M, 2001 - 2008

(Instead of writing about things in the order in which they happened, I'll just date them to allow a rough timeline. There is a sense of rambling here which I hate to say is unavoidable as my memory condenses and chooses what to remember and what to withhold. That in mind, this is easily one of the most personal and painful things I've ever written and that is because it shows my flaws. I was not a good person for a long time and I am putting that out into the world for posterity.)

In the back then of 2001, I was the "Angry Young Man with his fist in the air" that Billy Joel had written about. Its the summer after high school and living at home with my co-dependent mother and her asshole boyfriend who looks like Richard Belzer. I was spending a lot of time on the internet: mostly cruising for pornography and trolling internet boards for laughs. I was as generic a person as you were likely to find on the Internet: alone, unwilling to interact with most people on my private time. Writer Paul Schrader summed it up as "the pathology of loneliness": the young person that subconsciously pushes everyone away to be alone, even though the main source of their outward anger and self-loathing is that very isolation.

I had been helping a friend shoot a movie that summer and I barely remember all those involved except for two girls a couple years younger than me. The first one I cannot remember her name (and stayed away from because my best friend David was trying to get next to her). The other one involved me driving her home the one day we filmed. She was a short, stout redhead, a little on the thick side but with amazing Irish features: the sleepy eyes, sardonic lips, the milk white skin. I was so happy for having an attractive girl in my car I, of course, became a gigantic asshole.

I can't remember what we discussed but I know there was a lot of silence. Those awkward moments I can see in hindsight was from mutual attraction and not for a lack of something to talk about. When I helped her get stuff out of my car, she made a passing comment about having a boyfriend, which is what stopped me from asking her out. More awkward silence. She looked at me with a practiced wide-eyed look that dared me to act on instinct. I folded, didn't make a move but kept that moment in my memory.

A year goes by. Or two. I lose my virginity in an awful situation I'll detail later on (and its an ugly story worth waiting around for.)

One Saturday afternoon working at the liquor store, I'm asked to go the supermarket and return cans. I turn in the receipts to get the cash back, I notice an attractive redhead standing at the bakery counter behind me. I don't *recognize* her, but I do notice. She turns and sees me, turns back, turns again and waves shyly. I double-take, point at myself and she nods. A brief conversation involving her remembering me by name and me having no clue who this person is results in my getting her number. This is one of the few "cold calls" I've successfully made in my life.

She comes over the next night. We bicker about comic books and she grins broadly. I go to her house. She tells me about the movie Legend. We disagree on a lot of things but we always enjoy it. Its playful, nerdy and she has this soft voice where everything comes out sounding concerned. She bites her lip a lot, her eyes say one thing but now matter what, her eyebrows are always arched, pleading. To this day, I can still remember what she smells like. When we hug goodbye, I hold on as long as I can to every sensation in the moment. Sure, I've bedded a girl or two before this, but this one I genuinely liked for multiple reasons. She seemed to be a better match and - more importantly - she seemed to like my company more than just hopping in the sack.

She leaves my house one night and as I walk her to the car, I kiss her full on the lips. Open mouth. Standing in the rain. Her hands can't decide to pull me close or push me away and for a while manage to do both simultaneously. She eventually gives in to the shove and starts to cry, asking me why I did that, why I had to make a move and hurt the best friendship she's had in a while. She stammers that she has to go and even at a young 21 years, I can tell she doesn't quite mean it. I'm bad with women but I could read her like a New York Post headline.

The next day she comes over full of pseudo-anger about the night before. I remember her stomping her feet in place, her hands balled up at her sides. After thirty minutes of that, we're on the living room couch, her shirt is on the floor and I'm working at the eternal problem of the bra clasp: my hands are shaking and I want her more because I can feel her emotions through our skins. More importantly: shes a great kisser (possibly the best I've ever had), very responsive verbally to what we're doing and she's not afraid to say "no" if I go to fast or too far.

With her, I was drunk enough to be happy and sober enough to be sane.

We do this for weeks. Then the better part of the summer. She's still with her guy, who lives in the far off land of New Hampshire (and looks like a malnourished version of William Katt) but every other night, we're tangled into each other. No sex. We didn't need it. There was no rush. I just liked the conversations and the dreams and the swing sets as the sun goes down and even the arguments. One night, he shows up at my friend's house in a bridesmaid's dress and her breasts are overflowing from the cut of the top. Someone makes the obvious comments but she sits on my lap and manages to make the most mundane topics sound beautiful. I wrap my arm around her waist and kiss the freckles on her shoulders as I get my ass beat in a computer LAN game. It's a memory I wish I had a photo of.

Later that week, I go over her house and her much younger sister starts coming onto me. M watches disapprovingly before yelling at her sister. I try to step out of it but the sister peruses. This turns into a problem later on.

M eventually leaves for college. I begged her to try to stay in state but she goes to Keene way, way (3+ hour drive) up north. The original idea was to be with her boyfriend but she breaks up with him before college. Sort of because of me, sort of because of him - but all for herself. As an adult, I can see that was the best thing to do - as a child in my early twenties, I took it like a complete fucking dipshit.

In response to this, I do the shittiest thing in my life and fool around with her newly aged 18 year old sister.

M gets wind of this, and calls me sobbing. She's visiting home and her sister let everything spill. I'm left a little confused: M left for college, why was she angry that this happened? (I'm 21 and my brain is in "Frat Boy Mode", excuse me) She cries and cries and cries and then I start to hear screaming over the phone followed by dull slaps and screaming from two separate voices. M is hitting her sister, chasing her around the house. As amusing as this is was, I still feel rotten that I basically soured one great if unstable relationship (M) by playing grab-ass with the other (E). As I got older, this feeling of rottenness became an emotional cancer. It was the obvious prognosis of my shitty attitude and my own emotional problems - except expressed through other people.

We start fighting. M says she loves me and uses that breathless, pleading tone you hear in movies from when the mobster's wife pleads innocence to the gumshoe detective. She says she's hurt and angry that she can't trust me or be with me. I'm a callous asshole with a "more fish in the sea" attitude, saying something to the effects of "thems the breaks, baby". We try to stay friends because shes friends with a lot of my friends now. One night she comes over to Dave's house and in his basement, she says something to me that I cannot remember and I just throw it right back at her. I'm too busy with Smash Brothers and told her (with several well-positioned curse words) I don't have time for her drama...

She rears up and full-on cold-cocks me from behind, in the ear. If she'd hit me in the face while standing, I'd've hit the floor like a sack of flour. And I deserved it.

"GODDAMN IT" I scream and I turn and raise the back of my open hand to her, but never deliver on that promise.

That remains the lowest point of my life. Moral or otherwise. To this day, the wealth of shame I feel for almost acting on instinct with my hot Irish temper is something that never fails to make me wince. I have no excuse for it, as there IS not excuse for it.

She runs upstairs in shock, and sits on my friend's front steps, crying. Dave follows her up. A couple minutes later, he says she wants to see me and I sit on that stoop with her. She's still crying and I hold her and she tangles into me again, like old sheets thrown in the laundry basket. I can feel the smallness of her hands trying to find mine, the pads of her fingers rubbing my shirt.

"Why do we do this to each other?" she asks.

Its 2014 as I write this and I still don't have that fucking answer. And worse still, this was just a preview of things to come.

For the next several years, we fight. A lot of it through AOL Instant Messenger. We fight because I still love her but she has a moral certainty after I laid hands on her sister. We fight because I demand more respect than what shes giving me. We fight because she's found someone else. We fight because she likes Rainbow Bright and shes in college. We fight because I want to fight and because she hates that she can't be with me now. We fight because if you can't fuck, you can at least have intercourse through anger. We fight because we love and hate each other with equal passion. We fight because its the only way left we have to communicate.

And around now it gets weird. She'll come into town for holiday break from college and sees all our friends, and gets a job at the liquor store I'm in. Starts listening to music I introduced her to. I wouldn't say she's stalking me or imitating me but whatever it is, its somewhere in there. One time I get drunk at work and when she leaves, I kiss her as she gets into her car and its a kiss only as a drunken man could. She looks offended. I shrug my shoulders and watch her drive off. I am now emotionally and morally scraping the slivers off the bottom of the barrel.

We stop talking. Then we get to talking again. I say I hate you and the next week I beg for a forgiveness she wants to give but can't find within herself. She attacks me for being the worst person in the world and an hour later says that I'm her rock and she depends on me. We beat each other emotionally until we're both bruised and raw and unable to say anything except honesty. It really boils down to "I love you but can't have you."

She gets engaged to some guy in college. He's in the National Guard, I think. She shows me the ring next time I see her and I crawl into her lap - crying isn't the word for it. I am hysterical with raw emotion. She's utterly astonished, running her hands in my hair not like a lover but consoling a heartbroken child. She says I'm sorry over and over and over and over and over with that loving, weary crack in the softness of her voice. Two hours go by and I've soaked tears and snot into her pant leg. I've had shitty relationships and been heartbroken but this was something new to me. This was her being off the table for good. Aside from Elka leaving me, this was the hardest I've ever cried in my life.

Years go by... and I avoid her. I can't deal with her married but I still find her wedding photo in a  newspaper. I have conversations with her when she's not in the room. I delete all the good AIM conversations we had and keep all the bad ones as a reminder of why it didn't work. I regret that to this day.

Her marriage lasts just enough for them to know it was better being friends. Like getting a job at the liquor store, she takes her grad school courses at the college I now work at. She calls me up to ask for a personal tour. I take her in the van around campus, pointing out buildings she should know, where to park, where the food court is. We're in a stairwell when she stops walking and I, on nothing but empty instinct, wrap my arm around her waist and slowly pin her against the wall. She doesn't resist. She turns bright lobster red, looks away and I kiss her on the cheek. The smell of her, the gentle sound she makes as we're against one another. I don't push it, I still think I'm immortal, that I have all the time in the world. I finish the tour hoping she's going to say something, do something, give me something to hold onto hope ... when she gets in her car and leaves.

She moves out of her mom's house and into a condo a couple towns away. I bring her DVDs and books. Little things I can afford on a blue collar worker's salary. She types up papers as I lay on her couch. She says I can help her on them but she just has me sit around and eat snacks. She makes brownies. We start fighting again over nothing. She calls me an asshole, a bastard - sharp words shes never used before at me - saying she can never forgive me for taking her sister to the playground, to our swingset across the street and kissing her. That I should rot in Hell. Her emotions boil so hot that my only recourse is to hug her as hard as I can. She resists before she relents on everything... except the part of being with me. I know then it will never happen, and that I have only myself to damn.

More time goes by. All my friends seem hate her and hate me for defending her. She even makes a play at my best friend and after some PG-13 rated events, he eventually spurns her (I've never held a grudge against either of them for this). She finished her masters program in psych and packs up to move somewhere else. Anywhere else. Just out of *this* state. Just to drive distance between what she was and who she is now.

Before she leaves, we go to see Quantum Of Solace. I meet her on the upper deck of the mall, where the movie theater is. Shes slimmed down, her hips and waist are more prominent, she has a darling parenthesis around her mouth. She smiles broadly and we talk like old friends. We don't yell, we don't scream or hit or spit at each other. She says that she wants to see every new James Bond movie with me from now on. She takes my arm as we go into the theater. We both like the movie a lot and afterwards we stand out on the balcony and watch the food court. We're friends but I still want to take her in my arms. I can still smell her, that wisp of fresh cut lilacs. The curve of her back feels alive as I press it when I open the door for her. I walk her to her car, hug her good night under the buzzing parking lot lights. She leaves, maybe this time for forever. And I stood there, hoping she'd come back.

Recently, her sister's Facebook updates tells me M has remarried. Found stability in a job as a councilor or teacher or something. I'm happy that shes happy and settled down and that she doesn't seem to feel as strongly about these things as I do. But I wish I could turn back the clock. I hold so much guilt over what I did, we did, to this day. The memory of my mistakes and anger and the callow stupidity of my Youth chases me like an angry dog: always so threatening, so strong that a nip at my heels could trip me up enough to lay me out, and that dog would eat me alive. It took me years to realize that I'm still asking that girl for forgiveness every day, quietly murmuring to myself. I've even exchanged an email or two with her. We're friendly but... the shadows are so long now, it is most likely midnight for us. The distance we have now is perfect - but the memory of closeness chokes any satisfaction that might come.

I don't often think of her much in the context of "now", that book having long been closed and she is not the person I once knew, but I often think about us when we first met. Her breath in my ear, her hands guiding mine over her chest, the time she invited me over when her mom was out of town, the gasp on the couch as we came close to sealing the deal... and then as she decided not to (I begged to share her bed, just this once and she put me on the couch by myself. The next morning, she quietly admitted she wanted to give in. Imagine the look on my face.).  

As an adult, I realize now that I was angry with my home life, with my mother, with a lot of things - and the only way I could express it was hurting someone else. So often the victim myself, the chance I had at being close to someone I poisoned with improperly placed rage. I was a viper, angry he could not shed his own skin and biting the things nearest to him. That does not excuse what I did, but it may help explain.

I try not to dwell on any of this, I try to not think about what "might've been" but some nights are like that sweet, humid summer when we met and I can't help but remember where I came from. That is all that really matters to me now. Not the fights or the fooling around or the bad abuse we hurled at each other or the raised hands or the cobra spit of hurt feelings. Just running across the street to the playground and doing nothing but trying to see how high we could get on the swings as the sun went down behind the evergreen trees. Holding each other's hands. How her thick lips and their hunger matched mine and the curls of her hair around my fingers. The way she made my guts shake like it was winter weather as it was summer outside.

And all of this you just read is an abject failure, because what I feel is so much more than this.

I'm sorry, fidget.

The word is inconvenience

And to go hand in hand with that long widow's schlpiel about people having a tough time - its matched two-for-one item that makes me want to stuff my ears with cotton and superglue them shut to keep the stupid from leaking in slowly or my brains from leaving in a hurry.

The word is inconvenience.

This isn't about accidentally spilling coffee on your new shoes or some guy on the 301 ripping a stank fart next to you - this is the large type of inconvenience. The kind that has people lamenting their life because of a relatively minor quibble; you know the type I'm talking about. The people who say they don't know what to do with themselves because their favorite mint flavored toothpaste is being discontinued, the ones that missed that nine-thousandth airing of the third episode of Firefly (show's canceled for over a decade, move on already) and cry foul against a God that doesn't exist or those that, after making overly detailed plans like someone with crippling OCD could only imagine, totally lose all emotional control when things don't go as they'd like.

And it comes down to goddamn *whining*.

Normally, I'd throw the gauntlet down at Millennials, who are the most obnoxious of generations with their need to LOUDLY identify with products (all your generation's music is based on an increasingly obvious monetary industry and its only getting worse - welcome to the egress of your hollow lie) and misunderstood use of the words like "irony" or "intelligence" - but the fact of the matter is this also has to do with the people my age who are now hitting mid-30s and feel like they should have a statue built for them because they can't control a cheating spouse (ditch them, you ass) or wanting washboard abs and scream-crying about not getting them while they're shoving Ring Dings, Ho Hos and cheap beer into their hollow goiter.

Either do something, or shut up.

The thing is - when you're struggling, you have a right to complain to a certain extent. Bad day complaining, surely - "I am having a tough time and this is why" but when complaining becomes your raison d'être more than the actual work, you make me wish I never knew you (and if you're really bad about it, I'll wish you'd die in a car fire). When your effort about complaining that LIFE IS SO HARD is greater than the work you put in, you are not someone anyone should acknowledge.

Either do something, or shut up.

At least fail. At least do something tough and fail and do it again and fail again and chip away at *something*. But I really don't want to hear about it until you've given it a good go - because 95% of the issues lately are really, seriously lame. I'd say "Man up" but "Woman up" works as well - perhaps "Adult up" is a better statement. Stop infantiling yourselves and stop listening to your own bullshit. Just go get it done, you obnoxious little turd. You can thank me afterward.

Do something, or shut up.

Angst: The Bitter, Black Coffee For A New Generation

Something is going on.

So many of my friends - most of who read these status updates - are going through a really tough period. I cannot say why this is, but it seems to be happening all at once, to most everyone and in the worst possible fashions for most. Not "bad day" stuff but electrical current of bad mojo, and the curse of self-awareness as your personal elevator slowly descends another three floors into the sub-basement of Satan's Damned Souls and Department Store.

What surprises me most about it all is that every one of these people seems to be dealing with angst. Not the glass-half-empty teen fragrance, fake-punk-rock nonsense either - but literal, pathological angst. The kind that comes with refusing to adjust to the world and unable to change their world to suit them (and being unaware of it). That the majority of these problems are focused around holding on or holding on too tight. That people assume they are the exceptions to prove the rule (we are all guilty of this - its why when we look in the mirror, we wonder how the hell we got old).

Part of this is that a lot of these people I'm talking about are entering their thirties or thereabouts. The magic invulnerability of your roaring twenties is over, folks - the life you wanted was a sham. Let it go gracefully.

But moreover, there is enmity of change. That people over identify with things outside themselves, that the things they have and can hold and "keep", the things they can't actually control. Houses that need fixing, illnesses, bills, relationships - all this stuff is, quite frankly, shit to some degree. Let it all go - theres no point in holding onto *anything*. Even the universe is slowly approaching its finite heat death, so no matter how great something is or wonderful or awful or terrible - it'll be gone one day anyway.

Nothing can be saved. Stop holding on so hard. You should be more than what you identify with and when you are not, thats when you end up here.