Crushes
For the sake of unneeded organization, I partition my post-San Diego days into three categories. Hopefully, I am about to create a fourth.1. Getting comfortable
2. Unprecedented Growth
3. Heart break
Actually, I am currently in a bit of a void. Post #3, but not quite ready for whatever #4 will be.
For the first 5-6 months I was attempting to break out of my well-earned shell. Most old friends had graduated from beer and rock and video games to beer and tv and domesticity. All except for Dan. That loser is just like me and exactly the opposite of me at the same time. More on him some other day. In the time I was gone (4 years +) he had made lots of new friends. Most of them were much younger than us. They were more talented, more energetic, more dramatic, more intelligent, but less experienced and less knowledgeable. This is the group that I slowly entered.
It took a long time. I didn't entirely feel comfortable around them, ...but eventually the static, waste, and stuffiness of my 2 year seclusion in SD started to wear off. Their hippness rubbed off on me, and through the band I started to expand my circle of friends to include some of the better known musicians and artists in the city.
Unprecedented Growth
Because of you, I saw this process through. 8 months. You were there to play mental chess with me. We invented the non-sexual crush and obsessed ourselves with our never-ending conveyor belt of sexual crushes. My life through the band and new friends was spinning upward. Crushes came and went. Dating was re-learned, passions were discovered, life altering decisions were made.
There was disappointment, ...but nothing like sadness. Nothing that stung the memory and the heart. Except 9/11, ...but that is quite another matter.
High and heady binges. Long emails dissecting our dreams (a favorite past time). Long discussions about Dan and the psycho bitch, Dan and (A), Dan and ...well, just about everything Dan did. The story I began depicting a fictional future trip to London by us.
...Then, two cloves entered our lives.
Heartbreak
We drifted. You had your struggle and I had mine. Mine ended in a messy Train vs Garbage truck wreck. Yours is like cancer in constant remission.
Now
And here we are. 12 months later. 12 months that feels alternately like 12 years or 12 days. No crushes. No romantic adventures. No heady discourse. Just poor health, worry, depression (for the first time in my life), smothering restless anxiety, sloth.
Small efforts have been made to resurrect the battleship, to raise it from it's depths, but that is really impossible. You can never go back to what once was. You can only go forward. This part is a little tricky, because you have very little control over what is ahead of you. You only have control over what is around you, and right now you are no longer around me. But I can't go back to those days, ...so I guess you cannot always control what is around you either.
Last weekend a saw a small glimmer of something I will call speculative joy. It's the beginning of what we used to call crushes.
I saw her at the MP last Friday.
I have seen her about a dozen times over the last year. Each time I just looked on in calm, distant admiration. As if she was a Porsche or a yacht. Unattainable.
Then, as I followed the doc out the door at closing time, I leaned over to place my empty Newcastle bottle on the bar. I place it adjacent to her, though not deliberately. She looks up. Smiles. I look away. Walk away.
It wasn't a "Hi, come here and buy me a drink sailor" smile. No, it was "oh, a non-threatening, not entirely disgusting human in my personal space. No biggie. Hi."
Coming from her, that is more than I would have expected.
Guess where I will be tomorrow night?
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