5/11/00 (cont'd)
Megan and I have decided that we're not going to the big "Gay Pride" day this year. Every year, they keep jacking up ticket prices, and every year, it sucks equally bad. I don't need to pay $12.50 to hold my girlfriend's hand in public and drink really expensive beer and listen to rave music and watch drag queens lip sync. Every year, there has been a group of pissed off drag queens outside the gates protesting (right alongside the Jesus Freaks, how ironic) with signs that say "Pride is Free!" and the like. We've decided that this year we should join them. I've decided to make my own signs that say something like "avg. cost for a straight couple to hold hands in public-$0. avg. cost for a gay couple to hold hands in public-$12.50" or something just as witty. We'll protest until we feel heat stroke coming on, at which point we'll invite the pissy drag queens back to our place for a barbecue and queer movie fest. Screw KC Pride!
My earlier reminiscences of REM lust prompted me to dig out my "Automatic for the People" tape when I went home for lunch. I'm beginning to wonder if maybe I wasn't really horribly depressed back then, but I just listened to too much REM. I swear, I'm about to lock myself in the bathroom and cry. Or it could be that I've long associated REM with A, the male version of me that had me on an emotional roller coaster ride for the better of 5 years. I used to wake up (hung over) in his apartment to the sounds of him trying (unsuccessfully) to pick out the bass line to "Talk About the Passion." Over and over and over and over again. No wonder I hated him.
"Did you never call? I waited for your call...these rivers of suggestion are driving me away...the trees will bend, the cities wash away, the city on the river...there is a girl without a dream...go build yourself another home, this choice isn't mine....I'm sorry..."
That song (So. Central Rain, for the REM impaired) was like, our theme song. I would spend hours sitting in my apartment getting drunker and drunker waiting for him to either show up or call. And half the time he never did. But sometimes he would, probably just to prevent me from giving up on him altogether. A mutual friend once told me, "you two have one strange relationship." Yeah, buddy, to say the least. We met our sophomore year of high school. He was dating a friend of mine and I was dating one of his best friends (the guy I stole from the girl I was in love with--sordid, ain't it?). We hated each other pretty much immediately. This whole mutual hatred went on for the next two years, until the end of our senior year. I broke up with the boyfriend and he ditched the bitch, and since I hated her by that time, I called him up to congratulate him on finally losing the baggage. He invited me to Perkin's for coffee. I accepted.
And really bizarre shit started happening from that point on.
We maintained friendly contact for a few weeks after that congratulatory phone call--meeting for coffee, meeting at the park to drink, phone calls. Totally platonic. Then one night we were on the phone from like, ten until 3 or 4 in the morning. He was trying to get me to sneak out of the house and come over. At that point, my parents were still young and light sleepers and not averse to tossing my ass out of the house, so I said no. He invited me over for breakfast in a few hours, and I said okay. I went over around nine, he made me pancakes, and we basically just hung out all day until I went to work at 3. Around 7:30, the ex-boyfriend and two other mutual friends showed up to inform me that they had just taken him to the hospital because he was so drunk they were afraid for his life--apparently, he had been drinking the whole night (while talking to me) and while I was there (which I knew) and after I had left his house. I absolutely freaked, but there was nothing I could do. I lost track of him after that until about a month later, when I ran into him at the mall. He relayed his story of detox, getting thrown out of the house, living in the park for a few weeks, and finally getting an apartment downtown. He invited me over, and I accepted. While we were there, the ex-boyfriend and the girl I stole him from (who had recently got back together) showed up, making for a largely uncomfortable situation, considering I still loved them both. I was incredibly bitchy the whole time they were there. She wouldn't even look at me. As soon as they left I burst into tears. He handed me a bottle of cheap wine. I drank it, very quickly. I threw up in his kitchen sink. We went walking through downtown. We went back to his apartment. He gave me a back rub. We had sex on a sleeping bag in his living room.
Okay, now, any intelligent girl could very easily see what was happening here, but I was by no means "intelligent" at that point, and I have to admit, he was already inside my head. We had been through some really similar shit in life, and we had very similar aspirations (writing), and I wouldn't admit it then, but I was already in love with him. And I have to admit, he was a brilliant writer. He used to make me feel so inadequate because he could literally write circles around me. And because, when I was alone in his apartment, I would ransack the place looking for some clue as to his feelings for me. I read his journals, I read his scripts, I read anything that came out of his typewriter (we po' folks didn't have no fancy computers back then). His journals were how I found out--in black and white--that the ex-boyfriend had, indeed, cheated on me when he went to college, as I had suspected and he had refused to admit. (There was an entry in which they were screwing while A was pretending to be asleep in the room.) That revelation was not nearly as devastating, however, as the next line, which I still remember like the slap in the face it was: "I'm glad that R has finally realized his full potential instead of settling for under par wenches like Angie." But I could never be sure, and to his credit, he had still hated me deeply when he wrote that (and the feeling was mutual), but it stung nonetheless. And then there was a whole description of the first happy moments of my first visit to his apartment, during which time I pointed out the building across the street and said "that's where I'm moving into next week!" Why would he have recreated that scene? Was it even a memorable event? We fucked, pure and simple. There couldn't have been anything more to it than that.
And I say this because at that time, he had a girlfriend. No matter how he felt about me, he never got rid of the girlfriend for my benefit. He felt up my best friend on my bed once while I was in the bathroom. He was having sex with probably 6 of us at a time. And when I would try to walk away, he would follow me. After I had moved to Omaha, we somehow got back in touch, and it happened all over again. I was driving to Cess Pool every weekend, checking into hotels and waiting for him to show (which he usually did, very late). And it was planned that he would move to Omaha with me and we would live happily ever after. And then he started to not return my calls. And he stopped calling. And when I would catch him, he would be
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