Immortality

At the gym, they told me I would not die, I would only get sexier, and I believed them. I spent my nights wondering if this was going to turn into something long-term, if this was what is meant by casual, or if this was just my annual catastrophic disappointment because if it wasn’t, then I would have to brace myself. I took my medication and looked at pictures of people who were not in love with me. I deleted their names from my cache, said hello to my cat over the phone, took more medication. Days passed. I learned it’s hard to measure your own increasing sexiness. I enlisted bystanders. I passed mirrors and pretended they were not mirrors, but clean windows, and I was not myself, I was a clean stranger. Some days I was sure she wanted to come home with me, and I had to let her down easy, through the window, like a priest. Once I’d been unleashed from thoughts of my own death I was free to be loved in the way I always knew I’d deserved: reciprocally, in Fiji, our bodies lithe and bronzed like gods, but at the same time I felt like a vampire, and none of my friends could relate. They were jealous of my book deal, my time spent at the ashram while they were here, suffering another winter, their unsexiness a flourescent sign that blinks all night.