In some way or another, we all want what we can't have. I was having a cup of coffee (which evidently I didn't want) with a friend who had emailed me a day or two earlier. She told me she had some questions about a guy in her life, and she didn't know what to do.

 

I told her I'd meet her sometime during the week after work. I liked the suggestion because, although I was certainly not pursuing a relationship with this person, I felt like “after work coffee” painted me in a pretty impressive light. It highlighted a number of my best qualities: namely that I was refined enough to like coffee (a lie) and that I had a job (not a lie). Most impressive, naturally, was the unspoken assertion that, by opting to meet her, I carried some clandestine insight into the minds of men that she might be able to use.

Not the case, of course. I was clueless even about where to get coffee in New York, and when she asked for a specific location to meet up, I verbally floundered around cluelessly before settling on MacDougal Street in the West Village. I figured that on a street that lousy with college students, there must be some sort of quiet, hole-in-the-wall coffee shop capable of presenting me in that oh-so-desirable Bohemian light.

 

After walking for a disconcertingly long time, I spotted the telltale wooden sign of an old-fashioned percolator and veered knowingly toward the door, as if I'd intended the place all along. “AFTER YOU M'LADY,” I said a little too loudly drawing open the door. She smirked as she went in, and I devolved into a chorus of stage chuckles.

 

“HEH HEH,” I said, grinning toward the woman behind the counter, “JUST KIDDING. HEH! Don't... know why I felt the need to say that...!” My friend sat down and the barista continued eying me from behind furrowed brow.

“Anyway,” I said after not helping her to her chair, “Tell me about this guy.” I became suddenly aware that I was leaning forward across the table with my elbows splayed outward in an unintentionally exaggerated display of gross anxiousness. To compensate, I leaned backwards into an equally unnatural position, this time of intense languor, with my frame completely hyper-extended so my legs shot out under the table and through the other side. My right arm dangled coolly at my side and the other draped across the back of the table. I could only maintain the posture for a few seconds, though, before curling back into the upright, hands-folded-neatly-in-the-lap position I'd mastered in elementary school.

“...Go ahead,” I enjoined her.

 

And after all that setup, my nervousness to whether I'd have the answers she needed, the posturing, and the self-evaluation, she told me the same story that everyone tells.

It's an interesting one ... But I've heard it many times before. I think you know it.

 

First... there's a boy, see. Or: a man. And... somebody used to like him. Or: he used to like somebody. But it didn't work out. Then... somebody got kissed. Or: somebody got sex. And now... somebody doesn't know how they feel. No “or” that time.

 

Did she like him? Yes, even though she didn't want to. Did he like her? Probably, but maybe he was still yet to realize this. Could she call him to tell him this and straighten this all out? ...Even considering all the times she's claimed ambivalence to having a boyfriend? Of course. In fact, that's all the more reason to do it.

 

Life's complicated enough without our hearts and brains battling for control of our nether regions, I tried to tell her. We are built to be wildly adaptable. For every man and woman telling themselves, “This is only sex,” there's another couple admitting, “Maybe it's more.”

 

After much cajoling, she agreed to finally talk to this gentleman about the status of their relationship. We stood up to leave and I told her I'd like to hear how it goes after their talk. A few days later, an email arrived, explaining that she had asked him all her questions and he had answered them all honestly. “The end result is I'm still single,” she said, “...I feel great.”

 

It's difficult to divine subtleties through Internet communication, of course, so I have to take her words at face value. Regardless, though, I hope she finds herself a little more willing, the next time around, to set aside the self-imposed inhibitions that plague all of us single folk.

In the meantime, I think about myself and how much I changed, individually, from the time we entered the café to the time we left it. Just as my friend was subconsciously seeking out ways to sabotage herself from a relationship she wanted, I was putting myself in great duress over my own shortcomings that later turned out to be non-existent.

 

When I sat down that night, I was obsessing over how well I might handle my own involvement in another person's life, but by the time we stood up, I wasn't even part of the story.