“Cast Shadows,” oil on panel, by Émile Friant, 1891.
What he won’t tell you (at first)
A mutual friend points you out across the crowded room as someone familiar with the politics of the country where he was born.
Once you have a conversation, he can’t stop thinking about your husky voice.
He’d like to ask you out but fears you’d turn him down. He thinks you’re too smart to be moved by his smoldering good looks, that you’re above all that.
He will be wrong.
What he won’t tell you (until he’s sure he has your interest)
He comes to a meeting because he’s told you will be there. He has not heard of the proposition, would not notice if it passed.
The beautiful Latina in the tight dress he brings with him is a lesbian.
He’s already sure he’s in love with you.
What he won’t tell you (until you kiss him with an open mouth)
He won’t ask you out until he hears an inaccurate rumor that you’re moving away. That makes the possibility that you might turn him down tolerable.
He’s so worried about being late to your first date, he arrives forty minutes early. Waits in his car, watching you, silhouetted through the window shade, finish dressing.
The woman’s voice on his answering machine is his sister’s.
What he won’t tell you (until you confess you want him)
He stays up late each night reading the Marquez book you casually mentioned on the phone, reads it all the way through twice.
When he tells you this, you become enamored by what you believe it reveals: that he is unusually open, capable of a rare vulnerability.
You will be wrong.
What he won’t tell you (until after you sleep together)
Your wild hair reminds him of DNA. Whenever he looks at you, he wants to touch it.
Although he tells you he is a painter and a poet, he rarely paints or writes.
Until recently, he sold shoes to make a living.
What he won’t tell you (until he moves into your house)
He doesn’t have a bank account.
His paintings are all copies of other artists’ works or, at least, their styles.
He told you everything he knows about his country’s current political situation in your first telephone conversation.
He will never speak to you in Spanish while you make love because endearments in his native tongue remind him of his mother.
What he won’t tell you (until after you return from a journey together overseas)
He doesn’t like eating foods he’s never tasted before.
He says he prefers staying in rundown hotels because it’s closer to how the locals live, but it’s actually because he is almost out of money.
Change makes him so uncomfortable, he only enjoys traveling in hindsight.
His green card is expired. He will have a hard time getting back into the U.S. You will have to drop names and raise a ruckus before the authorities allow him to reenter.
This is what he won’t tell you (for many months)
His résumé lists a degree from a college he never attended.
He owes several years in back taxes.
He can fall asleep anytime, anywhere.
Especially when you are upset with him.
What he won’t tell you (until much later)
His father once hit him so hard, it broke his ribs. He still thinks he deserved it.
His last girlfriend was an IV drug user who has Hep C. He has not been tested.
You will have sex six, eight, ten times a week for two years. Then not at all—not once—though he says he’s still in love.
What he won’t tell you (until after he begs you to let him stay, to try and work things out)
He promises to go to couple’s counseling in hopes you will forget all about it.
Once he realizes you might actually end things, he will beat you to it.
This is what he won’t tell you (until it’s over)
He hasn’t had a driver’s license for more than two years. He knows if he’s stopped by police, they will impound the car.
It is often your car that he drove.
His mother has told him he is crazy if he doesn’t marry you.
Which is exactly why he can’t.
What he won’t tell you (because he cannot tell himself)
The bouquet of irises and daffodils he brings on the day he moves in will be the last flowers he ever gives you.
He is afraid of turning into his father.
He will stop making love to you after you confide you would not mind getting pregnant.
What he won’t tell you (because he doesn’t know it himself)
Even though he says repeatedly you are his last attempt, the only one he will ever love, within three months of breaking up, he will have a new girlfriend.
In the two years after he leaves you, he will:
apply for and receive a new green card
pay his back taxes
finish his bachelor’s degree and begin a masters
obtain a driver’s license and car insurance
land a steady, good-paying job
He will begin painting in an original style combining folk and post-modern influences.
What he won’t tell you (because he doesn’t want to lose you as a friend)
He enjoys traveling now and usually stays in nice hotels.
He urges his girlfriend to try new foods, to go to therapy, to handle her finances responsibly.
She never mentions things he’s having a hard time facing, so he’s never sure she actually loves him.
This is what else he won’t ever tell you (or you won’t tell him)
Once it ends, you will miss him terribly for approximately three years. Even though you were uncertain all along. Even though he didn’t turn out to be who you’d imagined.
He will get over you almost immediately.
When you see him, it will seem he has become the person you first believed he was.
He’ll no longer want you because you knew him when he wasn’t.
Sharon Gelman is a writer, editor, and activist. She was the U.S. managing editor and an interviewer for 200 Women: Who Will Change the Way You See the World. She also conceived of and produced the audiobook version of Nelson Mandela’s Favorite African Folktales, which won Audie Awards for Best Audiobook of the Year and Best Multi-Voice Performance and received a Grammy nomination. Her creative work has been recognized with the Page One Prize for Novelists, a Maryland Independent Artists Award, and as a semi-finalist for the 2022 Story Foundation Prize, among other honors. Gelman holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and has workshopped at Bread Loaf, Tin House, the Norman Mailer Center, and the Fine Arts Work Center. She is at work on her first novel.
