20091102

free

She is obsessed with locks and keys. She picked her first lock on her sixteenth birthday. Now she collects old keys, and she knows exactly what each one of them goes to. She likes to say that every key has its lock. There is a line in Pink Floyd which uses "pick her locks" as a euphemism for sex, and it is her favorite line in music, though she can't quite explain why. It has something to do with exploring, mystery, and freedom. As far as she is concerned, freedom is defined by boundaries--boundaries which exist to be broken.

She doesn't know how to tell the boy she has been casually dating that she is not interested in a relationship, especially because it is only true concerning him, specifically. She doesn't know that he isn't really, either, and is just too nice to tell her and too introverted to try to bring it up. He is philosophically inclined and wishes he were more adventurous, but he is afraid of everything--but most of all of being chained down.

His ex-girlfriend is primarily his ex because she was not philosophically inclined, and he mistook this as meaning that she was not intellectually curious. She is not worried about the meaning of things. She likes secrets, especially when she can share them with someone, and values spontaneity, though she sometimes wonders if this is a fault.

Before him, she dated me for a few weeks until the summer was over and I decided it was better to fly across the country, because my idea of adventurous is abandoning a good thing to go exploring something completely unknown, I think just to remind myself I'm still free. And mostly I'm happy with that, except last night I was drunk on the floor with my girlfriend, and it was 4 am and we were staring at the window and I asked her if freedom is worth it.

Freedom is her lips on my neck as she whispers that it definitely is, so long as freedom means us. It's a red wine hangover in the morning and going to brunch in the same clothes you were wearing last night, and telling stories over bad coffee about the little town you left behind. I'm not sure if it's worth it, but days like this it sure feels like it.

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