Best Part of the Week

The first time they hung out - just the two of them - it was by accident. She came into the bar when he was there with mutual friends and she sat with them. Not completely an accident. They had seen each other a week before, had drinks with a couple where she knew her and he knew him, and they flirted the whole night. At least, she flirted with him the entire night.

But now she had come into the bar and sat with him and the rest of the table had gotten up one by one and the two of them were left alone. They talked for two hours, until the bartenders called last call and turned on the lights. They put on their jackets and moved towards the door. "It's cold out... and I'm a girl," she subtly suggested. "Come on, I'll walk you to your car." They walked to the parking lot a few blocks away. "Well, good night," he said, starting to walk away. "Are you sure you don't want a ride?" She was looking at him as though he were slightly crazy. "Nah, I can brave the cold." He thrust his hands into his pockets. "Are you sure?" "Yeah." "Are you sure?" "Yeah, it's really not that cold." As he was walking back the wave of realization hit him and he swore to himself.

They ran into each other the next week. He was drinking rounds with his friend when she came in and sat with them. Just before ducking out, his friend bought a extra large bottle of Chimay as his round, to be devious. Encouraged slightly by the high percentage ale, this time he accepted the offer of a ride home. She parked the car in front of his apartment and turned to him, hands in her lap, expectant. Go for it, he told himself. "Can I take you to dinner sometime? Tomorrow -- the next day?" She smiled and batted her eyes slightly. "Of course." They exchanged phone numbers and he decided to push his luck. He leaned over and kissed her goodnight. She returned it, pulling him back when he started to end it.

Their date went fine, the two of them obviously having a good time after the initial nervousness wore off. He, so worried about calling her that he didn't even consider having to leave a voicemail went on in a rambling message that ended with "ok, this is getting to be an awkward message so I'm just going to hang up." She, so worried about her outfit and annoyed at being, in her eyes, so girlish about it, ended up calling 15 minutes after the appointed time to say she would be there soon and after managing to decide on shoes and run out the door, showing up 10 minutes after that. When the date ended he walked her to her car and she drove him to his. Their kiss lingered slightly, imbued with the expectations of next time.

Which came soon, at the same bar, on the same day, at the same time as their first chance encounter. He walked her to her car once again, saying "you giving me a ride home has become the high point of my week." To which she smiled and would have blushed, would she allow herself to do such a thing.

As she pulled in front of his building he felt butterflies in his stomach. "So, can I get a second date, or did I ruin my chances of that already?" "No," she replied. "I think with what you said earlier you pretty much guaranteed a second date."

The butterflies quieted a little. "You know, I wasn't entirely telling the truth when I said that. Getting a ride home isn't the best part of the week; this is." And they drew close for the kiss that would make him smile for days.

Water Shower

I breathe
Smell it as it falls through the air.
It seeps into me, through my nose, my mouth, my pores.
It flows through my veins, pumped by my softly beating heart.
The sounds of a thousand drops hitting the ground
echo like the footfalls of a thousand tiny faeries
joyfully dancing on a drum.
The beat of my heart quickens to the music, tries to catch up and sing along.

I see a thousand sparkling diamonds making their way down, falling, falling.
They sparkle and shimmer as the light dances around and off and through.
The rush of the air
desperately trying to get out of the way, being pushed down and around,
roaring like a thousand voices whispering all at once.

I step into the downpour and I collide with the droplets.
Sliding across my skin,
rolling down,
tracing the contours of my body like a thousand chilly finger tips,
melding into my skin,
it is me.

I lean back into the cascade and close my eyes.
I can feel it dash in between the thousand strands of hair on my head. I run my fingers through my wet hair
and feel myself drip away.

I open my eyes
and I can see myself rolling off the skin,
being washed down, down, down

2 AM

The night is mine. There’s nobody else around to hear my footsteps as I walk down the street. Sticks underfoot crunch, and I’m the only one who hears it. The few dried leaves left on the trees are rustling in the breeze. The wind is conducting a symphony and I’m the only one in the audience. Not a cloud in the sky. The stars are out, little pinpricks of light and only I am looking up at them. I’m standing, pondering. The world is out just for me.

The moon is in its waning phase. I understand a little about its orbit, why the phases exist, how you can only see one side, the large splotchy seas. But that doesn’t add to the feeling I get from looking up at the moon, shining just for me.

It feels almost like walking at night after a snowfall. Everything is at peace, there’s not a sound except the wind and my footsteps. The world outside is so beautiful and I’m the only one who can see it.

I put on my hat before I left. My coat was hanging on the doorknob in the hallway, and I tied my scarf after I locked the door on the way out. It is cold outside, but that just adds to the feeling. The cold and the dark cover the night like a blanket. They’re a pair. The atmosphere wouldn’t be the same without the cold, and the clear crispness that comes with.

I don’t even feel the cold though. I’m thinking about her. About the time she and I laid on the grass and looked at the stars. The time we stood on the bow of a boat in the pitch black, in silence because the wind was blowing so hard, and watched lightning flash in the distance. The first time she leaned over and kissed me, and the second time when I leaned down and kissed her. It’s not that the thoughts of her make me feel all warm inside. When I’m thinking about her suddenly it’s summer and we’re lying on the grass, we’re in the middle of the ocean, we’re lying next to each other in her room.

The night isn’t mine anymore. It belongs to me and my thoughts. The wind, the darkness, the cold, the leaves, the solitude. They’re giving me this present. Giving me my memories, making me happy. I’m with her even though I can’t be.

saturday SATURDAY SATURDAY!

Today I watched a giant mechanical beast devour and destroy an Acura. The massive creature picked up its automotive prey with crushingly strong pincers and tore into it with fierce steel teeth. The wreckage fell from its mouth and clamored to the arena floor, misshapen metal branches laying among the creature's locomotive treads. After witnessing such awesome metallic carnage, I decided my life has reached its apex, and from this point can only get worse.

“Soo... I take it you all had fun at the monster truck show?” K--- asked. She was back in town for the first time in several months and we had made it a point to all see one another after the greatest show we had never seen.

B--- and J--- nodded as I went on to explain. “It was pretty sweet, the announcer kept going,” I held an imaginary microphone and did my best announcer voice. “'Champaign Illinois, would you like to see some MONSTER TRUCK FREESTYLE!??' and before tonight I never even knew such a thing existed, but now that I know it does exist; yes, yes I would like to see that.”

Everyone chuckled a bit and the conversation moved on. “So I hear you're going to be back in town for the summer?” J--- asked K---. “What are you going to be doing?”

“I've got this job lined up at a cancer hospital over in X----. I'll be like the on-site minister there.”

“Wow,” we all seemed to silently exclaim. “That's gotta be pretty fucking intense!” B--- managed to put to words what each of us was thinking.

“So on a daily basis you'll have to deal with basically the most horrible maladies anyone could possibly have?” J----managed to be a little more eloquent than B---.

“Yeah,” K--- answered. “I'm already working for a hospital back at seminary doing similar work. I've got some pretty heavy patients now. There's this one lady in particular. She's from Vietnam and doesn't speak a lick of English. She moved here to escape her abusive husband, started dating this guy, accidentally got pregnant, and then found out she has stage 4 cancer. She can't undergo chemo or radiation because of the baby either. So now she's just waiting for the baby to develop enough so it can be born.” All of us had looks of disbelief on our faces, amazed and aghast at the situation this young woman now found herself in. “But she's the most positive person ever, you know. I'll see her and she say something like 'only a few more weeks left before I get to meet my child!' But the thing is as soon as the baby is born she's pretty much going to die.”

We were speechless. “Wow. That's the most depressing story I've heard in months." I paused for a second in incredulity. "So remember a few minutes ago when I joked about how my life was all downhill after the monster truck show? Yeah, definitely come true.” I awkwardly laughed at my own joke. “I couldn't imagine doing what you do. See, that's how I deal with serious shit. I change the subject to something trite and meaningless.”

To Do Before I'm 30

go scuba diving
see the rainforest
build a porch
walk around Europe
visit Australia
move to another country
quit my job
sail to a deserted island
write something i want to share
draw a picture worth framing
buy drinks for the whole bar
hike the Appalachian Trail

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

She turned off the TV and looked at me. “We need to talk,” she said.

“Can I fold my laundry while we talk?” I asked.

“No,” she shook her head timidly. She was leaving in two days, could she be feeling the same way I was? I put down the t-shirt I had in my hands and sat on the sofa beside her.

“So this weekend while I was driving I had a lot of time to think,” she started. The hesitance in her voice, the worried look in her darting eyes, I couldn't help it. I started to smirk. I knew exactly what she was about to say. “Wait, why are you smiling?” she asked.

“No, nothing, keep going.” I couldn't be the one to say it; she had already started.

“Anyway, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, and I just don't think it's going to work out between us.” She stopped wringing her hands and looked up into my eyes, expectant.

It took me half a heartbeat to consider my next words. I took a deep breath.

“I'm so glad you said that.” I couldn't believe she was the one breaking up with me. I had been going over this moment in my head for a week, trying to figure out how I could have this conversation without it ending up with her in tears. I didn't want that, I didn't suddenly hate her or wish her harm. I had come to the same conclusion as her: we just weren't going to work as a couple any more.

“Wait, what?” she asked. I must have mumbled, I always mumble when it comes to important things.

“I'm so glad you said that.” Almost two years of dating, of being best friends, of driving and flying and traveling over the country to see one another, of sharing in triumphs and commiserating in tragedies, could come to a close with such a simple exchange?

“Huh. I don't know what I was expecting, but I certainly wasn't expecting that.” Her hands were shaking almost imperceptibly and I could tell she was fighting back tears. The good kind, not the type I had been dreading before.

We laughed a little, slightly uncomfortable and awkward laughter. “So you're not mad?” she asked.

“No, why would I hate you for breaking my heart? I always told you you were a ruthless heartbreaker.” Nothing could have been further from the truth. “Can I give you a hug? I feel like all this weight has been lifted off my chest.” We embraced, the warm embrace of two friends who haven't seen each other in a while, and she lightly kissed my cheek as we moved apart.

“How long have you....?” She asked, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

“Probably since last weekend, when I was driving to that wedding and I had a bunch of time to think in the car.”

“Hmm. Makes sense.” The conversation moved on to how each of us had known, how we were going to tell our mutual friends.

“I feel so grown up; we handled this like such adults.” She said later, as I was standing up.

“I know! I was not expecting it to be this easy.”

The next day we went out to dinner before she left town. It was relaxed, comfortable. We had each rediscovered the friend we hadn't seen for months.

When I told a friend a few days later, he had already heard the news through the grapevine. “I figured you were ok,” he said. “Not too many couples go out to dinner together the next day to celebrate their breakup.”

Call me Ahab.

She makes me nervous. Just being in the same room other women disappear and there's one set of eyes that watch me without looking, peering past my defense, my facade. It makes me uncomfortable, knowing that there's someone like that. Someone who knows so completely that she has my number and takes such delight in it.

Her eyes are really what do it. Kind, yet malevolent. The eyes that the mouse sees right before the pounce. I stare into them and I'm captured, rapt in my spot, unable to think or talk or act. There's only the butterflies in my stomach and the cotton in my mouth. There's a billion nerves firing at once, out of control. I can see everything happening around me but nothing except her is in focus.

My friends think it's just that she's good looking. Beautiful. Hot. Yes, she is. Her lips make you want to believe every word that passes between them. To kiss them would be the kiss all other kisses were practice for. Her hair, her figure, her hips, her breasts – all defy description. A muse would need her own muse just to try. All this I know, I can see, but it's her eyes that make me weak in the knees.

Her eyes, when she looks in yours, tell you that she knows something that you don't, something about you that you've never even considered. It's the type of look that makes you forget about everything else, everyone else but her. Knowing full well that she could be your demise, the obsession that will lead to your downfall, you let the flirtation drag on. You let it drag on because in those moments –in those looks– you feel drugged, you feel alive, you feel.

A white shark is like a white whale, except the shark hunts you instead.

One Twenty

The gates were scheduled to open at 9am. They arrived at 8:30 to a massive mob of people already in line. By 10 o'clock, not having moved significantly, tensions were high and people were getting upset. The bitter cold did nothing to dampen the soaring spirits; rather, a sense of shared discomfort, of group experience, knowing that everyone was equally frozen, and all would be able to tell their friends and loved ones about the day, warmed the fingers and toes and noses and hearts of one and a half million people.

"Are we going to be let in?" "It's supposed to start at noon." "I've been waiting my whole life for this day, I'm not going to miss this." "Why haven't we moved in two hours?" Whispers that swept back and forth like the tide. "They haven't told us anything." "What's the point of tickets if they don't use them?" "Doesn't assigned seating mean you're assigned a seat?"

The frustration finally reached a head. Crowds always know how to chant, what phrases will work, and what captures the emotion of the moment.

"WHAT'S GOING ON? WHAT'S GOING ON?"

He Who Fights With Monsters

Have you ever had a moment when you look in the mirror and notice that the person looking back isn't you? Did you wonder who the hell that man was? Did you become him, or did he become you?

Did it scare you when you realized that you're a complete stranger to yourself?

I've looked in the mirror and I've seen that man. I've looked in the mirror and not seen me.

I know the terrible nightmares that exist in my mind. The things I push away when my imagination runs free. I used to think those things weren't a part of me. That non me -- the mirror me -- I don't know about him though. I think those things are all he has.

That's what keeps me up at night. Thinking that he might truly be the bogeyman. The fairy tale, the campfire ghost story, the lies they scare children with. What is he capable of? What's holding him back?

They say if you stare into an abyss it stares back at you. Sometimes you gaze at a mirror and you don't gaze back. Sometimes it's the abyss.