Girlfriend

I have one. We;ve been dating a month.

I'm writing this on her laptop, sitting on her bedroom floor, while she sleeps a few feet away.

She makes me crazy. I feel stressed out about her almost all of the time.

That's bad.

But I like her a lot. That's good.

There are some fundamental differences in how we look at the world. She thinks being friends with exes is a goal; I think it's deplorable. She rarely feels intimate during sex; I feel intimate during, after, and because of sex. She has more guy friends than I do; I have no girlfriends except for her and my sister.

She's a city chick. I will never love San Francisco. Not now, not ever.

It feels insurmountable, writing it down, now, alone in the dark even as she's in the room. It feels like I should go back to barely makin' it.

I love her. I haven't told her, because I don't think she loves me back. And as I write this, a part of me wonders if she can. Maybe that's what I'm feeling -- that lack of intimacy I yearn for with her may run deep.

I'm very confused.

Gravity just spun up on iTunes

Another weekend of work after an all-nighter a couple of days ago.

I'm punchy, and tired, and the matrix output slowly flowing past on my screen is literally starting to get blurry.

And Sara pops up on rotation.

I paused, quietly, and thought of faraway memories. Not because I'm tired and overworked, but because the passage of time has caused them to fade.

I'm trying to remember her smile. That first smile, the first time she said goodbye after the weekend she first said the 'L' word, in her pretty summer dress on that beautiful spring day.

I think I can see it... but I'm not really sure. I think I remember the image I was fighting to hold on to, not the actual memory. Like a photograph of a photograph... the second generation copy, with less clarity, more errors, and some detail simply gone.

I don't remember her eyes, anymore, for instance. Not from that day. Nor am I really sure what color her dress was... I have to steal that from another mental image and put it there because I "know" what is supposed to be in the image.

I don't remember her smell, I don't remember her taste, and I don't remember why it felt so good.

But I know I want to.

--

Yeah. It sucks. I still miss her.

In another time, another place...

I've been hearing Brian Greene on various podcasts and radio programs recently. He must've had a book come out this past year or something.

He's a physicist of the theoretical kind, pondering string theory, quantum mechanics, and popularizing the theory of the multiverse... that thing that has been out there for quite some time as an idea, but is apparently growing in mindshare, because it's not just in science fiction any more.

Another time, another place, another life. Another me. It is all so very alluring, because it grants us the fantasy that we could have made different choices.

And, for me at least, that they could have made different choices, too.

You combine a couple of pitchers of beer (shared, don't worry), a Friday night, a little too long on facebook looking up ex-girlfriends and even ex-flings, adding to the master list (yes, I have a spreadsheet, and after this past month I had officially lost count...), and wondering about the still-friends and the used-to-be friends, and...

We have Brian Greene.

It is all so very amusing in its self-inflicted sardonicism.

Oooh, that word was too long and atypical. Chrome doesn't recognize it as a word. Well, fuck you, google. You aren't omnipotent yet. Just omnipresent. There's a difference.

 So... yeah. I'm left wondering about the choices that weren't so very different that would have put Serino and I with Danielle and Lauren as next door neighbors, babysitting Frank's kids as we talk about the good times back in Austin. Or the seemingly little choices that would have Mel and I painting walls together next weekend even though I wouldn't really want to. Or, for that matter, the random flukes of chance that didn't land me married shotgun style to any one of (guh) dozens of pretty and kinda pretty girls.

I could've ended up married and miserable just as easily as I could've ended up married and grateful.

None of those choices were really all that harsh, nor terribly "deep" at the time. Nobody faced a court martial or jail time or knew they missed out on marrying Brad Pitt or Mila Kunis. Nobody got hurt... often at all, but surely, at least, not permanently.

(wince)

Ok, some of us got hurt. By some of them. But I digress. Read the archives.

But we were all so close. In a universe so vast as Brian Greene paints it, where everything that could happen probably did, where even the fantastic breadth of what makes us "human" or even "unique" is but a random, but finite, occurrence on a scale so vast that every atom in my body is surely exactly duplicated a quadrillion light years from here on a planet just like ours with a bona fide twin in every possible way...

Sigh. I could have married Texas Lauren. Or Mel or Kim or... any of them. And we could have made it. Loved it. Lived it.

There exists a world, out there, where all of those great things happened and are happening and will happen. There exists a place where someone more like me than, well, me exists and is not blogging right now, not drunk right now, not enjoying a nice Napa cabernet. He has a clingy girl that wants to be a girlfriend and finds it refreshing, not disturbing, as I do. He misses his Mel and his Kim and his Amanda, yet hates his Laura less and loves the world a little more.

Those billions of other MEs out there aren't better or worse, though. They aren't anything. They are merely the end result of the sheer breadth of the cosmos.

Maybe I just found god.

Today is somebody's birthday

I know because facebook tells me so.

I know because I got invited to a party and I didn't go.

Today I am a little less frat boy and a little more outlier.

A little more lonesome.

--

Mel wrote. She called, too, about six weeks ago. From her office phone, which I don't think she realized I had saved.

I may have deleted it since. I don't remember. It made me hold my breath when I saw the call come in. But then she didn't leave a message. It was only the sound of a phone hanging up.

You'd think when you're feeling your heart break all over again you'd actually hear something different.

But c'est la vie, right?

--

I miss her. I don't want to admit it, because I wish I could hate her, but I do. And I don't. Hate her, that is, even though she surely deserves it.

I miss Kim, too, even though she's de facto married and a million miles away. "We live in Concord together" she told another acquaintance that I overheard by way of facebook.

I would not have thought it would hurt so much.

It is surely better that I am not reading Mel's blog, not actively wondering, not seeking, not knowing.

It would hurt a lot too. More than a lot.

Did I ask too much? Did I disappoint you? Did I leave a bad taste in your mouth? Is it too late tonight to drag  the past out into the light?

--

Probably. I probably did. Disappoint. All of them.

Mama's love passed on. I'd love if... if you weren't married. If you were more considerate. If you were blonder. If you were more sexually free. If you challenged me more. If you were smarter. If you were hotter. If you were more supportive. If, if, if.

If you only loved the same god I do.

Oh, wait, no, that's not it, is it?

If I were capable of it. Her, I mean, not me.

Maybe the mirror is still present. Maybe I don't know how to, either.

Or, like I've said many times before, maybe I just like the pain. Maybe I like the loneliness. Maybe the absence of meaningful connection is now so strongly normal and habitual that I cannot change it.

I still miss them. All of them, a little, but especially the ones I loved. The Amandas and Lauras and Kims and... fucking married chicks.

Sigh.

It will pass. I won't remember what their embrace felt like first... it's long gone with Amanda, for instance... and then their look of affection -- every girl has one -- and then how sex with them, it's own unique and special flavor, felt. And finally, last to go, you forget their smell, their sayings, and finally, their touch altogether. Even the fleeting moments, like the way they looked at you the first time they knew you were getting under their skin, that were memorable and pure...

Gone. It will all be gone.

--

Stupid question?

Why don't you ever realize the brevity of meaningful relationships as they are happening? Why does it always seem like you might feel that way forever? That it could be real? That maybe, just maybe, it might actually last and become the new normal?

Why don't I ever realize?

Sigh. Sometimes I do. Hell, I usually do. And I don't care, because it feels so fucking great. Those few precious moments are worth it.

--

I'm still sad. I don't want to socialize, I don't want to go out, I don't want to date, and I don't want to change it.

(!)

But I am still sad. It's normal, and I'm used to it, and times are not that dire, but the melancholy, the loneliness, and the hopelessness remain. There will be no progeny from me. There will be no wife someday. There will be only the ex-girlfriends. The count will grow, the notches will continue to multiply, and the list of names will continue to extend.

But I will always be alone and sad in December.

Always.

:-(

Things you want to say... but don't.

Hi there.

You've caught me at a pensive moment. Or, rather, your profile has. Apologies in advance. At least you know what you're in for if you reply.

There are those profiles that that make one go "wow". Then you read. And you realize that you'd HATE this person. Ok, yeah, hate is a strong word, but you know what I mean... hate in that "you're really pretty and I'd soo enjoy your company more if you just closed your mouth and stopped talking."

That pretty much counts as "hate" (insert air quotes here) in this context, right?

And there there are the ones where you think "hmm. Yeah, that could work. I'd probably break her heart in three months, though."

Pass.

Usually, given moments of desperation (or just exhaustion, I'll opt for the former. But it's really all just a pacifier for what we're really after. Or, at least, what we all like to think we're after. (A pity that they are so often different things, isn't it?)

And then, occasionally, once in a blue moon, you'll run across a profile that you're actually afraid to reply to. There's this little bit of fear, because, you see, it would just be too perfect... same town, similar outlooks, hotness factor, and their profile makes you laugh out loud. And, to be completely honest, truth be told, (insert yet another silly cliche here), you'd probably blow it.

And then, naturally, you actually DO blow it with some long silly email that really should have showed up on the Craigslist rant page. Uhhhm. (looks around nonchalantly)

--

(No, truth be told, I'm not sure if any of the last bit is actually true. Such is the nature of flirting in the Gen Y era.)

I finally read.

I wasn't sure what I'd find. I found more than I thought possible.

Can I link to it? Would that be ok? Would privacy be lost or trust betrayed?

Tre has been writing for a long time.

A lot of it is about me. A lot of it isn't.

A great deal more is about me than I was ever aware of -- even after the heartfelt letter she wrote me a few short weeks ago.

I don't know what to say.

--

I wanted to comment, but it felt like not enough. I wanted to explain "those girls on facebook are my cousins!" and "those people in Tahoe are coworkers and colleagues!" I wanted to ask for some sort of absolution for seeming improprieties... even though I actually have done nothing wrong.

Except, perhaps, for the lack of courtesy regarding her feelings... unbeknownst or not.

--

I knew on July 4. I didn't "know know" in the sense of the "L" word, the breadth and depth, the rawness of it all. But I knew.

I was in love with Melissa. I was willing to see you (hmm, guess I've switched audiences), because I knew that it was wise for me to get out of love with her.

I knew you were crushing and had been, at least sporadically, for a long time. You started to say something that day like "you mean more to me than..." but I don't remember the rest. I don't think you finished the sentence.

But we were both drunk, then, and it was a holiday, and I've always wondered, and you're a grown up, and even though I didn't love you back, I thought it would be a positive experience.

To be honest, part of me is glad it didn't work out. I do think that we'd have had a great time, and it certainly would have been less costly than what happened instead, but the reality of consummating those emotions while retaining many of the unrequited aspects... instead of being the distant stuff of daydreams and occasional pining, I might be the recipient of four letter words and a catalyst for even more cynicism.

And that would suck.

I think that, honestly, a part of me has pushed you away this whole year because I didn't want that. Better to be the subject of curiosity and wonder than a catalyst for cynicism. The world has enough of that.

I don't know what to say. I think that I might be getting better at the whole "blink" thing when it comes to potential mates. Just as a girl knows in 30 seconds whether she'd fuck a guy, I'm starting to believe I can make those calls about ladies in a date or two. The ones I actually date still represent a great deal of confusion, but when I know that I'm not going to be "the one", it's coming ever more quickly.

I'll never love you back quite like that, Tre. I'll never want to go to a Karaoke and belt out some 90s R&B in your honor. We could have a great time, and it might -- heck, probably -- be an enriching experience that teaches us both a great deal with very little in the way of "payment" that is heartbreak or betrayal.

But I'm not the one. And from what I know of you -- mostly through our interactions, but now, too, through the blog -- despite your actions to the contrary, you want/intend/desire to be an all or nothing girl. You got angry with me several times because I was temporary. Well, everyone is temporary... until they aren't. And even then, life is pretty friggin' short.

But I digress. This is a tangential argument -- the notion that sex involves "giving" something on the part of the girl, and "taking" something on the part of the guy. Lame. And even purportedly liberal, empowered, feminist women subscribe to this. Like I'm somehow going to like you more if I can't fuck you.

It's actually the opposite. With the exception of the virginal, almost-pure love I felt for Preciouse, I've never loved any girl until after sex. Usually quite a bit of it. Good sex helps me fall in love; bad sex prevents me from falling or pushes me out of it. No sex just makes me frustrated and actually think less of the girl (usually -- I'm not talking about "waiting til the X date" or "taking time to get to know each other", I'm talking about a gal denying herself even though she really wants to have sex just as much, or more, than I do).

But enough of that tangent. If you're really all or nothing -- then it's gotta be nothing. Because I already know.

And I guess, all silly arguments about sex, or whether or not I'm really charming or simply manipulative, or whether or not you really love me this much, or why it is that we never seem to actually hook up even though we've been dancing around it for years now... I guess that this is it.

I am sorry. Really.

:-(

Mama

I forgive you for all that you did.

I forgive you for all that you didn't.

I don't forgive you for today.

Today you judge me because I don't love your god. Today you love me less because I hurt, because I reject your doctrine, because I carry cynicism, because I feel not your great fictional father in the sky.

Today you reject me. Today you tell me, with action, not words, that I am not your son. Today I am last week's fodder, leftovers from a life you've left behind, an almost-human that was once one in which you placed hope, faith, care, and love.

Today I am nothing to you. Today I am but the sum of the parts that I can manage all alone, without you, without the strength you were supposed to give me.

Then. Now.

And everything in between.

Today I still cry. Today I still want the love you held from me every moment I dared exert my individuality. Today I still need you. Today I could use your faith, your trust, your endorsement, and your support.

Today I feel nothing. Today I have nothing.

You may as well  not even try. You're "I'd love you if only" is almost worse than if you weren't there at all.

Today... today I miss, and I (will) cry, and I end my day alone.

Always alone. The world may be my oyster, but I shall consume it alone. No one could ever love me enough.

Here they come. The tears, I mean...