Climbing the Pitch

Even at the risk of taking all the fun out of it, I can’t help wondering what flirting is all about.  I likened it to sex, but is it in reality a sort of pre-foreplay?  It’s a toe in someone else’s water, isn’t it?  Or is it an invitation to a club into which only a coded rapport gains one entry?  And what is membership?  See, I wonder just how serious flirting can be.  Certainly, it can be more serious for one person than the other; that is, it can mean two entirely different things to each of the participants; and if there is a disparity wide enough, someone’s feelings could get hurt.  But, no, a flirt is a flirt, right?  You can’t get a flirt on alone.  (In that way, it’s definitely not like sex.)  Even the unacknowledged flirt is valuable insomuch as it eliminates a relationship candidate.  I suppose that’s what I’m doing when I flirt:  gauging compatibility.  Is that what it was for that flirter I told you about?  No, that was pure tease, a test of the ol’ feminine wiles.  If I’d been a serious candidate for romance to her, she would not have mentioned a husband.  So I got notched; at least she must have considered me attractive–unless she’d set her sights low when she picked on me.  (That can’t be true!)  I don’t flirt with every woman who approaches me at the circ desk, though I try with most of them; but that’s only because most women are attractive to me in some way.  I allowed the flirter her fun despite the tease because I had fun, too.  I had not invested much, and isn’t that the beauty of flirting?  There is never much invested, but the payoff is always in the black, ranging from flattery to romance.  And no one gets hurt.  Flirting is a kind of speed-dating:  No rapport?  Next!  A flirt can’t go too far but always far enough–far enough to know the sparks just aren’t there; far enough to have a good time; far enough to hit it off.

What happens after hitting it off?  This is where expectations can diverge.  Who’s seeing romance and who’s seeing a little diversion?  If it seems as if I’m looking at this a bit too deeply, to the extent, indeed, of sucking the fun from flirting, well, part of that is me trying to find a reason to not enjoy myself at it and part just plain curiosity.  I can’t much control either entity.  Serious or fun, flirting is still a game, but a fascinating one.  I want to know how and why people play at it.  After all, if I want to play this game I had better be able to hold my own.  This is a league I do not want to be booted out of.  Maybe I want more than my partner in repartee, but flirting is not the stage at which such things are revealed.  So, then, flirting is less pre-foreplay than pre-first-date, right?  That wasn’t how my flirter saw it, but maybe that’s how Ms. C saw it a few days later.  She had a different style altogether–subtler, with the body language all in her eyes and head, and no pointed innuendo.  In fact, there was nothing so much in what she said that defined her attitude as flirtatious as there was in the quality of the rapport between us.  I’m not even sure where the flirtation began.  Maybe it was in my own raised eyebrows when she approached, for she was gorgeous–see-green eyes set in caramel skin and dark hair piled hurriedly on her head–carelessly beautiful.  I was in her power, struggling to hold my composure and her interest.  Certainly, she knew that.  Though she didn’t mention a husband (and my eyes were unable to stray from hers in search of a ring), perhaps she was, still, playing the same game as Ms. H, the previous flirter, insomuch as she was enjoying her power over me.  Ah, so be it.  My flirtation skills are not yet such that I can hold and wield much power in these exchanges.  I wonder:  Is it the balance of this power that seals a mutual attraction?  If I were to hold my own better, not yield control so easily, would I be more desirable?  Huh.  I guess I’ll just have to improve my game to find out.  Ms. H. has a book on hold.  I can only hope that she holds off getting it till Wednesday or Thursday evening, and that I’m on the desk when she does.

I have allayed my initial fear.  Not only have I not analyzed the fun clean out of flirting, I have actually found new levels of appreciation for it.  Desperation has become eagerness:  Put me in coach!  I’m ready to play!  It’s a game worth playing, and worth studying to get better at.  I don’t know what “winning” at it means, and I don’t want to know just yet, but maybe by the time I’ve learned to swing the balance of power closer to center I’ll understand what prizes are awaiting me.  Do I then try to pull that balance toward me?  Ah, so much to learn.

To Take Desperation Down There and Drop It In a Bum’s Cup

It was more than two weeks before I finally played the CD I’d bought at Plan-9 when I was last in Carytown.  I didn’t want to be reminded of the failure and disappointment and the limbo of transition I was lost in.  It’s called Write About Love, by Belle and Sebastian.  It only took me a day, though, to respond to the sticker on the wrapper:  “Write 300 words about love in any form.”  It was a contest solicitation, but the thought of a “song and a visit from Stuart Murdoch” was not my inspiration.  Being asked to write about love was enough. It was the kind of inspiration that got me started on A Bright, Ironic Hell after at least two years of not writing about anything.  This what I wrote:

Love is all I write about, because I don’t know what it is, and I want it so badly.  I think I have been in love.  I’m not sure.  It was a new feeling, and it was a good feeling, and it was torture.  It might as well have been love.  She didn’t love me, though she liked me once–just not enough.  Now, she doesn’t like me and won’t even let me talk to her.  So I write about her.  She doesn’t like that, either.  It doesn’t matter what I write–whether I’m angry that she rejected me or worshipping her qualities–she doesn’t like it, and has asked me to stop–a few times–and I have stopped, because I would do anything for her.  But I have always started again, because, I guess, there was always that one thing I couldn’t do for her as long as she inspired me.  And, though, if she told the truth and said she hated me, I would find inspiration still in the fascination for her that won’t die.

Was I in love with her?  Am I still?  Is it even love if it is rejected?  Is it just a seed without soil?  Her name is Julie, and she’s beautiful except when she looks at me, when her eyes darken and her face hardens, and I could cry because she feels that way about me.  I only wanted to love her.  That was my crime, and that face is my punishment, though hell is not being able to stop seeing it before me–and having to write about it.

Still, it was two weeks later, just after I’d published the previous post that I listened to the album, and now it cozily inhabits my head.  Friday had arrived and all the chatter I’d felt so excluded from had left with the half of the crew that didn’t work that weekend.  I am always more comfortable with the smaller crew, and the size of the group has much to do with that–the smaller the better for me–but the people in that group are individuals I’m comfortable with, people I can talk to and listen to.  That they’re all women plays no small part, either.  I feel the rooster in the hen house in some ways, but the brother among sisters, mostly.  Mike and Maddox have in turn shared this weekend with me, and I felt them to be interlopers.  Jennifer traded a weeekend with Bethany recently, and it simply seemed there was a hole in Bethany’s place.

This crew–Megan, Becky, Bethany, Angie, Sujatha, and Judy–gets a much more relaxed Dion than they’ve probably ever known.  Though I harbor bitterness still over the not-so-distant past, I feel no reason to air it at work; without its source and target, it has no (or little) context there:  She’s gone, I’m out of the box.  I can breathe deeply and not dread an emotional menace around every corner.  On my best days–and they are coming more consecutively all the time–I feel like a dancer–loose-limbed, swivelling from the hips and shoulders; turning on a toe; reaching from the waist standing on one leg, back and other leg parallel to the floor, eyes straight ahead–nearly every move a “step.”  I feel closer to real.  Amongst this group, I feel much more accepted; and individual but still connected to the group.  I’d like to think that I ask for less and give a little more now that the person I used to ask so much from with such futility is gone.  Before she left what I wanted out of this crew (and everyone else) was some acknowledgement that they understood me, that I wasn’t alone.  My paranoia needed to know that not everyone was on her side.  Then the peace lily came, and she left.

The desperation stayed, of course; it’s mine, a part of me for the time being.  I can diminish its role as motivator, but it has to tag along to work with me.  It wants me out on the circ desk, to see and talk to people (by which I mean women).  I’m anxious to get out there, too, but when I do, I leave desperation in the workroom.  On most days, with a full crew in force, any of us is lucky to get more than an hour out there in a day.  Monday and Tuesday, day shifts for me, are busts:  Any women I see on those days are most likely to be either young mothers or retirees.  Give me my hours in the evening on Wednesday and Thursday, when the working women come in.  Fridays and Saturdays, with the half-crew, I might get on the desk three times, and as busy as those days are, my opportunities for contact can reach tantalizing proportions.  I have no “line,” just a smile, a greeting, and lots of eye contact.  If her eyebrows go up, the pitch of my voice goes down and its edges melt away.  That’s my invitation to a flirt, but sometimes the invite comes from the other side of the counter.  I never turn those down, though not leading the dance can momentarily tangle my feet before the flattery rights me.  With Megan as witness at the terminal next to me, one woman virtually turned a fine payment into a come-on, leaning across the counter to within inches of my face to joke huskily about being “bad” just before casually dropping the husband bomb.  I felt teased but didn’t let on, didn’t even pull awayto regain my personal space from what could’ve been a kiss if we’d both puckered up, we were so close.  If this had been a game, I’d have conceded her the victory but not without letting her know with a one-sided smile of a wink that I was merely extending her a gentlemanly courtesy and that next time I’d be a bit more competitive now that I had her measured.  I asked Megan what she though of this woman dropping the husband bomb in the middle of a flirt.  What was the point?  Megan theorized that the woman wanted to prove to herself that she still “had it.”  If that were true, then she went away satisfied.  I felt the same way:  It had been nearly as good as good sex–a mutual challenge willingly met to pleasure in each other’s pleasure.

I’m not sure what I’ve been getting at here, except, maybe, that I don’t have to just write about love, that I can talk about it, too, at work, where there is no longer someone with whom I’m in love and who resented and feared it.  What I have now (for the most part, and the rest doesn’t matter) is a peace lily and people who understand that I am a passionate man and am not ashamed of it; can confide with it and joke about; and is who he is not because of one person, but despite her.  Every day is less of her and more of me, and much more fun–and I’m getting paid for it.  What’s the rush to Carytown?

Dr. Weekend and Mr. Work

Monday through Thursday, there is almost as little to say here as to Julie, though in both cases it’s a matter of allowance:  Pride doesn’t let me speak to Julie; better judgement prevents me talking about the turmoil that that puts me through.  The problem is not going away.  Not-talking is not the same as not-feeling.  I almost feel a hypocrite or a liar for not expressing these feelings, but I ignore them only on paper.  So I’m stuck just thinking about them, fighting them away.  It’s been about a year since Julie and I had a conversation, so it’s been nearly that long since I ended (I won’t say “finished”) A Bright, Ironic Hell.  I still have many questions, and they fuel the bitterness of my pride, but only in my mind do I allow myself to ask them; and I ask them bitterly, knowing the answers hide within Julie.  We have settled, Julie and I, into an “understanding,” in which not even a word is spoken.  That is not an exaggeration.  Not one word.  When our eyes happen to meet, I can no longer read what they say or know what mine are trying to say to her.  I don’t even know what I’m feeling then.  If I had a more benign humor about this, I’d say this was all ridiculous, but there’s nothing funny here.  It’s not like two people mirror-dancing to get by one another.  The weekend’s advantage got me through Monday, but Tuesday through Thursday threatens to bleed into the weekend, though here, on a Thursday, it’s easy to underestimate the freedom that absence of Julie affords me; and if I still have that in mind when I leave work then the advantage will be mine, and I will have a headstart on a good attitude for the weekend.

“If.”  Where’s the font big enough for that word?  Especially when here it is Thursday night and I’ve been a bad boy, opening one of those doors I’ve told myself not to open and stealing glances at Julie.  And god am I paying for it.  I know I moaned out loud once.  She’s just more beautiful each time I look.  God help me if she doesn’t gleam when she smiles.  And in telling you this I’m going through another forbidden doorway, but it’s this or–I don’t know what.  I nearly kissed her neck tonight.  There it was, the back of it exposed as she stood over a cart looking down, her back to me, and I was drawn, pulled–yanked–toward her, leaning–oh, if I could just get a whiff of her hair….  How good sense turned me away, a foot from her, I don’t know, and I don’t know yet if I’m grateful;  though surely it would have cost me my job, I still see that smooth, pale neck with its brown mole, and I’m drawn still, but the fantasy can’t suffice.  The mind can only pretend to take what the body can’t have.

But it’s Thursday night, and I don’t want to try to sleep with that issue, yet how much of what I don’t allow myself to say is going to fester and spew pus on my weekend if I don’t lance it know?  So let me tell you about the flirt party Thomas and Julie threw Wednesday.  Thomas was in rare form because he had a rare opportunity with both me and Julie in the same room.  At first I’d left, not wanting to see the too affectionate squeezes or to hear Thomas drop his voice to the Barry White register to coo at Julie, but then I dedided I’d let him put on his show and see just how far I could take it.  Of course it wasn’t his cooing as much as her flirting along with him that tested the boundaries of my tolerance.  Thomas flirts with all the women, but Julie’s the only one who doesn’t roll her eyes and avoid him.  It gets harder all the time to believe she’s not enjoying the twist of the knife in my gut as much as the attention she gets from no other male, but we won’t go there, will we?  I gave it about ten minutes before I said to him, “Get out.”  He said, “What?”  “I’ve had enough,” and I turned my back him at my desk.  He said, “Did you hear that, Julie?”  He told me to get out.  What do you think of that?”  I didn’t hear a reply, though the full room had gone silent.  Thomas said, “Can you believe that?  He hurt my feelings.  Do you want me to go, Julie?”  “Oh, I would never ask you to leave, Thomas.”  But he left, and Angie told me later that she was practically dancing with joy when he did.

So, I’ve broken my rules already.  What the hell–it’s Thursday night with three days of no-Julie ahead of me, and a Friday of whatever I want right around the bend.  I feel good, and maybe by Monday I’ll feel great, but I can’t lie my way to that feeling.  Working with Julie will not get better by pretending nothing’s wrong, but nothing’s wrong about enjoying my weekend, and taking work there with me won’t help me do that.  However, taking the weekend into work with me can considerably improve my attitude there.  Call me a prideful coward at work if you like, but you can’t call Julie much less, and at least I’m using three days out of the week to effect some positive change in the rest of the week.  I think “if” is only about eight points high right now.

Looks Like One of Me’s Gotta Go

Despite the mileage on my legs already by then, I went to a movie (The Kids Are All Right) Friday, half hoping to continue the conversation with the bike-coveter.  But I had no conversation, probably didn’t speak ten words, and none of those more than courtesies.  Just the way it is, sometimes, I told myself, trying to hold desperation and disappointment at arm’s length, being “philosophical” about it.  This is becoming a habit, I thought on my way home.  I hate habit; it’s dulling and reductive to consciousness.  I struck out on this mission to climb out of my rut and see what I could see and make happen.  Am I digging myself another rut but just on higher ground?  Not all ruts are equal, though.  Better to dig it in public than private.  After all, the places I go regularly are places others go regularly, which makes us alike in that respect and compatible to that degree.  Aren’t those the people I’m trying to meet?  Isn’t this the way I’ve always tried to believe was the way things worked?

It gets easier.  Each weekend seems less of a challenge, more natural, the standards of success made more realistic and attainable and, when attained readjusted to a higher but still reachable level.  It seems I know what I’m doing, or finally confident enough to do what I’ve always known was right.  At work Monday through Thursday, the goals are unsettled and the confidence absent.  Emotional survival is the short-term goal, an attitude shift toward Julie from disdain to indifference the long-term goal, and I have no viable strategy for attaining either.  But now I’m thinking that the success of the weekend can displace the stress of the week, if only little by little.  After Friday I still had another day to work, but the weekends at work have become virtually stress-free since Julie’s departure from them.  (My weekend begins when I pedal the hell away from Julie Thursday night a little after nine.)  The workweek floated from my shoulders even as I worked Saturday, and by the time I got home form there I realized that I’d looked everyone in the eye, spoken clearly, and made every effort to connect on the other’s levels–even flirting quite a bit.  Before I had quite made it home I stopped at the store.  I’d decided I wanted a bottle of wine, simply because I could not carry a six-pack in the messenger bag on my back.  But I don’t know wine (sorry,Dad!), and I’d been staring at the proverbial dizzying array of bottles for some time when a woman my age appeared beside me looking considerably more purposeful.  I turned to her and said, “I have no idea what I’m looking at here,” and I smiled.  I was talking to an introvert:  The look I got from her she hardly dared give–a side-long gaze that explored with a wary curiosity the motive behind my words.  She tried to project upon me the motive that had not occurred to me–to chat her up–when all I was attempting was to set my thought free.  I was practically out of my body for lack of self-consciousness.  I didn’t even bother to feel slighted by the implication in her eyes.  She didn’t answer me but, unsure how to respond, just smiled politely.  I moved to her other side because I sensed I was in her way, and she moved to my vacated spot.  I faced a wall of merlot.  I turned to her again and asked, “Is merlot a red wine?”  (Honestly, I don’t know wine!)  She said, “Yes, it’s a dry red wine, not so sweet.”  “And what would one eat with a merlot.”  “Oh, steak is good, or even cheese and crackers.”  She pointed to a bottle I’d just been eyeing.  “That’s a good merlot there.”  She pointed to the Riesling area and said, “That’s where my favorite usually is, but they seem to be out.”  I plucked the Woodbridge (2008) from the shelf.  “Sorry to distract you from your mission,” I said–”Oh, that’s alright”–”but I appreciate the advice.” 

I found my body again at the register, but the fit was a little loose, in a comfortable, broken-in way–familiar in a new way.  Can I bring this guy to work?  I’m not sure how to get him in , but I have to fiure it out, though perhaps I can settle for floating through the first four days of the week daydreaming of our next encounter, on Friday.  We’ll be going to that psychic and bookstore that were closed two (three?) weeks ago, though I’m not counting on the bookstore, as it’s going to be very hot again by then.  It will make for another hundred-plus-mile week, but it’s what I have to do, isn’t it?  It’s a habit I can embrace, these extracurricular Fridays.  Against the knowledge of how real the positive possibilities are, the excuses to stay home may never again be clever enough to work.

I’ve Run Out of Metaphors for “Never”

Still, it’s all about Julie, and that spoils everything.  No matter how good I feel about my appearance or how confident I am of my game plan and ability to execute it, her hands are around my throat.  I say, “If only I could find someone else, I could be rid of Julie,” but most days it feels like the other way ’round.  Being in the library with her is a fight for emotional survival.

Some days, I’m just sure I’m not going to make it.  I become that caged animal again, knowing I have to get out of there–permananently–yet despairing of the possibility.  On Monday and Thursday, the two full work days with Julie, I’m looking for her even before I get to work.  As I pedal across the Nuckols overpass, cars criss-crossing in front of and behind me entering and exiting the expressway, I’m gazing ahead to the next exit, where Julie would be getting off.  I always hope to see her on those days–not just see her but pass in front of her at the stop sign and look her in the eye and kiss the air between us.  It has never happened, though twice we have been stopped beside one another at the next light.  She refused to look my way–not even straight ahead–but checked her rearview and shotgun mirrors while I stared at her.  If I don’t see her on the road I hope to at least beat her to work and get changed and ready to work before she arrives.  Monday I’m always scheduled to start the day deleting outdated holds, the ones patrons didn’t pick up in time.  Julie could be anywhere else–circ desk, window, picking holds–but I hope for her to be backup.  There are two terminals at the backup station, one always manned, the other spare.  I use the spare one to delete holds.  I want Julie to be backup that same hour so she can be trapped beside me.  I won’t talk to her, and I’ll only look at her when I’m sure her back is turned.  The torment is exquisite, and I only hope that Julie is at least uncomfortable.  After all, I don’t want ignoring her to make me invisible; I just want it to be annoying.  It’s easy for her to not talk to me, but I don’t want it to be too easy for her.  I suppose all I am or can be to Julie is an annoyance, and I can be that for as long as I want to be.  I know her boundaries.   I can be that fly bouncing against the other side of the window screen, just this side of her doing anything about it.  When I think of it that way I wonder why I even consider her a hindrance to my pursuit of love.  Ask my heart why it bruises my ribs in her presence or my face why it flushes crimson.  In the infancy of my crush, I had a giddy outlet for that energy, running everywhere in the library I needed to go, vaulting desks, dancing and spinning around obstacles–including Julie several times.  But the excitement has turned to dread and the energy now lies coiled, poised for flight or fight.

It’s not always my desire to avoid Julie.  If we are both shelving, I like to be near her, and see her working from where I’m working.  I don’t hide; in fact, I often will her to glance over at me as I stare at her.  It sometimes works, and when it does I take the eye contact as a victory and work on.  The only time I don’t want to be in the same room with her is when there’s a chance she’ll speak to someone.  I can handle seeing her, but anymore just hearing her voice raises my blood pressure.  In the workroom I try to drown her out with music through my headphones if I’m trapped at a desk, but if I’m sorting a cart, I might get up and walk away–way away, like out the back door, for some deep breaths of fresh air.  If I’m where I can’t do either of those, such as at the window or backup, I sometimes mutter, “Shutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutup…” until she does.  Though sometimes her initial syllable comes out at a very high pitch, it’s not her voice that annoys me so much as that she’s not speaking to me. 

We do the avoid-dance as if we choreographed it in collaboration–as if we were an old married couple tired of each other, except that we are embarrassed instead of indifferent upon encounter.  When the music stops and we misstep into a confrontation the eyes meet briefly (that chin-up, defiant glare that used to freeze my blood having been replaced with Bambi fear) –just long enough for recogniti0n–then we take an exaggerated path  around each other. 

If by the end of the day I have dodged apoplexy, I scramble back into the bike togs and try to hit the road ahead of her.  That way, she’ll have to pass me (if I get a big enough headstart).

Tuesday and Wednesday, when Julie and I work oposite shifts, overlapping only half the day, it’s possible to have no contact at all with her, as long as one of us isn’t relieving the other at a service point (desk, backup, window), and even then we both know the steps to that dance, though I sometimes ignore the music just to make her look at me and say, “I’m here, Dion”–another little victory.  At the end of those four hours I am angry (and puzzled as to why), abhoring the resultant vacuum before a baptism of relief floods the void.  I never believe it’s going to happen, but within fifteen minutes I’ve been born again.  Before that point in the day I cannot be expected to bother with conversing with anyone, and if I had any humor at all it was cynical and cruel.  With Julie gone I am very nearly the opposite person–happy, talkative, goofy, my voice clear and expansive.  It’s a good time to flirt.  The weekends, now that she’s switched, are virtually holidays.

But these two lives are one life too many, each in the shadow of the other, each mocking the other.  Neither can be sincerely lived (and certainly only one deserves to be).  I insist on claiming back my self from the emotional tyranny I imposed with the obsession over Julie, but I also insist on continuing to oppress both of us as punishment.  I can’t be rid of Julie until I let her go, but as I told her about being in love with her, “It’ll be over when it’s over”; there’s nothing I intend to do about it–or, rather, nothing my pride will alow me to do.  Rationale gets no say.  Perfect sense is still not wisdom.  So nothing will change about the life I don’t want, because if I don’t change it it won’t change.  Julie will never make the least move toward change, any more than she would initiate a conversation or greet me in the morning–any more than I am willing to do it myself.  I play at pushing aside that ugly life, displacing it with the more attractive one, but I can only carry it, like a hump on my back, like that constant knot in my shoulder, and drape it with vanity as I play-act my way across the more scenic stage.  But acting, however good, is still just acting.  I know what I’m up to–both the good and the bad–but just as rationale will not effect wisdom, neither will laying moral judgment upon myself effect action toward healing.  The changes needed will make themselves.  Talk is cheap, and pretty words don’t mean much.  I’ll move on, Julie will move on, the tension will fade.  I’m almost sure now that that will have to happen before I can have a meaningful relationship with another woman.  Until then, emotional survival at work will remain a challenge, but, with patience and confident foresight , should be more endurable.  Another lofty game plan, maybe, but at least one not consciously executable.  It might all just amount to muddling through, but was I doing any better strategizing?  I’m at least able to recoginize futility.  Sure, it’s still about Julie, but one day it won’t be, just won’t be–no grief or relief on its departure, because its departure won’t be noticed.  One day.

When a Ten-Foot Pole Just Won’t Do

There is a lot to be said for the separation theory for getting over Julie.  By Monday, I will have worked with her for only four hours out of eight work days.  During that time without her, I became a silly, confident chatterbox at work.  The library has very nearly become the home I’d always hoped it would–a vast meeting house full of diverse ideas and open minds and hearts, and things that need to be said that are actually heard.

I talked with Valerie as I leisurely registered her for a card.  I have no doubt that everyone is Valerie’s friend.  She is intensely curious and entirely without social fear.  Valerie told me how years of military service on an island off the West Coast created her unusual accent, how she has had ten operations and has a terminal disease (she’s only forty-five), but she told me with neither self-pity nor a desperate grasp for mine.  She has died, she said, and she is not afraid of death.  “You know how love feels?  Well, what I felt was a billion times that.  But I came back.  My brother saw the sheet over my face going up and down.”  I tried to imagine that billion-fold love and could only stare with wet eyes into Valerie’s under the potato-chip brim of her cowboy hat.  She smiled, said, “Yeah,” and we both laughed, me with a tear running down a cheek.  “Don’t sweat the small stuff, Dion.  Those little details”–she pressed her thumb and finger together between us–”don’t mean a thing.”

Michelle is as mellow as Valerie is intense.  Michelle is Future Wife–only not.  The bike came back and I spent my lunch hour beside it with no return of the owner.  But I left a note this time, and while I was one the desk a woman stepped up and told me so.  I was disappointed at first sight–she was stout–but she was pretty and natural and in her low/mid-forties, near the low end of my age range.  Her son Michael, about ten or eleven, was with her (explaining the smaller bike near hers).  He was very patient (as was Brian, upon whom I’d sloughed my duties) as we talked for much of the hour.  She couldn’t tell me much about the bike (she got it at Goodwill), but she told me a bit about herself:  She’s from Santa Cruz, been in this area a few years, renting one of the few farms left in the area, keeps a community garden on land.  She cried for a three-hundred year-old oak that was taken down because it, supposedly, was in the way of a water line coming through.  When she found out I’d lived in Richmond my whole life she was surprised, by both my Mid-Atlantic (non-Southern Southern) accent and my liberal consciousness.  By the end of the conversation she’d become quite attractive, indeed, and she left me with an open invitation to drop by.  “We’ll throw something on the grill.  My husband’s laid-back–well, I’m laid-back and Michael’s laid-back.  My husband’s not laid-back.  But he’s cool.”  Ah, well. …

A younger woman (early thirties) flirted lightly with me as I helped her with the copier, but I was caught off-guard and put off my game.  I probably blushed.  I’m always shocked (and flattered) by younger women flirting with me.  Are they bolder than women my age or just enough less subtle about it that I’m actually able to recognize it?  I know it’s spring, and the human is no exception to the rutting instinct of the season, but if Julie were around how much chance would I give myself to find a mate?  I go to more trouble now to look my best on the days without Julie, and the weekend’s casual dress code gives me more leeway to be myself–out of the khakis and into the jeans and t-shirt.  I’m eager to get on the desk, where I can see (and be seen by) people and meet and talk to them.  The library is where I have to do that, because it’s where I like to be (most days), where I live much of my life, and where I’m most likely to meet minds and personalities meeting my needs and standards.  I’m saddened to think that I can have this only by closing myself off to Julie, but what else can I do?  I hate this game, where the rules tie my hands and stuff a sock in my mouth.  I’m leaving Julie those rules and playing by my own.

I had no intention of being bitter.  This was to be a celebration of a new direction, of territory reclaimed, but though I am off in a new direction, and I have reclaimed a little of what’s mine, the cost gives me pause, and Monday I will give back much that I gained over those eight work days, including a calm consience.  Or maybe I will talk to another Valerie or Michelle, or I’ll see the blushing woman again and get to say more than “Hi” to her.  Maybe I can actually do that with Julie in the library.  Have I gained that much distance?

Nowhere Near “Postal,” Anyway

Work without Julie is a relief.  That, like many another thing I’ve said, is not true.  There was a time when it was true.  There was also a time when I was unhappy without her there.  This is neither of those times, though it strongly resembles both.  Her not being at work relieves me of watching out for her in order to avoid her or openly show my disdain for her.  It deprives me of that, too.  It relieves me of very little stress.  See, if she’s not where I am she’s relieved of me, free to live without me.  Free to be happy.  Free of my dramatic disdain.  I could say I don’t want that for her, because I feel that way, but I don’t believe it,  and I don’t want to hate myself yet more by talking myself into believing it.  I’m just lonely, jealous, and brittlely insecure, and Julie is a target for my projections.  What I can’t take responsibility for I blame her for.  There’s my awareness.  Where’s my corrective action?

The solution is beyond my intellect–not smarter than it, but transcendent of it, impossible to consider.  What’s to do when thinking won’t do?  We come back to faith, a frightening place, a place without control.  A humble place.  A place without Me.  A lifetime of looking for myself, and this is what it comes to.  I thought I was through with irony.  This soul’s not big enough for both faith and pride, and it’s easier to keep what I’ve always had than to replace it with what seems an ambiguous entity that will claim control of my ego.  Pride has not altogether blinded me, or I would not be questioning its worth, but sight is the price I would have to pay for faith.  With what, then, would I look in the mirror?  How would I avoid Julie?

I still have my little game of flirtation with the patrons, but the big game I play at the library is with Julie, and I lost it at the tip-off–even playing by my own rules–simply by getting her to play with me.  Winning now means losing my ego.  I tell myself this is all an experiment, a test of limits and reactions, but it’s really no more than poking with a stick.  I don’t honestly want her to hate me.  I’m even beginning to doubt that I’ve fallen out of love with her.  Was saying I was no longer in love with her just another of those hopeful deferences I made to Julie? or was the lie the declaration of love?  (Wow, Irony, you don’t mess around!)  If Julie changed her mind about me, do you really think I’d say, “I’m sorry, but I just don’t feel it anymore”?  The supposition says enough.

I’ll play my game.  I’ll avoid Julie as I avoid doing so many “right” things:  with awareness of the actions and their consequences, the guilt of knowing and not-doing, and the pride of doing the wrong things well.  Awareness doesn’t change anything but my level of self-loathing.  Do I have a limit I must reach before I change?  For how long can I work with Julie before I reach that limit?  Will awareness keep up?

Turn Blue

Outside the practically scripted structure of the library, the rules of my game of attraction change.  There is no search of interest in widening eyes or a head-dip.  There is only one rule, really, and that is to look good, and that’s all about the hair.  Shaving happens when I feel like it, clothes cover me, and I’m in good shape.  Hair is my vanity, and I’ll pay for the extra hot water it takes to wash and condition it now that it’s grown out, and for the detangler and oil.  If I feel I look good I feel good, and I’m the opposite of self-conscious.  I don’t swagger; I just feel good.  If there’s interest, I don’t notice.

Now that Julie’s back, outside the library is where I’d rather be.  With a weekend between us, it was easy writing that first paragraph .  Now I consider shaving the evening before the new week begins, and her face floats up before mine as the reason to shave.  So I won’t.  It didn’t stop me from washing my hair, though.  My rebellion in that arena is not having it cut.  I know no one at work likes it.  The next time someone says my hair looks good will be when I cut it short.  They can hold their collective breath.  I’ve spent enough time trying to impress the unimpressable.  It’s time I impressed myself–and anyone else who can appreciate me as I am.

Leaving Well-Enough Annoyed

If there’s nothing I can do, what can I do?  Well, there’s me all over:  Well-Enough will always have my company.  For most of the time that I pursued Julie I knew, explicitly, that she was not interested in me.  For once, I’d come out of myself to pursue what I thought was a chapter of my destiny and could not have been more wrong.  Why not leave it to chance this time?  I could certainly use the breather.  Not that I don’t live on the edge of hope.  I encounter quite a few people at the library, and the odds throw several attractive women my way every day.  I look for the widening gaze upon first contact, the naked left ring finger as they pull their card from their from their wallet, and the birthdate on their account if the first two criteria are met.  If I can’t build up a flirt, I try to make meaningful eye contact or look for the head-dip/side-glance combination, or either of those along with the hair-tuck over the ear.  Let’s not say I’m looking for love so much as interest.  As long as I’m not looking for love I’m unburdened of the groundwork.  All I have to do is answer the phone when it rings and the door when it’s knocked–as long as I don’t each time expect or hope that love is the caller or visitor.  Ah, but I won’t hold that breath.