Terms of Entrapment

 

03/28/80

 

 She came again tonight to sit and stare at me, drumming her fingers on the table while pretending I'm unimportant to her.

 I told her several times I could never love her, but she doesn't believe me. She wants something from me I cannot give, images of house and home and family that are not in me.

 Each time I meet her, I tell her less and less gently how I feel, but she persists, following me from club to club, calling me at home, leaving me notes on my car.

 Tonight, I came to understand she will not give up, badgering me into accepting her when love won't work.

 So I walked up to her table, stared down into her face and told her, "Go away."

 And she, hurt more deeply than any I've hurt before, told me I led her one.

 "How? By refusing to take you to bed?" I asked.

 And then, she staring straight into my eyes said: "How big an ego you must have."

 I had no answer for that, nor could calculate the new angle at which she came at me.

 So the rest of the night, she still stared, but instead of gaze full of love, it is full of hate.

 She doesn't understand my need to survive alone, free of distractions, of too easy attractions, of the temporary satisfactions, of something I will be sorry I got involved in later, the doors of a trap from which I will expend time and energy seeking to escape.

 She never will understand.