Blog

I felt your heart tonight. It beats still. You are human. I thought that you and I both might have become embroiled in a pattern of hatred, complexity and general non-humnaness. That is not the case. I hope the conversation did not hurt anything. You will be great, because you have always been wonderful, and it is not just me saying it. Float on, wunderkind.

So it seems like I am always out looking for second best. I know where best is, but she is forbidden, so now I have to settle for a second best search. They may not even be second best, at least I hope not. I hope there is a closer approximation of you. There will be nothing that will equal you, but maybe something that comes a lot closer than what I am meeting. Why do I want to go out to midtown on a Friday night to watch you dance with German guys? Which then reminds me of your Danish guys in NO. They must have been cute, so much cuter than me. For you to kiss Christian at the end of a drunken night. Doesn’t seem like you, but I have witnessed it happen now. Have seen how that scene goes down. I don’t know that Grier. I don’t know her at all. I hope that it made you feel good. I am sorry for what I did that made you feel justified. Were you ever true to me? Was there always, from the beginning, someone brewing in the background? A secret desire? Was I ever your desire, or just a filler? I think I know I was more. I think you did love me. I know I did and do you. You asked why we couldn’t be, and I am not sure exactly sure what that was supposed to mean, but we were. We did exist, me and you, for a time period, and I think you were happy for at least a portion of that. If I am lying to myself, please do not correct me. I am looking for number two now though. I blew number one. I should have known I couldn’t deserve you. I should have known that achieving this dream wasn’t possible.
Jenny told me today that she thinks she likes me because of the way that I love you. That she has always wanted someone to love her that way and that seeing how I love you made her fall for that side of me. I told her that I love YOU though and that is not transferrable to someone else. She said she had thought about emailing you to tell you about my heartache and unflinching passion for you. I told her she should not do that. I could not see how it would help me, you or her.
When I was in high school I spent one glorious summer in Charlotte at a state-sponsored summer program. It was one of the best times of my life, and returning to my high school was difficult. After that summer I pined for it and thought that I had been given an experience that I could never top. Only I applied to Governor’s School the next year, and in the spring, in the middle of a tennis match, my friend Shaq came out to the courts to tell me that we had both been accepted. I felt like I had a second chance. I was in a dream state for months. The GS experience was even better than the previous summer.
I sometimes daydream about a second chance with you. I dream about getting number one back. I dream about what I would be like to fall back in love with each other. I dream about calm, maturity, knowing that I did something right. That I finally got it right. That there is forgiveness, and that right and proper change and hope can be rewarded. That it might even be better the second time, after we’ve lived a little, figured a few things out, know that we miss and want each other more fully.
I cannot give up. Not yet.

It’s Friday and where are you. I have gotten back in off of this bad evening of flirting with things that are not as lovely, or as real as you. You don’t believe me. I am all evil to you. The center cannot hold. I don’t ask you to live here again. I don’t ask anything. I just wish. Wish that the crook of your hips was mating with mine tonight. That you would push that way. That we could claim things in strange languages to one another.
I would like to awake in the morning and go to Publix and buy cold cuts and make a you a fucking sandwich. That would be a dream, but my Saturday won’t have that. Not any more.
I loved you through those cold cuts. I loved you through my meanness. I am sorry about that. I collected 4 leaf clovers for you. I am here.
I have no other dreams. Just that you will say you love me, let’s try again. I wanted to/ and still want to marry you, G. I have never been so sure in my life.

It is at the end of the day when I tend to get sad if I am going to get sad. It’s odd. I know I used to be such a cranky thing when I got home, I was so stressed, but it is at this time of the day that I miss you the most. Knowing that I am going home to an empty house isn’t always the most appealing thing. Sure, I will go out and see friends and do things, but ultimately I will return to that empty house. I am sitting here listening to moderately sad songs and waiting for the Peach Buzz to be done.
I almost texted you to ask what you were up to, if you were in town, if you wanted to get dinner or see a movie, but alas I knew it wouldn’t happen. I would receive the same answer that I’ve always received: it hasn’t been enough time, it would be too hard. I know, and I guess I agree. I get more and more settled every day, but tonight that part that can only be calmed by you is getting stirred up, no matter how hard I try to keep it in check. I will figure it out though.
I hope you have/had a good weekend. Heck, maybe we will even run into each other.

It was a dream, or was it? Last night or this morning? And we are at an inn, with old-timey rooms, large windows, with window sheers lightly blowing – near the beach.
You spoke and what you spoke was not completely understood or even heard, the gist of which was that you had gone to the beach with the other man. You said it was a mistake. I understood what you said, but not what you meant. What was a mistake? Going to the beach with him? Breaking up with me? Being there at that time?
And then I find myself on the beach with Gates, she’s not pregnant, in a bathing suit and big hat, sunglasses. We lay there silently for a while until I come in to find you.
At first you are not there and then you are, coming out of the shower, I guess, naked: pert and dark nipples, pale breast, tan-lined, showing off your summer tan, a certain glow, a small mound of dark hair between your legs, your belly smooth descending toward that mound, hips pronounced, legs slender and strong. I notice the scar on your knee. I notice no other blemishes. You come to me and press yourself against me in a hug, breast pressed hard between us. We lightly kiss. Then you push away, sit on a chair, and start putting on pantyhose.
I begin to violently sob, and just ask, Why?” over and over again. I ask why we can’t be again, what happened? You finally say that you do not even think of “us” anymore – it’s only when I force you too and you fake it then. Then you say, “turn around,” and I do. You are standing there and the hose have turned to fins. You say, “I love you,” and then float out the window. I run after only to get to the window just in time to see your tail submerge beneath the waves.
Epilogue:
I was a marooned sailor once, who fell in love with a mermaid on the island, and we lived there happily together until the rescue helicopters came and took me away, and she said she couldn’t go. And I saw her getting smaller and smaller in the water just off shore as we rose, until finally she I couldn’t see her anymore.
I live by the ocean and stare at the sea that I cannot bear to go back on. I talk to the water at night. At times I see things I cannot explain. I I still wish that mermaid would swim back to me.
G, I know this is all hokey, but sometimes dreams are that way.
Was playing: Strange Lands by Hudson Bell

A short song loop entry (MP3)

Why do you not pray anymore? Once you sat on the porch before you moved out and forced me to pray with you, I think ostensibly, that you and I would make through all of the moving out and strife, I think we both thought at that time that it would mean “together.” I guess God works in mysterious ways though. I suppose he could still surprise us again.
I feel like I am becoming a novelty here though, just sweet and kind but with no real power in this situation anymore. I hope your new romance is making you steadily more happy. God knows the one with me didn’t have any power to produce happiness for too long. Take care, G. You will be happy.
Was playing: Your Ex-Lover Is Dead by Stars

Yes things happened with me and Jenny, and it just so happens that Liz gets her hair cut at the same place where Jenny gets her hair cut, and Tom does, and I have come clean with Tom about it all, and I am sure he has talked with Liz, and since Liz is a gossip hound (not that I don’t like her, or gossip for that matter) I am sure it made its way back to you. We all make mistakes and this was another of mine, but in some strange way, I think it has ended up helping me. She has become desperate and a little crazy at times as I have steadily extracted myself from the situation. When I have had to deal with that drama, I have realized how you must have felt at times, especially during the period after you moved out when I was so sad and desperate myself. I am trying to be her friend, and she keeps writing these things about me, and I am afraid that we might not be able to be friends at all, at least not right now, which makes me a little sad, but may be the way things have to be.
I have dated and been around others since we split as well. It has been good, with much less drama than the Jenny situation, but with each person it just hasn’t felt right. I have searched my brain for what is off-kilter and the only thing I can come up with is that these women are not you. I realize that is not fair to these women, or to you for that matter, but you are the yardstick by which I measure things right now. There might be someone else who comes in and blows my doors off like you did one day, someone who makes all other yardsticks useless like you did, but that hasn’t happened yet.
I am sure that you wish at times that I would stop pining about you like this. At times, I wish I would too. I have tried everything I, or my therapist, knows how to do, and you still are there.
At the end of every day, I roll over to where you used to sleep beside me. I embrace a pillow, and, yes, I still pray. Tonight I will pray for the heavy heart you mentioned today. I used to pray for God to see a way for you to come back to me, now I just pray that he will show you a path to happiness and light. I pray for other things and people as well, but you are generally the first on the list. I ask Him to lift you up, and sometimes I ask him to fill your sleeping heart with the love that I still have for you. I hope while dreaming you feel it sometimes.

There are too many Toyota 4 Runners of a similar color in this town. Behind the wheel of each could be you. What would you be doing in Buckhead at 2 PM on a Tuesday afternoon? It doesn’t matter, it could still be you. Maybe school got out early and you went to the mall, or to buy a new mattress, or to get a coffee, maybe you are sleepy and lost your way on the way back home. And in the neighborhood, there are at least 24 trucks of a similar age and color as yours, and they drive past the house tormenting me. I try as hard as I can to catch the driver’s face as they pass by. There are too many of these trucks, but only one that is yours. I know yours when it is sitting in your driveway, but outside of that it is hard to tell. There’s no Elvis sticker, the tell-tale sign. The only distinguishing mark, if it still exists, is the Elvis air freshener that hangs from the rearview. Sometimes, I look. I stare hard. Is it you? I will have to try harder. I cannot tell. What does your truck look like? What do you look like anymore? How does your heart feel? And, is the engine running fine? Let us take a ride again one day.