonder if I should have. But even now, years later, I’m not sure what I would have said. All I know is that I wish her well, wherever she is. E.E. taught me more about love and identity than I could have learned on my own, and for that, I’ll always be grateful.
But gratitude doesn’t erase the ache of a first love lost, nor the mistakes that led us there.
No one tells you about the imbalance of age in relationships in a way that you’ll listen to. How was I to know that it was coercion when he offered to drive me home from the airport during winter break? (But drove me to his parents’ empty house instead, where licenseless me and him, would later have sex. The loss virginity that I wouldn’t care about, after a few glasses of wine.) How would I know that?
In the way that most people are. In name only. As a teenager, I often proclaimed that women were very beautiful but I could never date one. The insidiousness of heterosexuality. Women are meant to be sexualized. Men? Meant to be idealized, loved, persons who you are meant to be devoted.
It was floated as an idea. At first, I had been uncomfortable with it. She brought it up, because she had thought she’d be able to sleep with someone she wanted to. I reluctantly agreed. She stimulated that the other person should sign off on the people we were going to hook up with, an insane idea, in retrospect. She said no, often, to the men I proposed. She never said no to the women, or the non-men. The thought of another penis in me, repulsed her. The thought of penis itself, repulsed me.
There is no way to be friends with someone you loved romantically. There is no way to be friends or amicable with someone you hurt.
I wouldn’t have meant it anyways.