It was the opposite of love, and yet it wasn't love I was opposed to but the murmurs that said, This is your chance, which seemed less like the promise of a door opening than the threat of one sealing shut.
Melissa BankThe women are young, young, young, liquidy and sweet-looking; they are batter, and I am the sponge cake they don't know they'll become. I stand here, a lone loaf, stuck to the pan.
Melissa BankWith so much sky and so much river, you couldn't help seeing the big picture. It was what you already knew, but crowding into the subway or rushing to a movie, you only saw it for a second, and close up. Now I took a good long look. I'd always heard you couldn't see stars in Manhattan because of all the lights. But here they all were. Here was my night in shining armor.
Melissa BankThe elevator door opens right into the loft. I was counting on those extra few seconds of hallway before facing the party, the party we are now part of and in, a party with people talking and laughing and having a party time. I think, I am a solid, trying to do a liquid's job.
Melissa BankIt scares me. But then I get this big feeling, simple but exalted: He's like me, just with different details.
Melissa BankHe gives me a kiss that barely touches my lips – it means nothing or everything.
After he’s gone, I think, Happy birthday to me.
Jack says, ‘That was the guy?’
‘That was him.’
Jake shakes his head.
‘What?’
‘He’s not for you,’ he says.
I say, ‘How do you know?’ but what I mean is, How do you know?
‘He’s like Ashley Wilkes,’ he says. ‘Any one of these guys is Rhett-ier than he is.’
Again, I ask my benignly inflected, ‘How do you know?’
‘How do I know?’ he says, tackling me into a bear hug. ‘How do I know? I know, that’s how I know.
By late August, I’m on my second sublet, and I’ve been working as a copywriter long enough to know I’m not good at it. I seem to be reliving the life I had when I was twenty-two, but I’m about to run twenty-eight, which feels like the opposite of twenty-two.
Melissa BankIt reminded me of how I’d felt applying to college. Night after night, I sat with my father in his study while he read aloud from Baron’s. He’d read the name of the college, the number of men and the number of women, and a description in guidebook prose; then he’d say, ‘How does that sound?’ and I’d think, Sounds just like the last one.
It took me a few nights to realize that my father was reading only the colleges that I had some chance of getting into – not Brown but Bowling Green; not Wesleyan but Ohio Wesleyan; not Williams or Smith, but William Smith. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that my grades and test scores over the years were anything more than individual humiliations; I hadn’t realized that one day all of them would add up and count against me.
When he takes off his shirt, I see that his shoulders are narrow and his chest almost hairless and almost concave. For a second I’m disappointed but right away I think, Grow up; this is the chest of a husband.
Melissa BankSometimes you’re loved because of your weaknesses. What you can’t do is sometimes more compelling than what you can.
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