Affection

We all crave for some form of affection. We all want somebody to accept us the way we are – to realize our faults and put that realization away in the darkest corner of their mind. We all want somebody to make us feel as if we’re enough, and not too much. If we’re too much, even this big world might explode with the effort of keeping us.

She wanted that too. She craved for passion more than I crave for ice cream at two AM. She pretended to be skeptical of affection, to not need it, but she was just fooling herself. Only people who believe in love post pictures of waterfalls and starry skies on Instagram.

 

Once, an acquaintance, someone I barely knew, came to my gig and stood lonely by the entrance. He had friends but claimed that none of them had been able to make it. He was funny and easygoing, so I liked him, even though he put gel in his hair (always a bad sign). She was there too, always supportive of my music. She sat at the table in front of the stage, humming along and smiling.

After the show, my friends suggested we’d go somewhere for a drink. I invited the guy because it seemed impolite to brush him off after he’d come to my show. She started talking to him in that cheerful, too innocent to be flirty way of hers. They stuck together the whole night. In the bar where we listened to a rock concert, during a walk through town, and while sitting in the grass in the park.

“Goodbye guys, see you later!” I called as I was leaving, but they barely answered. They were too absorbed in their own conversation. She had already forgotten his name, so he was pretending to be mad. When I saw them there that night, I realized they would soon have sex.

 

“It was so romantic,” my friend recalled. “We were standing by the river, with the moonlight shining. He grabbed the belt loops of my jeans, lifted me up to my tiptoes and kissed me.”

“I thought you didn’t do romantic. I thought you said you were taking a break from guys,” I said. We were sitting on my bed, with our legs propped up.

“I know. But he’s so cute. And we’re not in a relationship anyway.”

“What do you mean? You see each other all the time.”

“He has second thoughts because I’m so much younger. And to be honest, I’m not really in love with him either.”

“So it’s just sex.”

“It is.”

 

I’m sure that everybody gives in at some point in their lives. We just can’t deal without affection. Sometimes waiting for the somebody becomes so tiring that we settle for a somebody. And she did too. She talked about him every time we met. He was boring, or shallow, or prudish. Why did she keep on seeing him then? I always asked. Sex, she said. Or sometimes she just shrugged her shoulders.

One night I got a text, saying:

he just called us ‘friends with affection’

She thought it was funny because she thought he was too uptight to admit that they were sex buddies. At the time, I thought she was right. But now, I think that maybe he didn’t call her that just because he was conventional. Maybe it was because he knew that the reason they were keeping in touch wasn’t purely physical. He understood that they both craved for love more than anything else.

Eventually, they have stopped talking. They were unsuited despite their mutual needs, a fact they had both realized at the very start. Even the darkest corners of their minds couldn’t blind them enough for each other’s shortcomings. But now my friend, and thanks to her, I, know that the need for affection can’t be satisfied by just anyone. So I won’t just settle. And neither will she.