“We Understand”

Did I tell you about the plant?  It landed on my desk the day after the tribunal, the first of two consecutive days I took off in order to get away from Julie for the week and write what I thought then was the last post of Satellite Dance.  Of course, I didn’t know the plant was there until I made it back to work, but Angie informed me it created quite a stir, and that only through serious conscience-searching did the curious leave the little card envelope sealed for me to open myself.  The plant was a peace lily in a bright orange pot.  The card said, “We understand.  Hang in there.”  It wasn’t signed.  A florist had delivered it.  Only Angie and Bethany ventured a query about it.  I told them only that the card wasn’t signed.  The message was mine.  I smiled impishly to think of the overheating the rumor mill must have suffered in speculation of the sender and message.  I don’t speculate much myself.  No, I don’t know who it was, and, yes, I’d like to know, but they don’t want me to know.  It’s a horse with perfectly good teeth, is all I know–well, that and that it lives at the library and is a hell of an ally.  Just when I was feeling my most isolated and friendless, someone dares to step up and step in and say, “We understand.”  It could be the most timely and necessary gift ever given me.  On my desk, where I could see it and touch it, it got me through that last month of Julie, offering support and peace of mind that came to me from nowhere else in that building.

In this first week without her, it continues to offer support and solace.  It is a friend, as others, I hope, will become.  No longer tiptoeing through a minefield of paranoia–hers as well as mine–I am free to do my job.  The person I was before–that acerbic, angry man–left with Julie; in fact, existed only relative to her.  How long it will take anyone to realize that and adjust their judgement of me is not my concern, though a certain vanity cares a little how I am perceived; but they are not even potential friends.  I know who those people are–I’ve seen the judgement in their eyes, as I could see it in Julie’s, though theirs is much subtler, perhaps becasue of the relative absence of malice.  All the judgements are irrelevant.  I like my work, and I like the people with whom I work most closely.  I talk to them, I ask after their families.  I show interest in them with the hope they’ll show interest in me.  I want to get along, not be alone.

To say the whole Julie thing is behind me would be a lie, though one I try almost incessantly to believe.  “Out-of-sight, out-of-mind” is hardly accurate.  Her nameplate on the whiteboard was removed the first day she was gone and the gap filled by lowering those above; Tupperware cups she’d brought in to hold the transit-hold flags have been replaced with something more useful; and the last of the holds with her handwriting on the slip has either been picked up or deleted.  I had no hand in any of it.  I’m not the only one eager to move on from this mess, which might serve as Julie’s legacy at Twin Hickory.  I can think of nothing else she’s left behind but in a few select hearts.  No, I’m not over it, but I refrain from initiating reference to it, preferring, instead, to looking forward.  I did tell Megan what I thought of Julie in a few terse words, just to get it off my chest, but only Becky has spoken to me directly about it, intimating my relief.  I was grateful that she cared, though I was more expressive of my lingering bitterness over the handling of the affair than of my gratitude to her.  The bitterness will linger for some time, because my questions are not satisfied with silence for an answer.  Things swept under the rug make a lump that’s always there to be tripped over.  It will likely remain difficult for some time to accept Julie’s departure as resolution, but it’s all the resolution I will get.  It’s a pretty damned good one as they go, though, and, without doubt, the best one I could have hoped for:  The one person I couldn’t get along with is gone, and with her the hostility that poisoned the workplace.  My peace lily is thriving, and with good reason.

And Good Fucking Luck

Fuck it. I’ve lain in bed long enough to know I’m not getting to sleep until I pull off the goddamn gloves and say what I feel. I just can’t understand it. I can’t sympathize with whatever made her accuse me of harassment. What the hell did she expect that to do to our work environment? Did she think it would make everything better, that I’d stay on this fucking leash and like it? I’m not losing my job over this, believe me, but I’m not taking this vindictive shit lying down. Yeah, I fucked up. This is what I get for apologizing? What did I do that can be called harassment? I gave her a couple fucking magnets, for godsake! Let it go! Christ, it’s been a year since you killed A Bright, Ironic Hell–and nearly two since I’d given you anything–a box of altoids! What the hell am I paying for? I don’t need to tell you how to spell grudge!

I went through absolute HELL today trying not to ask you what–if anything–you were thinking to make your accusation–or call you a vindictive bitch. I’ve had enough of trying to understand you–sic your goddamned demons on yourself! Whatever caused you to be this way, I no longer give a flying fuck–and is irrelevant, anyway. I’ve exhausted all attempts at sympathy. Yeah, that’s rich–I’ve been an asshole. But I know what I’ve done, I’m ashamed of it (though not as much now as before you did this), and have apologized for it, but I AM NOT A THREAT. Call this a rant–call this whatever, I don’t care. I’m angry beyond measure, but I’m not a threat of any kind to anyone.

Goddammit! This is better? This is less stressful? What the fucking hell were you thinking? You weren’t! Any more than I was when I sent you that email. At least I realized the damage I’d done. Do you really believe your damage is proportional? Do you have any idea what it’s like now at work since you laid the minefield? Justice would have you sharing my hell, but justice is for the one who runs to the boss and tells her story (and I do mean story) first.

I don’t care how irrational this seems. I don’t care how much of this could be shouted right back at me, but–Fucking magnets? Jesus Christ!–What the hell did you think I meant by them? And are you gonna tell me you’d have accepted them if I’d handed them to you? BULL. SHIT.

I love my job, but you’ve been marking time since you got here–and here you are threatening to take it from me. That’s so fucking rich–you, who abandoned circ at our busiest times for your Adult Services vacations because you’re bored–and now sloughing off workload onto Slackles, as if he needs an excuse to sit on his fat ass and pretend to work. (You know, there are simple appliances to do what you do at your desk without your attendance. If you’re bored, do something we need done.)

This was not a work issue and never was. I can confide in who I like about anything I like. If I recall–and I do, correctly–it was you who let everyone know about the blog, so don’t play that hand. Was it any of your goddamned business who I told I had a crush on you? How did that hurt you? Your embarrassment is your own–you created it, you carry it. How the hell did I “[keep] reminding” you with my “words and actions how” I was in love with you? Huh? HUH? What the hell has that paranoid brain of yours concocted to justify that statement?

Get over my writing “about” you. How many times did I tell you I was writing about me and how I felt. Let your vanity believe what it wants but these were my feelings to express as I needed to. I haven’t told anyone about this blog, but I know coworkers are reading it. Is it an invasion of your privacy? Run tell Greta. She’ll make sure everybody in the system finds out, as you did before.

So, did you tell Greta about the card that came with the flowers and what the flowers were for? (Didn’t think so.) What did you tell Bethany and Becky and anyone else who would listen to your sob story of relentless victimization at the hands of a–but I won’t say it–you would be to ready to ignore the irony. I’ll say this, though: You’re sick. Yeah, yeah, so am I–whatever–but at least I have some self-awareness. I try to break down my walls, not build them up. Accuse me of whatever the hell you like. Did I speak your name? If it’s not true, it’s not you, right? (Whatever you need to tell yourself.) Good-fucking-night.

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.

I Can Almost Believe Myself This Time

Though I try to believe that love will just find me, I think it needs some help.  It won’t come  bursting through my door, so I have to go out and meet it.  Not find it, just…run into it.  Maybe it won’t be in the movie theater, but I might find its wallet on the sidewalk out front.  Maybe I’ll bump shopping carts with it or laugh at an embarrassing event it had hoped no one saw.  However it comes, I expect it to come unexpectedly.  This attitude relieves the desperation of the endeavour, if not the urgency, because it’s a role that suits me.  I believe in serendipity, but like luck, it needs a catalyst sometimes.  So, I’m getting out of my bubble to do things I like.  I may no longer be getting my money’s worth out of Netlflix (I kept Stranger Than Paradise two weeks), but spending two-thirds of my monthly fee on one movie in public is more cost-effective for my purposes–eventually.  I think. 

But of course I spend half my waking life at work, so I have to seriously consider the library as a site of prime opportunity, and for direct, captive contact the circulation desk is the place to be, where the patron will first encounter library staff.  Each week there’s a chance of not getting an hour out there one day.  On that day I feel caged and wonder what opportunities I’m missing and hope that I can at least get out into the stacks with a cart of books to shelve, maybe get a chance to help an attractive woman find something.

On the circ desk, the patron has to come to me, but I can attract them.  Two people are assigned to the desk, and if I’m really intent on getting on my game, I’ll try to get the terminal nearest the entrance in order to make the first contact with the patron and try to steer them my way with a smile and greeting.  If it’s a woman I find myself attracted to, I consider her mine and will be disappointed if I don’t get at least a smile in return.  If she steers to the desk I lock onto her eyes.  This is especially important when she approaches head-on from the stacks (as opposed to the entrance, whose path is parallel to the desk) and is deciding which clerk to visit; first eye contact almost always wins.  Having won her my way, I look for the glint, the bright band of connection, the bridge from soul to soul.  Quite often it’s there, and when it is I am that much closer to being at ease and myself.  I can throw away the professional scripts and be Dion instead of Mr. Library.  Discreetly, I look for the ring and try not to let finding it close me off.  After all, contact is the thing, and I’ll take all the practice I can get.  (The last time I was on the desk with Julie, after the failed conversation, I enjoyed a banter with a woman my age as I checked out her books.  We had a very easy time making each other laugh.  There was never a thought of romance in my head–I knew she was married–the conversation just flowed, and afterwards I realized how important that kind of rapport is and how Julie and I never had any of that, how strained, even in the best of times, our converse had been, and how our humors had rarely met.  If only I’d recognized then the signs of incompatibility….)  I maintain the eye contact as best I can (that doesn’t come naturally to me, either) especially at the parting, as significant a moment as the greeting.  The duration of eye contact at that moment is very telling:  The longer it lasts, the brighter and stronger that band of connection becomes.  But as strong as the connection might be made, it may never get a chance to be made stronger.  With maybe one hour on the desk a day, and rarely the same hour, reconnection is, at best haphazard.  In fact, I can’t think of a good connection made twice with the same woman.

Still, I psych my self up for the opportunities.  My vanity, formerly attended to strictly for Julie’s audience, had, until recently, fallen somewhat lax, but on most days now I bother to shave and wash my hair.  I’ve discovered my physical persona as a rugged, outdoorsy guy, and I like him, with his perpetual tan, his sleeves rolled up and his hair in a ponytail.  If my physique falls a little short of my ideal–Michaelangelo’s David–I can at least say that I’m comfortable with it–in fact, a bit smug about having chiseled it from my chosen lifestyle without that narcissistic artificiality of “working out.”  I like wearing what shows it off and showing what the clothes are supposed to be covering–a boy’s ringer tee tight around the biceps, a tad short at the waist above the low-riding jeans, flashing skin between the belt and shirt reaching to the high shelves, squatting to show off a rim of colorful underwear.  I embrace the exhibitionist in me as I try to embrace all those other mes I used to deny as flaws to be expunged from my character.  “Me first” is not, in my case, selfishness in the derogatory sense; it’s the place to start.  It should be easier to complete myself that way than to seek someone to do the job for me. 

Is what I’m completing the vessel to hold love?  Instead of bumping into love or finding its wallet, will it just flow into me?  Or am I sewing a cap and begging for love to be dropped into it like loose change?  I suppose my attitude will decide, and right now my attitude says “vessel.”  If it ever points to “cap,” I hope it does so with an impish grin and a wink and doesn’t thrust out the supplicating headgear before finishing a goofy soft-shoe.

Future Life

My future wife was in the library, but she got away before I could find her.  Or, that’s what I told everyone there.  Tyger dragged me out to the bike rack out front to show me the coolest bike–a girl’s model from the fifties or sixties with a front drum brake, built-in generator for front and rear lights, full wraparound chainguard, and fenders, topped off with the bicycle equivalent of a hood ornament, all of it original–and I said, “I have to find her.”  I scoured the library for a bicycle helmet, in vain.  I must have bordered on indiscretion, maybe even mania, judging by the looks of some patrons at computers and carrels.  I went back to my shelving, distracted, leaving it every five minutes to make sure the bike was still there.  Another hour till lunch:  If the bike was still there then, I was going to camp there beside it.  But a half-hour later the bike was gone.  I didn’t think to leave a note.

Had Julie been at work I might not have made the fuss, or at least not have broadcast it.  In fact, with her gone, I was practically human again, joking and chatting with nearly everyone, going out of my way to find a bond in every encounter.  When I arrived at work I had been already beaten down by an angry morning and was not looking forward to even a minute in Julie’s company.  But even upon realizing Julie had taken the day off, I was angry.  It quickly wore off in the presence of people who carried no grudge against me, who would talk to me and listen to me.  I have found Angie to be particularly comforting.  Of course, she’s no stranger to the Julie saga or its chronicles, but to her I was never the sad, creepy, obsessed guy that so many of our co-workers considered me.

With Julie gone, I can flirt and joke about my failures and foibles in romance.  I can fall in love with a patron I’ve never seen or one that’s just strolled by the circ desk.  I can laugh and have opinions without giving a damn who hears them.  I can be attractive, so I am attractive.  I can feel like I’m showing off my arms in my ringer tee, because I can feel that someone will appreciate them, and I can appreciate the appreciative glances.  Julie’s off today, too, so it will be a nice, long weekend without her.  I’d like to believe the time will give me an insurmountable headstart away from her, but Monday will come soon enough–too soon.  What I’m actually counting on now for that distance is Julie’s leaving.  It seems realistic, though I’m not sure what gives me that feeling.  Maybe it’s just wishful:  Seeing as I have no realistic means of leaving this workplace, it’s not me that has to go from this place that isn’t big enough for the both of us plus a white elephant–and the elephant’s not leaving on its own.  In every workplace there are people who, from the moment they arrive, seem to be looking for a way out.  Julie’s been trying to escape for longer than I’ve been a thorn in her side.  I’m not content at my job (Julie aside), but I like it.  I last gave librarian school serious thought before I finished my English degree.  By then I knew I was not a librarian, was not going to pursue a career that didn’t define me.  I’m a writer, and though I harbor only the most desperate hopes of writing my way out of this day job, it’s what I am, regardless of how many publishers would disagree (if I gave them the chance to).  I won’t make a cent in this forum, but I’m saying what I need to say the way I need to say it.  I don’t know what Julie is, and maybe she doesn’t, either, but she’ll possibly try to find out the way many people do, by getting another job or another degree.  Anyway, I don’t expect her to be here through the year, and I’m almost counting on that to keep me patient for the end of my torment.  Don’t ask me if I want to see her go, because I can’t answer honestly.  I want my life back.  I want to not love her.  That’s not true, but the only alternative is to want her to love me, though no more likely to happen.

With Julie gone, I’ll be free to love someone else, or free to pretend that I want to, anyway.  I don’t want to see my future wife.  I don’t want to be married again.  Do I even want to fall in love again?  If Julie leaves without making peace–and, yes, it is up to her–I will still be in love with her, but making peace would allow us both to move on.  Does Julie have any less at stake than I do?  Monday gets closer and closer.

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.

I Think That Tree Has Already Been Cut Down

I pedal through flurries of leaves on my commute, and never does one touch me–glance off my helmet or wind-glue to my chest for a moment.  On the evenings I work attractive women my age criss-cross my vision.  Rarely do they come to my half of the circ desk.  What would I do, anyway?  I’ve forgotten, or lost my drive, on which I had only a tenuous hold at best.  Flirting is fun, but, ultimately, it seems simply another manifestation of vanity.  I’m not flirting so much to attract women as to make myself feel good, to assure myself I still have it.  Whatever “it” may be worth intrinsically, I can’t right now discern it value to me.  It has all but evaporated in the distillation of necessity.  Why this process doesn’t also rid me of pride and self-hatred, I don’t know.  It seems all I’m left with–the two of them dancing maypole around me, keeping the women away.  But they are not just a barrier; they are a force, as strong a repellent of others as an attractant to me.  Awareness is often deterrent enough of creeping evil, but I have not yet convinced myself of pride’s malevolence.  Yes, the words.  Talk, talk.  No one can convince me of anything with just words.  I can’t even convince myself, even if I make the most sense.  This eradication requires more than awareness.  It requires a sacrifice of pride  itself, surely, but what does pride walk on?  What do I pull out from under it to upset it? and then how do I keep it from getting back up?  I’ve tried to imagine a life without pride and no picture forms, only a vague emptiness in my gut.  Pride is my only connection to Julie–my only reason to keep it and the best reason to get rid of it.  I can’t let her forget me, even it she only remembers me as odious.  Shouldn’t pride demand a better impression upon others?  It does, upon others. I want Julie to hate me as much as I hate myself.  I’ll take any emotion she’ll give me as long as it’s strong. 

Why should a leaf cling to me, even for a moment?  I work with good people–people who greet one another, talk to each other, help each other out.  That alienates me.  The other person is never the first person I think of, though I manage somettimes to do the right thing.  It’s the people who always do the right thing that I allow to make me feel small and less than human.  Yet Mike, James, and Julie are all lonely people, too.  If anyone is more deserving of love than anyone else, they are more deserving than I.  I see them give every day.  I’ll bet they don’t even have to think about it.  Why is no one clinging to them?  Love is not fair.  Why isn’t it ours to just pluck from the tree?  Why must we have to try to catch it when it falls from the sky?  Is it getting swept to the curb, washed down the gutter, when it eludes our tense grasp?  Does it dry up to be crushed underfoot?  Was there a harvest that we missed?

What would I do with that leaf pressed against my chest, held only by the force of my forward movement?  Pedal harder to prevent it peeling away?  Snatch it off and cram it into my pocket?  I doubt I could simply welcome it for as long as it stayed and say goobye with a smile.  It would not be easy-come-easy-go.  It would not have come easily, its trip having been so long as to have at least been ponderous, if not also circuitous and arduous.  I would not let it leave.  In my pocket it would go.  Occasionally, I could remove it briefly, to admire it but not to appreeciate it.  I hope I get the chance to do otherwise.  Fall is not over yet.  There are plenty of leaves yet to pedal through.

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.

Food, Shelter, Love

At work I see plenty of physically attractive women, but I’m not ready to fall in love with any of them.  Physical attraction in only that.  Love is more.  To be physically attracted is to have sized up a potential sex partner, a biological imperative justifying a recreational pursuit.  Where is love?  Of course I want sex, but it isn’t the first thing I want.  It might not even be the second or third, depending on the scope of love.  Is it realistic to want love above all else? to eschew the baser needs in favor of a need that has never been satisfied?  Why not?  Let the baser needs take care of themselves.  What, then, has happened to letting love come to me?  Well, I’d leave well-enough alone if it were well enough left.  But regardless of my inability to bring love to me, my overwhelming need for it crowds out the faith that it is on its way.  So I distract myself with the shapes of women, and I don’t kid myself that it’s anything else.  I know better than to look for love in a vulgar aesthetic.  Though sex, for me, has never been a simple vulgarity or casual one-off, I have never fallen in love with an object of sex, and when I have fallen in love (if I actually ever have), physical attraction was not the reason.  If I have ever fallen in love, it was with Julie, and in all of the time I mooned over her I never considered sex with her (though, eventually, that would have been nice).  If I had not otherwise been attracted to her, there might have been no attraction at all.

So, here we have new expressions for both the inutility of vanity towards the “acquisition” of love and the futility of seeking or even preparing oneself for love.  If physical attraction cannot recognize love–and as a biological (animal) mechanism it must be singularly ignorant of any spiritual imperative–then what role of the least significance can vanity have in the attraction of anything but sex?  If that is all vanity can do, then its role is to distract one from seeking love.  But I don’t want to be distracted–from anytything.  These shapes are all nice to look at and to imagine having fun with, but as much fun as they might be, they aren’t enough.  Feeling that way, I can’t enjoy the game.  Yet there is nothing else but distraction when there’s nothing else I can do.  Nothing else is more important to me than this thing I can’t do anything about.  But as I have neither the patience to not-wait for love or the faith in not-waiting that would facilitate the patience, what’s left but to play the game? to appreciate the shapes?  Perhaps that’s all that keeps obsession at bay.

Mirror, Julie, Dion, Hair

Ben Franklin said something of the usefulness of vanity, but I don’t remember it.  Its logic, tongue-in-cheek as it may have been, didn’t fly with me and, therefore, didn’t stick.  I suppose vanity is, at least, useful in keeping one’s hygiene on the healthy side, but what does it otherwise do for one?  I can’t think of any way it’s been of benefit to me.  I’ve been using it to pretend I’m somebody else, and that hasn’t gotten me anything but confused.  Few of the images I’ve presented have been of my self:  “Who was that short-haired, clean-shaven dweeb?”  And, somehow, it’s easier to fool a mob than to fool one person.  I am not that person.  I fooled myself for much longer than I fooled Julie.  I try not to fool anyone now.  Vanity’s place is to make me feel good about myself, judged by my own standards.  If I find an audience in the mirror as I preen, I stop.  I hate it when Julie’s face floats up in front of mine, judging my appearance.  On many days it stops me from shaving, because if I’m not doing it for myself, I won’t do it.  My hair is my most strident display of my vanity because I know no one likes it.  Sometimes I don’t even like it, and consecutive good-hair days are a miracle.  It hasn’t been cut in a year.  It’s bushy and curly, and that’s just the way it is.

The confidence vanity might give me is an attractant itself, and being passive, attracts only what it should, as a flower does the insect to pollinate it.  The confidence is a projection of my true self.  What does it eventually attract?  The insect/flower relationship is sex, but of course that’s a much baser objective than that for which humans strive.  Is love the logical eventuality?  Is genuineness the attractant for that most human of needs?  Being genuine releases one from striving, from trying to discern and conform to the perceived standards of others.  It’s a crystal honesty.  Does vanity get one there?

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.