Longview
So there this new girl watering at The Pub. She’s incredibly cute, petite, very dazzling blue eyes, liberal, and artsy. We’ve had some interesting conversations and we’re already on a “hug goodbye at the end of the evening” sort of familiarity.
How perfect is this? I’ve been here before: we’ll go out for four to six months, having a wonderful time pushing each other to new heights and having wonderful sex, with perhaps a trip or two thrown in, followed by a three to five month downward spiral when we find that some of those things we found endearing about each other are really starting to grate on each other’s nerves, combined with some sort of emotional imbalance where one of us is beginning to evolve in a direction diametric to the other, and we’ll start to spend more time away from each other.
Or one of us will be forced, because of school, work, family matters, or some other semi-valid reason, to spend our time supporting others and be too drained to sustain a relationship. I won’t be around enough, what with all my classes and training and trying to balance girlfriend and friends. Priorities will be mismatched, and the timing won’t be right. They’ll be some big fight, in which some surprising things are said, she’ll be throwing plates and I’ll be a little too calm and logical, which will piss her off even more, although I’ll be breaking down on the inside, trying to compose myself, curling up and sequestering myself like an injured tiger, trying to figure what the fuck is going on even though I already know. There may or not be make-up sex, but the relationship is already gangrenous.
They’ll be some sort of heart-wrenching breakup scene – if my history is any indication, it’ll be over the phone. (See Appendix E, “Termination”, Paragraphs “A—-“, “K—-” and “M—-“.) I’ll be house-bound for a little while with my friends Don Julio and Milagro, catching up on reading, thumbing through my Pynchon novels again, and double my martial arts training schedule, expunging my emotions for catharsis and regaining control. I’ll recover relatively quickly, but still have a rebound fling or two in there, probably with an artist or alcohol promo girl.
I’ll be asking myself, why did I repeat this again, with these variations? And I’ll answer, because the good times were worth it. This is life, good and bad. This is not fatalism, this is self-awareness, of what I am and what I like, from beginning through end, and knowing what will eventually become a problem and working on solving it, of working to preempt the fights and distance and disillusionment. This is listening to the little voice that tells you the truth about yourself. This is experience. This is the precursor to evolution. This is looking down the path you’re on seeing where you need to turn and what you need to change.
This is walking in with my eyes wide open.
Of course, I haven’t even asked her out, and I don’t know if she’s into me, and I can’t say this is the way things will go, nor do I expect them to follow this little monologue. But each time it’s happened, I re-write the story just a bit, I get different things right and others wrong, and each time it gets richer and more enjoyable and more painful and more … real.