the game of chicken

Thursday there was a text, another observation, tidy and perfunctory, transportive. I stood on that corner once, just recently, so I went back to that day, when I waited for him to pick me up to drive me to the place he didn't want me to wander around, and I tried to remember if it smelled like anything that day.

It was just beginning to rain and the sky had that heavy humid iron smell and the rain drops were bigger and landed with a heavy splat! on my skin and t-shirt. And in my memory that is all I can bring back, is the smell of the rain in the summer, mixed with a thousand beakers of humidity and sucking blood out of a wound in a finger.

And so thoroughly did he move me, inspire me, impress me that there around me the walls began a quick crumble, the rocks began to fall in great heavy clumps, I turned and it was descending, like a building being demolished by bombs, like the building had knees that didn't exist before and it cracked in the middle and fell.

Yet still, I hesitated, still I let the bitterness of what's past swallow me and demand my silence, which I gave without struggle.

Then she intervened and suggested the invitation. I am so thoroughly repelled by them in general and don't consider the random texter a prospect (some loser I had the good sense to delete a while ago, um, yeah, how exciting?); I hadn't considered inviting him. So I did, just to see what the answer would be, to see if I could flush out the clues to end the mystery and I referenced his other half (the guitar he plays so well) so that if it is not the singer that is randomly texting me, they would immediately object this reference to an instrument they do not play.

I got nothing. Not a no, not a yes, not a word for a full day, nothing.

Of course, there is a worry that maybe it is not the singer and some random stranger who I once knew will wander into my home tomorrow night and I will have a choice to make about this person I hadn't considered before and hoped to never see again.

Or no one will show up and the bluff will be called, and then it will be hard to admit to not being the fool.

update: 8/2 no one showed...so, the mystery continues...

the constant itch

My curiosity got the better of me, and maybe I felt a little guilty too, for ignoring the random texter, so I sent a message Friday morning to him (her? the singer? the know-it-all prospect from forever ago? who is it?). My message was meant to nudge him into correspondence, and encourage him, since I had ignored the two previous messages. I also wanted to show some appreciation for the cleverness and humor of the last message [rats are to cheese as hipsters are to pitchfork].

I didn't expect to hear back for a while, and certainly not relatively quickly, so the response was surprising and fun, we had a couple volleys back and forth before I let it expire, with the hopes that I would hear from him later that night. But nothing came until the next day, and that was an invitation, but I couldn't go, so I gently pushed him away.

Knowing myself better than I thought I did, I deleted all the texts so I could not write during an idle moment of boredom. The mystery of it is consuming me, like a constant itch, I just want to know, but for some reason I don't want to ask.

For one thing, if it is someone I know, and wanted to talk to, I would have their number programmed into my phone. And if it is a guy that I have met over the last nine months, it's probably not someone who I want to hear from. Unless it is the singer and he's coming to his senses and realizes that I am worth doing the work for.

Also, it's kind of fun sending messages to someone and not knowing who it is. A lot of my conversations via text rely on my referencing information and details that only the other person and I know about. I have a very referential (elbow nudging, wink wink) kind of humor with people.

I feel like there was a time period (maybe after that first text) in which I should have just fibbed about losing my phone and not having the number of this friend of mine programmed in my phone. For some reason, at the time, I just didn't care. I was a little put off by that first text [what's the plan tonight], as if I was just some desperate girl waiting by the phone for him to decide to spend time with me and would jump at the chance to do anything with him given the chance. I was mad at the gall, if it is the singer, that I'd deleted him from my life and he was going to swagger in like nothing had happened.

So maybe it's not the singer. I haven't heard from him in any other medium, and usually we corresponded on facebook, but he's no longer my friend, because I deleted him from my life. It could just be some random girl friend of mine I haven't talked to in a while, but I just can't tell right now. And I suppose the mystery will stay a mystery, for now, because I have to wait for whoever it is to text me again...and I look forward to the surprise of the when.

this not about love, 'cause I am not in love*

The random texter texted again, despite being ignored last week. I don't know if it is the singer, but it might very well be.

this time, it was a comparison, a joke, an observation. I loved it and felt the thrill of being wooed by words, but again, I did not respond, I did not let it run my day, I noticed it and carried on with the things I had to do, spending maybe ten minutes discussing it at dinner with my friends.

later, I was urged to tell the timeline of our interactions, to find some meaning to it all, and in doing that, we discovered his songs, which I have already consumed, but happily did again, because despite his inability to find love when it is staring him in the face and showing up to hear him sing, he can sing about it very well.

this means nothing without him doing the work to get to know me and a random text or two is not enough.

*lyric from "not about love" by Fiona Apple

the hair factor

It came as a shock, that memory, and as I pulled it out of its sepia toned solution, bathed in nostalgia, I saw that connected to that memory were two more that were similar, my brain had filed those moments away together and they came rushing at me, the sappy sentimental moments that I'd forgotten.

The first one was just recently, as I was obsessing over every detail between the singer and me, every moment that I should have known it was all too good to be true, except there weren't any and then I remembered, like a shockwave, when he turned and smiled down at me and took the hair covering my face between his fingers and swooped it away.

As if that weren't enough the magnetic disc quickly followed and I recalled the moment when I was turned toward him and the rush of our breaths precluded the exchange of words and our eyes locked and the tip of his finger stumbled through the air like an engorged bumblebee and he drew a line across my forehead, watching my bangs fall back into place before he whispered, "I like your fringe."

Almost like a gush of oil came the next one, which was buried deep down, the memories of the burnham I've been trying to forget, but it couldn't be contained and I was right back there on that couch, in that quiet apartment, in that territory of discomfort and hesitation and he was looking at me and I was looking at him and then he pushed a lock of my hair out of my face that had fallen there when I had laughed off one of his many compliments and looked down in shame and he pushed it away and told me I was beautiful.

Now all I can see is the ridiculousness of my supposed thresholds; how easily I was snake charmed.

indeed

I want it all to be nothing, I can feel the ground under me trembling, I keep on trying not to admit it. I can pretend, it's easy, I am getting better at pretending, but there it was again, that palpability, that crackle.

His eyes sought me out, and in them I could see his joy, his gladness, his pleasure at my company and instead of reflecting that back, I looked away, looked down, hid my joy.

I don't want it all to be nothing, so I will fervently pretend it is until there's no more room for denials. Thankfully we are light years apart; the fabric of time has a firm grip on each of us and it is difficult to shake loose. It will take a long time to find each other in the same room again, and then I fear I won't be able to resist him.

His hands couldn't stay away from me, those fingertips that had produced such beautiful music were trying to coax vibrations from mine and where there have been walls was just air, he is one of the rare men that propel the best of me into the light; I was witty and beautiful, smart and graceful, radiant and delightful. And even though the timer had long gone off ("He finishes his set at 10, I'll say hello, chit chat and leave by 10:30," I insisted to Walter); I was snared in his orbit and didn't want to leave it anyway.

So I stayed.

And I let myself believe that maybe the crackle, the vibrations, the magic he waved in front of me might be real.

And then I woke up and remembered that there is nothing that anyone can do to please me. Especially them. So it is with great relish that I thrashed through the night with a machete and tore up the love letters we will never write and deposited that dream back into the deepest recesses of my brain.

It's not time yet.

Monday; or the day the earth stood still:

How can I deny that the only thing in the world I've ever been really good at is that stupid fucking cafe, the place that has made me cry, sweat, hate, change, love, expand, seen every layer of my onion peeled away so that all that remains is the core of who I am, not the people I thought I should be, the people I wanted to be, instead I've been reduced to the pearl nestled inside all that mess. It's where I spend the little bits of free time I have, it's what I call my home base, it is where I go when everything is wrong. I have said it better and more thoroughly before. Now it could all be different and what terrifies me most is not the stretch of time, the inevitable hard work, the endless opportunities to embarrass myself; it is simply that I would have to, be forced to, grow the fuck up.

As this was happening, as this was being presented to me, I was reeling from the discovery that my hopes for the fire were all empty and without meaning, that any connection I felt was maybe completely one sided, or that absence of proximity had prevailed in completely dousing whatever interest might have once been present. And I was surprised that even though I knew things were dwindling, my interest (due to an endless array of evidence that he was just a cardboard cutout) and my patience (the game is so tiresome), it still took my heart and hollowed it out like a blasted mine. Instant and heavy hollowness fell over me. It was not about the failure, or the loss, it was about the not knowing and hoping and then having it all blown away like nothing. And truly, it can always be construed as nothing, but maybe all that it provided was the lesson that I need a three dimensional man and not a flat beautiful thing to carry around.

And before all that, there was the frustration that no matter how hard I love people, despite their flaws, with a generosity that I deem them worthy of, they disappoint me by not returning that kindness, by holding my every movement and dialogue as evidence of my betrayal (or imminent betrayal) and it is like I am swimming, trying to tread water, in a vastness with no land and he pushed my head under water for no good reason. Of course I am sad that I hurt his feelings, but how many times have I stroked his ego, joined his causes, rallied in his name, and given him the most valuable commodity I have to offer anyone I love: my time?

So I went home, to that shoebox, to that place he drove me to, to that rat infested shithole and I made the calls I'd been putting off all day, the hard calls, the difficult calls, the calls that will propel me out of that place, away from that hate. I am the worst at doing the things I need to do but find difficult, and that was when the gears of the world began to shift, like a giant machine suddenly turned back on, first it was a hum in my ears and then it was a whirring of everything making sense again and the knowing that it was all going to be fine. As usual. Somehow that reassurance that lives for me like a constant pulse point was silent during that half hour.

So I am moving again. For the third time in little over a year. This time it will be the kind of soul assuaging environment I need to thrive again, to unfurl my limbs from the orbit I've been catapulted into. It happened the way everything I've ever been destined to do happened; I succumbed to the sweeping wave of fate and it was like putting a puzzle together, finding that all along I've been holding that last piece upside down and backwards and when I finally stopped and took a closer look, it dawned on me that I'd been making it harder than it had to be all along.

I resisted the urge to be extreme, I wanted to wipe it all away, the tentacles of me that spread and gotten bigger than I expected, started the fire, which died out; that led to the singer, which was an accident anyway, and finally gave me the joyful experience of being gotten by the brain. So instead of pulling in, pulling away, hiding, I sent them both messages that were friendly and open and without expectation. It didn't surprise me that the brain was prompt in his response, for he has nothing to lose and has done this before, showing his expertise again and again. I am enjoying that he is so good at the game, because I need someone right now who can play the game with me. It doesn't hurt that I love love love that brain of his. His vocabulary alone could set ships sailing.

It took the singer a couple days to report back to me, and it may very well be that he is busy with projects (the two buzzwords most oft used to impose distance and disrupt the landslide). I realize at this point there is no one perfect man for me anyhow, and it will certainly not be someone who can't do the work of getting to know me. So rather than let the moments we shared fester in my mind to grow into an apparition that will never match him, I've let it go, let him go, let that urgency sit it out. I find the more I do this the less painful the disappointments are, because I never give too much of me. At least not without some inspiration.

In the end, I don't regret the risks I've taken because I know I would've regretted not taking them. And each disappointment teaches me something new about what I need.

crackled

It came as a complete surprise. It was supposed to be a nothing. A toss up. A beginning of something else.

I felt it surge through me and tried to lance it, to clamp it down, to keep it bound. And then he felt it too. He let me know with the tips of his fingers, and they travelled over me in a dance and I was delighted to imagine he felt it too. And even more impressed that he was able to express that in such a subtle perfect way.

Mmmm. Palpability is so much easier to digest. It's so gratifying. It reminds me that I've been doing it again, because something feels so much better than the nothing I've been trying to force.

Instant crackle. So so so good.