I am in a polyamorous relationship. I say this rather than saying "I am polyamorous" because I am not sure, in fact, that I am, in fact constitutionally polyamorous. I'm in this type of relationship because the level of trust and commitment and communication I have with my partner are enough that any insecurity I might have about either of us seeing other people can be dismissed. I am not sure that it would work this way with anyone else as my primary partner. That being said, I am not sure it is working, at least not for me.
My partner has another girlfriend he has been in a loving and committed relationship with for the past three years. I don't. I haven't, ever. I've had a few experiences which turned out to be disastrous, so while I am entirely certain that it is, in fact, possible to love more than one person at the same time (I have experienced that part of the equation), I am not sure if it would work for me to be intimately entangled (both figuratively and literally) with more than one. I'm not sure it'll ever be possible for me to find another partner that would work out, and today I am writing to illustrate why.
Let's say this red circle represents the number of people I am attracted to. We'll include friends, co-workers, random strangers on the train or bus, people I see at shows or other group events, basically anyone who catches my eye.
This blue circle over here represents the number of people who are attracted to me. Certainly there are a few; it may even be a rather large number. I can only be aware of those who make their attraction to me known, so it's a nebulous number at best, but they are out there, so we'll take that as a given.
Here, the two circles intersect to form a purple region. Since this is a basic Venn diagram and we all studied those in school at some point or another, you should be able to logically assume that the area where the two circles intersect is roughly equivalent to my potential dating pool, or PDP, where mutual attraction leads to the possibility for dating.
Except it is more complicated than that. Let's start with my personal foibles. First off, I am straight. So no matter how hot that girl at the bar making eyes at me is, I am (so far) unable to develop the kinds of emotional attachments with women that I am with men. I've been told every girl is just looking for the right woman to come along and rock her world, and I won't discount the possibility if it happens, but it hasn’t so far, so I prefer to say that I am straight. Which narrows both circles down by approximately half, but instead of scaling them down, we will just assume that the circles only represent populations of males.
Secondly, I am notoriously picky. Anyone who has spent more than fifteen minutes with me is probably aware that I have a "type". The "type" is not always manifested in physical appearance, but more often than not I am a slave to my desires.
I have been accused of only liking "cute" men. I don't feel like debating whether or not this is actually true, because it's way more than a physical "type". The main flaw I have when searching for prospective partners is that I am a smart girl. I cannot bring myself to even have a one-nighter with someone that I can't have a reasoned, intelligent conversation with. Said conversation must also include topics I give a flying fig about. I might be able to talk intelligently about carburetors or hockey with someone for hours, but unless we have some kind of common ground in books, movies, music, politics or sense of humor, I'm not going to be interested in boinking them. And boinking isn't necessarily what I am after. I like the idea of commitment -- of shared intimacy and everything that goes with it. I'm not prone to sleeping around, because sex isn’t a huge focus for me. It's fun, to be sure, but it's not my number one priority. Good sex is never a reason to stay in a bad relationship. Sex for the sake of sex is not a reason to compromise my principles and deny myself what it is that I actually want. So my slice there in the middle, the common ground, actually represents a very small percentage of the male population. I can crush on someone, initially, for about three days, tops, if they don't meet my model of reasoned intelligence. After that I rapidly lose interest, such that said crushee who filled my fantasy for three straight days, becomes a moron, beneath even contempt.
So, to sum up my flaws: I am both shallow and deep at the same time. I want someone who rocks my socks off with their bedroom eyes while also talking to me about the relative merits of cinematic techniques or minor chords. That type of situation in general is what every girl wants, but I seem to be way more picky than most. The amount of people I have actually crushed hard on in my life is very very small. So let us remove the circle from Figure A and concentrate on the other circle, and the space between.
Let’s be brutally honest for a moment. The men I have met so far who embrace polyamory in their lives are, in general, not men I want to date. They are goths or hippies or hopeless nerds, none of which fits my actual peer group.
I am somewhere between a geek and an indie rocker. I don’t really exist in one continuum or the other. The problem with my actual peer group is that it is made up of sensitive boys who believe in the one-on-one ideal of twoo wuv, which is a beautiful thing. Most of them haven't ever stopped to consider other modes of relationships. Right now they all want to get married and/or have kids. Maybe some of them will change their minds over time, but most of them are serious softies. The good news about my peer group is that they're all fairly open-minded free thinkers, and pretty practical. Once exposed to the idea, they're not always totally against it, and they, being geeks, are pretty practical, so they can see how it might work. There's a difference between those who see it working in practice and those who are willing to try it. I am partnered with one, and there are a few others I've met, but they are as rare as two-headed kittens. So since my peer group doesn't consist of men who are into the idea, and I can't date men I'm not attracted to, I have to work with what I've got. Let's remove the other circle, and focus on the area in the middle.
The inside of this here area is going to focus on specifics. As in, these are specific scenarios I have encountered with multiple multiple prospective datees, taken from an amalgam of interactions.
Scenario number one: "I am married."
Scenario number one is hardly worth mentioning, because it's usually nothing more than an offhand comment this man makes from the security of his wedding band. "If I weren't married and monogamous, I'd be all over you." This happens to me more often than anyone would ever believe. See also "in a long-term monogamous commitment" replacing "married" in the above statement. This scenario can be casually dismissed. Occasionally, this has led to experimentation with polyamory on the part of the married couple, but this is also very rare.
Scenario number two: "I am crazy."
Fortunately, it doesn't usually take too long to figure out that someone is batshit insane. Usually. But with this man sometimes it is an insidious form of insanity that creeps up on you when you least expect it. Subtle controlling behavior. Manipulation in the form of becoming everything I want until we're close, and then withdrawing it all once I'm reeled in. I've been in this situation a few times now and funnily it's always with guys who think that they are the most centered, self-aware human beings in the universe. Anyone who stresses how self-aware and centered they are now automatically triggers my alarm button. I won't be involved in this kind of scenario again, if I can help it.
Scenario number three: "I am wigged out that you have a boyfriend."
Doesn't matter to this guy that I am free to do whatever I want within the context of my current relationship. Free as in I could kiss him, I could sleep with him, I could date him casually, or even get into a long-term committed relationship with him. This man is often concerned that being involved with me would mean threesomes with me and my partner. Ugh, no. The idea is repugnant to me. This man is often really concerned that he'd mess up what I already have with my partner. How egotistical. If our relationship hasn't fallen into the gutter with what we've experienced already, it's not likely to. This man also insists that he needs a level of commitment I cannot give, which is basically code for "if I can't own you, I don't want you at all". I can't make someone accept my life the way it is and still want to date me -- it's something they have to come to acceptance of on their own, if they think I'm cool enough. And it can be done. It's taken me years to rewire myself from someone who is basically a monogamist at heart to acceptance of this lifestyle. Every song we hear, book we read, and film we watch reinforces that the only acceptable form romantic relationships take is one-on-one. This scenario is always the hardest to deal with because it feels like being cut off at the pass. Nobody ever likes me enough initially to take the risk, and by eliminating the possibility of dating me at all, they never grow to like me enough.
Scenario number four: "If I play my cards right, I can get into a threesome with this girl."
No, you can't. Not saying I wouldn't ever consider it, but if that's all you're wanting out of this interaction, then you might want to look elsewhere.
OK, now we can remove these four groups from my little middle area, and as you can see
I have nothing left. Well, next-to-nothing. I have one pixel. One pixel which comprises maybe five people in the entire Bay Area. Which is not exactly a small sample size. So here are my options.
a) Wait around until I meet one of the five
b) Wait patiently until someone can get past scenario three long enough to realize I'm the coolest girl in the universe.
c) Break up with my partner and hit the road as a single hot momma again.
A and B are right out, because waiting for anything gives me hives. I have been told I have the patience of a saint, but that is not true. I am highly impatient. I am just really good at repressing it. So you might think C is the most viable option. But it isn't. Because if I wanted to break up with my partner, I wouldn't be in this situation at all. I would have broken up with him when we initially considered it, and gone on my merry way. So I'm stuck with options D or E. D: Be frustrated, or E: learn to appreciate what you already have. I'm currently living a mixture of the two while I follow options A and B. And it sure is itchy.
I did yoga today.
Let me explain. For a really long time (most of my 20s) my idea of exercise was walking to and from the car from various live music venues. I was out of shape and getting seriously doughy but hey, guys on the internet still thought I was a babe, so I was in denial about how bad it had gotten.
Then came a party where I'd had a few too many. The next day, in the throes of a near-fatal hangover, I uploaded the pictures someone had taken the night before from my digital camera and began paging through them.
"Hey, look, somebody puked! I don't remember that. Boy, duder is so regretting that beer bong today. Ha! Who the hell is that pink-haired cow? I don't remember inviting her. Wait. I have pink hair. Holy shit is that ME?"
I put the photos away and tried to forget about my six chins and my eyes-glazed-by-the-all-you-can-eat-buffet expression, but I could no longer deny that maybe the reason guys on the internet thought I was a babe was because, well, they're guys on the internet, natch. Immediately the fitness regimen began.
I say it began immediately and I find that this is completely true even though the physical activity didn't actually start till a few years later. When people tell you how to lose weight and get in shape, all they focus on is "Well, just eat less and exercise, you lazy asshat." They don't tell you that sometimes the "eat less and exercise " bit can only come after long brutal bouts of WWF-style mental smackdown. It can take years to overcome a lazy nature, especially when you're so out of shape that you get winded trying to open a Twinkie. So for a couple of years I berated myself for not getting in shape, and then finally one day I hit the bottom of the barrel.
Actually, that's not entirely true. It wasn't my self-loathing or desire to get in shape that motivated me to exercise. It was actually a full-on case of stupid teenage angst. I can no longer remember what it was I was upset about on that first fateful day, all I know is that it sent me running into the street, Discman in hand, walking randomly along the streets of my town until I was thoroughly lost, eventually walking six miles out of my way, crying and confused until a kindly policeman pointed me in the direction of the closest mental hospital.
By the time I got back to my apartment, I felt pretty good. I didn't think much about it until the next day, when some other unspecified bit of teenage bullshit hit, and caused me to grab the Discman again, stomping off down the street. This time I was careful to look at landmarks, but walked even further, and felt even better. Still I didn't put two and two together (that perhaps exercise had been eliminating my stupid mental static) until a few weeks later, after many more stumbling, sobbing jaunts through my neighborhood, scaring children and causing little old ladies to put their fingers on the buttons of their house security systems. Suddenly the bright idea occurred to me that maybe i felt better because I was exercising.
So I started doing it every day. Every day I would go outside and walk hard for 40 minutes to an hour. Every day I would come back soaked to the skin and filled with endorphins, usually with a brand new idea I'd come up with while walking and listening to music. In the span of a year I lost 50lbs without changing my diet (other than to eliminate most sugared soda) just by walking every day.
Then I got a job wherein I was chained to my desk for 14 hours a day, and gained 20 of it back within 4 months. Easier to pack it on than to get rid of it, for certain.
Once that job was done I was anxious to get back on my fitness trip. So I joined a gym. I knew I had to exercise more than 3x a week, but I had no desire to spend my life in the gym, and I had a friend who had been talking up yoga to me. "I am back down to a size SIX!" she said. OK, sounded good. Yoga. Sure thing.
I knew better than to try to do yoga in public for the first time, because, see, I like living a life relatively free of public humiliation. So I did some research on how I could do yoga in the privacy of my own home. DVDs appeared to be the answer so I fired up my browser and ordered "Really Totally Basic Yoga for Utter Retards" from my favorite neighborhood web retailer.
I had grandiose plans for my new fitness regime. I was going to go to the gym Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and then on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I would fire up the DVD player and get my yoga on. My first day at the gym went GREAT! I did my little workout and busted my ass and I got an endorphin high that put the best china white to shame. I went home totally excited for day two, wherein I would try yoga for the first time. Soon I would be buff and babelicious.
The next day, I popped in the DVD. An obnoxiously perky woman with a waist the size of my wrist appeared and told me to remember to breathe correctly.
"And remember, when you're done, to drink lots of water," she said. "You've earned it!"
I have earned the right to drink water? What am I, living in a third world nation? If I do yoga for another half an hour past the end of the DVD will I have earned the right to eat a single carrot stick? I grimaced and started the workout. I proceeded to contort myself into a pretzel shape. After about five minutes, my skin was the angry color usually associated with southern construction workers and/or hypertension victims, and I could feel my muscles actively rebelling. Once I got to downward-facing dog position (and what the fuck is that all about, by the way?), I was through. I did not have the upper body strength to do yoga. Defeated, I switched off the DVD and drank a lot of beer. Beer has water in it, right?
Flash forward to a year later, which is like, today. I have been sorta semi-regularly attending the gym enough to shed that extra 20 I gained at the job from hell (ok, maybe not so semi-regularly). In fact I crossed the low-weight mark just yesterday, and I've built up a lot of strength via lifting such that I can now look in the mirror while naked without hiding behind strategically placed fruit baskets and/or crying. I have a waist again. I have a belly button. Guys on the internet think I am SUPER hot.
Previously in my life, the more exercise I did, the worse I hated it. P.E. class was a nightmare. Organized sports were devised by torturers to make my life misery. Now I find the more exercise I do, the more I want to do, which is really fucking cutting into my hours of sitting around, and kinda creeping me out. Nevertheless, today when I felt kinda sleepy and lethargic, instead of crawling to my bed to power nap, I broke out the yoga DVD.
I put it in. Grimaced at the perky thing telling me I'd earned my water. And went through the entire DVD with her. I am not about to say it was easy. In fact, it was one of the hardest physical challenges I've ever given myself. I was using the same muscles I normally use only when I lift weights, except I was lifting MYSELF and I weigh a lot more than weights do (at least the amount of weights my pussy ass can lift). Even on the "total retard" setting, I felt like I was twisting my body around into pretzel-like forms I would never get out of (at one point, perkything says "Now untangle yourself..."). But I finished.
Remember that endorphin high that put china white to shame? After the yoga, I was higher than a kite on china white that has just ingested a gram of really killer mushrooms. I can totally understand why yoga is a spiritual and religious practice. I drank the seven gallons of water that I had earned and I sat down in my computer chair, eager to tell the world how I had conquered yoga. And then I got up to get more water and fell flat on my fucking face.
My lower back muscles wish the entire world to know that holy shit, I did yoga, and they are NOT about to stand for that crap. I'm not talking sore, because you know, I've been sore before. This was muscles flat-out refusing to work because they were so tired. I somehow pried myself off the floor enough to sit for a while so they could rest, and then got up again, tentatively, this time, to take a shower. This time they worked. I can tell they will not be happy in the morning, but I will worry about that when morning comes and I eat my breakfast that is high-fructose-corn-syrup-and-trans-fatty-acid free. I will go to the gym no matter if it feels like 400 individual elves are dancing a nude fandango on every one of my muscle fibers. And then Thursday I will do yoga again.
But first, I'm eating this pint of Ben & Jerry's.
Because I earned it.
We were just babies. We were just babies, but you already had a baby of your own. That made you seem so much older and more responsible than me, but when I look back now, I see that wasn't the case.
Halloween, 1995. Who is this guy? Where did he come from? Why hadn't I noticed before? The next day, hanging out and talking while the boy played with Lego. The day after: "Do you want a ride to work?" And all the days after.
Brian, afterwards: "I know you're thinking: I'd really like this guy if he didn't have a kid."
My response: "I like him even though he has a kid."
"That's kind of scary."
"More than you can imagine."
Hours of gun practice out on the range. Many more rides to work. Trips to the mall. Sneaking around apartments, checking the lay of the land for "assasination" attempts. Card games, buckets of Sangria. Even the Macarena, despite my attempts to remain cool.
"There's one thing I hate about her. She's not ticklish."
You seemed to move twice as fast as everything else around you. I got the impression of a dragonfly -- a brightly colored blur flitting around and about me -- and me chasing after you, following in your wake, grasping for you and thinking I had caught you, but always coming up empty-handed.
Even empty-handed I felt myself thaw. Every moment was bliss, every moment was occupied. The murky ice I had trapped myself under began to melt, and I could feel again. The pain and confusion were as welcome as the joy of being near you.
"What are you doing here?"
"I came to see you."
"You're drunk, where's Kyle?"
"CJ is with him."
"And you came to see me?"
"Can I sleep here?"
"I guess."
Sleep. That was all. I lay awake in my bed all night trying not to breathe while you slept. While the girl you were fucking stayed overnight with your child, you slept in my bed. You didn't even try to touch me. Yet you'd rather sleep in my bed than stay with her. Did you ever think for a second what kind of message that might send? After the first time? The third? The fifth?
Drunk together, at a party. I don't remember how it started. You bit me. I pulled your hair. This time I was in control. Left you drunk, reeling, spent, panting with desire for me, but I still couldn't bring myself to kiss you. I couldn't break the unspoken divide between us, and so it remained, unbroken and unspoken. I was as afraid of what would happen if I did as I was of what would happen if I didn't.
First the one you dropped for me. Then the other one. Unforgivable.
Disgusted, I withdrew.
"Is she hurt? Is she upset?"
"What do you think, you big jerk?"
"I don't want to hurt her. I love her."
"You've got a really stupid way of showing it."
You left, then. I don't remember when or if you said goodbye. Just that you left for grad school. A year or so later you called. Passing through. Could you come see me? Sure. Sure.
"You're a dish. I love you. I have always loved you." Offhanded, flippant, vacuous, and years too late. Wounds healed, though I couldn't help noticing the one with you at the time. She had a look on her face I recognized. It was the same one I'd worn when I chased you.
Looking at your face today for the first time since, I want you to know that if you're out there, I miss you. And the ice? It hasn't reformed. Thank you.
M: You've no idea how much I miss you. Every pretty girl in every tv show, music video, and movie is you. Sometimes I feel that if I had you around, even just via phone, the rest of my life would be so much easier to deal with. "Shut the fuck up and deal," you'd say. And things would seem better. And I could shut the fuck up and deal. I can only imagine that you felt I was being so stupid that you dropped me from your life so you wouldn't have to deal with the fallout. But look! I'm still here. I'm still alive. I'm still in love with the same person. I belong here.
S: I keep expecting you to randomly show up at my door one day, just like you used to. If you happen to be reading this, I'm sure my address isn't hard to find. Or email me, for Pete's sake. M once referred to you as "cute boy!" You should know that out of all the male people in my life, you're the only one I've ever considered unequivocally not a boy, but a Man.
T: I apologize. Maybe you're ready to hear it now. I know I didn't do the best job of conveying that I was not interested in you in that way. You really didn't want me. Not in the state I was in. I promise.
M2: I'm not sure what it was that I represented for you, but I was certainly a lot more than just a friend. We connected on a deeper level than that, but I'm not sure what it was. When I think about you, I find myself confused. I wish I knew where you were and what you were doing. I wish I had some way of finding you, to let you know that things turned out OK.
J: Whatever.
A: I have given up trying to understand what it is you want from me. I can't be the friend you want me to be. I can only be me. If you can't accept me, then I guess I don't need your friendship. Maybe your therapy will help you learn that, someday. Or maybe it will keep you on the path of discarding your friends at your whim, until you've no-one left.
B: I appreciate the fact that you made me feel like maybe I was cool. But if you ever come near me again I will cut you.
Since I was a very small child, language has always fascinated me. I once read an article on how for some children, language is a code to be broken -- the reels slide into the correct order on the drums in their brains, and suddenly the world comes alive in combinations of letters that make sense. Such was the case with me. I learned to read so early that I can't remember ever not reading. And that was merely English. When I was in kindgergarten, I attended a private day school for a time, where they engaged us in pursuits such as horseback riding and dress-up play, as well as rudimentary French. My days were long drawn out hours of waiting until I could see the familiar sketchy illustrations of our elementary French text. Le rasoir. Les pantalons. Le poulet.
Later, in public school, there were no language studies to amuse me until high school. I settled for an obsession with English grammar. "Conjugate the verb 'to be' -- present, past and past perfect. If you can conjugate more tenses, you'll get extra credit. " I conjugated them all. All the tenses. Tenses some of you were probably not aware we had in English. I actually did this, not for extra credit, which I assuredly did not need, but out of love for conjugation, out of desire to be conjugating something besides my native tongue.
In high school I took the two years of French available to me, as well as a third independent study course when there were no other options. My senior year, I quit band to study Spanish. When I went away to college, and I needed an elective it was always a language class. Advanced French. Intermediate Spanish. Latin. Beginning Russian. Each of the languages I learned featured those reels spinning into their correct places on the drum, the code suddenly becoming clear to me in the form of a dream or an offhand answer to a foreign friend's question.
My field of study should have been clear to me then, but I was muddled. I didn't think there was anything I could do with my love of languages other than travel and not be considered an Ugly American, or perhaps translate and be paid a tenth of what a polyglot should be worth. Linguistics didn't occur to me until the degree program had been discontinued at my school. I didn't even know what linguistics _was_, but it sure sounded like a lot of great fun. For a time, I branched out into computer languages, but their syntax was odd, and used a different, rusty part of my brain. The reels never quite clicked.
So now I want to go back and do it over. I want to learn more French, I want to learn German, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, more Russian. I want to learn languages nobody speaks like Sanskrit and Ancient Egyptians, and ones that few people speak like the Ohlone dialects, Inuit, and Finnish. And I want to compare them, contrast them, document them, and classify them. My goal for the end of this year is to learn one simple sentence in at least fifty. This is a flighty, whimsical goal that will go hand-in-hand with serious study, so of course I'm going to ask for your input. What, just exactly what, should this simple sentence be?
Life interferes.
Back to school.
Back to work.
Back to life.
His eyes are blue. Blue. Holy shit, they are blue. I'm momentarily taken aback by their blueness, stunned and reeling, trying to remember what it was we were talking about.
My hands are shaking, so I put them in my pockets and lean against the wall in the hopes that no-one notices.
I'm the kind of person people depend on. They need me for advice. They need me for moral support. They need me for validation or a kind word or a hug or a quarter for the bus stop or a cigarette. Perfect strangers stop me in line at the store or waiting at the bus stop to tell me their deepest secrets. I look trustworthy, or exude some aura of trustworthiness.
I'm the kind of person people take for granted. If I disappear for a few days, instead of calling me to find out where I am, people wait until I get back to ask what I've been up to. Nobody seems to appreciate me until I'm not around, or wonder where I am until I've been gone for a while.
I want to be the kind of person who enters a room and commands it. I want to be the kind of person people throw surprise parties for. I want to be the kind of person people appreciate when I'm around. I want to be a legend. I want to be present, real, and accounted for. I want to the advice I get to be as good as the advice I give. I want to be. Instead of missing me, I want you to find me.
It had been a rough spring. I'd been working hard trying to salvage the mess that had been made, working from the inside, with my enemy, and also against him, in secret. My friends certainly didn't understand what I was trying to do, nor the hell I'd been through: nerves strong enough to make me vomit on a regular basis, hair falling out, grey cast to my complexion. I've never been good at keeping secrets, especially when it comes to how I feel about people, and secrets being kept on this level -- no matter how passionately I felt about the reasons why -- were doing me in. And I was doing it all for them. Instead of being appreciative, they called me traitor.
On a night when they were being less judgemental, we were all at a show. Versus was on stage, and they talked a little bit about something and then segued into "River", their tribute to Mr. Phoenix, who had died not that long ago. The song and my situation filled me to bursting, I couldn't take anymore. Tears began falling, and soon it was impossible to conceal them.
"Aw, baby what's wrong?" Brown said sarcastically.
"She misses us, you asshole. We've treated her like shit," said Lisa, showing a heretofore undisplayed ability to read other people.
It was too much. I ran. Out of the ballroom, past the tables, past the bar, past the front door, where Sean was sitting idle: nobody else was coming in the door this late at night. I was too distraught to notice him following me as I ran up the stairs and into the ladies' room. As I had my breakdown in front of the mirror, he burst through the door and grabbed me in a bear hug.
"Who do I need to beat up this time?" he said.
I lost it. Tears turned into giant belly laughs, and soon we were both on the beer-soaked landing of the women's room, holding each other and laughing.
"You followed me in there to ask me that?" I asked. "And wait a minute. What do you mean by this time?"
He gave me one of his sincere looks and said, "One of these days, you'll realize exactly how amazing and cool you are. And how cool I'm not. You'll look back on all of this and you'll understand."
I'm looking back now, Sean. And on one level you were right. I have grown into myself, and I realize now that I'm a much better and cooler person than I ever thought I was. But to this day, I still count you as the coolest person I've ever met.
It's hot, and the party is crowded. There are at least 25 people in the living room. The huge 70s style paper globe lantern in the corner casts a reddish glow over everything, accenting the orange in my hair and the orange of my courdouroy dress. I am sitting on the sofa, and people around me are talking, but I'm in my own space. I'm high. I mean, really high. I am thinking that it's possible I've never been this high before, and judging by the size of the joint that Randy's been passing around for the last half hour, I'm probably right.
Earlier at the after-party I'd had three or four glasses of red wine Tim had smuggled to me past security. This is the after-after-party, now. We're prone to having them. Nobody ever wants to go home after a big event, especially not one as big as this one. I'm still mulling over what Jeff said earlier, when he introduced me to Ken:
"She's not my friend. She's just a girl I work with."
I'm thinking: I listened to him bitch about his entire life for the past six months, empathized with him when he told me his tales of dating woe, smiled and nodded at him despite my annoyances and I'm just a girl he works with? That stung.
There's music playing somewhere. I can't really make it out, but it's got to be one of three songs: Stereolab's "Jenny Ondioline", or My Bloody Valentine's "Soon", or Beat Happening's "Teenage Caveman". Or possibly it's something by Sonic Youth, or more likely, Pavement, considering the house's tenants. Those are the only things I ever remember hearing in this house, where I've spent so much of my time in the last year.
Suddenly, something draws my attention up and to the left. It's Glenn. The guitarist in one of the bands from the festival. He's trying to get past me and over to the empty space of couch on the other side, but there's literally no room left in the living room for him to get up and walk around me.
"Do you mind? Can I just...?" he asks, miming climbing over me.
"Sure, no problem," I smile.
He climbs into my lap. He's drunk. Everyone here is drunk. He leans over and kisses me on the cheek, hesitating on my lap before sliding into the spot next to me.
"Thanks doll," he says. A trace of his Kentucky accent leaks through.
While all this is going on, Peter, the lead singer in his band, approaches from the kitchen, playing leapfrog over the heads of my colleagues still passing the joint around on the living room floor.
"What's this then?" he says, as Glenn slides into the empty seat. Apparently not one to waste time on formalities, he takes Glenn's place on my lap.
"Hi." he says. "I'm Peter."
"I know," I say. "I helped book your band."
"Yeah, I recognized you. With the hair," he says, and runs his hands through my sherbet-orange locks. "It's awsome. How'd you get it that way?"
"Industrial hair-dye accident," I quip.
"I imagine that happens a lot. So anyway, what's your name, doll? Are you a promoter?"
"No, I'm just a DJ. I work at the station."
"Just a DJ?" Glenn asks from my right.
"Just a DJ."
"Do you play our records on your show?"
"I do, in fact."
"Then you're not -just- a DJ. You're the coolest DJ," says Peter, and leans in and gives me a kiss.
Everything after that is kind of hazy.
We had this joke, he and I. A joke from before we'd ever met each other, when we were just words on a screen. A joke about how I'd startled him and broken his tea infuser.
Things hadn't been going well for a while. He was still pretty broken up about things with his ex, and he still had a crush on a friend of his he was trying to work through. I went up to visit, for what turned out to be the last time. And I brought him a tea infuser, to end the joke.
"This was really sweet of you. But I'm afraid this is our last weekend together."
"I'm OK with that," I said, mostly because it hadn't sunk in.
After all, we still had time together. We had a whole weekend. It was easy to deny what he'd said when we were in bed later, spent and shaking.
"You know, it's cool that you're OK with it. You're really cool."
"Yeah, I know. I'm the coolest," I responded. There was no time nor place for rebuttal. There was no time to nurse my broken heart. We still had a weekend.
Later, after we separated for a while, I went to a party, where I was meeting him. I didn't know anyone else but the people I'd come with. Alexis greeted me at the door:
"You should hang on to him. He's a good boy."
I didn't bother to tell her that there was nothing left to hang on to.
Later -- much later -- he showed up with his crush. I'd had a lot to drink by this point, waiting for him to arrive, trying to mingle with strangers. Trying to explain to Matthew that we'd broken up just hours before.
"You aren't allowed to be jealous of Meg, because she and I aren't boinking," he said. Was I allowed to be jealous because she had his heart and I never would?
"I'm sorry I had to end things just when we were falling in love."
We walked back to his place from downtown. It was long, and we were drunk. I had to pee. We passed the Black Angel; touched her for luck. I had no idea if we were going in the right direction. I had to trust him to lead me home.
An hour or so after we fell asleep, I woke, brain spinning from my drink. I ran downstairs to the working bathroom, and threw up for what seemed like hours. The simplest explanation was that I was drunksick and vomiting up the toxins inside me. But it seemed as though I was also throwing up my hurt, my anger, my frustration over all the past four months, flushing it away so that it couldn't touch me until later.
Our last time together was slow, langorous. It seemed to last six hours or more. When I finally stood up, my head was pounding and my stomach burned like fire. I couldn't shake the clouds in my head. I could barely move without feeling nauseated. But I'd managed to love him the best way I could for the very last time, despite my hangover.
I didn't cry until much much later. I was too numb for that for a very long time.
Tonight, nearly ten years later, he said:
"I finally got over breaking your heart."
"Yeah, you did."
"Eventually. I was apologetic for a couple years."
"Apologetic to me?"
"Yes. I remember apologizing every six months or so."
"Yes, I remember."
"It's OK. I got over breaking your heart."
"So did I, fortunately."
"I'm glad too...You're more fun now that you're not all worked up over me."
"You're totally pressing your luck, there, bucko."
"Goodnight."
And somehow I never brought up the tea infuser. And it's been almost ten years. And it can still make me cry when I think about it.
How can we go back to the way things were when we can't even agree on how they were in the first place? There was the way you saw things, and there was the way I saw things and they never intersected, no matter how much we'd like to believe that we were once joined.
I can't even recall what it felt like to have your lips on mine, or to have your hand entwined in my hair. I can only recall the vagaries of misunderstanding--the hours spent deciphering something you said down to its component parts. I can only remember what it felt like to read those four words, over and over: "I am not ready."
I could have asked you if you honestly believed that you would never be. Instead I chose to pore over what you said obsessively, as if I could find nuances in your written word that would answer that question for me.