That Guy
I wrote this just now. I feel better. I think I've been reading too much Bukowski of late.
I'm applying to grad schools right now, and part of that is looking over my transcripts and seeing all the awards and recognitions and grants and such I've recieved over my academic career, and fuck if people don't have a lot of faith in my ability. It's funny how much better I feel just from looking over all my old accomplishments. Just to feel good about myself, like I used to, is a wonderful thing indeed.
That Guy
Off the top of my head, I don’t know when it actually happened. Not the esoteric, unknown loss, but the actual event. I remember it, vividly, but I’ve never been one for dates, and no, it was a Thursday, because my new job had only allowed me two days off a week, and I wanted to spend that one with her. I’d called her in the morning, preparing for our day together, and just at the end of the conversation, she’d said goodbye and then my name. She’d said, “Goodbye, Max.” And I knew.
“Do you even want to see me?”
And strained, like an admission, like a sudden realization, “no.”
And I cried there, in my bed having just woken up. I tried to talk her out of it as best I could. I still saw her that night to pick up the camera we’d bought together, which I’d said I wanted back just for an excuse to see her. I’d packed up all of her things in a garbage bag and brought it along, expecting to take it back as I’d done before. At the end of the night the camera was with me, and the bag was with her, my little black heart inside it.
We’d talked in the car in the parking lot of a bookstore in Newport. We’d cried together, held each other, her acting like the decision was just as hard for her to make as it was for me to accept. She said she loved me, that she knew we’d be together again someday. That we’d be married and have a child and name him after a character in a movie that shared my last name. She said she felt pretty when some boy named Roland in a class she was taking had said she looked pretty. She kissed me there, in the parking lot, and later when I dropped her off she kissed me again. I stopped her just before, tried to collect myself, tried to prepare myself to remember this last kiss as best as I could. I tried to remember every moment of it. But kisses don’t work like that. They’re instants. They’re time, and when they pass they’re gone. It’s not like sex. Fucking comes back easy, and often when you’re alone. But kisses leave and never return, given so easily and taken so joyfully, they’re too much in the moment to ever be remembered.
I didn’t talk to her for a few days, she’d gone to Europe with a friend. A trip she’d been planning when we were still together. Part of me wondered if she wanted to fuck some Italian boy and didn’t want the guilt. Part of me knew she’d never do that. Neither part was really right, I guess.
When she got back, she wrote and called me on the same day, telling me she thought about me everyday she’d been gone. Telling me she was still thinking about me all the time, and that she loved me. Foolishly, I felt that it was enough. I felt fine, like it would all work out in time, and I’ve always been convinced that I have time. There are always hours in the morning, secreted away for the crunch. There were always weeks and months and years to be utilized. Nothing had a deadline. Everything would work out.
I texted her one day to find out her shirt size. I wanted to get her a shirt I’d seen, as if that would make it better. As if it would fix whatever was broken. It was late, and we went back and forth for a while, her never giving me a good answer. I’d try the next day.
I called after work, after this new job I’d gotten partly just to make her happy. She was at a theme park I’d always wanted to take her to but had never had the time. She couldn’t talk. I asked the shirt size again. She said she was with the boy from class. I tried to call a few more times, and she seemed bothered. I stopped calling.
The next day, at work, riddled with it, absolutely saturated by it, I sent her another message telling her I needed to talk to her. She couldn’t do it tonight. Well, that just wasn’t good enough for me. I called her, and she didn’t answer. Over and over again I called, needing to talk to her, needing to know what was going on. Finally she answered, said she only did so because he’d told her to, and said that I needed to stop calling. She had someone new in her life now, and they had an honest shot. This was less than a week after she’d told me she was thinking about me every day. Less than a week after she’d loved me.
It was in the small hours, and dark, and I was going nuts thinking about her with him. I started to drive, wanting to go to the beach, wanting to look over the cliffs where I’d first told her, in no uncertain terms, that I wanted to be with her forever, and had actually meant it. That I fully expected to spend my life with her, and had believed myself more than I ever had before when dealing with a woman. A girl.
Halfway there I got off the freeway and turned toward her house. I tried to remember the trip, the last time I’d be driving to her house. That part, I can remember. That part stays with me.
I parked down the block and across the street. It was around 3am, and her house was black. I waited for a while, just wanting to see her get home, just wanting to know when they’d be apart so I could talk to her. She didn’t show, and after half an hour I called again. This time, it was,
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”
“That’s exactly what I called to tell you.”
“Well, good. Then it’s mutual.”
But I didn’t let her go. I wanted to understand how this could happen. How something so pure became so ugly, so low. I wanted to know what had changed in the last week. I needed to understand to let her go.
“There are so many means things I can say right now. I don’t want to be mean.”
“I know, baby! I know you don’t, you’re a nice person!”
I pleaded and begged. I flattered and cried. She threatened me with him, who she was apparently with. Said that he was getting mad, and I didn’t want a mad him. That she didn’t want a mad him. Like I gave a shit. I asked if I could call her when she got home. When was she getting home?
“I’m not coming home tonight.”
“… what does that mean?”
“I’m spending the night with Roland.”
Roland. I could never compete with that name.
Finally, I’m asking her to talk to me. To explain it to me. She’s saying I’m annoying, that I should get over it. What’s my problem? That we had been in love. Even with him, even then, she couldn’t say we weren’t. Then, suddenly, a man’s voice, just for a second.
“Dude… man…”
And then silence.
I was sitting in my car outside my ex-girlfriend’s house at three in the morning, tears on my cheeks and a cannonball in my stomach. The phone was still warm in my hand, either from being pressed so hard into my face for from whatever nuclear power source sat inside. I saw what I was, then. I had become “that guy.” I didn’t know if other guys like me became like this for the same reasons, but I didn’t want to think so. I wanted to stand for something more. I wanted to have fought for something worthwhile, not just refused to let go of something out of stubbornness and denial.
I left, drove to the beach and spent a while looking out over the waves. It was cold, and I didn’t stay for too long, but I sat there with this knot in my chest that still hasn’t quite straightened out, deciding what in God’s glorious rapture I was going to do. I didn’t know, then. I still don’t, really.
I drove home and cried in my bed. I tried to find some scent of her left over in my blankets, in the pillowcase, sniffing around like a bloodhound. There was nothing.
I'm applying to grad schools right now, and part of that is looking over my transcripts and seeing all the awards and recognitions and grants and such I've recieved over my academic career, and fuck if people don't have a lot of faith in my ability. It's funny how much better I feel just from looking over all my old accomplishments. Just to feel good about myself, like I used to, is a wonderful thing indeed.
That Guy
Off the top of my head, I don’t know when it actually happened. Not the esoteric, unknown loss, but the actual event. I remember it, vividly, but I’ve never been one for dates, and no, it was a Thursday, because my new job had only allowed me two days off a week, and I wanted to spend that one with her. I’d called her in the morning, preparing for our day together, and just at the end of the conversation, she’d said goodbye and then my name. She’d said, “Goodbye, Max.” And I knew.
“Do you even want to see me?”
And strained, like an admission, like a sudden realization, “no.”
And I cried there, in my bed having just woken up. I tried to talk her out of it as best I could. I still saw her that night to pick up the camera we’d bought together, which I’d said I wanted back just for an excuse to see her. I’d packed up all of her things in a garbage bag and brought it along, expecting to take it back as I’d done before. At the end of the night the camera was with me, and the bag was with her, my little black heart inside it.
We’d talked in the car in the parking lot of a bookstore in Newport. We’d cried together, held each other, her acting like the decision was just as hard for her to make as it was for me to accept. She said she loved me, that she knew we’d be together again someday. That we’d be married and have a child and name him after a character in a movie that shared my last name. She said she felt pretty when some boy named Roland in a class she was taking had said she looked pretty. She kissed me there, in the parking lot, and later when I dropped her off she kissed me again. I stopped her just before, tried to collect myself, tried to prepare myself to remember this last kiss as best as I could. I tried to remember every moment of it. But kisses don’t work like that. They’re instants. They’re time, and when they pass they’re gone. It’s not like sex. Fucking comes back easy, and often when you’re alone. But kisses leave and never return, given so easily and taken so joyfully, they’re too much in the moment to ever be remembered.
I didn’t talk to her for a few days, she’d gone to Europe with a friend. A trip she’d been planning when we were still together. Part of me wondered if she wanted to fuck some Italian boy and didn’t want the guilt. Part of me knew she’d never do that. Neither part was really right, I guess.
When she got back, she wrote and called me on the same day, telling me she thought about me everyday she’d been gone. Telling me she was still thinking about me all the time, and that she loved me. Foolishly, I felt that it was enough. I felt fine, like it would all work out in time, and I’ve always been convinced that I have time. There are always hours in the morning, secreted away for the crunch. There were always weeks and months and years to be utilized. Nothing had a deadline. Everything would work out.
I texted her one day to find out her shirt size. I wanted to get her a shirt I’d seen, as if that would make it better. As if it would fix whatever was broken. It was late, and we went back and forth for a while, her never giving me a good answer. I’d try the next day.
I called after work, after this new job I’d gotten partly just to make her happy. She was at a theme park I’d always wanted to take her to but had never had the time. She couldn’t talk. I asked the shirt size again. She said she was with the boy from class. I tried to call a few more times, and she seemed bothered. I stopped calling.
The next day, at work, riddled with it, absolutely saturated by it, I sent her another message telling her I needed to talk to her. She couldn’t do it tonight. Well, that just wasn’t good enough for me. I called her, and she didn’t answer. Over and over again I called, needing to talk to her, needing to know what was going on. Finally she answered, said she only did so because he’d told her to, and said that I needed to stop calling. She had someone new in her life now, and they had an honest shot. This was less than a week after she’d told me she was thinking about me every day. Less than a week after she’d loved me.
It was in the small hours, and dark, and I was going nuts thinking about her with him. I started to drive, wanting to go to the beach, wanting to look over the cliffs where I’d first told her, in no uncertain terms, that I wanted to be with her forever, and had actually meant it. That I fully expected to spend my life with her, and had believed myself more than I ever had before when dealing with a woman. A girl.
Halfway there I got off the freeway and turned toward her house. I tried to remember the trip, the last time I’d be driving to her house. That part, I can remember. That part stays with me.
I parked down the block and across the street. It was around 3am, and her house was black. I waited for a while, just wanting to see her get home, just wanting to know when they’d be apart so I could talk to her. She didn’t show, and after half an hour I called again. This time, it was,
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”
“That’s exactly what I called to tell you.”
“Well, good. Then it’s mutual.”
But I didn’t let her go. I wanted to understand how this could happen. How something so pure became so ugly, so low. I wanted to know what had changed in the last week. I needed to understand to let her go.
“There are so many means things I can say right now. I don’t want to be mean.”
“I know, baby! I know you don’t, you’re a nice person!”
I pleaded and begged. I flattered and cried. She threatened me with him, who she was apparently with. Said that he was getting mad, and I didn’t want a mad him. That she didn’t want a mad him. Like I gave a shit. I asked if I could call her when she got home. When was she getting home?
“I’m not coming home tonight.”
“… what does that mean?”
“I’m spending the night with Roland.”
Roland. I could never compete with that name.
Finally, I’m asking her to talk to me. To explain it to me. She’s saying I’m annoying, that I should get over it. What’s my problem? That we had been in love. Even with him, even then, she couldn’t say we weren’t. Then, suddenly, a man’s voice, just for a second.
“Dude… man…”
And then silence.
I was sitting in my car outside my ex-girlfriend’s house at three in the morning, tears on my cheeks and a cannonball in my stomach. The phone was still warm in my hand, either from being pressed so hard into my face for from whatever nuclear power source sat inside. I saw what I was, then. I had become “that guy.” I didn’t know if other guys like me became like this for the same reasons, but I didn’t want to think so. I wanted to stand for something more. I wanted to have fought for something worthwhile, not just refused to let go of something out of stubbornness and denial.
I left, drove to the beach and spent a while looking out over the waves. It was cold, and I didn’t stay for too long, but I sat there with this knot in my chest that still hasn’t quite straightened out, deciding what in God’s glorious rapture I was going to do. I didn’t know, then. I still don’t, really.
I drove home and cried in my bed. I tried to find some scent of her left over in my blankets, in the pillowcase, sniffing around like a bloodhound. There was nothing.
posted by DeadLanguage at 2:27 AM
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