The McVie Show On Prime Time

I believe this is the very first time that a book review had such an impact on me. The review by Lisa Schwarzbaum is found in the March 19 issue of Entertainment Weekly, and it is for the book The Solitude Of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano. It’s the story of two people whose “lives intersect at various points in the course of this quiet heartbreaker, and each recognizes a kindred alienation in the other.”

What got me was the following paragraph in the EW review:

But in truth, Alice and Mattia are only alike insofar as how strange and singular they are. They’re twin primes, if you want to get fancy. Primes, Giordano writes, are “suspicious and solitary numbers,” divisible only by one and by themselves. Twin primes “are close to each other, almost neighbors, but between them there is always an even number that prevents them from truly touching.”

And I remember the heartbreaking Oscar-nominated film, The Remains Of The Day, wherein the characters played by Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson know that they are attracted to one another and yet never they do not end up together. Even years later, when they meet again, the most heart wrenching sight was their fingers slipping off one another as the bus pulled away, separating the two forever.

I’ve been single since birth, not by choice. At first I fell only for straight guys. After I grew out of that, most guys I was interested in were either taken or were not interested in me. It happened once too often, so much so that when a guy showed interest in me, I’d give him a chance. Why? Well, I was always in their shoes and I wished the guys whom I was interested in would give me a chance. But a sad truth I learned was this: the more one-sided the interest, the more patience is needed. And even then patience is not a guarantee of success.

More and more I’m beginning to accept the fact that I’m at my prime. And maybe I should just stop resisting and accept it fully.