Current Musical Selection: Smashing Pumpkins - Today

Got a request to talk about some more on the romance and relationship subject. I don’t see a need to. I honestly don’t have much to say. You all seem to like it when I ramble on about stories and adventures I had when I was young and stupid. So without any particular direction, I shall ramble for you.

Not long ago, I had a late evening get together [since I apparently cant qualify as a date] where she and I talked a lot about life back in high school. I'd known her since junior high at least, but we still like to talk about what it was like then; we liked talking about what was different then from now, needless to say it was a long night. For a while it was easy, we both were dispelling the myths and things the other didn’t know, and it was fun, revealing and fun. But it was hard. It was hard for me not to tell the truth to her. It was difficult for me to sit and dodge what was on my mind. And for me, it was her. Back in high school I guess I had something of a crush on her. And I never told her. It didn’t really pop back into my mind until I was sitting there with her, in that dank 24-hour restaurant, several hours from home. In the smoking section, of all places, we sat, really barring all about what is like, and what it was like. She was surprised that I remembered so much about her, and that I noticed so much in high school. I couldn’t tell her why. I'd let her talk for so long, and while I listened to everything she said, my mind just kept wandering away from me, trying to find a way to bring it all up… to find a way to say, "gee, back then I really was attracted to you," without it sounding really creepy.

I don’t think there really is a way to go about that. Back in high school, we had a lot of classes together, she and I were always around each other. For me then, I didn't know how to handle it. How the fuck do act normal around one of the more beautiful girls you’ve ever met, when you sit next to her in 3 classes? So I did probably what all men have resorted to at one point or another. I made fun of her. God it was stupid of me. I didn’t go full-tilt on her, as I know some of you may be a bit floored at that comment… but I gave her a continual ribbing. She took it well. That’s always surprised me about her. Anyway, it was the only way I could really make it through it all. I joke a lot. I fuck around a lot. But I only do it with those I feel comfortable around. I still find myself doing it. People, females especially, never quite seem to know how to take it. And I guess, me saying, "I only do it because I like you," just doesn’t make it clear to them. But that’s why I do it. I still hate that I do that. I hate that I did it then, and that I still do it. It ruins things fast. Back then, I suppose it could do the job to alleviate the tension; but now, in my older age, I feel a lot of my mistakes hurt me more than they hurt others. I've learned that I've pushed people away by doing things like that, and I hate myself for it.

All of that is swimming through my head as she chatters on about people from school. Baby's, deaths, marriages… all-important stuff to know about. But I kept coming back to it in my head. I still was trying to find a way to cleanse my soul of it… just to come clean about it all, in good faith. That was stupid. Then I start arguing with myself over arguing about it; is it something to even say or bring up, is it not? She started talking about her experiences in the past summer. That woke me up out of it. She was telling me a lot of things that really, really, made me question what she'd turned out to be. I wasn't listening before, but now I was. Now she was someone different than the cute girl in high school. Now I was someone different to her, judging by the material conveyed to me, and now I questioned that too. I questioned myself up and down about whether I was in fact, a different person that whom she'd known. I likely am.

We were two different people really. She was popular. Popular. I wasn't. I had my friends; generally speaking it was a small group of guys, no girls, that I'd known from what I did, and groups I was involved with. She had a huge variety of friends. Everyone knew who she was. Me? Not so much. Her friends were also popular people. Mine were the scourge of the school, much like me. Not quite the resentful band of fools I was friendly with, but not much better off. She was a cheerleader. [A gorgeous one at that.] I was band dork. And not a faithful one at that, coming and going as I pleased, playing my trumpet or drum set occasionally [to the ire of the band director]. She always looked to be having fun, she was always the spirit of the squad, pepping about with a smile and a twirl of her skirt. I sat in the back row, with my long hair and Nirvana t-shirts, if I blended in it was probably on accident. She did a lot of the professional clubs too, Key Club, National Honors Society, shit like that. I turned NHS down; fuck good grades, high school grades didn’t mean shit in the real world; so I became the speaker. I became the eloquent and the fervent orator of the debate team, and I played chess for the school too. She was saving the world and making it better. I argued for the wars, then reenacted them with my army of plastic men. She was at all the parties and knew all the cool kids to be with. I wasn’t invited to my own party, and people rarely associated themselves near me. She got caught up in the rush of it all, was on the student senate, and dance committees, eventually ended up as class president one year. Heh. I wrote scathing editorials in the school paper, and was managing editor of the literary magazine. She be came the apple of the eye, the sparkle in the gem about being a success in high school. I skipped some classes, walked out of aud's and waived a finger to it all. Two different people. And although I may feel like I'm on to something, I have to know that no matter what, we are two different people. One not like the other.

The girl I was sitting with however, was no longer the girl I thought she was. I was surprised by her actions, by her words, her gestures. She wasn’t much of what I remembered her to be; yet she was more than what I had remembered. She had really become two different people to me now. The girl I knew, and the girl that sat in front of me. The girl in front of me wasn't the happy one I used to know. She was still every bit the looker, but she looked differently… it was in her eyes and in her face, something that maybe an artist with a brush and a vision could touch at, but nothing that I could describe to him. It was the emotion in her words, it was the drifting gaze away from me, and it was the essence of the cigarette smoke curling away from her hand. It was maturity, and it was growth. It was dark. The bright spot of memory has turned into something of a blended tone. The air of excellence and perfection was now lessened. She was in fact a real person now, no longer the stereotyped image of my mind, where shed dwelt the past few years. She was now someone else. And I didn’t know if I liked it.

I can only guess at what she thought of me. I know that I am the same person I have always been - time and events have not changed me, people have changed their attitude towards me. But for her, I'm sure I wasn’t exactly who she remembered either. If I couldn’t do it, why would anyone else? If I could sit and piece together these memories of nothing; the memories of making her smile at my answer to the teacher in calculus, or maybe just a fleeting glimpse of her walking past me in the hall way in the early afternoon light. If I couldn’t find the same person in all of those things, sitting in front of me; how could she? She didn’t, I suspect.

So… what in the fuck does that have to do with Valentines Day? I dunno. I'm not that kind of person that can make sense out of everything, something's but not all. But for two big reasons, I thought I should tell a story. 1) I like stories. I like telling stories. Tuff shit. That’s reason 1. 2) Reason 2 is more of a reason I suppose. I sat and reflected back on it all, I tried to find a reason to it all. Not a strong and fast rule… just more of a meandering, wandering theory; that could make sense of my relations with people… with my interests in people. I tried to find a reason to justify myself in apparently becoming interested in people that were totally different from me. And even that’s not right. I was trying to find a reason to why I have relationships with people at all. That’s a bit closer to the truth; but even to closer is to back up a notch again. Why do we have these complicated sorts of relationships with people; why is it we as humans have to have some form of relations with another? And I don't know that either. Valentines Day; although apparently against the beliefs of everyone I know, isn't solely about lusting after another… or better yet, feeling bad because you have no one to lust over. The object of the lust, pure and simple, is the lust for a relationship. Nothing more. We as humans naturally are attracted to each other, but its that special kind of attraction… that special redeeming quality that’s feed back in through your veins, that makes your pulse race, that clouds your mind, and makes your vision blurred. Its that kind of attraction you only get from one other person, who's probably just as afflicted as you are. It's that type of reaction/relation that humans seek. Some intricate knowledge of another, that’s altogether respected, reciprocated, and can't be satisfied by any other person. Its not some plain old person, it's got to be something davar, to borrow the Hebrew word. Something that has gravity, and weight and presence… yet all together sustains great meaning and power in a longevical sense. We desire what is most unattainable… having a relation with another human being for some greater reasons or purpose, when there are none. Our only reasons are to have that relationship… just to prove to ourselves, that life absent of it, is that poor of an alternative. This is what drives man to kill, what drives man to suicide, what inspires man to create and write. It is mans own pursuit that is uniquely his own in this world. It is what makes everything relevant, and everything important.