Will You Still Love Me On Sunday?

It’s so easy to be head-over-heels under the loud music and the overfull glasses of Saturday night. Everyone loves each other, everyone wants to be best friends. Everyone sees only the best in everyone else. And there is a certain magic in Saturday night, as though you’re so far inside the weekend — so buffered on each side from the unforgiving reality of the weekdays — that everything is possible and real if you want it to be. You say things you might not mean on Monday morning, because for the moment in between the sixth and seventh drink on Saturday, it’s all you can think about. Going home and going to sleep in someone’s arms when you have every inhibition stripped away is easy. It’s fun, of course, but you saw it coming.

But when you wake up on Sunday morning, when your head hurts so badly you feel as though it will never return to normal, when everything that was beautiful and mysterious the night before has been rendered harsh and unflattering in the relentless daylight — will you still want to turn over to me? Will you still be interested in all of the things I have to say, all of the coincidences we took as divine intervention last night when we were only so happy to tell each other how we feel? If the facilitators of alcohol and dim lights and a group of laughing around us are no longer part of the equation, do you still want to hold my hand?

And if I’m sick on Sunday, come down with the flu after not having taken proper care of myself this week, will you bring me soup? Are you willing to accept that the quietness and vague sadness of Sundays are simply part of life, and that every moment between two people cannot be the kaleidoscopic blur of honesty and fulfillment that Saturday is? Because I have been told so many things on a Saturday night which failed to be true in the morning, which were as much inspired by having the night end on some kind of temporary high note as they were by genuine feelings. I understand that sometimes we get caught up in a moment, but I don’t want my life to be a series of moments that cannot be sustained once the party is over.

We all know that pit-in-the-stomach feeling of Sunday, the throbbing knowledge that one has to go to work in the morning, that whatever was able to manifest itself in the throes of the weekend will have to be met with the limitations of daily life. I am not so naive as to believe that everything that can happen when we have no responsibilities is capable of being sustained during the times when we are surrounded by logistical constraints, but I believe we can adjust. I believe that if we mean what we say when we are drunk and we are honest and we are able to listen to our bodies without our pesky heads getting in the way, we can make things work in the times when everything is too real and too well-lit for us to cope with.

I will love you on Sunday. If I told you all of these beautiful things when we were standing under the red light of the bar, peeling the label off a beer bottle, it’s because I want you to remember them the next day. I want to pounce on my momentary lack of inhibitions to say all of the things I’ll later want to sweep under the rug, but which I truly mean. I am telling you these things on Saturday because I won’t be able to on Sunday, but I’ll want you to know that I mean them. And I hope you know me well enough to know that I never say anything I don’t mean — even if they’re a bit embarrassing to remember in the morning.