Whenever, I Hope

Lieneke’s Law, Relationship Rule #1:  Getting over the separation lasts half the time the relationship did.  (The Vanishing, 1988, The Netherlands)

From the time I declared (to myself, in writing) my crush  on Julie to the days she left Twin Hickory was twenty-six months.  I’ve gotten more than three of the thirteen months allotted me out of the way, so it seems I can anticipate my Christmas (or birthday) present.  If the formula is true and my calculations correct…well, I’m not sure.  I’m ambivalent.  It seems soon, but isn’t it what I want?  It’ll be the biggest non-event of my life, but it will still be a non-event.  Seeing her set me back a month, maybe, but I did nothing about it but write, so I might very nearly be on track.  If I shut up altogether it might happen sooner.  No–later:  I can’t fool myself into not thinking about her; that’s just an explosion down the road.  I don’t do distraction well; I want to face my problems–resolve them, not ignore them away.  If that prolongs the battle, then it will have been well and truly won in the end.  To resolve it I have to live with it, give it a place in my life where it will do the most good, and that’s right here, and in Twickory, in Book Monkey Says, in “the novel.”  I write, I tell stories.  I have a story to tell, and, somehow–I don’t know how yet–I’ll tell it.  I am afraid of getting over Julie, afraid of losing her.  I want to capture her on paper, at least.  Can I do that when I’m over her?  Will she still mean enough to me to finish the story?  Will she remain an inspiration?  The writing will decide that, will create the Us without Julie (and without me at times), imperfectly recreate the woman I couldn’t get to know otherwise and let me know her surrogate, instead.  Resolution is finishing telling the story as I know it; and though I know barely half of it, I can eventually fill out the rest with my fascination for the other half.  I’m most afraid of losing the fascination.  I expect none of these fears to be realized, though, now that I’m that I’m aware of them.  The aggregate fear is that I might stop feeling love for her, but I’m now almost sure that I can be over Julie and still love her.  And why not?  It’s a good feeling to love without obligating someone else to return it (and I come closer everyday to actually believing that).

The Vanishing is only a movie, and Lienecke’s only a character in it.  There is no rule.  I’d be as well off making my own rules, arbitrary as such rules are.  Why We Love offers no formula, says only “weeks, months, or years.”  Whenever.  Whenever–it’s as good a time as any, considering my fascination with the journey.  Where am I now?  I still think of Julie for a large portion of my day, but every day less of the frustration and bitterness accompanies the thoughts.  Fading, too, but at a slower rate is the regret of missing so many opportunities to step up and get out of my pride.  But how could anything have been different between the two of us, given how we were each equipped to handle any of it?  We both did what we could do, in our own inadequate way.  For my part, hormones were doing the driving.  I dubbed them “The Fool.”  I don’t think they’ve gotten behind the wheel quite as often since Julie left, but they’re still not in the back seat, either.  Minus Julie’s agitation, The Fool can almost relax, detach a little more every day from the past, now that it’s not the present every, single work day.  Sometimes, I can take step back from that bright, ironic hell and see the satellite dance, and that excites me, because that’s what this writing was supposed to have been  all along:  A look back–not over my shoulder, but through time.  When that shoulder no longer knots up at the thought of her or at the sight of her handwriting, maybe that’s when I’ll have reached Whenever.  Or will it be when I no longer look for her wherever I go? or when she finishes becoming Phoebe?

I have honed a certain necessary ability to categorize my feelings for Julie by venue of expression:  The worst bitterness and frustration–e.g., when I saw her at the training center–goes into Twickory; there’s no longer room for that here; I’m trying to heal.  I still often feel the feelings that aren’t good for me, and, still needing to be expressed, they’ve been given a place of their own in Twickory.  It’s an important outlet, a place to answer the nagging questions and understand the Julie that wouldn’t let me know her.  Of course, it’s all still speculation, but in fiction everything is true, nothing can be disputed.  If you understand it, it’s true.  Without Julie’s help I’ll help myself.  That’s an important step away from her, as important as not needing her love to validate mine for her.

But I suppose that it will yet be a long while before I’m over her.  I still write this for her, to her, still hope to hear from her, to see her, to sit down and talk with her–not to air grievances, not to talk at her, begging for answers, but…to get to know her.  Having those hopes makes my recovery seem a lot farther away.  Perhaps Twickory is the place for hoping, too.  Hope–at least this hope–might as well be fiction, and Julie might as well be Phoebe, because the reality just isn’t good enough.  Whatever the reality is at Whenever, it may still pale to my hopes, and Twickory may in the end be little more than a story.  What will I be?  A little more complete, a little closer to loving myself, a little closer to falling in love again–a lot less Julie and a lot more me.

My Plastic One Can Do the Same Job, Just More Slowly and Painfully

(To the tune of “Foot Shooter” by Frightened Rabbit.)

Thomas said he had news.  I said, “Oh, yeah?”  My mind was already out the starting gate, chasing the possibilities; my gut already girding for the blow.

“But I can’t tell you.”

“That’s what you said last time.”

“Yeah, but see, I didn’t know you were gonna take it so hard.”

I was surprised that he found that more important than the amusement it afforded him,  but maybe I’ve been selling him short in the compassion department.  Of course, I wanted to hear this “news,” and, of course, I didn’t, but my imagination had probably already topped the reality:  The immediate thought was that she had a boyfriend.  Not that I could believe it, but my imagination took off after the worst news I could have heard.  I didn’t push Thomas.  I knew that despite my own worse-case scenarios, ignorance was the path to bliss in this matter:  Don’t give me the knife, and I can’t fall on it.  Naturally, I’d be jealous of any man whose romantic attentions she accepted, but after that. . . ?  Well, I’d feel plenty of pity for my lonely ol’ self, sure, but I don’t think the dreaded inpiration-loss would happen.  See, I’ve been learning to channel the bitterness of the irresoluble reality that was Julie and me into a resolute fiction–Twickory. I am creating the resolution, putting two characters in motion against each other and trying to interpret the consequences and steer the course to an actual destination.  Thomas can go ahead and tell me Julie has hooked up with the man of her dreams, and I’ll feel all the things I usually feel towards her and myself, but if it comes down to asking the same unanswerable questions with which I’ve burdened myself in Satellite Dance and A Bright, Ironic Hell, then I will put them to Twickory and see how those people deal with it.

Very recently I discovered the answer to one very old question, and have found in that answer yet more motivation to fictionalize my account of the affair.  It might have been one of the first questions I asked after Julie was told about BIH:  How was my writing about how I felt about her an “invasion of [her] privacy”?  The simple answer is, it wasn’t, and in my defensive, naive idealism that was the end of the matter.  What I’ve finally come to realize is that though it was not an invasion of privacy, it was lack of discretion:  Had I had more respect for how my writing might affect Julie, perhaps I wouldn’t have written what I wrote in the way I wrote it.  Not that I regret doing so, because at the time and in that forum it was the only way to express myself; but I do regret the pain that it caused, though I will yet not take the blame for the readers’ inference and its effect upon them.  That said, however, there is an entire page of this entry slashed with a red X that, though a true account, would serve only to hurt Julie.  There was a time when that would have been a weak argument for exclusion–on the contrary, might have been the best reason for inclusion–but the argument has strengthened mightily under a regimen of maturity and humility.  At the time, especially since The Tribunal, the motivation for discretion has been mostly self-preservation.  I’m not concerned with Julie taking further action against me–she won’t and can’t–but I am concerned with bruising the ego of a more “important” person than Julie.  I cannot trust someone who says, “I remember every word I say,” so I can’t feel safe in telling you what he said to me when I reopened Satellite Dance and after Julie had left his library, what he gave me explicit (though unsolicited) permission to do at Glen Allen; only that I would never do it and that I took silent umbrage to his use of  the word “harass.”

I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings (though that hasn’t always been the case) but I do want to tell the truth as I know it as candidly as needs be, and sometimes discretion gets in the way of candor and is shunted by emotion.  Thomas is the more valorous of us two, but he didn’t have pride to contend with.  He had better keep his news.  I’d be a fool to solicit it (the same fool that’s dying to hear it), and who knows how valorous I could be with the information.  I would be a fool to want to find out.

Ghost of Julie-Not-Quite-Past

No, I didn’t get to Carytown.  I didn’t even leave the apartment Friday until three, and that to do laundry.  I slept in, then read (Watership Down) and wrote (Twickory).  Carytown could not call me out to play.  The air was brisk and the sky cloudy, and I didn’t feel like preparing for a seven-mile ride in anything but optimum conditions.  The motivation was missing.  I couldn’t find meaning in going down there, but I could feel the desperation, the hope without confidence.  And I was feeling poor a week after paying rent and a week before payday.  I guess that all adds up to “I wasn’t feeling it.”  But it’s only going to get colder.  How much more motivated am I going to be three weeks down the road when I get another Friday off?  What else can I do in the meantime that can help me feel more a man worth having, and closer to having a warm, soft body to share a winter’s bed with?

Is this really desperation?  It’s what I want; it’s what I need.  Am I anything but impatient to have it?  I’ve done nothing desperate to reach my goal, don’t even know what I could possibly do to reach it besides what I do now.  It’s my introversion that defines desperation as any difficult necessary action.  Besides the aching desire, what else makes this mission seem so urgent?  Do I need to know?  I don’t think I really want to know, in any case.

Julie is only gone from the library, not from my mind.  Its’s hard to relegate her to the past when there’s still a chance of seeing her at library functions.  I don’t want to see her at those, because (among many other reasons) I still can’t say anything to her; but I still fantasize seeing her in public and telling her frankly how I feel about her.  Not that I’ve come to terms with those feelings; but as I will not likely get a chance to voice them to her, I have plenty of time to formulate them.  My pride holds onto an anger when all I really want to do is talk to her with compassion, not a personal agenda.  The truth is, she still fascinates me, and my curiosity won’t  be sated.  She deemed me unworthy of her trust.  That is her call to make.  I don’t care so much that she doesn’t love me, but I still want to love her. Why am I talking like this?  In my fiction I portray Julie in a much more compassionate light than my pride will let me in reality, perhaps because it’s the only place I can know her, where I can detach from my pride to see through her eyes.  But she has not gone far enough away to leave me alone with my imagination.  She would laugh in my face to hear me declare my compassion towards her, and I couldn’t blame her, but it nevertheless exists.  When I think of her now, I see a lonely woman likely to remain lonely, unable to expose smallest part of her soul to anyone.  Perhaps that sounds arrogant and condescending (and sour-grapes), but I know loneliness, and I feel sad thinking that I can’t help her, that I can’t be allowed to just listen to her pain.  Again, I know how I must sound, and you have every right to not believe me.  Why am I talking about Julie, anyway?  Because I can’t pretend I don’t think about her.  That’s me:  Closure comes only from resolution, and there’s no faking that–or getting it.

The urgency to find someone for myself is to get rid of Julie, and knowing that is what makes the mission desperate and me reluctant to indulge it, though I know also that otherwise I cannot move on:  I have to accept this tack as the best course toward the best resolution I can get and take it.  yes, I’m desperate, but I know what I want, and whether or not I know how to get it I have to make the effort, however clumsy or blind, to find it.  Trust and patience can preclude urgency and desperation, given the chance.  Carytown will wait for me.

Shoot Me–the Poison’s Not Working Fast Enough

Returning to work is a challenge I’m still not up to. I’m scared, and I’m hurt and angry, and I can’t spin my way out of any of those emotions. My heart is silent, and whatever my head says I’ve heard a million times. I know what happened last week, and I know my part in it, and I accept the blame for that. It’s Julie’s reaction I have trouble accepting, essentially for the inimical place it has made the library and the innecessity of doing so. I will not ask why she threatened me with harrassment charges or pretend to understand it, but if I can find some empathy for her fear of me I might find myself able to not take it personally. None of this will happen by Monday. It’s best I make no predictions on what will happen, for the spoken prophecy is too easily fulfilled. The best I can do–or try to do–is to find the lesson to be learned, the opportunity for growth. In the meantime, I must put my pride in my pocket and stay the hell away from Julie. (Now I’ve reached the end of my emotional restraint, so I will stop.)

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.

Mad Scientist’s Lament

There’s a monster I created two years ago that I’m now refusing to feed, yet I’m the one that’s starving.  My obsession with Julie fueled a passionate torture machine.  There is still torture, but passion?  Or is the passion there, too, and it’s inspiration that’s lacking?  The pilot light’s on, but there’s no reason to turn on the burner.  What I put myself through over Julie sprang me a quantum leap to a new level of self-expression, but it was a level of maddening futility that reflected the worth of the object of my obsession relative to my soul’s needs.  As I try to rise to a new level of not just self-expression but maturity I have to leave behind this Marley’s-chain I call Julie.  Whatever purpose it served it has served it.  Whatever it is I feel for Julie, it is not love. That’s the first link unforged, the first meal denied the beast.  How could it ever have been love?  Sometimes I think that falling in love is no more than getting carried away on a wave of hope, swept up in a fantasy that overwhelms all rational faculties, blinds and deafens us to reality.  Yet it’s what we want.  It’s still what I want.  Even pride is subdued.  Until she says, “You’re a nice guy, but…,” then it unfolds from it’s depths and wreaks a terrible vengeance.  But I shouldn’t apply a universality.  Who do I know but me (if him)?  That’s another battle among my many.  Maybe it’s the whole war.  Can I handle another rejection?  Do I dare even risk it?  That’s wy it’s easier to believe that love will just find me:  I can’t trust myself to find it.

I’ve lost my way, in this narrative, in this mission.  What am I trying to say?  What am I trying to do?  These are daily questions.  The efforts toward survival offer little room even for thought, and attempts at it yield confusion.  I’ve thought all the thoughts and am still on the brink.  Thoughts no longer have the power to keep me from taking that last step, that step into…? See?  I know so much, I’m oh so smart, and I’m powerless to help myself.  I know what goes on at work, how staunchly Julie and I avoid interaction, how we do it, and how I feel about it; but I feel that to write it out would be to justify it, and to justify it would make it too real, would give it a life that would once again claim mine.  I don’t want to own that madness again.  That’s not the inspiration I seek, and if that’s all that fuels my writing then perhaps I need to be inspired to not write.  Emotions will have their way, but they can’t write themselves.  Do they have their way with me? or can I choose which ones to express on paper?  I try to choose, but the omisisons often seem to make lies of what I’ve chosen.  They say I’ve made the wrong choice, and they are probably right.  After all, this writing is an exorcism, very likely of itself.  The monster Frankenstein created can’t live, doesn’t want to live with all of the torture and none of the passion of humanity, but the doctor drags it to work with him.  But at the library the choke-chain is around the other neck.  Nothing is funny and music is angry, and breathing is intermittent and emitted in sighs.  To offer more detail would be to feed the beast.  I can think what I wan’t–the beast can’t read my mind–but to write it would be to place the dish in front of it.  But pride is sustenance enough and there’s no short supply of that at work.

I tire of these metaphors, as I tire of the incessant quarrel in my head that comprises my work day and consists of flare-ups of bitterness at the sound of her voice, followed by talking them down with reasoning, which is then slapped down for having already been heard–to obvious ineffect–a million times.  All.  Day.  Long.  Is it any wonder I’m practically a zombie at work?–that and being awaken two hours before the alarm by the argument’s resumption.  There’s your monster–a three-headed goon that won’t shut up.

If Julie ever talks to me again or if my pride allows me to talk to her first (again), I’ll let you know; otherwise, details of our days together, footholds for obsession, are best withheld.  With nothing to hold onto, maybe I can let go, but there’s been nothing for a long time, yet I cling to the Julie that inspired, unable yet to replace her.  Which comes first? the letting-go or the replacement?  The question is all the more unanswerable for the seeming umpossibility of either resolution.  The monster, the machine, the chain:  The metaphors are all much more real than resolution.

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.

Hope Springs Infernal

Goddamned hope.  Goddamned ridiculous, obfuscating hope.  What have I been hoping for but what I can’t have, what I don’t even really need?  Julie.  I’ve not been hoping for love, but for Julie.  Hope has kept me lying to myself.  All I say or do is still in effort to attract her to me–damn the impossibility, full-steam ahead!  Every word I write I hope (and fear) she will read and is meant to charm her (in my tenderest mood) or taunt her (in my bitterest), but never is it meant to alienate her, actually push her from me, as I doth protest so much I’m trying to do.  Friday night I pedalled east, into town, to do a little shopping, maybe make a connection–or so I unconvincingly told myself, all the time wondering as I pedalled if I would see Julie’s car.  Sometimes I’m glad for rationality:  I was kept from actually looking for her or her car by the sure knowledge that she would neither venture this far nor step foot in a Barnes & Noble if her life depended on it.  I had a good time–spent some money, spoke briefly with a few store clerks–but not a good enough time to obviate the usual reluctance to head home.

All weekend I didn’t write, pretending the hope wasn’t there, not wanting to write about Julie, ashamed that I wanted to, barren of other, more pressing ideas.  Then I awake Monday with this constipation of ink clogging my heart and choking my mind, and I feebly lash out at work by changing the desktop of the driveup monitor from a closeup of a purple flower to a blank blue.  It didn’t get better, and at the end of the day Mike, ever-caring Mike, asked if I was okay.  “You’ve looked…disgruntled.  Or are you just tired?”  “No, ” I said, and paused, reluctant to bring it up but grateful for the chance.  “It’s just the same old…stuff.”  “Work?  Or is it personal?”  “Yes.”  My vision began to swim, so I turned away from him and knelt to pack my bag.  The emotion took me by surprise.  I said, “Someone here.”  “It’s not Julie, is it?”  I laughed bitterly at the incredulity in his voice.  The tears receded and I was just angry and ashamed at myself for not being over all this.

When Julie stood before me the next day, smiling and courteously informing me I had a phone call, I stared, mesmerized into her (gray) eyes, and when she was done said, “Thank you,” and I was angry again, this time at her, for so easily pretending things were all right  between us; and I returned to that declaration she made at the Trainwreck, as unbelievable and incredible (in the most literal sense of each word) now as when she first spoke it, that people get to know each other best either at work or by living together. …  But this is where I turn bitter, and know I know that road goes nowhere–doesn’t deadend, just doesn’t reach a destination–so I’ll stop.

Truth is, all there is between Julie and me is my pride.  Nothing else.  Do I even love her in any greater sense than I love anyone else I care about?  Hope wants me to believe a lot of things, but it can no longer make me believe I am in love.  Whether or not I was ever in love with Julie is irrelevant; it felt like it, and that’s good enough.  I don’t feel anything for Julie.  When I look at her I feel only for myself–regret, shame, remorse, (yes) hope.  I no longer even see the woman I’d hoped she’d be for me; hope can no longer blind me to that reality.  I’m left with a sparkingly stunning woman, and, my pride aside, that’s enough to silence me in her presence.  It’s difficult to accept the things that remain unresolved, but they are things I cannot change and must, therefore, accept.  I’m a long way from acceptance, as far away as someone else’s control over it.  I can turn bitter again at this point and ask, Whose idea of resolution is more important? but I must stop again, before I throw my brain against the emotional wall.

I am standing still against hope, tacking against its push into a candyland of faith-full joy.  It’s a vacuum; it would kill me.  Instead?  Pride?  There must a be a hope that does not indulge delusion, a hope to believe in.  The hope for Julie’s love won’t die easily, no matter the sober words against it, no matter, even, the emotional detachment I have claimed.  Pride is the last and densest barrier, the insatiable monster at the gate of the treasure cave who can neither appreciate his riches nor allow the more deserving to have them.  I wait for emotional evolution to sate the beast, but patience is hardly a friend, either.

Am I the Prince or Cinderella?

Someone is in love with me.  He is a reader.  His passion is startling and unabashed.  He is thousands of miles away across an ocean.  To say I’m flattered would be to marginalize his ardor.  No, “flattered” is rebuffing a friendly advance from a member of my own sex.  I’m kind, letting them know I’m both flattered and heterosexual. I don’t think I’ve ever hurt anyone’s feelings that way.  Angie,  describing a gay friend’s troubles, said, “Well, he chose to be that way.  I guess he doesn’t mind.”  A choice?  Imagine, getting all the attention I could handle–only, I don’t want a man.  Though being the idol of a man’s masturbatory fantasies is a little uncomfortable, I’m still flattered.  Hey,  someone  thinks I’m “hot and sexy”!

But am I in Julie’s shoes now?  I try to convince myself of the absurdity of that question, but I’m not laughing.  Pascal’s passion is flattering but frightening, like something I might have to defend myself against yet not trusting my battlements to withhold the onslaught.  Is that Julie?  Is Pascal’s passion also mine for Julie?  This is a mirror I really don’t want to look into, knowing and fearing the naked image staring back, saying, “Look at me!  Stop pretending I don’t exist!”–my other half, my compassion, my connection to humanity, my understanding of Julie, my total immersion in New Emotional World.  Yes, I’m in that world, but the umbilical to the old is long and tough.  I’m sorry, but I just can’t look.

Yet I’m feeling more vulnerable than perhaps I ever have.  I was a quivering wreck at work yesterday from the moment of our first non-encounter in the hall:  I stared, she glanced till recognition, then pretended not to see me as we passed one another.  I stared at her every chance–goddammit! why can’t I not look at her?–and was not discreet about it.  God, I must seem such a creep!  She came within inches of me, politely asking permission to squeeze in a book on a cart in front of which I knelt.  I mumbled assent and stumbled frantically out of the way, though I would rather have fallen the other way, into her.  Oh, what I wouldn’t pay for just a touch!  And another half day with her today before I’m away from her for a long weekend.  There is a chance, I know, for today to be better than yesterday, but I know, too, that it would take a leap beyond quantum proportions to affect it.  I would have to be the man I wish I were–assertive, confident, extroverted. My resolve to greet her when we first meet dissolves instantly when I see her eyes hardened against it.  Is it a challenge?  What if I stood up to it, actually smiled and said, “Hello, Julie”?  That would be more than a baby step.  Then I think of all I’m not allowed to say to her, and I want to resolve to say nothing till she speaks to me.  I know she’s trying, though, and it can’t be easy breaking through to me, either.  Besides the awkward encounters, Julie has tried to be nice to me, but my inability to respond in kind has not encouraged her.  I have to be the man and step up.  I can’t live this quivering, anxious life.  I imagine that man and know I could be him for Julie, given the chance.  Is it a chance I have to make, or is it a chance Julie has to give me?  I can’t see–or just can’t look.

Two Divided by Pride

My way of showing my love to Julie is cruel.  I searched for a better word, but I was searching for a word to ameliorate my guilt, to rationalize my actions, actions dictated by pride.  It’s deeper, even, than that, or perhaps just ingrained now.  There’s a layer I need to break through, chip away at to get to the compassionate human inside me.  I can’t keep hurting–myself or anyone else.  It is not a perverse indulgence of my vanity to believe that I have hurt and am still hurting Julie.  If she were not hurt, if she had laid all this aside, she would not be afraid of contact with me.  Of course, the same could be said of me, and that’s where we stand:  Two hurt, headstrong people unable to get past pride to reconciliation.  But, at this point, what is reconciliation?  One of the most truthful and meaningful (and last) personal things Julie said to me was that our relationship was “damaged.”  Our respective interpretations of that word are no doubt different.  The designation itself is open to interpretation; in fact, it’s still difficult for me to understand just how I did the “damage.”  I fell in love, and I expressed it.  I did not tell her such, and I did not express my frustrations, either–to her.  She was not meant to know them, but she found them out.  Thus, the damage:  I had cast bitter aspersions meant only to relieve my hurt, meant only to be read by the sympathetic, but, indiscreetly, I allowed them to circulate.  I had also recounted private conversations between us.  I don’t know which she found more unforgivable, but the grudge sits there between us, square-jawed and defiant.  My grudge sits opposite–the same prideful grudge, but with softer, supplicant eyes begging forgiveness, pleading for escape from this tyrannical standoff.  But nothing will be done.  Two people, fearful of each other’s–and their own–emotions will only step close enough to add another brick to the wall pride builds between them.  Wouldn’t one step more lightly without the brick? advancing to remove one, instead?

Cruelty abides in my love for Julie as a pain of unrequition, but that pain is no one’s fault; no one did that damage.  I must move that pain to a place of its own, where it can live out its days in seclusion.  There is no room in my heart for it.  I must make more room for compassion.

Love Regardless

Another weekend without Julie is closing, but I achieved no distance from her, and her smoke will envelope me tomorrow.  Saturday, just stepping outside made me hopeful of running into Julie, an unlikelihood at the best of times, an impossibility now that we don’t work the same weekend.  I wonder how standoffish she’d be if we did chance to see each other in public, or what attitude I would take toward her regardless of her own.  I would be tempted, as it would be my only chance, to tell her what she won’t allow me to say at work–which is anything that is in any way a reference to what’s gone between us or how I feel about her.  That’s all I have to talk to her about, in or out of work, anymore.  I don’t want to taunt her about it.  I want to air it out, get it out on the way, laugh about the absolute absurdity of two people grudging each other civility over perceived slights, none of which either understand.  Julie cannot laugh about this.  I can laugh about it only with Judy, Sujatha or Thomas the courier.  What makes the way I feel about her embarrassing to her?  I’m not a puppy humping her leg.  I love her, and if she doesn’t love me back, what’s to do about it?  Nothing.  No notes, comments, tokens–those days are over for good, for, much as I might like to rouse her emotions, the only one I would ever get out of her would be ire, no matter the friendliness of my intention.  I don’t doubt that she knows how I feel about her.  What frightens her about that?

Oh, Julie, what are we doing?  What is shifting weekends or me transferring to another branch going to solve?  Do you really think that all it takes to make things better between us is separation? that that will allow you to ignore the threat to your emotions?  What about the next man to fall in love with you?  Where will you hide from him?  I love you, and if that means nothing to you, then why do you sometimes look at me with such hardness that I think you want to slap me?  Did I tell you to love me back? or force you to make a decision?  The power is yours, and always has been, to make things better for yourself.  I haven’t even the power to defend myself should you attack, which I think you have wanted to do for quite  some time.  Forget the part of you that knows  better.  How do you feel?  I won’t go to my knees to plead for your love, or climb upon a white horse to gallop to your glass castle, but neither will I pretend that you are just another co-worker, just another woman.  You are simply the only woman I’ve loved.  You don’t have to love me back, but you don’t have to hate me, either.

Monday, Julie will do her best to ignore and avoid me, and I will do my worst at pretending not to notice.  Thomas will give her a squeeze then tell me privately how good it felt, how soft she is in certain places, and I will make his day by burning with jealousy.  That’s why he does it, and we both know it, but last Monday I told him, “Sometimes I think she does it for the same reason you do–to fuck with me,” and that any room with the three of us in it was too small and I would be the one leaving it.  I have been true to my word.  I can hide from Thomas, but Julie will asphyxiate me.  The weekend did anything but build up my defenses against her.

Better the Julie I Don’t Know

The library at which I work is open till nine the first four days of the week.  Each of us works two of the evenings, our day starting at twelve-thirty.  Friday and Saturday the library closes at six.  Half of us work alternating weekends.  Before Julie was on my radar, we worked the same schedule–Wednesday and Thursday nights, same weekend.  Before I asked her out, she switched her Wednesday evening to Tuesday.  A couple weeks ago, she switched weekends with Becky.  I now have two whole days and two half days with Julie.  This is Friday.  Julie was at a training class yesterday.  Monday is a full day together.  I may need more time to write this.  Without Julie I have much more room.  She fills the library when she’s there, like smoke.  I take small breaths so I don’t choke.  Emotional survival is my only goal.  Her absence does not stop me thinking of her but stretches and thins the emotional wall to an  opaque veil, until I can almost think of her irrelative to my desire for her.  I need to be in that state from now till I finish this.

What is Julie to me now?  Julie is not May.  May would, of course, would not exist but for Julie, but Julie is just the framework for the character.  The rest I make up from what I know, filling the gap of my ignorance with imagination, extrapolating the girl I want from the girl I know.  But May would not exist if I knew Julie.  I would not be projecting my hopes onto May, because they would have been realized in Julie.  What Julie is to me is a fascination, a toy I can’t put down, a puzzle half of which I don’t have–the half in the box with the picture on it.  She is a regret:  I chose ego preservation over compassion.  I had the chance to get to know all about her.  I attacked her, instead, already digging out my pound of flesh for the perceived wrong of rejecting me, never considering how hard it was for her.  What I heard as patronizing–”If I change my mind, you’ll be the first to know”–was a nervous attempt at appeasement, appeasement I was too proud to accept.  She had considered my feelings, something I hadn’t done for either of us.  At last, I’m grateful for that.

My fascination with Julie I’ve never been able to quite trace to its source.  Perhaps I simply wanted to be fascinated by her.  Perhaps I really had no choice.  It has continued unabated and grows with each offhanded, overheard snippet of information she proffers to coworkers who aren’t me.  Those snippets plus what she told me of herself while she still trusted me add up to the Julie I know:  The fourth of four, the others boys; the third died in his early twenties after a very long illnes; the oldest predated her by sixteen years.  She “grew up in” northern Virginia, though her parents lived in a few different places before settling there.  She worked for Borders for thirteen years and is bitter about being let go.  She has a horticulture degree but would rather have (in hindsight) studied voice and/or “design.”  Her father died six years ago, her mother a month ago.  Add a few like/dislikes and personal observations and it’s only just enough to madden my curiosity.

The Julie I extrapolate from what I know and have observed was not born in northern Virginia but likely moved there before school age.  Her father I’ve narrowed to two professions–college teacher or military, leaning toward military, based on something else I know:  Julie was not on the academic track in high school but distributive education.  That is, she was preparing herself, it seems, for a commercial career, not a liberal arts education, which I can’t imagine would sit well with a teacher-parent.  Northern Virginia tells me “government job”  for retired/decommed dad.  It also tells me “very white upringing in a vast surburbia,” evidenced also by the fact that she had to ask who did “Ball of Confusion.”  Julie isn’t two years younger than I am.  If she didn’t hear that song on the radio, then she was a in a demographic that wouldn’t have been exposed to it that way.  Her brothers, I surmise, were not so much her protectors as whom she needed protection from (oldest brother excepted).  This I make out from her being so tough (outwardly), self-protective, and emotionally guarded.  As the youngest and a girl, she was likely daddy’s little girl and not real close to her mother.  I doubt she’s ever had many true, lasting friendships–plenty of acquaintances but no confidants.  She aches to be more outgoing.

Julie’s darkness attracts me perhaps more even than her beauty.  I want to know that darkness (though maybe I do already; my own might not be dissimilar), be with her in it, walk out of it with her–but I am not a knight, or a prince;  and if that isn’t what she needs, it’s at least what she wants, I would bet.  A bigger man than I would be happy to see her happy with the right man.  I want her to be happy, but I want the right man to be me.  When that man comes along–and I really do want him to–I don’t want to see it.  I don’t want to experience it in any way.  I would be happy for her, but I woud be devastated for me.  There is heartbreak in her darkness, and shame and regret.  I recognize it.

I accept all the attractants that tie me to Julie–her beauty, her darkness, all the common interests, her sexuality.  The pedestal on which I’d placed Julie has never been more than a shabby simulacrum of rotten wood and mis-hit nails.  She’s always been a whole woman to me:  It hasn’t been just her lips and neck I’ve wanted to press my lips against, not just the contours of her face I’ve wanted to trace, not just the hair I could see that I’ve wanted to comb my fingers through.  Why am I only now able to admit this?  (The more I consider the answer, the more rhetorical seems the question.)

This is Monday now, long after work, close to bedtime.  Julie has made no effort toward reconciliation; I have not made another.  I suppose for Julie it is just not worth the effort, or she just can’t make it; or she doesn’t trust me–or herself.  I want to get along, and I can’t believe she doesn’t at least want that, too.  This isn’t going to get better for either of us until she wants it to.  I may be asking her to be assertive beyond her usual capacity, but isn’t that what growth is?  We’re both stunted, rooted firmly in a barren clay of stubbornness, but I’m not content to wither in this rotten excuse for soil.  There’s better to be had.  Doesn’t knowing that obligate one to pursue it?

Holding My Breath Waiting for Satan to Slip on His Ice Skates

Julie’s mother died last week, about a year after her stroke.  Still, I managed not to talk to Julie.  At best, I’m horrible at offering comfort in such a situation.  It was not a lack of compassion.  It hurt and hurts still to think of Julie alone in her mother’s house, her brothers eventually leaving town again to get back to their homes and families; Julie surrounded by her mother in the shape of what she left behind, sifting through the memories of intrinsically valueless things in a practical, necessary effort to distill sentiment into a portable burden, the burden anyone with such a loss carries.  And I’m jealous.  Her mother’s funeral was Saturday.  I was working.  So were others, but some still took the time to go.  Mike went, and I couldn’t have been greener, though I’ve always known he’s not attracted to Julie.  I was jealous of the attention Julie got without me, but if I’d been there, I’d have wanted her attention.  I told myself she wouldn’t want me there, as if my presence could possibly have dampened the surprise I’m told she felt upon seeing coworkers there.  Only for my sake was it best I wasn’t there.  Even now, when I consider how it would have been at least a nice gesture to be there, I wonder what kind of points it would have scored me.  How could I ever have thought I was worthy of her love or capable 0f giving her mine?

Julie took off today, the first workday after the funeral, and I spent the entire time thinking about her.  I will tomorrow, too, no doubt, as I avoid her, stare at her furtively, and try now and then to make eye contact.  I wish I knew what love was.  I want to know if that’s what I’m feeling for her.  I think I love her yet am not in love with her.  I think that’s possible.  I think it would help if it were.  But if I loved Julie I would be kinder to her, not expect and hope for so much from her.  I’m not going to say I’m a horrible person.  I’m not.  It hurts to be the way I am toward her, but I don’t know how to stop.

I thought about her on the way in to work, too, and by the time I got there I was angry, having yet again revisited her betrayal of A Bright, Ironic Hell to all the managers in the building and how a week later I get an “apology” passed through one coworker and another admitting she “overreacted.”  And I just can’t let it go.  When will I ever?  How far am I from love when I feel that way?

When I Get Writer’s Block, It Will Be “Antagonistic”

When the first two lines of my novel came to me, I was suddenly more conciliatory toward myself.  (But it was also my birthday, and I still feel good about birthdays as long as I can share them with someone, and I was treating Matt and Hinckley at Joe’s Inn as I did last year.)  Conciliatory in what way, I’m not sure.  I may be using the wrong word.  For what should I apologize to myself?  I have been very hard on myself lately, but as a drill sergeant to his “maggots”–to force change, if not conformity.  I don’t know if I’ve graduated the basic training, whether I’ve made myself a better person, but I know I deserve better treatment.  So does Julie, of course, and I thought that would follow.  For a start, I thought I could ask how her mom was doing (I’d heard she’d taken a bad turn) but not show any interest toward Julie herself–not to continue my disdain but to keep the feelings between us as much out of the way as possible.  I thought I could ask about her family holiday.  I couldn’t do anything.   An hour on the circulation desk together would have been the perfect opportunity, had I taken it, but before I’d even stepped onto that road I could see the end of it–the hope that Julie would love me; that I’d laugh at all my silly machinations, accept her as simply a coworker, and get on with life, only to have her then see me as the sensitive, well-meaning man who found her fascinating….  You (and Hollywood) know the end of that fantasy.  Absurd.  So, the hour was silent between us.  I didn’t even dare glance at her for fear of betraying my interest.  I have trouble now recalling her face.  I see her only from behind now, and when I look at her I stare.  It’s the best view my pride will let me take.  I try not to argue over whether or not I have feelings for Julie, for what I insisted while I was in love with her–that this was not an affection of convenience–now seems untrue:  There she is, here I am, there we are–why not?  Pure practicality, easily put off.  No love, so why bother?  I look at my verbal sparring on these pages about my receptivity to love and its chances of finding me and I know that there’s nothing to do, either, about my feelings toward Julie.  The think is, I’m still bitter about allowing her to put a stop to A Bright, Ironic Hell and angry at myself for not questioning her on just how this blog was hurting her.  I considered it, then, an act of compassion to end BIH–and it was–but, increasingly, I think that what I was hurting was her vanity, because she didn’t even have to read the blog, and I see myself as weak to have bowed to such a shallow god.  It’s only unanswered questions that keep my hurt alive.  “Conciliatory” is definitely not the word I should have used.

To BFE of the Soul

All I wanted to do was write about love, but I find I know nothing about it.  It’s an ideal, a goal I have no idea how to reach, a goal I’ve tried to tell myself I’ll reach in good time.  I’m thinking it’s time to stop being so rational.  I’ve had concerns about my mental health, but I awoke in that rare noiseless hour of the morning to realize, somewhat comfortingly, that it was my emotional health that needed the most immediate care.  In that quiet I grasped emotionally for a connection then egotistically rejected it as a loss of self.  I am emotionally frail, and rather than admit it, I’ve chosen to claim a mental imbalance.  How far the ego will go to hide frailty!  I’m not afraid of frailty so much as concerned with how it outwardly manifests.  I don’t want to appear frail.  It turns women away and alienates me from men, who I desperately want to admit are just like me.  I can’t talk myself out of the idea that men have to be strong for women, but I can’t talk myself into being strong.  How strong is any man?  I wonder if I should even call it frailty, but I tire of semantics.  If I’m lacking strength, it’s to hold up the facade society seems  to be asking me to keep before me.  Poking out eyeholes was not enough; it has always been a barrier, and I’ve always held it unsteadily.  It’s just too heavy.  I’m sensitive.  I take rejection badly–that is, personally.  I set myself up for it with high hopes, hopes well beyond a one-off good time.  The higher I climb. …  So it takes me a long time to try, when my hopefulness finally crests my fear of rejection.  There’s my vicious cycle.  I like attention, but I embarrass easily except with close friends, of which I have only a few.  I beg for attention as I beg for love–quietly and desperately.

Every layer has another below it.  Mental health to emotional health to…spiritual health?  In search of answers, the spirit realm is the place I am most afraid to explore.  Each successive layer seems more deeply ineffable than the previous.  There’s less and less I can say, or want to say.  Words don’t reach all levels.  Perhaps that’s what scares me:  I may be going someplace I can’t talk my way out of.

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?

It’s Either Love or Another Kid Selling Magazines

Tell me:  Given that I deserve love, am I already receptive to it?  Has it come to me and, being unrecognized, been rejected?  How many himes has it come to me only to be rebuffed?  Just once, I think–with Ann.  She could have loved me if I could have loved her.  I wanted her to love me like I couldn’t love myself or anyone else.  It was too much to ask.  Is giving love receiving love?  If so, I can stop wasting my efforts at attaining it.  I don’t feel capable of giving love.  I have, perhaps, never given it.  I could say that the first gift should be to myself, but I’d rather believe in Stacey’s magic.  It’s easier, and it’s as closely aligned to my wishful non-intervention theory of love-reception as I’m likely to get with rationale.  What I want to believe is that despite how badly I might think of myself, there is still someone who can see through my self-hatred to the me I was meant to be and love that.  That’s some serious magic.  I can’t expect that to ever happen.  How could I expect anyone to come more than halfway?  or respect myself for letting them?  No, I have work to do.  And no clue where to start.

That’s a lie.  Pride is the starting point; the biggest, bitterest pill I have to swallow.  Pride is all a guy with low self-esteem has.  Well, that and vanity.  Their intrinsic values are equal–zero–so I have nothing.  I could be a bigger man.  I could give Julie the time of day, say “excuse me” when I nearly run her over.  I could let myself fade into her background.  That I can’t do those things makes me the kind of person that wants love to knock on his door.

Would the knock come?  Would I ignore it?  Would I let love in?  Would it come in?  I would not be a good host.  I’m a horrible housekeeper, I sleep in the middle of the bed, and I leave the toilet seat up.  I’m a selfish jerk.  And I deserve love.

It Doesn’t Matter How Many Times You Click Your Heels Together–You Never Left Kansas in the First Place

Stacey is letting Eric go.  (Most magic is an illusion.)  Not only does she not want to be involved with a married man, but he can’t see her “past the physical.”  She believed him when he told her she was beautiful, and she was flattered.  When he had to get home Saturday night from her place, he had a tear in his eye.  He said he was very happy.  Stacey did not feel the same way, having already decided she wasn’t all that attracted to him after all and feeling that his attraction to her wasn’t deeper than her skin, but she didn’t denigrate his tears.

Now she’s going to break it off, and she’s asking my advice.  I’ve missed that.  When she sided with Chris when he blew open A Bright Ironic Hell, I had difficulty forgiving her, and for a while she was just a twice-a-week ride to work.  Now she’s asking my advice on how to let Eric go, and I see an opportunity to redeem Julie’s pat blow-off of me and to ensure not only that this guy is treated respectfully and without condescension, but that any subsequent guy in her life who needs to be let go gets the same consideration.  I told her to be honest, don’t apologize for anything, don’t try to buck him up.  Tell him it won’t work out because he’s married.

Sounds easy.  Men have been let down with a lot less honesty, and they’ve accepted it.  It’s just been the way of those men.  That is, some men have too much pride to see resolution in being let down softly.  But an emotional and passionate life beyond rooting for a favorite sports team.  Last year I displayed my passion and was told both implicity and explicitly to cover it up again.  I think the reason that most men will accept the pat let-down is that they know what I had to be told, that emotion and passion are weaknesses in men.  Eric might cry again when Stacey lets him down.  I hope he does.  Stacey should be allowed to know how he feels, and he shouldn’t pretend he feels other than how he does.  It’s the best thing for both of them–and for me and you.

Confounded Interest

Julie returns to work today, and I’m reminded of how ill-prepared I am to love, how pride is so thickly in the way of accepting what others have to give. I will go on, open to that spark of interest from women I don’t know and might not see again, all the while entirely closed to the woman whose interest I most want and will never have. I’d as soon she never came back, but the sweater hangs on the back of the chair at her empty desk like a jeer at all those lofty words her absence afforded me. Pride seems now to make a lie of all of them. This that I seek I seek selfishly, as something I demand as a natural right that has been unnaturally denied me. How much I talk of receiving love–what can I say about giving love that doesn’t embarass me with its naked ignorance? This “interest” I look for is not the innocuous fun I claim it to be. I’m looking for someone willing to love me. What thought is there of what I could give back? So a woman to whom I can’t speak, upon whom I can’t look returns to work. How well now can I expect to play my little game with the women I don’t know while I’m ashamed of the game I play with Julie?