Part XIII: The moon is full until it isn't

I don't even post everyday lately, yet tonight I'm doing two posts... not in the same day, (it's after midnight) but within 24 hours... between sleeps. I had some inspiration on a moonlight solitary walk. Some inspiration, and some caffeine.

The nature of the walk I am going to reveal in due time. It was motivated, put simply, by boredom - a solitary Saturday night wherein plans fell through - and caused me to go deep into thought. Not a depressed thought, but a bit of wonderment.

Like I said, plans fell through, as they sometimes do. After a tedious day, during which I actually started drawing a bit again, I went to dinner at dad's. The plan was to go from there to Joe's, for the first time in many months with hanging out. While there, I was on MSN and he came on and told me the plan had been scuttled as a result of general lack of participation. I was disappointed, but if it was going to be then it was going to be. (We'll revisit this theme later in the post.) So on short notice but not for anything close to the first time in my life, I was without anything set for a Saturday night.

After a while of waiting around, I got on the computer and decided to troll for random conversations. The target in this case became an old flame. I call her an old flame, although the correct terminology would be old friend and, I suppose, there just happens to be that element to our history. I wouldn't even broach this topic if I thought she'd be reading this. But the city of her school does not seem to appear among those listed on my WebStat. All the same; you probably know who she is but I'm going to come up with a clever pseudonym for her. Miss F., for er, friend. Or flame.

(Bizarre sidenote: somewhere back on my family tree, by a few generations, my late Grandma Williams once told me I had an ancestor named "Friend," a name the nature of which I should someday reveal but not here.)

She was back in town during reading week. Last night I'd dropped her a line to see if she wanted to see the play, but it was a last-minute invite and she didn't get back to me until after I'd left and the show, presumably, had begun. But this was how the lines of communication, pretty cold for the last several months, warmed back up. So I decided, let's try conversation.

So I asked her, "Hey, you there?" Not long after, she confirmed she was. We got to talking, and I admitted upfront that I was in search of a brief respite from terminal boredom. She indulged me and we caught up a bit with some cursory "How's school" talk before I just kinda started riffing on whatever I was doing. Maybe it wasn't my A-game but she was polite enough to type "haha" so I must've at least amused her. After a while, I confessed, sitting at the computer all night seemed oppressive. I decided I was going to leave, even though it was cold and I was relaxed; I invited her along. "Tempting," she said, but she was waiting for another friend, also back for Reading week, whom she also hadn't seen in ages. I goaded her a little bit.

"What if I say 'Come On' repeatedly, dragging the 'n' out for effect?

"As in, 'Come onnnnnn?'"

No sale, as she was determined to see the other friends for a drink more potent than coffee (if you catch my drift,) but she at least agreed to a raincheck. And it'd be nice to believe I'll be able to cash that one in someday but I'm not holding my breath. I went out and got coffee anyway. And I started to think about the story.

It's going to make a hell of a chapter in my book when I get around to it, but the idea is this. Either it was supposed to happen but didn't, or it wasn't supposed to happen but almost did. We became friends in the most innocuous way; through mutual friends. She was always around and a lot more fun to talk to a lot of the time. As I learned more about her - and, then as now, I usually approach every situation with the possibility in mind - I learned she was a bit tough, that one young man, perennially smitten with her, was in constant pain because while she plainly yet politely turned him down, her personable nature would not coldly turn him out, thus causing him to continually gravitate toward a woman who had made plain her disinterest in him. (Questionable use of disinterest, but we're going for effect.) He wasn't even the only one. According to her (not one to toot her own horn,) another young man was also a bit too infatuated with her. Frankly I saw the evidence then and I still see it now, though I doubt he'd admit it.

So I knew to cool off, and we became good friends. And maybe other people saw it coming before I did (Maggie was quite vocal at the time,) and maybe I just didn't want to even look because I knew there was trouble down that way. And maybe it was keeping her at arms length during those crucial late-spring days that laid the groundwork. By the coming of summer, we had been on between one and three non-dates, depending on what criteria you use. They were not dates and we were not going out, but they were something, maybe.

I was supposed to ask her out. That's how a normal guy would have done it, and a normal girl would have accepted, and that would've been that. Neither of us would admit to being normal (that's probably where the appeal was.) We were both smart, capable people (well, she was smart and capable anyway,) but when it came to matters like these we both kicked around like a couple of sixth-graders at their first dance. I would have to psyche myself into asking her out, and then she'd have to explain why she'd be too busy (but would love to) or she'd accept and then something would come up. Then I'd have to psyche myself into dialing her number all over agian. This process took a very long time, and repeated itself over the summer until the point where it was clearly not happening.

The last time I asked her out had been after a very tough day. Whener I feel like the world has just totally shit on me, what I often do is something, anything, I've been putting off or neglecting. That was why I submitted my manuscript to a publisher once (the effort was somewhat half-assed) and that was why I asked her out. And she said yes. And it was all according to plan. Except it was basically the last day before she had to go off to school, and she really wanted to do something else. I went along, and it was awkward, and I felt out of place, and we hardly spoke. The night ended, we all said goodbye.

We spoke sporadically over the next few years, saw each other at the ever-less-frequent gatherings hosted by said mutual friends, until the entire damn system seemed to rupture. We always got along well at these functions, like old times. We always find a lot to talk about and are by and large the same people we were when we first started randomly talking way back when. But I wonder, and more importantly, I wonder if she wonders.

We've never spoken about it. Never, ever, ever. I don't just mean since. We barely even spoke about it when I was in the process of asking her out. We didn't speak about it when we fell asleep on a corner-couch. Hell back in the day, I had to hear from a friend that she was even thinking it. And maybe I'm just looking for some kind of closure on an issue that was never opened very wide to begin with. I don't try to talk to her, to hang out with her and keep contact, because I'm holding out hope. It would be some kind of wicked double-standard for me to think such a thing. (She's a great girl and it'd be nice but at this point, horribly inconvenient - which was already a factor when we both lived in the same town. So I just want her happiness, and also mine.) Maybe, damnit, I just want my friend back, because we do get along great (possibly because we've never talked about it) even after all these years, after all the miles and silence and all the things we never discussed. But after all these years, it still sticks in me and goddamn if I don't know why.

I thought about all of this - and more that is either too much to write or by-now forgotten - while I was getting a cup of coffee. And I realized it took a very long time for me to start absorbing the message of this little story.

Sometimes, you can do everything right. And let me tell you, back in those days, that was never the case for me, but going over the play-by-play, I did my best. You can do everything right and still it comes out wrong, through no fault of your own. I have a big fragile ego, sure, but I take it as a matter of personal responsibility usually when these things go awry. But I don't think it was my fault and I don't think there was anything she particularly did wrong either, it just wasn't coming together. There are many things I wish I could do over, but in particular, I wonder sometimes what if we had an extra 6 months; if it started in September rather than March. But that's a kid's game, and frankly, being too much like a kid is what got me into that scenario to begin with.

I've dwelled on it a bit much and I don't mean to other than to use it as a bit of storytelling from a creative mind whose muscles have not been ovelry exercised lately; I mean seriously, University hardly affords me time to write, and that's rather disgruntling, so I have to reminisce about half-lived non-romance stories at 1:30 in the morning on a Saturday night.

That was all sort of a downer, which is weird because I'm not really that down about it. Because you can't do anything about the past, just try not to let it bother your present I suppose. My romantic past (if it can be called that) is littered with a number of girls whom I liked but couldn't ever tell - my greatest fear is that somewhere along the way a girl felt the same about me (most dreadfully if it was one of those same girls.) It's nice to know I was on the same page as one once. If I can still randomly contact her (and I don't very often) and she can still laugh at my antics, then we're still good. I'm reminded of the words of Sol Bloom, who later became a U.S. Senator. If we're left with nothing, we can only break even, because we started with nothing; in fact, we'll still be up, because we will have had a good time.

This post has gone all weird, but I think I needed to write it. It isn't like anybody reads this anyway, right Mags?

I did end up finishing that Regular Guy strip and it'll be up soon (nobody reads it.) Tomorrow is the last stop for all the crap I said I'd do but didn't (a lot of it.) I've got a lot on my mind and on my plate and as always I've got someone to meet for coffee tomorrow. Ah, the joy of social addictions. Sometimes I loathe my routine, but only when I'm not loving it.

I should get to keep on rockin' already
-Scott