 A Thin Line |
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I went to the martini bar with S. last night. I had nothing to do, and I'm trying to procrastinate finishing The Amber Spyglass because I just can't imagine how sad I will be when I complete the trilogy, so I decided to call him. He had called me the night before and we'd chatted for a while and decided to do something soon.
So I just called him, and we decided to go out for a few drinks. He'd never been to this bar before. I mean, that is just a sin. The poor boy really has been a hermit for the past six years.
We sat sipping our beers and munching on our grilled vegetable sandwich and shrimp po-boy, talking about I don't even know what. Feeling warm by the white light of the still-erect Christmas tree. Only here, I think, do people actually adhere to the "It's still Christmas until Epiphany!" rule.
We talked about how part of me will always be attracted to certain people and how part of him will always be attracted to this girl with whom he's been having a brief affair (supposedly it's over). He said, "It would be so much easier if I could just hate her." I said, "It's rare that we can completely love or completely hate someone. Usually we do both at the same time. Therein lies the human drama." We looked at each other and both cracked up that I could say "therein lies the human drama" with a straight face.
We saw a guy whom we've known but haven't seen forever, and when he walked away, S. said, "I'm realizing that I don't have a life anymore. How much I gave up for my relationship. Seeing people like him makes me realize that. It was good to see him." Then he paused and said quietly, "It's good to see you."
I sat there chewing for a moment and then said, "I'm glad we can be friends again."
"Me, too."
We went to his studio apartment and I curled up in his beloved popason chair and he in the bed as we watched a Dave Matthews DVD. We got a little stoned and I spoke extemporaneously about the lyrics and he about the chord progressions. That's S. and I. I hear the words, he hears the music.
We toasted to living it up until we're old and senile. "Celebrate we will, for life is short but sweet for certain." I mean, I'm not sure there is anything I believe more fervently than that.
Last night I noted that he has a blanket I gave him for his nineteenth birthday hanging over one of his windows. "I gave you that!" I exclaimed. "Yes," he said. "My ex liked it so much that she stashed it in a closet for six years." We laughed.
He showed me a model of a Japanimation action figure he had assembled. It was a robot with wings. "That looks like someone who'd be a character in the books I'm reading," I noted with appreciation.
Smiling, I watched him smiling back at me, and I thought suddenly, God, how I loved you. And I wondered if he was thinking the same thing.
I went home and crawled into bed, where I dreamt of him all night. I can't remember the last time I dreamt of him. I'm the kind of person who becomes very convinced of the truth of her dreams. If I dream I'm married to Slash from Guns and Roses, it will take me a few days to convince myself that I've never met old Slash. In my dreams of S. last night I loved him again. I'm hoping I can shake the feeling, because I'm not sure how comfortable with how warm it makes my heart.
I don't feel any disgust for S. Or even any anger. What was once anger and hurt, with time, simply faded. As it is supposed to do, thankfully, according to life's design of our minds and our memories. I am forever astounded by the capacity of the human heart to heal itself. That is the most vomit-inducing platitude I've ever uttered, but somehow I believe it's true. Believing in that is what helps me get through the day without the fear that used to paralyze me that something so devastating would happen that I would never recover.
I refuse to feel anything more than friendship for him. I just refuse. Then there is the attraction factor. The first few times we hung out, I didn't really feel it. I guess I was still to entangled in the kinetic field of lust that was connecting me to someone else for a while there.
But it would be retarded for me to deny the fact that S. is a beautiful man. His beauty is in the eye of every beholder. It's impossible not to find him completely adorable. It would be silly to deny that we used to love to get naked together. Even when that isn't at the forefront of my mind when we're together, I realized last night that it's definitely lurking in the back. I mean, how can it not be? For the love of God.
It's not an immediate desire to throw myself on top of him. It's more of a slow, steady, sweet knowledge that I wouldn't be entirely against it if he suddenly threw himself on top of me.
I don't know. I do not see us getting involved. I really don't. I don't like the way I felt when I woke up this morning, though. Feeling closer to him than I should. Simultaneously holding myself back from wanting to see him again. Soon. Remembering that day in the cold November rain (God forgive me, I am all about Axl & Co. lately!) six years ago when I asked him through tears if we could start over, and he said, through tears, "No."
My heart was broken. It's true. And maybe some of the pleasure I've derived from our recent contact stems from the fact that he called me. He needed me. And I was there for him. I was for him what he ultimately failed to be for me -- a source of comfort. Of strength.
Did I relish that he turned to the woman he left when he left the woman he left her for?
Holy hell yes. I'm human.
It's impossible to hate someone who has no hatred in him. S.'s heart is soft. It has no discernable hardness. He is fundamentally a kind and vulnerable person. Maybe I'm only designed to hate people who have the capacity to hate me in return.
It's an abstract impossibility to define what it was that I once felt for him and to compare it to what I feel now.
How does a person reconcile what it was to once love a person in the past and not hate him in the present? What feeling, what emotion rests between love and hate?
So here I am, stuck caring about him in a state of vagueness. I know him so well, or at least I did a long time ago. Do you stop knowing someone when you stop seeing him for six years? Does he stop knowing me? It seems that he should. But it doesn't feel that way, somehow.
There was a time our happiness seemed neverending. I hear Mother in Ragtime sing that song and I know there was that time. I know that it took me a while as an adolescent to extract myself from that time and that pain. Now that that which was the source of such joy and such pain is here again, I almost have to squint my eyes and wrinkle my brow to see myself in that time that was. It's almost like I feel like I can't remember how I felt unless I can somehow feel that way again. It's like if I can't feel it again, maybe I never felt it at all. Like maybe it was never even real. I feel myself reaching out to who I was, who he was. Were those people so different from who they are today? That's it. That's the frustrating part. When we're together, it's like we're the same as we ever were. Only together, we're not. And I don't know whether to be happy or sad about that. I nursed the heart of that girl. I nursed it until it was whole again. Why do I suddenly feel somehow guilty that it's no longer broken? Like I've lost her forever?
I feel like the me I am today is slapping the face of the me I used to be, because what made her who she was then long ago slipped away. Suddenly the fact that I made it -- that I am okay, that I survived the loss of him and of that part of myself -- feels like some kind of betrayal. To her. To me.
And I don't why this is something I am so desperate to understand.
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The Amber Spyglass, the third book in the His Dark Materials trilogy. I'm really struggling with who's Right and who's Wrong. I need it to be clear cut. It's not. Life is ambiguous enough on its own -- sometimes I need to know who is Good and who is Bad in fiction. I can't wrap my brain around this quite yet. Hearing Liz Phair, Exile in Guyville Journal Quote du Jour There is no such thing as perfect, and too-high expectations will blind you to what you truly do have. Bagels and mousakka and a child’s expression at the sight of an aquarium and a delicately strong watch and a pile of books and a life I didn’t exactly expect but thoroughly enjoy when I look at it with true vision and not through the veil of expectations and disappointment. Sometimes you just have to breathe and be and accept life for its subtle beauty and quiet joys. And yes, sometimes there’s a little blood too, and sometimes people disappoint. But sometimes they don’t. --Scenes from a Birthday, from Tamar's Visions and Revisions Inspiration du Jour The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet. All's Well that Ends Well, V:3 Inspiration du Jour "You have got a dæmon," she said decisively. "Inside you." He didn't know what to say. "You have," she went on. "You wouldn't be human else. You'd be...half dead. We seen a kid with his dæmon cut away. You en't like that. Even if you don't know you've got a dæmon, you have. We was scared at first when we saw you. Like you was a night-ghast or something. But then we saw you weren't like that at all." The Subtle Knife |
