It was our first date, or maybe our second. Regardless, it was early on, though not so early that we didn’t find ourselves in bed, reflecting together on the evening we had built together, breaking down the awkward building blocks and rebuilding them through the warm glow of our love making, our guards’ stripped and on the floor with our clothing.

“You’re a narcissist.” She said it with a smile and no sign of judgement in her eyes. This felt like too true of an idea to have developed through one date. She must have meant something else.

“What makes you say that?” Hearing the hurt in my voice, she argued back that “there was nothing wrong with that — I’m a narcissist too.” I didn’t much care what she was, also; I wanted to know what I had done to instantiate my fears so quickly. She couldn’t explain.

My feelings were hurt, I thought she should know. I was being very American, she said.

…

It was our third or fourth date and we liked each other enough to play back our favorite activities from the first couple of evenings together, but without training wheels. We sat on the beach again, but drank less wine. We removed the single Airpod from each of our opposite ears, not being afraid of filling the silence with our own words, or not at all. In bed we asked for what we wanted, not what we thought the other wanted us to ask for. She asked me to tell her a story, and my heart swelled. Is there anything better than being asked to demonstrate your favorite thing about yourself? The story was set in a forest and featured a bear and his missing friend the field mouse, though I couldn’t come up with a name for the bear when we met him and by the end of the story I had forgotten to address my mistake. The nameless bear was found lost in a meadow, his friend nowhere to be seen, and if you can believe it, when the bear cried in fear, she cried too.

“I write a lot too.” The way she added that she never shared her work felt like a challenge, an invitation to scale the wall. The reason for the fortification was obvious. I write my favorite things about myself and beg the world to read them. She did the opposite. “Sometimes it’s dark and judgmental and not very nice. I’m working on being more nice.” Not being nice had gotten her into trouble, she said. We talked about rude vs direct, when they’re the same and when they’re not. When an observation needs to be shared, and when it doesn’t. How she had told me on our first date that I’m too skinny, as an example. I liked it though, didn’t I? Not being told what I already know and don’t like, but that she could say what was on her mind without any fear. It was time to ask again about calling me a narcissist.

Did I know that I talk about myself a lot? That all of my stories are centered around me? That I show off?

What scares me most is that she doesn’t mind. She’s a narcissist too, she swears. When people treat you a certain way, you can’t help if it changes how you see yourself. She says it so casually, like how the first time I told her how sexy she was she responded “I know.” I had loved that, but now I heard it in my voice and I hated it. There must have been something in my face, then. “I’m not doing a very good job of being nice, now.”

…

In the morning my writing was terrible. The letter “I” mocked me in sentence after sentence. I deleted it all with a yell.

…

By the afternoon I had changed all “I”s to “he”s so that I could write truthfully without scaring myself. With each paragraph I could feel the fear receding. She and I are not the same. She has to try to be nice, to stay out of trouble. I’m nice because I care about what others feel. She and I are not the same.

…

Her spell on me was completely broken when I went to catch up with an acquaintance. For two hours we laughed and told stories of better times, past and future. Stories of festivals and house parties, travel and work accomplishments, each tale of adventure leading into another, my voice growing louder with excitement as I built my legend, until it was the only voice left.

That night I called her and asked to see her again. It’s ok to be a narcissist, she had said, I am too.