A Story of Heartlessness and Cruelty

This is a story about when I was a heartless 24-year-old, about when my fumblings toward an authentic life routinely burned small cities and ran over kittens.

There is a scene in "Dances With Wolves" where Kevin Costner (will his star ever stop rising?) shoots a buffalo as it charges a young Sioux boy. One of the warriors comes over and carves out an unidentifiable hunk of buffalo flesh (heart? testicles? tongue?) and offers it to Costner to devour, apparently as a show of manliness and triumph. Costner takes a girly nibble and declines, but the warrior takes a giant bloody bite and lets out a whoop, kind of a Sioux "boo-yah, bitch!"

I offer this in comparison with something I once did to a man's heart, in full view of people trying to have a nice dinner.

D. and I dated for about a year and half, which was my standard at the time for figuring out that someone was completely and unmistakably Wrong for Me. Unfortunately, D.'s intentions developed along an entirely different trajectory, one involving rings and Crate & Barrel, and he shared this information with everyone but me. Inevitably, right as we reached our separate conclusions, talk of The Future came up.

It was a balmy, batshit-smelling night on the Congress Avenue bridge in Austin, and after our movie ended, D. and I walked across Town Lake to the picturesque little gazebo, whose roof looked like a dinner napkin plucked up by its center. He was advancing his case for me to move with him to D.C. on the basis that he thought public policy sounded interesting and maybe he'd like to study it. I resented the cavalier way he insinuated that I had nothing going at the time (in fact I didn't-- I hated my job) and could drop everything to follow him and a hunch.

We reached the gazebo and I sat down on one of the rocks surrounding it. He sat on the grass next to me. We tugged each way on the knot between us and finally It came up. The Future, the Long Term, Us, Marriage.

I told him about a nightmare I had the year before about having to marry some guy in a church basement in the commercial break of a football game. There were Cheetos and my dress had poofy sleeves and the zipper broke. The despair had followed me for days.

"I don't see myself getting married," I said.

"What?" His voice got high and tight. "Like ever?" A family of swans came out of the reeds by the shore and cut long graduated z's in the reflection of the city lights, two large swans and three little ones following. I am not making this up.

"Pretty much."

He sat up on his knees and faced me and his eyes filled with tears. I forget what he said at this point because a riverboat strung with white Christmas lights emerged from beneath the bridge and the occupants, seeing us and the swans and the last reflections of the setting sun, rose from their chairs and applauded us, some lifting wine glasses.

Had they only looked closer, they would have seen the still-beating heart (or tongue? or testicles?) in my hand and the blood smeared across my mouth.