A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing

I arrived in Washington on the first day of the first month of the first year of the first decade of the first century of this millenium. I moved here because I had spent my whole life living in places because of other people. I was born in New York because that's where my parents lived. I lived in Maine because my father got a job there. I lived in North Carolina because my parents wanted a home with mild winters. I lived in West Virginia because my father bought a farm there. I lived in Tennessee because my mother moved there to be closer to my eventual stepfather who was incarcerated in Nashville. I moved to Illinois because my big brother invited me to come up there and share his apartment. But I moved to Washington because I looked at a map of the United States and said, "that's where I'm going next."

When you move by yourself to a new region of the country where you don't know anyone at all there are basically three things you can do to combat the inevitable onslaught of homesickness:

1. You can go shopping and buy new stuff for your empty apartment.
2. You can establish traditions that make you feel closer to home like making spaghetti every Friday.
3. And you can find ways to meet new people.

In my attempt to accomplish this last, I sought out what's called a chess scene (a place where people gather to play chess). And so I found Bertolino's. Bertonlino's is a coffee bar open 24 hours. Its ambience is enhanced with old wooden tables and chairs that have seen their better day. And in one of the bookcases there are stored several chess boards with pieces probably conglomerated together from nearly ten different sets. Over the years this has become my favorite place to hang out. It's especially perfect for reading inasmuch as reading at home is too easily compromised with the accessibility of the internet and cable television. Also I'm in the habit of taking my journal for writing and my sketchpad for drawing.

Dave is the graveyard barista at Bertolino's and we've gotten to know each other. He hates me for being a Yankee fan. We both have horror stories about ex~girlfriends. It makes him batty that I can read the first six Harry Potter books and then postpone the seventh one for several weeks until I've finished various other reading projects.

Last year when I was setting my record for abstinence from gambling he was very supportive. And then when I relapsed he offered me an incentive to do better. He began asking me if I was up to 100 days and hinted that when I reached that milestone he would have something for me. It took a few crash~landings, but last week I reached the elusive 100 days and last night I went to my coffee bar to claim my prize. I still don't know what it is because Dave was unable to locate it in the stores about town and ended up ordering it online. But when he came to work... his wonderful (and basically genius) girlfriend, Carol, sauntered in with him carrying an apple pie that she had baked so recently that it was still hot. The aluminum foil covering the pie was inscribed with the words:

For Shannon

Congratulations!

From Dave and Carol

We convivially discussed book collecting and monster illustrations. Carol explained to me what an abracadrium is and we argued about which of all the Bonds we like the best.

I don't know how else to say this. It was a hell of a nice thing for them to do to make an event out of my own personal dragon~slaying quest.

And I don't want to turn a nice thing like that into a lecture on the irrelevancy of church (but I'm going to anyway). I think it was kind of a Christian thing for them to do. And Dave is an atheist.

Birds Are Migratory?

I'm going to Las Vegas in December to see twin sisters, Paulina and Mercedes, competing in dance competitions. For some reason it's never quite slipped off the edge of my memory that Mercedes was once my girlfriend... living proof of my conviction that there is such a thing as love at first sight. Thanks to the balmy medicinal magic of time we find ourselves friends. Mildly sweet to each other after nearly a decade's estrangement. So while there is none of the feverish passion and drama remaining from our college years, there is an unmistakable determination on my part to look good when I arrive in Las Vegas. I mean I am motivated to manufacture lean sculpted muscle anatomically wide... biceps... triceps... pectorals... quads... pentaceps... hectoceps.... whatever.

Imagine my disappointment this past week, then, when I developed a little cold. No one wants to challenge themselves physically when they are sick, do they? So from Tuesday until Friday I did nothing but stay in bed , take medicine, and watch as all my physical fitness drained away. Today I woke up feeling a little more capable, consumed a dark chocolate Acess nutrition drink (distributed by Melaleuca), and headed out to the track across the street. On my way I saw this little bird... so little... and I stopped to watch him only a few feet away as he was hunting and pecking at every little speck of potential food within a ten foot expanse of embankment. I watched him for nearly a minute imagining that I was James Audobon or Charles Darwin and intensely fascinated by every little characteristic of this bird. I noticed how slender were the legs upon which his entire weight was balanced and at what angles they were supporting him. I noticed how these legs were not used at all to hop from one spot to another... nor were the wings perceptibly employed... but that apparently the body of the bird simply willed itself to flit about sporadically. This is all foreshadowing... done most artfully except that in really stellar literature this particular asseveration mentioning the foreshadowing itself in a none too subtle fashion would be omitted.

So I arrived at the track and surprised myself with running two miles in just under 17.5 minutes... my best time since February... perhaps I've not suffered so bad from being sick as I feared.

And while I'm bragging I might mention that at midnight I will have abstained from gambling for 100 days (42 short of the record).

So when I get home I hear this fantastic tumult up in the ceiling somewhere. My apartment has a vaulted ceiling with windows in it all the way across its apex. At first I imagined some large and menacing wasp or hornet, but really it generated too much noise for that. And upon further investigation I confirmed it was a small bird. See how that foreshadowing thing works? Really useless literary device if you ask me. What's wonderful in literature is when you don't know what to expect. So why, unless you wanted to be intellectually irrelevant, would you go around all the time giving hints about what's goig to happen at the end of your story?

So pretty quickly I gave up on diplomatically persuading this frantic creature to depart from my home. I realized my best chance was to invite the feline half of my apartment's residents to take a rare excursion into the outdoors inasmuch as her incessant inarticulate announcements that she would like nothing better than to use her jaws as a makeshift guillotine with which to decapitate the little bird were not helping. That being done... the bird commenced to make a little less noise, but still seems ridiculously certain that the only way to vacate my humble abode is through one of the window panes in the ceiling.

And that's how I came to ask myself, "birds are migratory, aren't they?" I mean seriously... how is it they fly back and forth each year from Alberta to Peru and yet the one chirping away in my ceiling right now can't remember that he flew in through the goddamned sliding glass door which is even more open now than when he entered it approximately 45 minutes ago?

The Smiles Are Real

I just ran two miles in less than 19 minutes. Didn't set any records, but I can feel myself getting stronger out there. And it was raining. Something kind of exhilarating about that and apparently Gatorade knows what it is because when I got home and opened the refrigerator to replenish liquids the first bottle I picked up was called Gatorade Rain.

I thought about Wendy as I came home and felt like sending her a text message saying "are you okay?" The way our friendship ended is that in April we were having dinner and she was showing me text messages her most recent ex had sent her. She was obsessed with trying to figure out what his messages meant. I was obsessed with noticing that the few messages I had sent her were deleted. I didn't say anything then, but a couple days later she asked me if I was ignoring her messages and I replied that I wished she weren't deleting mine. She didn't respond to that for about a week and then came the message when she said. . .

She only wanted a friend.

She went on to say the message thing was just too much for her and that she was going to take some time to take care of herself. And that she wanted me to take the Mariners tickets I'd given to her for her birthday and go with someone else.
That's how our friendship ended with her thinking I wasn't a very good friend and with me thinking I was the best friend she'll ever have and that it's unfortunate she couldn't appreciate that.

But today I asked myself was it the right thing to confront the issue of my messages being deleted? Or was I demanding something from her for selfish reasons. She was careless with my feelings and it would only have gotten worse for me. I believe she was hurting because of losing her ex and that in a subconscious way she was releasing that pain by inflicting it on me... so I kind of decided to remove myself from that role.

Today I want to be her friend again. And yesterday I wanted that too. I'm the person in her life that she could talk to about anything at any time. I would never judge her and I was always in love with her. Very constant that way and I usually think she was a fool to dispense with me so recklessly. All I wanted was for her to say she was sorry for deleting my messages and that she wouldn't do it anymore. But lately I've been thinking I was the fool. Apparently I was more addicted to her leaning on me than she was.

It's been two years since we broke up. Two nightmarish years wherein I often grope about desperately and blindly for some fragments of my soul, but it's getting better. On the 4th of July I was at Fred Meyer shopping for all kinds of things like DVD's and basketball shorts and Gatorade Rain. And I smiled at some person. A bigger smile than usual. A fearless smile. The kind of smile that is completely independent from the assurance that it may or may not be reciprocated. The kind of smile in point of fact that knows it has just completely brightened your day to the extent that if you fail to smile back it's not because you are immune to my charm... no.. .rather you are so much overwhelmed with the warmth that it pretty much renders you responseless for just a brief moment or so. And I kept right on flashing that smile at people... almost every person I saw and I wasn't really doing it on purpose either. It just kept happening and I myself wasn't sure why.

The cashier asked me how my day was going and I told her honestly that I seemed to be in a really good mood which is rare for me. I told her I'm usually quite grumpy. And she said at least I have a good sense of humor about it and I said... yes... I'm a grumpy person with a good sense of humor.... which must be ostensibly plausible because it made her laugh.

And at midnight I'll be at 86 consecutive days without gambling. There's still a long way to go before I reach my goal of 142, but it happens that 86 was the previous record... a record I set when I was with Wendy and believed I had found at last the girl I'd been hoping for throughout the first 34 years of my life.

I don't blame myself for falling for her the way I did. It made perfect sense. There was no reason to doubt the magic of our infatuation together. And I don't blame myself for succumbing to the nightmare of learning that it wasn't real. That whatever she felt for me... it was not love... not any kind of love you would ever want to rely on. It was the most immense disappointment and it's understandable how it submerged me into a listless depression.

And yet I never completely capitulated to the darkness. I held on. I knew that I was basically a happy person and that no disappointment could deprive me of that forever. I knew about my smile. I didn't know where it had gone or how to get it back. But on the 4th of July it just kind of revived on its own without ceremony or explication. And I wouldn't be surprised if it's back for good.