No Matter Where You Are, I Can Still Hear You When You Drown, You've Traveled Very Far, Just To See You I'll Come Around, When I'm Down

--"Drown", Smashing Pumpkins

We had just finished our "salmon fish" sandwiches that Breanne had packed along as a way to save money when she told me that we should go swimming.

The sandwiches weren't quite the fare I had grown accustomed to on our trip up and down the coast, but saving money was saving money. Also, the making and planning of the picnic was something nice she wanted to do for the both of us. I had gone to the trouble of arranging most of the details and it made it feel like she was contributing to take care of this one meal. Like any extended trip, we had had our ups and downs on this particular one and it was an easy concession to give her.

Part of me wanted to say no simply because the thought of swimming wasn't something I had been looking forward to on that day. In the motel I had told her I would, but the vast part of me was hoping that this would be yet another promise that she'd forget I had made. Either that or I was hoping that she would get far too preoccupied with something else to let me off the hook. I don't know--the whole trip had been a delicate balancing act of convincing one another where to go and what to do. Towards the end we were finding it difficult to disguise our annoyance with one another at parts. I wouldn't say a general animosity had been built up; we were still on more than friendly terms with one another. We had just stopped being as polite as we had begun the trip, again, as is par for the course with any getaway where one is pressed to spend days on end with one another.

"Can't I just skip the swim? I'm not in the mood right now," I asked, hope of a convenient partial amnesia still in my voice.

"You promised, darling," she said as she began to unwrap the towel from around her chest and waist.

No such dice.

She'd taken a short dip in the waves while I had been searching for a suitably close parking space to leave the rental car. We couldn't have been separated more than five or six minutes. Yet in that time she had managed to drop the picnic basket, the towels, and other gear off, and find he way to the water's edge. When I had found her next to the basket the water was already dripping from the chestnut brown tendrils of her head. I had shrugged my shoulders in puzzlement. Then we had eaten.

Her body was still damp in places and it showed brazenly in all the areas where her two piece hadn't bothered to cover. Normally, the sight of her gentle curves and gentle face glowing in the afternoon sunlight would have been enough for me to forgo any notions of resisting her. After all, she had made a career of getting what she wanted on the strength of sheer determination and sheer beauty alone. But, overall, it was a different kind of day that day. I just didn't feel like forsaking my original choice for that of the opportunity to be next to her. I'd been next to her enough in the previous six days. I was finding the thought of being able to be apart from her a refreshing change of pace. We had argued about this earlier on the drive down to the beach, whether or not there was an obligation to do everything together on a vacation. Her point of contention was why would you ever want to go away with someone if you didn't want to spend every waking second with them? My main point was that, as much as I liked spending time with her, it felt false to pretend that I was hanging on her every word or agree with her every sentiment just on principle we were there together. I didn't need her to be within arm's reach every second of the day to still feel like I wanted to be on this trip with her. I only needed to know we were together without actually having to be physically together.

"Ten little 'ole minutes and then you can come right out, I promise," she pleaded, laying her blue and white towel next to where we had laid the food. "Ten little 'ole minutes and then you can just watch me swim out there."

She smiled with those delicately dimpled cheeks of hers. She was really pulling out all the stops. I don't know if the swimming was really important to her in the long run. Having been friends with her for quite a length by that time, I knew the getting her way was important to her. She wanted to win this detente. And when she wanted to win it was almost pointless to argue with her.

She coddled up to me in order to take my hand in hers. I took off my beat-up USC football t-shirt and we made our way to the water. She didn't seem too concerned about the picnic basket or the towels, and everything else was locked up in the car, so she made us take off in a run for the shoreline. Never mind the fact that I very rarely to run my hardest, but I had just eaten and this was supposed to be my vacation. I didn't stop running, but once we reached the water's edge I made it a point to deliberately catch my breath. She took it all in stride, patiently waiting for me to rest up a bit, before she directed us into the water.

Little Miss Chipper has never been the type to wait on anybody. As long as I've known her she's always been the type to boldly strike out on her own and expect people to fall in behind her. She doesn't so much lead as trailblaze. It's one of the aspects of her personality I've always liked about her. It's also one of the aspects that can get on my nerves. On that trip especially, since it was the first time ever we had spent more than three days in each other's company, I was learning that that portion of her brain never shuts off. She's always willing to go just an extra step farther, stay out just an extra hour longer, and exert herself just an extra ounce harder all the time. That's another part of the reason why I didn't want to take that swim with her, to see if it would slow her down any. As I came to find out, it's literally exhausting to be her friend sometimes. It's difficult to be that enthusiastic for as long and as diligently she is all the time.

Especially with me how I am. I never liked to exert myself fully unless it was for something truly important.

Swimming was and never will be among these objectives.

As soon as the frigidness of the water hit my skin I knew I'd blame her for my discomfort. It wasn't fair, but I knew it would be true. The first couple of days on this trip that we had gone swimming I'd been more than accommodating. Hell, there was a huge part of me that relished every second of those first couple of times. It wasn't like she's ever been an eyesore to look at and the scantily clad choice of garments certainly didn't hurt the case. Couple with that with her infectious exuberance and I had been just as impulsive as she had been. We had frolicked both to and fro. We had stayed in the water long enough on both days to prune up quite extensively. We had splashed and splayed and swam till it was too dark and we were too hungry to stay in the water any more. But this time was different. This time I had already had enough. Swimming, at least in the sense she knew it, had lost all sense of fun for me. I was ready to move onto something else and she obviously wasn't. Whereas before the cold sting of the water on my face and shoulder blades I would have found invigorating, this time I just found it overly uncomfortable. Whereas before the idea of spending hours in the water I would have found enjoyable, this time I was finding the idea just exhausting. I knew I wouldn't be able to keep up the facade for very long. The water was so cold and my nerves were beginning to fray so abruptly. I would not be able to hold my temper in check for any lengthy period of time, I was sure of it.

"If there's a space between heaven and Earth, I think we're swimming in it. I can't think of anywhere else I'd want to be right now," she said. "I can't imagine that such a place exists, you know?"

I watched her brush the spray out of her eyes, smile ever-present on her lips, and I wondered how she did it. I wondered how she held onto such joy no matter what conditions befell around her. I wondered how she held it together in such a fashion that even I could be taken in by her optimism more often than not. Her thinking was on a whole other wavelength than mine. It existed in a place where people actually could be invincible and where the wings of faith in something better being just around the corner carried you. That was where she lived, where I only got to seldom visit.

I pushed myself into the water to hide my amazement. There was no sense in letting her catch on that my thinking was slightly less benevolent as hers. I was in a mood and I knew it. I was trying hard not to let my annoyance ruin the day. There had already been enough turmoil in the last twenty-four hours. I did not want to see any more.

"Hell's bells, you were down there a long time. Were you trying to swim to Hawaii or something?" she asked as soon as my head cleared the water.

"Maybe."

I heard more than felt her arms wrap around me from behind. In one sense they felt wonderful, like they had always felt. However, in another sense, I knew what they meant. She only did that when she felt something was wrong, when she felt there was something that running headlong would not solve the problem.

"You hate it out here, don't you? You can't even pretend for me right now," she asked, more hurt than anything else. "I can see it on your face. It's as plain as a candle in a room with all the lights shut off."

"I'm sorry. I tried," I offered to her. I tilted my head sideways so it touched where her face was now resting.

"It's okay. I thought the water would be a good thing. I reckoned it would wash some of what's been eating both of us recently. I guess I was wrong."

"It's not your fault. I've just been feeling... off for the last few days. I'll get over it."

I felt her let go of me and her head slip away.

"You want to head back. I'm sure it's been ten minutes."

"If you don't mind."

"Not at all. Swim back and I'll join you after, say, half-an-hour?"

"Sounds like a plan to me."

As I started to make my way back to shore, I thought I was being a jackass about the whole affair. I've never been good at covering up my feelings when decorum dictates that it would be best not to let them show. I've never had much restraint when it came to that department. Believe me, it's gotten me into trouble on more than one occasion. It had been getting better up until that day, but the cumulative effect of too much driving and too little sleep had done a number on the part of my brain which controlled my acting skills. I couldn't fake it any more. I was feeling restless and there would be no getting around it.

I was more concerned about the effect it was having on her than it was having on me. I knew it would pass, but I didn't think she ever had to deal with somebody in person who has been in a funk where she was powerless to stop it. She's always been the type to get some sort of results. The only problem was I wasn't her usual madcap kind of friend, dealing with some mundane problem she could jerryrig a solution in a jiffy. There was nothing concrete for her to put her considerable emotional muscles into. My problems were and always have been ghosts. They've always been little wisps than actual monsters. Whenever somebody else has tried to fight them back, they've always failed. You can't fight a ghost, after all. You can only wait for them to leave of their own accord.

If you've ever had a best friend you'll understand what I was feeling. I wanted her to help me. I wanted her to get me feeling right again so I didn't ruin the remainder of the trip. I wanted her to be the one person who could break through whatever psychological barrier I had erected that was preventing me from enjoying myself, but I knew she would never be able to. That's what was distressing me most of all, that she wanted to help and I wasn't capable of letting her. It's like the salmon fish sandwiches. She thought those would be a good first stone to lay on the road to enjoying each other's company like we had been at the beginning of the trip. She couldn't see that what was happening wasn't something you couldn't patch with sandwiches and sweet tea. There was a hole in me--a small hole, to be sure--but it was getting wider and deeper every minute we spent together. And I was feeling like it would be too deep for us to recover from by the end of the week. She wanted to help, but all she was doing was allowing us to sink even further even faster.

I walked back to our stuff and sat down.

I watched her swim for awhile. Thirty minutes soon turned into closer to forty-five. She was upset too. That's what those extra fifteen minutes were all about. She was trying to decipher through what she should say or do next, try to figure out where it was we would go from here.

All I could think of was what it would be like if she started drowning out there. At that point in time, I actually wondered what I would do. Would I rush in to rescue her? Or would I watch from shore as she drowned? I imagined through that possibility. Doing nothing, feeling nothing, and letting her go. It would mean not having to get back in that water. It would also mean not having to muddle through the rest of the trip with her. All this without having to go through with the mess of trying to explain myself to her. The amount of talking around my issues was the burden. I was fine explaining how I felt to her; it was the subsequent attempts on her part to fuse everything back together that was the difficulty. It was hard telling her I wasn't feeling any different two days in a row. It would be easier to let her drown and be done with it.

It would be easier to let the problem slip beneath the blue and white waves rather than keep it afloat. She was the problem, her and her need to fix everything right away. If she could just let it be, everything would correct itself. But she was like a shark in the water, smelling blood and not able to let anything go, including me until she had devoured everything in sight. I wanted her to know how I felt, not have her fix me.

She could drown.

She could die.

I could let her.

And I could live again.

That's what I do, I take a good thing and I drown it until it is no more. What we'd had in those first couple of days was good. It was great, in fact. It went way better than I could have ever thought. But the more time passed, the more I realized that such an achievement was going to take all my effort to keep up, to keep up with her. It was exhausting to be so considerate and upbeat all the time. It was exhausting to be so on-the-ball and on-the-spot with everything we did all the time. It was exhausting being in love with her. Because once you started down that path, you could never stop. You always had to keep it up because you didn't want to disappoint her. You didn't want her to say, "What happened? Why aren't you acting the same way you did the other night?" You didn't want her to leave you behind.

You had to keep swimming to keep pace with her. You couldn't stop. You couldn't stop or you'd drown. Worse yet, you saw she would leave you. That would be worse than death.

I wanted to see her dead. I wanted her to die. It would be so easy that way. I wouldn't have to say anything. I wouldn't have to lift a finger. I wouldn't have to kill her. I could just let it happen and say it was an accident.

And it would all be over.

I took those first couple of days, how great they felt, and I twisted it into a reality where she was trying to show me up. I did what I always do, I made something that made me happy and I convinced myself it was going to make me feel awful in the end. Not only that, but I convinced myself that such an arrangement was intentional on her part. She was making me feel this way on purpose because she knew I was no good. She knew I could never keep up with her, someone who could make her happy. She was making me too altogether tired to want to bother with her.

She was taking something that was for once good in my life and she was killing it, smothering it to pieces, holding it underneath the waves until it couldn't breathe any more.

I could let her drown and I could be done with it all.

But then I watched her some more.

I noticed she still had that goofy, but endearing smile on her face even though she was out there by herself. I knew she was going through the same problems I was. She had told me as much herself. Yet she wasn't the one sitting on the sand contemplating how best to get rid of me. In fact, she was doing her darndest to fix things. And there I was, hating her for the effort. I was despising her because she couldn't leave me in my misery. Where was the logic in that? So what if she couldn't actually help me through the process? She was trying. She was doing something positive in the only way she knew how. That isn't the handcraft of someone out to get me. That isn't even close to that. That's the handcraft of somebody who cared about me enough not to see me wallow. That's the handcraft of someone who was happy to be with me even when I wasn't. That was someone who genuinely could be happy enough for the both of us.

That wasn't somebody you allowed to drown. That was somebody you should save no matter how cold the water got or how tired you were or even how many more days you still go. That was somebody worth saving.

She started to paddle back to me after awhile. She was going to meet me up where I was sitting I guessed to settle things.

Instead, I calmly walked out into the dimly crashing waves and I met up with her halfway. I stopped in front of her and gave her a short kiss.

"Not that I mind, but what was that for, sugar?"

"For being you, for continuing to swim even after I'd stopped."

"Really? That's all?"

"Really. That's all. I guess I'm glad you didn't drown or nothing."

She looked confused at that last sentiment.

"My pleasure?"

It's always been easy to dislike her. She's vain, stubborn, and more than a little reckless for her own good. She can be wicked and cruel, and sometimes downright vindictive. It's always been easy to see the moss beneath the stone. Yet there's always been something that's kept me coming back. There's always been enough there for me to want to hold onto. Maybe it's the fact she's never given up on me or us, even though I've tried walking away more than a few times. And maybe it's the fact she makes it impossible to stay mad at her because her heart's never entirely in the wrong place for long. Yes, I've wanted to strangle her more than once. Yes, she's not perfect and, yes, she is the worst woman I've ever known.

But she's also the best thing that's ever happened to me and the last person I would ever want dead.

(She can also make a mean salmon fish sandwich....)

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

How Can You Just Walk Away From Me, When All I Can Do Is Watch You Leave, 'Cause We Shared The Laughter And The Pain, And Even Shared The Tears

--"Against All Odds", Phil Collins

A weird fact about me is that I've never known anybody personally who's ever gotten divorced. I'm not talking about met or am acquainted with, I'm talking about none of my close friends or friends' families, and no one in my immediate family (cousins, aunts, uncles, &c...) has ever gotten divorced. Much like the ability to smell, the concept of divorce is a foreign one to me.

I understand the idea behind it, though. I completely comprehend why two people decide to call it quits and break-up. That's a rationale that I don't have to empathize very much with to experience. Nope, what I'm talking about is not quite being aware of all that goes into getting divorced. To me it's akin to super-sized break-up. If breaking up with a boyfriend or girlfriend is an 8 on the pain scale, then I'd have to say getting divorced must feel like a 10, with death maybe cranking it all the way up to 11. That's all it is to me, an imaginary plot point on some graph somewhere. I think until I experience it firsthand I'll never full know what it's exactly.

That's rather sad in a way. I hear all the time about friends of friends getting divorced or people on the street that I might pass by. Hell, even Breanne came close, but to me every time I hear the word I always approach in a scientific manner rather than an emotional one. I have the burning curiosity to want to know what it's like in the same vein as wanting to know what it'd be like to have a house that spins or to actually shoot a fireball from one's palms. Thoughts of the devastation it wreaks, lives it destroys, never enter into my consciousness. I have this clinical view of the word that belies any and all understanding of the minutae involved. Somewhere along the line I grew detached from the meaning behind the word and grew into wanting to know more about without going through it myself.

It's just like dying when it doesn't involve someone I know personally.

My mom could tell me a former classmate, a former teacher, or even a third cousin died and I always ask how it happened. Once I get the answer to that, then I seem to forget all about it ever happening. That's not even the worst of it. My grandpa died a few years back and it didn't seem to affect me at all. I took it about as hard as if I took the news the Red Sox lost a game. Yeah, I felt bad, but it wasn't something a good night's sleep couldn't cure. I just didn't feel it.

That's what divorce is for me. It's just a word I don't understand. I'll attack it like any other word I don't understand. I'll look it up on the internet, I'll ask some people I know, but I won't pursue it any further than that. Once I feel I have a cursory understanding of it, that's usually good enough for me. It shouldn't be, though. I should feel more when somebody tells me that another couple is getting divorced. It should affect me somewhat. I should want to care. I should care. Here I call myself a romantic and I can't get worked up about a journey's end as much as I can about a journey's beginning. I should care. I should care because the end of a lifelong commitment isn't something that's supposed to be commonplace. It's supposed to be the exception to the rule. It's supposed to be a big deal. I should care. I should care because whenever someone gets hurt emotionally, it should hurt me too because that's what you're supposed to do when you're a human being. You're supposed to lend support to both stranger and friend alike. I should care because it might happen to me someday.

I don't know--it's just beyond me. Divorce is something that hasn't hit me personally yet and until it does it will remain in that fascinating, but ultimately forgettable category in my brain.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

But I Know My Luck Too Well, Yes, I Know My Luck Too Well, And I'll Probably Never See You Again, I'll Probably Never See You Again

--"Hand in Glove (live)", The Smiths

One of the principles I've always believed in was that you can't escape your legacy. Anything you wrought before will come back to haunt you. This is a different idea than karma, which I do not believe in, because karma implies that your comeuppance will come in a vastly different form. My belief is that no matter what you do somebody is going to know or somebody will find out and that very same thing is what will bite you in the arse. It doesn't matter how much you try to avoid it. It doesn't matter how much you try to deny it. Fairly soon somebody's going to have the whole story one way or another.

For example, I've made a living out of doing away with the old and ushering the new. Be it school, jobs, or elsewhere--there hardly has been a situation where I've made a conscious effort to retain anything of the old lifestyle that was connected to these places. For schools I don't bother with going to reunions or visiting the old places for memory's sake. For jobs I hardly ever consciously wish I was back at a previous job. Especially with people, once I leave a place all the friends I may have made there I don't have a nagging desire to see again. It seems to me the people I can remain friends with the longest are the people I don't associate with any one chapter (i.e. school or job) in my life, people who are outside of classification as belonging to any one section of my life. It's inevitable that I'll move on. I'm just the type of person who's constantly bucking for something new and something different. Once that need becomes overwhelming, I sever any and all ties. If something is bad or old, I don't want anything reminding me of that fact once I've moved onto something else.

You can imagine my consternation then when presented with a mother who insists on updating with the goings-on of each and everyone of my elementary school classmates every opportunity she gets. Just this past week she informed me that my old friend Tommy now has a kid and that his parents are always visiting him to babysit. This is coupled with the constant updates I get of my old friend John who--wouldn't you know--had the luck to find a job in the very same building where my mom works at. Don't think I find out more information than I care to know stemming from the act of serendipity. Thank the gods that she has much more limited access to the daily shenanigans of my high school classmates or else I might start receiving dossiers on each and everyone I've ever met eventually. I mean--she couldn't have managed to track down the people I might care a whit about--like Erin or Nicole, Jennifer or Stephanie. Nope, it has to be the people that I've spent years trying to distance myself from due to the very fact I think of those people as my past and, quite frankly, I didn't like who I was in the past. More specifically, I didn't like who I was in elementary school/junior high.

And yet, there always seems to be one person who manages to sneak through the wall I build around myself. People like Jeff or Albert from Bally's who I only worked with all of eight months and yet have remained on relatively close speaking terms with for almost three years now. Even though I've lost touch with everyone else in that department and company, those two seem to have snuck their way into being at least a little bit a part of my daily plans.

The same holds true for Casey Weatherfield.

As much I hold a bitter taste for St. Rita's, students and faculty, Casey seems to have wormed her way through to being a separate entity from all involved there. The sad thing is we weren't even friends there. We weren't even anything there. I didn't hate her. She didn't idolize me. We just didn't travel in each other's circles. We were basically off each other's radars. I knew her name. Aside from that, I was clueless. To give you an idea of how far removed we were from each other in those days, my mom doesn't even bother to tell me information about her. This is the same woman that thought I would be interested in the news that so-and-so just learned to play the guitar, even though so-and-so and I haven't spoken in twenty years now.

In fact, if it wasn't for the graduation dance I doubt we would have even been comfortable enough to approach each other when we did meet a few months back. If you recall, that was the incident where Sara asked me to dance because. of everyone in my class, I was the only one too shy to dance with anyone for that first hour. You'll also recall how as soon as I got out onto the dance floor my whole class "oohed" and "awwwed" enough to drive me scurrying for the nearest bathroom in embarrassment. As aforementioned, St. Rita's was not my finest couple of years. Well, after I'd calmed my nerves down after about a half-hour in the bathroom, it was Jennifer and Sara, and one other person who basically held my hand through the aftermath. That person, of course, was Casey. I don't know if I would have ever had the nerve to face everyone out there if it hadn't been for those three. They did what was necessary to make me feel like I hadn't blundered egregiously only minutes earlier. I don't even know what I was worried about; it wasn't like I would be seeing any of them a week later after we had all graduated. I guess one's reputation with one's immediate peer group, no matter how temporary, is always at the forefront of one's motivations. Whatever the reason, I came out of that bathroom better for not having to immediately trot out to the dance floor. Instead, I was ushered to one of the tables that had been set up and the four of us just talked about everything else besides getting back out there.

Eventually within ten or fifteen minutes, Jennifer and Sara were pulled away by their other friends, but Casey and I sat talking at the table just a few minutes longer. No, it wasn't enough time to make up for the six or seven years we has basically ignored each other. But it was enough for me to realize that perhaps I should have gotten to know her a little bit better before the last week of our time together in Sierra Madre. She was sweet. More importantly, she showed genuine concern for me, a person she hardly knew up until that point. I remember talking with her about her plans for high school the following year. She wanted to stay in the Pasadena area, but her parents were pressuring her to attend somewhere closer to the San Marino area. This, of course, lead into the requisite discussion about staying in touch the following year and the years following that. Those were just empty promises made by two kids too young to realize that nobody stays in touch with their elementary school friends. No one. "Real" friends aren't made until high school. Yet promise we did.

Nope, I never did get to dance with her that night. In fact, I was scared off from dancing with anyone else that night. It wouldn't be until freshman year of La Salle that I ever got to dance with someone of the opposite sex, which has always been a secret shame of mine.

I'd like to say that I upheld my word and made a conscious effort to stay in touch with her. I'd like to say she made that huge of an impression on me from one conversation that I made it a point to keep her in my life. I'd like to say that, but I can't. Like I said, St. Rita's was my old school by that point and I wanted a clean break from it all. Casey Weatherfield fell by the wayside just like all my other fellow Raiders. It wasn't anything she did. It was entirely me and my need to distance myself from the scared, shy kid I was when I was there.

I don't know what it was about that school that made me that way. All my guy friends from there managed to transition fairly well into adolescence. I pretty much was the shyest kid there when it came to all the guy-girl stuff. I remember one incident where my four close friends--Paul, Phillip, John, and Tommy--were all calling me up to come to this party that was being held by Andy, another classmate of ours. They kept trying to convince me that it would be good for me to come. I wouldn't be convinced, though. I couldn't be convinced all stemming from the fact that I knew it was going to be a boy/girl party and that, frankly, was too much pressure for me to take on. It's not like I had any discernible mannerisms that would have embarrassed me. I didn't stammer when I talked to girls. I didn't keep my eyes from looking at them. I didn't do any of that. My biggest faux pas was an inability to be comfortable around them. I just couldn't focus my conversation with them in that type of setting. Talking at school was easy and talking about non-sexual things was a breeze. It was just for some reason in that carnival atmosphered where I was expected in a very specific manner, I couldn't act in that very specific manner. It wasn't the pressure. It had more to do with the loss of control. It had to do with the idea that I wasn't free to be how I wanted with my own agenda in mind. I felt like I had to have a different agenda, one that I wasn't entirely comfortable having. Then again, it just might have to do with the fact that I've almost always been more comfortable the less people I have hanging on my every thought or deed.

It also might have to do with the fact that in that school I always felt like an outsider. I wasn't somebody that belonged to groups until high school. At St. Rita's I always had the impression that the majority of people there got to know each other outside of school. Whether it was sports, church, or some other function, I never had a set of parents who were keen on acclimating me to life outside school with my classmates. Sure, they'd take me to my friends' house, but they almost never were up for doing anything school-related that involved driving me anywhere after class had let out. I can't say I can blame them; a lot of the time when I get home from work the last thing I want to do is leave the house again. Yet this had the effect of limiting my contact with everyone else. I always had the skulking suspicion that everyone knew each other better from this time and that I was always the poorer for it.

Maybe then I would have gotten to know Miss Weatherfield better before I did.

However, I must not have been too much of a wallflower because when I was over at National's over near Buena Park back in the thick of football season, who should I see but a certain dirty blonde? I mean--it was bound to happen sooner or later, running into somebody I knew from Sierra Madre days again. After all, it was one thing to run into Erin at The Only Place in Town while I was in high school, but going fifteen plus years without seeing anyone else from that school is pretty ridiculous, especially considering that I go back to my hometown at least once every few months and had been living there off and on in the interim between elementary school and now. She just walked right up to me, gave me a hug, and asked if I remembered her. I recognized her right away. She wasn't the prettiest girl in my class, but I don't think I'll ever forget that stupid graduation dance incident for as long as I live, including Casey's hand in it. It turns out that her and her girlfriend hadn't even meant to stop in at that National's on that day. They'd only popped in when their other Sunday plans fell through. I don't know--it's funny how chance happens like that. If I hadn't been so silly and locked myself in the bathroom, I doubt she would have even thought I was worth walking up to. And if she hadn't had her plans cancelled I probably could have gone the rest of my life without knowing anything else about her.

As it is, I think she knows too much about me. Her impression of me is unlike anyone else's I know. She basically knows the me before the real me, before I grew more confident and less worried about appearances. She knows the sheltered, scared version of me that I was before I went to high school and beyond. It's kind of scary, actually. She says she doesn't think about those days very often, but when we've talked she's always saying stuff like how she wouldn't have imagined me saying something like that ever. Or she'll show honest amazement at some of the crazy (and mean) things I've done in growing up. When I told her i was involved in a hit-and-run accident she practically flipped out. "But you were always so timid. You're the last person I would've thought would turn into a criminal." And when I told her that I'd managed to visit the emergency room with three different girls I've dated because of things I'd done in anger, she almost walked out. Yes, I have an easy time talking about such incidents, but it's also because most people I tell those anecdotes to have no history to compare it to. She's in the unique position of judging me by how I was when I truly was struggling to find myself. Even Breanne knew me when I was practically out of high school and well on my way to forming my current curmodgeony and stubborn personality. it's funny to see how much she remembers of me back then, because I really sound like a different person now.

From talking to her she doesn't share the same trepidation I possess. To her St. Rita's was an okay school and she had an okay time there. She doesn't share the horror stories I have. She doesn't share the sense of almost loathing that I have for it. In her mind, I'm overblowing a great many aspects about it.

That's exactly why I choose to ditch people I used to know, because as soon as most people are removed from a situation they look back with fondness upon it. I, in the meanwhile, tend to look with either sadness or regret. I almost never approach a memory with reverence. I almost never see the bright side to things being over. I'd rather forgive and forget everything I ever learned. I don't see the point in hanging onto unpleasantness longer than I have to.

And yet, for the foreseeable future, I plan on staying in touch with her. We're not eating buddies or anything, and I highly doubt she'll ever be someone I can just call up and ask if we can hang out. But she is in Los Angeles, which, right now, is a sight better than most of the people I call friends. And, unlikely as it is, it has been fun at times reminiscing about the good 'ole days (or bad 'ole days, depending on who you are). It's like being able to read the same book written by a different author. What's else, it's fascinating to get to know a person for the second time. I'm making the best of a situation that I think secretly I've always felt bad about. She was there for me at the hour when I needed somebody immediately. I've never forgotten that even if I've managed to forget much of everything else.

I've wanted to block out the years of 1982-1989 for a long time now. A lot of who I was back then I'm not too proud of.

She's my past catching up with me.

I thought it was all bad and that there was nothing worth saving. I'm finding out more and more there were pockets of joy in there. I thought there wasn't one single person worth still knowing, not a single one. I'm finding out more and more that there is at least one person. I thought I was done with my past, done with revisiting my youth, done with all of it.

I'm finding out that your legacy will always be something that outlives you no matter how far you come and how much you grow.

It's always going to be one surprise hug away from finding you.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

I Hear Babies Cry, I Watch Them Grow, They'll Learn Much More, Than I'll Ever Know, And I Think To Myself, What A Wonderful World

--"What A Wonderful World", Renee Olstead

After starting my third fantasy baseball league in as many years as well as having started two basketball leagues and one football league, I'm beginning to get the skulking suspicion I have a God complex. It wasn't that I wasn't happy with playing in other people's leagues. I could've probably gone a few more years playing as somebody else intended without too much of a complaint. However, when it comes right down to it, I'm never really satisfied with anything until I've decided how best to do it. If I had more time to devote to two or more leagues I could have resigned myself not to start yet another one, but I spend enough time slacking off at work to waste any more trying to change rosters, pick people off the waiver wire, &c... for another league or leagues. And if I can only play in one then I'm going to make damn sure it's the league that has the rules set to exactly how I want them to be. Baseball, like anything else, should be enjoyed on one's own terms--not someone else's.

I always thought it interesting that creativity and creation both stem from the same root. It's always spoken to me that creating something also means imagining something beforehand. You can't bring a new project to life without helping to wonder how it's all going to turn out. More importantly I've always been intrigued by the notion that the body responsible for creating something often has to bring it forth from nothing in the same way somebody imagining something often says the ideas came out of thin air. That's how I've always imagined where my talents lay. I tend to gravitate towards projects that involve piecing something out of nothing--whether it be fiction or games or, yes, fantasy leagues--and I tend to want to manage these projects solely. Even when I share creative and editorial duties it's never an equal share. I almost always can only work with people willing to accept my take on matters. If not, I tend not to enjoy it as much as something I've nurtured on my own. That's how it is on this site. The three of us might all do different things, but ultimately it's my rules that are the law of the land. If the tables were turned and I had to write for somebody else--say, Breanne--I don't think I would be as cordial as the two gals are. I have too much of a hard time ceding control to anybody to be productive in that environment.

I guess I knew that from a young age. My parents were always telling me I was stubborn or hard-headed. I've always had to do things my way, even if it didn't make sense to anyone else. Actually, I had to do things a certain way especially because they did not make sense to anyone else. It's not that I'm a contrarian. I know normalcy has its uses, but, honestly I've always found doing things in my own certain way more fun and more enriching of an experience. There's a strong part of me that likes it when people have no clue why I do the things I do. It makes me feel special and unique. I guess in the conflict between wanting to be thought of as an individual and wanting to be accepted into the group, being an individual wins for me.

And when it comes to my endeavors, I like the world to be mine in some way. When I play video games I like to customize my characters/teams up the wazoo, even going so far as to modify whole teams to be comprised of players of made up for a team I made up in a city I made up with a mascot I made up. Or when I write short stories I tend to do four page dossiers on all my characters because I've found creating characters is the part of the process I like the best, even moreso than trying to come up with plots. When I make up games I love exploring intricate game mechanics more than trying to come up with a good theme. Good mechanics are the heart of any game; it's like setting up the way the universe works. Everything else, the components, the theme, and the artwork are all flavoring. The meat of the matter is always getting the play down in terms you like and want seen.

Just like at the heart of my rationale is setting up my world the way I want rather than trying to adapt to living in yours. It's my show and all the rest of you are just guest stars. LOL

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Send Me Your Flowers, Of Your December, Send Me Your Dreams, Of Your Candy Wine, I Got Just One Thing I Can't Give You, Just One More Thing Of Mine

--"Flowers in December", Mazzy Star

It looks the gods of fate have conspired against me. I spent the good portion of my morning at work hashing out plans with Marion and her sister Nora to fly over there in June. It seems little (well, maybe not so little since she's almost in her mid-twenties) Nora is finally getting married. Of the three sisters, I know Nora the least but she obviously feels she knows me well enough to invite me to her big day. I don't know--personally I could have gone either way. I'm more of a friend to Toby and Faye, and it'll be nice to see them while I'm over there, but I have a lot of reservations about this whole plan.

One, I'm going to know only Nora's immediate family. Everyone else is going to be new for me. That's going to put me at quite the disadvantage with everyone else there, who'll all be classmates, friends of the family, relatives, and other acquaintances who have bumped into each other probably more than once.

Two, I have mixed emotions about people getting married. I never know how to feel for them. I never know if I'm supposed to feel overjoyed at their happiness or guilt that I haven't stepped up my efforts to settle down with someone. Truthfully, at most weddings I feel overwhelmed by jealousy. I start asking myself questions about why that can't be me and how other people do it. How do other people manage to hang onto a relationship that long without fucking it up? Frankly, most weddings put me in a bad mood because I always end up on the losing end of the comparison.

I basically come out of most weddings thinking it's one of the most beautiful acts two people can commit together and that it's also one of the most damnably melancholy ceremonies I've ever ended attended. That strange brew of happiness and sadness, completion and longing, usually makes marriage and everything involving marriage melancholy affairs for me. They're like precious artifacts locked behind glass, preciously exquisite but inevitably out of my reach.

I can take it in all right, I just can't take it with me once it's done. And I definitely could never hope to give it away to someone else.

Three, and most importantly, the trip is going to cost me about a thousand to fly out there, stay the week (like I promised Toby I would last time I was in Louisville), and fly back. That's going to put a serious damper in my plans to fly out to Atlanta in April. It's not that I couldn't afford it, but I'm used to only vacationing once a year. One of the two trips, if I decide to go on both of them, is going to feel extraneous. I'm going to feel particularly self-indulgent, like I should have saved the money I spent on the other trip, especially in these economic times.

And yet I can't turn down a wedding invitation. I've never been able to do that. If they felt I was that important to invite then I feel obligated to show up. It isn't like Nora and I aren't on friendly terms. I just didn't think that I was close enough to be invited. And now that I have I'd feel awful if I turned her down. This isn't a case of being pressured into doing it because my family insists I go. The only person putting pressure on me is me (well, me, and the youngest Frisson girls). This will be one of the few weddings where I honestly can say I kind of want to be there. Most other weddings I'd rather not be there because, honestly, the people involved don't matter that much to me.

This feels different, though. This feels like someone in my family is getting married. Hell, this feels like someone closer than my family is getting married because the majority of my family I couldn't care less if they got married or not. Aside from the whole siphoning funds away from the Atlanta trip, I see only good things arising from this wedding. And, for once, I can see myself having a good, if not great, time there.

I want to go.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

The Dust At Dawn Is Rained Upon, Attaches Itself To Everyone, No One Is Spared, No One Is Clean, It Travels Places You've Never Been Or Seen Before

--"The Night Starts Here", Stars

I was riding with my co-worker to lunch today when he started talking about how he almost got into a fight at the gym yesterday. He was waiting for a machine to stretch out when he noticed someone was already using one side of it. He asked if anyone was using the other side to which the man replied, no, that it was available. Well, after about two minutes of stretching one of that guys' friends comes up and tells my co-worker, "That's enough." Apparently, he'd be dividing his time between the two machines and thought my friend had stretched out enough. Normally, he said, that would be enough to make his blood boil. He had done his due diligence in asking around if the machine was in use. Had that guy wanted it, he should have spoken up then. Instead, my co-worker backed off and let the man finish his stretching.

That's the difference between me and most people. I don't back down for politeness' sake. As I know I've mentioned a few times here, I have certain rules when it comes to aspects of my behavior and one of those is that I don't back down very easily. When I drive I almost never let anyone in. When I'm at the movies, I never scooch over for new arrivals. When I'm listening to my music in my own car, no one is allowed to change CDs. Hell, no one's even allowed to turn on my radio. I'm very particular about people abridging my rights to do what I want when I want.

If it had been me that had asked around and started to use the machine when that guy told me stop, there would have been a scene. I don't know if there would have been a fight, but there would have been a scene. I've caused public disturbances; it doesn't bother me in the least. I think a lot of how certain people get away with things in our society is because they rely on the public's fear of speaking their mind or causing a disturbance. For instance, with the whole changing lane debate, all my friends know that I take the approach that signaling a lane change "should be a statement not a question." Personally, I don't flick on my blinkers until two seconds before I change lanes. When my lights go on it's because I'm beginning my lane change. The people that irritate me to no end are the people who casually turn on their blinker to change lanes and proceed to leave it going for ten, twenty seconds at a time. Then, they have the audacity to get angry at me for not letting them in. I don't care if you want to get in my lane; you should pick a better space than one in which I'm nose to tail with the car in front of me. The way I see it is that if you're going to merge into my lane then you better get used to the idea of doing it in the space behind me.

Or, in another case, I had a certain ex who liked to drop big decisions or, rather, disappointments in public. She would also choose to give me bad news in a restaurant, in the middle of a party, or while we were out somewhere. She was always content to use other people as a buffer for her rather than let me have my full say. However, towards the end I started responding to her in kind without any regard to where we were. I can remember one incident where we were at Olive Garden where we had just started a fight and I wanted to talk about right then and there. Instead, she informed the matter was settled (in her favor, mind you) until further notice. What she meant was that she was hoping I was going to keep quiet because we were in public and then, later, she was going to say that my silence at the time was a sign of concession to her point-of-view. Instead, I not only chose to continue the argument, but we also managed to continue it outside the restaurant when we were asked by the management to settle our dispute outside. I don't know if I won the disagreement. In the end that's not what was important to me. What was important was getting across the concept that humiliation or spectacle would ever be motivating factors in my agreeing to anything.

My point is we live in a world where we hold ourselves back from what we really think because we don't want to cause any waves. We bite our tongues, bide our time, all in a vain attempt to wait out the storm. We think that, given enough time, we'll forget or even forgive our differences. In a sense we'd rather not put up a fight for the small things even when the small things start turning into bigger things.

I try not to live like that.

I hold people to their word and I don't let people slide because it's easier. Whether it's making plans and canceling, whether it's owing me fifty or five dollars, or whether it's other people insisting on my politeness, I don't acquiesce on principle. I mean--I think I'm a nice guy in most circumstances. But a huge annoyance of mine is when people count on my politeness to solve their problems. I'm not going to make nice with you if I dislike you to not ruin the mood. I've ruined more than one party because someone chose to ruin it for me. I'm not going to greet people I have no interest in knowing. Besides being a form of small talk, it sends out the wrong message that I'm going to take all the effort to get to know people. You can't force friendship and chastising me for not saying hello to one person out of a dozen because they made a bad first impression on me is not my problem. My world doesn't revolve on the vain attempt of getting everyone to like me. It's basically built around the idea of saying and doing as a please in almost every facet of my life.

What it isn't based on is sparing people's feelings.

It isn't based on budging an inch when I think I'm in the right just because it's easier.

It isn't based on keeping the peace when I'm at unrest.

People always talk about polite society, but I think certain people learn to prey on this system. They count on people's sense of embarrassment to get what they want. They finagle and domineer everyone they come across because it's served them to get what they want. Worse yet, they've learned that if never let the other person say anything of importance, they end up sounding like the only one with important ideas.

Sometimes you have to fight for your right to disagree. Sometimes you have to fight for your right to answers. Sometimes you have to fight for your right to do things your way even if you're outvoted. Sometimes you have to fight for your right for a few more minutes on the machine.

As Rachel said,

Right is right even if no one does it, and wrong is wrong even if everyone does it.

And the only person that can decide what's right is you. Period.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Don't Be Disheartened By This Thing We Started, I Guess That's What I'm Trying To Say, I Will Defend You, My Friend, I Won't Quietly Walk Away

--"Return To Send Her", Camera Obscura

"When you're done with him, Tiger, send him outside," I heard him say in that unmistakable gentle tone he's always had. At the time I didn't recognize it as such. At the time it sounded like a threat more than anything else. What was this "outside" and what did it want with the likes of me? A thousand questions flooded into my head at the ominous underpinnings behind the simple command he had given his daughter because, even though he had been addressing the aforementioned daughter, the instruction most definitely was directed towards me.

I watched as the bear of a man swung open the front door, bottles in one hand and a plate full of something in the other. I followed his form outside the window to the porch bench, where he proceeded to sit down and snap open the bottles. By "when you're done' he had meant as soon as possible and by "send him outside" he meant get ready to face the firing line.

I gave my friend a glance that could have melted icebergs.

Help me, Breannie-wan Kenobi, you're my only hope.

She gave me a pre-conditioned smile that belied the worry I knew she must have been feeling. Unfortunately, worrying about a person and being in a position to assist them are two different things entirely. We both knew that there would be no talking my way out of this. My going outside was as inevitable as the song's end and as fraught with tension as a ball game tied in the bottom of the ninth. I possessed only one course of action. I had to follow him outside in a few minutes.

We talked a couple more minutes to give off the impression that I was in any rush to get it over with. The last thing I wanted to do was insult his intelligence by pretending I was ready to face him right off the bat. He wanted me nervous. I was going to do my best to oblige his wishes accordingly. Besides, if I had rushed out there it would have been rude to Lucy. It was still my first day there, after all. The whole point in coming was to spend a decent amount of time with her. In that instance, her father could hold his horse for a second while she and I got a couple more moments of quality time in. I don't even know what we talked about, but I made sure to sound confident to her. I figured it was good practice and I figured she wouldn't want to send me out there scared out of my wits. It was better for her to believe that I had my act together than to see how I intimidated I was. All in all, I think I did a good job in carrying on the conversation, short as it may have been. I'd like to think that I made it seem like a natural transition between talking with her to getting up and walking out the front door.

"Good luck," she said as I finally opened the door.

"Thanks," is all I could think of in the way of a reply.

The last image I had of her was her getting up to walk in the kitchen to join her mother.

I walked down the porch bench. I chose a seat a comfortable distance away from the good-sized gentleman who held my fate in his hands. Yet upon sitting down, I found the corners of his mouth turned southward.

"You don't have to sit that far from me, son. I ain't going to bite you."

"I'm sorry," I answered, moving a little bit closer on the bench to him.

I watched in subtle amazement as he scuttled his own butt closer to me.

"Nothing to be sorry about. Now sit awhile and listen."

'What am I supposed to be listening to, Mr. Holins."

"The quiet... and me, if you're up to it."

I nodded my head at both suggestions.

My first impressions of Breanne's father was that he was an imposing figure. He was tall and thickly built--not overweight, but definitely stocky. What I saw of him I knew him to be a man that commanded respect without having to say word one; he just looked like a guy that was used to being in charge without ever having to force the issue. What she had told me in prior conversations was that he was a nice guy and that she was sure he and I would get along swimmingly. She didn't see him having a problem with me in the slightest. My own trepidation was not so easily squelched, however. I know that the manner in which he acted around her wasn't the greatest barometer of how he would act around me. For all I knew I could say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing once and there would go my chances of getting on his good side. My track record with parents aside, Mr. Holins was definitely a beast unto himself. He was a strange and new creature that I had no precedent upon which to base my behavior around him. I was used to dealing with people who either liked or disliked me off that bat. I wasn't used to dealing with people who were unreadable, even after three hours of getting to know one another. I had vast experience in improvising ways to improve upon my situation with people who openly despised me. I had vast experience in building upon the foundations I had laid down with people I had managed to impress right away. In the situation I found myself in, I didn't know if I should have been apologizing or sucking up. Without that bit of information, the first few minutes of the conversation absolutely bewildered me.

"Hot wing?" he asked, offering me the plate.

"Yes," I replied.

I carefully took the platter and snatched up the first offering. When I took my first bite, it barely registered as a nibble.

He shook his head slightly.

Almost as if to show how it's done, he took his first wing and proceeded to suck it down whole. When he extracted the wing bones from his mouth there wasn't a morsel of meat to be friend.

I was very impressed.

"Wow," I said, unable to contain my amusement.

"I don't know how they do it in your part of the woods, but that's how we do it down here. There's no sense digging a pothole when what you need is a ditch."

He had yet to crack a smile. All throughout the car ride home and all throughout dinner he had been very jovial. He had told stories, he had repeated jokes both clean and mildly obscene, and he had been very openly warm-hearted. To his wife and daughter. To me he had been pleasant, but not overly welcoming. I didn't get the impression that he didn't want me there--only that he wasn't quite sure what to make of me yet. I guess that explained the whole summons to come outside.

"How are you liking your trip so far, son?"

"Good. Great. It's already better than I thought it would be."

"That's good. I must say the two of you look like you have been friends all your life. I was just asking Jean exactly how long it has been since the two of you met."

"Your wife and me?" I asked, confused.

"No, my Breanne and you."

"Oh."

I watched him grab another wing. This time he sucked it down more carefully, slower--the entire time his eyes glued to my face to gauge my reaction. He extricated the bones again from his mouth and tossed him to the side of the plate.

"Help yourself," he said, offering the plate again.

I took another wing, but I didn't bite into it. It sort of rested in my hands while I waited for him to speak.

"So exactly how long have you and her been friends?"

"Almost a year-and-a-half now, as far back as July of last year."

"And, what? You two have been talking since then?"

"Talk, write, chat, &c..."

"Is that right?"

"Yes."

He nodded his head slightly a few times before, turning his head away.

Truth be told, I didn't even think it had been that long. When I said the words out loud it sounded like a lot longer time than it had actually been. When I had first met her, our friendship had started out like most friendships. I didn't think she was going to be that important--not after meeting her on-line--and I didn't really pay attention to the number of conversations we'd actually been having. In the beginning, they were far more sparse. I'd maybe talk to her once every two weeks and maybe chat with her on-line twice a week when I happened to see her. She certainly wasn't someone I went out of my way to make time for at the start of all of it. Then, like most long-standing friendships, I found myself thinking about her more often. When I would do something with other friends I would catch myself thinking what she might think of it. Or, in another more relevant case, I would be saying something to a co-worker and her name would crop up as offering something meaningful to the conversation. Fairly soon, once every two weeks become once every week, which in itself became two or three times a week. Our ten-minute conversations to catch each other up on our daily events became longer conversations where deeper, more philosophical thoughts began to creep their way in.

And before long, it wasn't unheard of me to call her three nights in a row and talk to her an hour each night.

Somehow the "smart, young poet I bumped into on-line" became the closest thing I've ever had to a soul mate.

Eighteen months didn't seem to cover it at all. It really did still feel like I had met her only yesterday and that I had just been having the mother of all good days with her.

"So you would say you guys are close right about now?"

"I'd say that, Mr. Holins. Your daughter is probably the most amazing person I know right now."

"She is... but don't let her catch you saying that, son. It'll go straight to her head," he said, finally showing a toothy grin.

I took the break in the wall of frigidness he had erected around him to take a bite of my wing finally. Instead of the small bite I had taken earlier, I took a good-sized piece into my mouth that next time. I hadn't quite moved up to sucking them down whole, but I was less afraid to indulge myself in his company.

He offered me one of the bottles by the bench. I took it and was glad to quench the mild burning sensation in my throat with something cold and refreshing. I placed the bottle down by my side of the bench and took a few more bites of my wing. Within seconds I had finished it.

"I must say, Mr. Taroc, that I wasn't a huge fan of the idea of you and her beginning to talk when you did," I listened to him say matter-of-factly. "In fact, Jean and I had a long discussion as to whether we should allow her to continue this relationship with you."

"Breanne never told me that."

"She didn't know. We never told her. We wanted to be sure about our decision before we informed her. She can be a real wildcat when she's disappointed, you know?"

"I've gathered that much. She's kind of evil."

He laughed.

"Evil is a good word for it. Her mother's real fond of wicked."

"That one I've heard."

"At any rate, we thought we'd disapprove of somebody so much older than her paying that much attention to her. We thought you must not have her best interests at heart. We thought your intentions for her had to be less than honorable," he continued. "So are they, son?"

There are times when you're asked a point blank question that you think to yourself that the answer's obvious the question must be rhetorical. What he was suggesting sounded quite ridiculous coming out of his mouth that I almost didn't want to dignify it with an answer. Of course my intentions were honorable for her. I may have liked her as more than a friend, but I wasn't about to try anything underhanded or sketchy around her. I had more respect for her than that. What her father was suggesting was probably what would have leapt to my mind had I been her father too, but knowing me and knowing her that was never something for once I ever considered. Our relationship had always been on the up-and-up. I never once hid how I was feeling from her. I never had to disguise it other intentions' clothes. At that point in time all I was thinking of was ways to get to know her... and her family better.

I took my time before answering him. I wanted to make sure my answer carried with it the full weight of my meaning. I didn't want him to take anything I said incorrectly and jump to the wrong conclusions.

"My intentions for her are pure, I can assure you that. I only want to be her friend. I only want to continue doing for her what I've done for her since day one."

"What's that?"

"Listen to her, maybe guide her a little, most of all, just be somebody who's watching out for her when she feels like nobody else is. I know what it's like to feel like you're fending for yourself, that nobody cares what you're going through, and I kind of like the idea of being that type of advocate for her."

"And you? Do you get the same kind of benefits from her, son?"

"I do. Not exactly the same, but, believe me you, she's been there for me more than once since we've met."

A lot of the time when I see how much I talk about Little Miss Chipper and see how often I obsess over her I get embarrassed. I hate the fact that so much of my daily existence revolves around somebody I hardly ever see and always seem to have justify my relationship with to others. It just seems I devote too much of my energy to somebody that from the outside doesn't have all the appeal I attribute to her. Yet when confronted by these aforementioned naysayers all the reasons become opaque. It's only when somebody's attacking her or my being with her that i start to see all the reasons I became enamored of her in the first place. It's almost like seeing what matters to you most inside your house when that house is set on fire. You can claim this knicknack is important to you and that doohickey is valuable to you, but it's only when something or someone threatens to take it away that you can see clearly what's most valuable to you.

Hearing her dad's hesitation with me brought out this aspect of my personality and it was coming through me in spades.

I watched as he took another wing. He offered it to me, but I was still worked up a bit to accept it.

He again ate slowly. Before he spoke again, he took another wing and ate that. The wait was interminable. It was like waiting for the death sentence to be placed upon me.

He subsequently took a drink from his bottle of beer before he finally spoke.

"I like you, Mr. Taroc, Patrick. I wouldn't have agreed to you coming here during the holidays and all if I didn't think I would take a shining to you. After all, you don't light a fire that you don't need, do you?

"I have no problem with you and her being friends. For now she seems to care an awful lot about your friendship and I can tell it means the world to you too. And anything that makes my little 'ole tiger smile I'm all in favor of, you know?

"My only worry now is where the two of you go from here. Let me ask you where you see the two of you a few turns down the road."

That's the question me and her had been discussing the few weeks leading up to my trip. I wouldn't say it was the predominant focus of our conversations, but it was certainly that puppy dog following us around everywhere our conversation went. Before my trip to see her, we had confined our involvement to phone calls and mail. It was easy to say she was my best friend when I didn't have actually spend up-close time with her. It was easy to wile away the hours with her on the phone when I knew she had to conform to my schedule as much as I had to conform to hers. We never had to make concrete plans that involved the both of us. If I had some free time in the evening, I would call her. If she was available we'd talk until one of us became busy. If she had nothing to do, if she was bored, all she had to do was wake me up or find me and I would try to fit her in as best as I could. What we didn't do was schedule anything super-far in the future. What we didn't do was make plans to be involved with one another for the rest of our loves. That was an alien concept to the both of us. It's like she told me in one of our earliest conversations, "nobody sets out to make a best friend. It kind of sneaks up on you like a skunk. But once it's there, sugar, it sure as hell makes its presence known." But once the trip was in the initial stages of being planned, we both knew something substantial was occurring. Once we met in person the rules of the game would change. For one thing, it would be that much easier to see each other in person in the future. For another thing, it became obvious that what we had wasn't a normal run-of-the-mill friendship. She made the request to her folks to fly me over as her Christmas gift. You don't do that for someone you're only mildly on good terms with. Hell, I've never flown anyone out to see me, including her. It's just not done unless you're trying to say something concrete about what's going on between the two of you.

What was to become of us? That was the question of the moment.

"The way I look at it is this. I don't see myself walking away from her voluntarily. I followed her all the way to here and I can honestly see myself following her around for a long time."

"You're not worried all this is for nothing? You're not concerned that you two might fall out of favor with one another next week, next month, next year?"

"Not in the least," I lied.

He took another sip from his beer. I took another sip of mine. I don't know if we reached some type of arrangement or if all the talking had run its natural course. We were both silent for quite some time. I remember that. I'd like to believe we were both thinking about scenarios in our head. We were both considering the two possible outcomes. Either we would stop being friends, at which rate I would have wasted a trip and many hours on the phone, or we would get closer and then I could look forward to even more hours and even more involvement. Both thoughts had their disadvantages for both me and her father. The way her father was looking at it was that she was either going to get hurt if one of us stopped being involved in the other's life or she was going to get hurt if the two of us worked our way closer to one another.

About the only safe course of action was staying exactly where we were--neither one of us close enough to cause any long-lasting damage but not so far as to not be a comforting and calming influence in each other's life.

"She asked me to speak to you, you know?" he suddenly revealed. "I was going to talk to you anyway today, but she specifically wanted me to talk to you about how you felt about her."

"She did?"

"I'd do just about anything for her and she wanted me to see how much you really wanted to be here. I told her I'd try to get a reading on you."

"And what'd you come up with?"

"I came up with that you really shouldn't be wasting any more time out here with me. You're not here that long. You shouldn't be wasting another minute with me, son," he again laughed.

"I passed then?" I asked, getting up slowly from my seat.

"I don't know--I'm not the one who's grading you," he said, turning to face out from his porch.

I thanked him for the talk, picked up my beer bottle, and walked into the front door to meet the one person who was actually grading me. I found her in the kitchen with her mom.

"I like it here with you. Is it okay if I stay forever, Breannie?" I said, walking up behind her and giving her a relatively decent-sized hug.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

This Room Is Full Of Memories And, Shadows Of The Past Remind Me, Of All The Love I Gave In Vain And, All The Hurt I Feel Inside Me

--"I Want You Back", Bananarama

Back when I had a show, it was the only show I would watch the whole night. When Avonlea was on I didn't plan anything else for the whole night. Come 8 p.m. Monday I was glued to the television and there was nothing on Earth that could pry me away from it. Pretty much for the whole day that was the even everything else was leading up to.

Compare that to how I typically watch television on Mondays. Now in no certain order, thanks to the magic of DVR, I watch no less that seven shows on Mondays--House, Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Heroes, 24, Chuck, and Gossip Girl. Granted, they're all good shows, but none of them are the centerpiece for the night, let alone the only thing I watch on that evening. 24, I suppose, comes the closest to being the gem among gems. Even that, though, I've caught myself checking my e-mail during the commercial breaks or even working on an idea for a post during the main action of the episode. I am nowhere near as consumed as I was when I watched Avonlea on a weekly basis. Somewhere between then and now I lost the taste for a particular show being my obsession. Now I see them all as what maybe they were all along, pieces of entertainment.

It's not just television. I remember a day off consisted of riding my bike down the block to my friend Tommy's house and just hanging out all day--no invitation, no chatting first on my cel, no e-mail. I would bicycle down and knock on his door. If he was home we did something. If not, I went home. Now to even schedule a dinner or even a drink after work, it involves a three-hour delayed negotiation over a combination of cel texting, facebook, and/or e-mailing my work. Even then there's hardly any opportunity for a large quality of time devoted to one thing. I catch myself twittering as often about a thing as doing the thing itself. Even worse, I find myself thinking of ideas for something else--a game, a post, even a story I'm writing--and sending the information to myself in a text on my cel phone. There's never an ocassion where I'm entirely centered on whatever I'm doing.

I guess that's a product of the age we live in. I guess with all this technology there's never a need to be entirely consumed with much anymore. The buzzword of the day is multi-tasking and spreading one's interests.

Deep down there's a huge part of me that thinks we're missing out compared to when we couldn't get to a phone or computer very easily. I'm still of the mind that thinks it's wrong to fast forward or rewind a DVD once it's started, let alone (Gasp!) pause it. I'm still of the mind that thinks it's wrong to mass e-mail people a letter. Some of my fondest memories involve carving out sixty and seventy page missives to Breanne and, of course, Jina. I'm still of the mind that hates when people decide on plans once they come together instead of making plans beforehand. I'm all for being impulsive, but lately it seems nobody wants to commit to hard and fast plans. Instead, they all prefer this play-by-ear, spur-of-the-moment lifestyle where nothing specific gets done but a little bit of everything does.

It feels like the world lost a lot of its depth the instant people began to be able to do most everything with the touch of a button. It feels like everyone in the world became more distant the second it become commonplace to talk to everyone at a moment's notice. It feels like the world's gotten colder since you can find people with the same interests so easily through the internet and forums rather than having to pick your confidantes from your neighbors and schoolmates. It just feels like everyone's always distracted no matter what they're doing at the time; at no point in history has it been so easy to be interrupted or pulled away from life.

It's times like these that make me long for places like nineteenth century PEI, where you literally had nowhere else to go, nothing else to do, and nothing else to think about except life in a small village.

And you were happy about that.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers