Finally, after fifteen months, an admission of grave errors made on her part.

I was going to get back inside! I exclaimed, going half hard.

Linked for the seasonal check-in, the next day.

Initiated by me, went without saying.

At the Green Line on Powelton, a half mile away and equidistant from our houses.

Tried my best to stay calm.

To curb my excitement.

But I was already at half mast before I even arrived.

Erect within seconds of seeing her.

The breasts.

The demeanor, and shared memories, too.

But mostly: the breasts.

Couldn’t imagine ever getting over them.

The attention she put into her appearance (‘some’), however subtle, gave me hope.

Hope I would hold close.

That I would employ to fuel my purpose, and imagination-only masturbation, going forward.

We proceeded tentatively.

Housekeeping updates, to start.

Treading lightly.

Perfunctorily.

We’d go in, eventually.

I’d make sure of it.

Wouldn’t leave till we did.

But for now.

I let her do the talking.

She referenced something I referenced in my most recent podcast.

I didn’t say anything about it, and wasn’t sure whether she’d even listened.

She must have.

But if I didn’t bring it up, I couldn’t be proven wrong in my assumption that she had.

Plus, not mentioning it coincided with the New Me: silent, attentive, selfless.

What I’d referenced in my latest podcast was something Sheila Heti had on hers.

On her podcast Podcast with Raisins.

She’d posted four episodes the past four years.

The first two were from the same week, in 2015; they were conversations with her brother, on a lake in Canada somewhere, about philosophy and the ‘point’ of art.

Possibly unserious.

But then, outta nowhere, she’d posted another. Last week.

A rant, really.

Going in about how critics misunderstood her most recent book, Motherhood (2018), as a polemic when what it was was a personal account.

How critics, in the U.S. especially, and especially since Trump, tended to politicize all art.

When art was that which specifically and categorically was not meant to be politicized.

To politicize art was to misunderstand its point.

To misuse its function.

How artists today were becoming more like entrepreneurs.

Not that there was anything wrong with entrepreneurs.

It was just…

Entrepreneurs were entrepreneurs; politicians, politicians; and artists, artists.

Everyone had their role.

The artist’s role, Sheila reiterated, was not to be political.

It was to be honest and uncompromising.

To shake people.

To, as DFW via Rilke put it: disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.

Ex bae reminded me of this; we used to tell each other this often.

When I first heard Sheila’s take on the artist’s role, it was revelatory.

Here I was thinking I’d botched all prospects, chosen a life-path outside of the one elders encouraged.

That women, ultimately, wanted me to take.

That ex bae dipping affirmed she too had wanted.

Social Darwinism.