Mary was visiting Marc in Montreal. They were both writers but he was ten years her senior, and they’d met when he’d asked on the internet where he could get weed in New York City when he came down to do a reading, back when weed was illegal. Mary had brought him weed, and he’d charmed her with his benevolent sarcasm, and his penchant for chaos, game as he was to wander to a cemetery with her after the reading, drinking and taking mushrooms, talking about books. And then they’d started emailing, and then Marc’s wife of twenty years had dumped him, luckily for Mary.

Neither of them had much faith in themselves. By the time they started dating they had both decided to ditch alcohol (but stay on the pot) and now their liquid confidence was gone, replaced with uncertainty. As writers they both felt like failures, even though Marc had published a book and Mary was an editor for a relatively well-respected online magazine. Their accomplishments were basically irrelevant, because they were inherently depressives, and this was what bound them, at the same time as it caused a sort of compounding dysfunction. 

The main difference between them was that Mary believed in love and hoped for it, but Marc had seen too much. As much as he cared for Mary, he had seen love through to its end already, whereas Mary had coveted it so much as to never really have grappled with the distance between the ideal and the human reality of it. 

They had just finished eating a pineapple pizza, and Mary had shittalked the restaurant for using canned pineapples, which had offended Marc, because the other difference between them was that Mary had gone to college almost entirely paid for by her parents, whereas Marc had left home at 16 and fended for himself.

By now Mary felt as if there was a rhythm, where if Marc was sitting on the couch and they had no plan to watch a movie or show, it was because he wanted to fuck. She sat next to him, put her arms around him.

“I’m so full,” she groaned. 

“Me too,” he groaned back.

They made out a little, but Mary pulled back. Something was bothering her but she didn’t know how or if to say it, whether it was just PMS, or general female irrationality, or unresolved trauma, or what. Marc asked if he could sit on her, which he did, with his knees on the couch straddling her, so he was light in her lap.

“What is it?” he asked, realizing something was wrong. Mary couldn’t face him; she stared at his thigh for a long time. Then started quietly crying.

Marc tried to make her say what was upsetting her. Finally she tried to, saying something about how it felt like he got more excited about her body than her mind, and of course he didn’t take it well. He got defensive, said he didn’t know how to convince her he liked her personality, since he had told her many times he did. He said he was going to go smoke a cigarette. She said, “You make me tell you and when I do you just leave.” She asked him tearfully for a hug.

They hugged for a while, and he said, “I think you just want to be friends with me, and it’s okay. Really.”

“I don’t know if that’s true,” she said. “I’m confused. Maybe I’m just crazy.”

“Don’t say that,” he said. They were silent a bit. “Maybe I like the way you are,” he said, as they pulled apart and looked at each other. “Like I like having to fight for you. As long as we make up.” Mary smiled. 

They went to smoke by the industrial building of unclear purpose across the street. The moon was almost full, and dramatically glowing up a cloud in front of it.

“Maybe I’m just depressed today,” Mary said, explaining how she felt lost in her effort to edit her novel. She said maybe she wanted it to be a journal, but carefully edited, deceptively messy. Marc said Sartre’s Nausea was in journal form like that, that there were long-winded entries and then very short ones, and then the narrator started to lose his mind, and the dates started to get made-up, like December 103rd. Mary laughed. He said it was funny because the narrator was friends with this guy who was supposed to know a lot because he was reading every book in the library, going through from A to Z, but of course he really knew nothing, because he had no experience.

They went back in and back to the couch and then Mary felt aroused.

“Maybe you just have to describe a book to me,” she said. “Good thing you’ve read so many.”

He grinned. “I better keep reading,” he said.

The next morning, after getting up at 5 am to smoke weed and write as he always did, a couple of hours later he got back in bed with Mary, held her. She started moving her hands over his hip bones, his ribs, his clavicle. He pulled her panties down and started eating her out. His go-to method was a flicking technique against her clit, Mary supposed that was what his ex-wife had liked, but to her it felt too fast and sensitive, even though she was unsure what it was she did like, as no one had ever eaten her out in a way that she liked, that she could recall anyway. She tried to move her hips to encourage him to do something different, then said something about sticking his tongue in perhaps, but she was really wet, and he said it was a bit too much for him. He said he didn’t like to stick his tongue in, he wasn’t used to it, and so they hurt each other’s feelings, Mary’s because he was grossed out and didn’t seem open to learning, his because she was unsatisfied with his efforts.

He left the bedroom in a huff, and Mary stayed there in a huff. She googled ‘how to eat pussy’ and read an article about two techniques called ‘the pancake’ and ‘the volcano.’ She thought maybe it could be simple, he could just lick her up and down over her whole pussy, and suck it a bit with his lips, there was no need for him to stick his tongue inside. She remembered she had once asked him to “make out with it” and at the time he had liked that direction, but he seemed to have forgotten it. Finally she went downstairs and they both apologized, but he was hung up on this idea that she wanted him to put his tongue inside, and she was hung up on the idea that he always just got defensive, rather than thinking of her feelings too, rather than feeling glad she had told him how she felt, rather than telling her he wanted to figure it out with her. She told him that a passage in Michel Houllebecq’s The Elementary Particles had made her think her pussy was ugly, because it hung down between her legs, and he said her pussy wasn’t ugly.

But then she got upset. 

“It’s like if I said, ‘Oh your writing’s not bad. Your dick’s not bad.’” 

“It’s like if I don’t respond in the exact right way you get mad,” he said. “I live in constant fear of saying the wrong thing.”

“Well I don’t want you to live in constant fear.”

They hugged, and then changed the subject to food or something.

That night they went out for mussels and fries. They were having fun, sitting in a plant-filled backyard in the candlelight, stuffing themselves. 

Then Marc spilled some mayonnaise on the pocket of his button up shirt. He seemed embarrassed, and muttered self-critically to himself. Mary said she was surprised; she had thought she was the self-conscious one. 

He was eating mussels with his fingers and apologized. She said she was the queen of eating with her fingers, especially when no one else was around. Marc explained that in the house he grew up in, he’d be yelled at for it. He’d be yelled at by his stepmom for so much as clinking his fork on his plate too loudly. Mary looked at him sadly.

At some point after their food was gone, they were staring into each other’s eyes a bit.

Mary said, “I have the urge to cross mine but I’m repressing it.”

“You go right ahead,” Marc said, so she made a funny cross-eyed face.

“It’s just a way of escaping vulnerability,” she said. “You know what I thought of yesterday in the shower? My poem that I wrote about staring into your eyes.”

“I don’t remember,” he said.

She repeated it to him.

“See this is why you’re so smart,” he said. “I’d never remember my own work like that.”

“I think it just means I’m self-obsessed,” Mary said. 

After dinner they started walking to Chinatown. They paused for a cigarette, and as they chatted the conversation turned to literary readings and Marc said, “I’m surprised you haven’t suggested setting up a reading when I come down in October.”

“Oh that’s a good idea,” Mary said. 

“I’d probably ask Jack Finn to read,” he added.

Mary asked why he hadn’t just asked her directly about setting up a reading. Marc thought that was what he had just done. But now Mary felt sensitive that he was suggesting who he’d add to the ticket as if it was suddenly his reading, even though it was her friends who had said she could set up readings at the bar. She tried to say in a jokey way that it wouldn’t be up to him, but that he could suggest people.

“Oh okay,” he said, smirking a little.

Mary asked who else he’d want to read. He mentioned his friend Annie. They walked on and she tried to stop herself but couldn’t and so she muttered, “You didn’t ask me.”

“That’d be great, if you wanted to.”

“I don’t but it would have been nice to be asked.” And again attempting a jokey tone, she added, “You don’t think I’m a real writer because I haven’t written a book.”

The jokey tone didn’t work. Marc got mad. He stormed off a little and started smoking again. Mary joined him. 

“It’s like all night you’ve been trying to point out how I’m an asshole. From the moment I got home from work, even. You got mad because I didn’t text you ‘thank you’ when you told me you got me an espresso. Like I just wanted to get home to you, and hearting your message wasn’t enough.” 

He was right. Mary had been sensitive about that, it had annoyed her. 

“Like do you even like me?”

“Yes I like you,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m so sensitive.”

“You’re entitled to your feelings,” he said. “You can’t help that you’re sensitive.”

“But do you even like me?” she said.

“I do but it’s like, I’m just in a constant state of anxiety wondering if the next thing I say is going to upset you.”

“I’m sorry,” Mary said. They finished their cigarettes and kept walking, changed the subject. After that they had a nice time wandering through Chinatown, then down to the port. On the way Marc pointed out his favorite statue, of a man holding a dog, and when you peered up at it, you could see the dog’s testicles.

The next morning they started fighting again. Mary was drinking coffee in the kitchen, asking Marc to wait for her to go smoke, and he said he would wait, and she questioned his tone of voice, and then he yelled, “I’M SO EXCITED TO WAIT!”

Mary was shocked. She said, “You told me you’d never yell at me,” and Marc said it had been a joke. He went out to smoke without her. She got ready and followed him down; she wasn’t wearing her contacts and couldn’t see where he was. He called out to her from the warehouse parking lot across the street, where he was crouched. She hesitated, then went over to him. He cried and she tried to comfort him. He said he was sick of waking up. He asked if Mary would smother him with a pillow. She held him. He said life had been hard since he’d quit drinking. He was just so tired. Mary didn’t know what to say. He said it was all downhill from here, and he didn’t know what would happen to him, what was he going to do when he couldn’t work anymore?

Mary was silent for a bit and then said she would take care of him, and he gave a little laugh; maybe he didn’t believe her, or she’d hesitated too long—or he didn’t think she was capable of it. Maybe Mary was afraid of being trapped. Maybe she wasn’t in love. The worst thought that crossed her mind was that he was saying all this to manipulate her, because he was sensing that she was sensing his narcissistic nature. She didn’t really believe that, though. And when she thought about it later, it depressed her that in that moment when he needed empathy, her mind would go to that dark place. Maybe she was the narcissist. 

Then it was the morning of the last day of Mary’s visit, and they were in bed. Mary was so nervous as she sucked his dick, because she had a plan to ask him to eat her out in a new way. She thought it could be the right way finally, but in deciding to ask him to do it, she had felt resigned, assumed it wouldn’t go well, questioned her attraction to him. She figured if nothing else, it could help him in his future relationships, if she was going to end up breaking up with him. But instead, when he did it—she asked him to thrust against her pussy with his face, without even using his tongue, thus solving his problem of disgust at tasting her excessive juices—it worked well, it turned her on, and he said he’d enjoyed it too. 

Then, as she sat on his dick, it felt better than ever before; she told him he was waking up her underused pussy, and he said it had been going to waste, was a gift to the world. She came, it felt really good, and she didn’t want to dump him anymore. After they switched positions so he could fuck her—that was how it worked, she came on top of him, he came on top of her—she told him that maybe her feeling hurt hadn’t really been so much about worrying he liked her more for her body than her mind, but was actually resentment at the fact that he seemed to enjoy sex more than she did, and that she couldn’t figure out how to enjoy it as much, which was more her problem than his, of not knowing what to ask for, how to get him to help her get there.

“I want to make you happy, you know that right?” he said. “I’m just a big baby sometimes.”

Mary smiled. “I know, and so am I,” she said.

As Mary was getting ready to leave for the airport, Marc was sitting in a chair at the kitchen table as she rummaged in her suitcase, saying some shit about her socks or whatever. He was looking at his phone; she could tell he wasn’t listening. She told him as much. He said he was sorry. She asked what he was doing; he said just scrolling. She said that was kind of rude. He said Mary was rude like that all the time, so why was it fair for her to call him out when he did it? She said she always admitted it when she had gotten distracted from what he was saying and that she always apologized, asked him to repeat it. She said this seemed more like he was just pretending to listen.

He said his responses were never good enough for her, that she made him feel like an asshole. She said that was a fair point. She said he always overreacted to her criticisms, that he could never just apologize, that he had to then make her apologize for hurting his feelings. He said that made sense. They were repeating themselves. Mary thought about how, in relationships, you started out admiring each other like works of art, you saw your ideal self in the eyes of your beloved, but slowly they became like your family, you forgot to be polite to them, you ended up treating them like you treated yourself in your own head, with all the unfiltered criticism you lobbed at yourself, as if the other person was a limb you resented for trying to detach itself from your body. Was that love?

Back home in New York, Mary got a haircut at a salon called Happy Place. She managed to keep up her end of the customary banter throughout the haircut, as they discussed different flavors of Coca Cola they remembered, King of the Hill episodes, sourdough pizza spots. But at the end as the stylist showed Mary the result her stomach dropped. It didn’t look right. It felt like she was leaving her body as she tried to get the words out asking the stylist to fix it. Mary knew it was a normal thing to do, but it felt wrong. She didn’t want to hurt the stylist’s feelings. And then even after some adjustments were made, it still looked bad.

At home Mary stayed fixated on it, taking pictures of her hair, staring at the reference photo she had shown the stylist, wondering how she had failed to communicate her desire. Maybe she always felt disappointed after a haircut. As she photographed herself, she realized a smile line was forming on one side of her mouth. She felt trapped in the pursuit of her elusive femininity.

Marc and Mary had planned to talk on the phone, and they did. But Mary was cranky and distracted, which she blamed on the full moon. “This is why I should be a hermit,” she said, “because then I wouldn’t have anyone to vapidly bitch about my bad haircut to, and I wouldn’t even need a haircut, because no one would be perceiving me or expecting me to look normal.” She felt guilty voicing these thoughts to him. 

Marc told her he had finished reading The Elementary Particles and that it had made him cry. Mary asked him what made him cry. He said he just thought the whole thing was sad. And that it had made him wonder if he had ever felt anything in his life.

Mary started looking at her copy of the book, trying to jog her memory of it. It seemed like Marc was getting frustrated, feeling like she wasn’t paying attention to their conversation. She was trying to remember whether she had related to the main characters in the book the way Marc was saying he had, how they had failed to feel things. 

Hearing Marc say he hadn’t felt anything his whole life was making Mary feel alienated. She wanted to believe one of the male characters had felt something like love; Marc didn’t think so. They talked about how people’s reactions to books showed something about them. How they saw themselves in the book.  They hung up and Mary sat staring out her bedroom window at the moon. The character Mary thought had felt love had gone insane after he’d failed to show up for the woman he supposedly loved, which to Mary, proved his love. To Marc, his failing to show up must have disproved it, regardless of what happened after.