Bartini

Veronica had an affinity for falling in love with every guy she dated.  "Except for the stalkers," she mused.  "They're undesirable.  But they sure do entertain."  Currently Veronica was forgetting yet another disappointment; a man deceptively sincere and cleverly indecisive.  She told me once over cocktails that they never slept together while they were dating. They let the intensity of their breakup and the desperation and fear of losing one another drive them to intimacy. "It lasted for a mere week, I believe," she recalled.  "He confessed being close to me made him fall in love with me and he said he couldn't be in love right now. 'We can't be physical you know what it does to me!' he nearly screamed at me one night."  We both laughed at the amusing insecurity of his affections. "And shortly after cutting himself off from my love," she continued, "he fled to the mountains.  Clearly there is some power behind my sex appeal I've yet to fully understand." To that we clinked our glasses in cheers and ordered another round.

"If a man uses you or stops loving you or finds another it hurts but you have the misfortune of swallowing the 'Love has Died' pill and can move on with your life. If a man, in contrast, becomes so intoxicated with you that it eradicates his decisions from months prior driving him to passions of amorous desire and longing but then runs from such intensity out of cowardice and fear you're left in a confused state of uncertainty."  I chimed in,  "You were right, he did still have feelings for you, being close did, in fact, mean something." Veronica nodded. "It was a manifestation of a love in each of us almost willing itself to endure. But it wasn't enough.  Men of inaction will always be men of inaction even when all they want in the world stands before them with adoring eyes."  And somehow even though she was the one jaded, we both felt sorry for him.

"That's why I'm off love," Veronica announced with coolness.  "Love is not the thing, love is not all I need, it is not always enough. I want action. I want a man who grows intoxicated by me and allows that to draw him toward me not push me away. I want a man who steps out of his fear to take my hand into the unknown.  I don't want poetry and promises and candlelit illusions. I want the rough, stubborn, determination of a love that will endure."  Our waiter, a short timid man with a blushing complexion interrupted us to ask how we were doing.  "We'll take another round," I said to shoo him away and Veronica continued.

"'What more can we try?' he once weakly asked me.  I wanted to sock him in the jaw. We can fight for what we know is true, I thought. I always have. He's the one who lost his heart."  She shook her head with dejected strength.  "I just wish I could tell him he foolishly overlooked the detail that he also lost me along the way.  Like her, I see him for all he never was.  He can tell the polar bears what a fool sits before them."
We paid our tab and I amusingly watched the waiter eye Veronica on our way out.