What I Take

Mel made a very, very interesting statement today. Although I am not certain that she meant it the way I am going to take it, I do not care much about that at this time because it made me think. She said 'Learning is growing. Learning automatically changes you.' I think that she meant it on a much larger scale, but for this evening's purposes I am going to apply that statement to my recent source of irritation, which is these stupid boys.

She's completely right. Every experience, every interaction, every exchange is an opportunity to learn. Instead of being pissed off about how lame they are or how they are all the same, I should examine them and figure out what they taught me. I have scads of material, you would think that I would be an expert by now. But I'm not. Because I don't think about it, I don't look at it that way. Sure, I always believe that nothing is wasted because it is a learning experience, but I have never really thought about what it was that I was learning. From the important ones, anyway, the ones that stayed with me, the ones that had an impact one way or the other.

Daniel: When people go crazy, it is not always my fault. Sometimes the forces around them and within them are so much stronger, and there is nothing I can do to combat those things. There was nothing I could do for Daniel except to sleep with one eye open and get out of the way when things started going bad. Daniel was my first great love, the first person I ever lived with, my first real, for real boyfriend. I was eighteen and he was twenty two. He was, well, insane. In the end I was lucky to have not been killed, and hindsight on this one gives me nightmares, still. He is a novel in himself, the stories I could tell about that guy, I would not believe them. But that was not my fault, any of it, and in the years of heartache and distraction that followed, it would have been nice to know that it was not in my hands, and never had been.

The Erics: They are not always going to love me the way that I love them. The Erics were my best friends in junior high and high school. I love them, I love them, I love them. I would have done anything for them. Eric S. was my very first dance partner in junior high. The Halloween dance at Hanby, and it was Didn't We Almost Have It All. I wonder, now, why they have dances in junior high. As though life were not difficult enough already. I don't remember what he was dressed as but I remember it involved a raincoat. What I remember is that he was already almost a foot taller than me, and that he looked at me with his head tilted sideways rather than pointed straight down. I was infatuated with his best friend Daniel at the time (see above) and would be for years, but Eric was so, so different and so much more important. We sat together on the bus our entire high school career, which for me was sporadic because I came and went, came and went. But every time I came back, Eric was there, the very same Eric that I had left. By the time we were juniors all I wanted in the world was for Eric to see me differently. For him to look one day and go My God, that is the same girl, but suddenly it is not the same girl at all. And it never happened. He wrote me notes. He left things in my locker. We skipped class and did nothing, all day, laying in the grass and doing nothing, but certainly not falling in love.

Eric B. was my first friend in California. We had both missed a Social Studies class as freshmen and had to make it up our junior year, the two of us in a class of freshmen. Eric was a full on, for real, ridiculous gang member/graffiti artist/fantastic friend. We were as close as I could ever hope to be with anyone, ever. He was so different from the people I had known in Oregon, and so different from me. He was the best boy friend I have ever had. We could not have been more different. He would skip class to come watch me swim. I would skip class to lay on his bed and watch him paint. The walls. I've never felt so connected to anyone so fast, ever. And it was mutual. He did things for me that I know he would not have done for anyone else, and made me things that were very telling and told his mother that it was okay that he had no girlfriend because he had me. Midway through our senior year I was moving away, again. He came over and we were sitting on my porch and then we were down by the pool and we were just wrecked. And we discussed it, what we were losing and how we would probably never find it again, and I swore I was dying and it broke my heart that he was dying also. We had this conversation, the kind of conversation that does not happen outside of adolescence, everything was so huge and immediate and crushing, and we walked back to his house and spent the night together, and did not sleep. I moved, and I lost him, and every year or so he calls my brother to find me and we meet somewhere and talk about what's happened since last time, and then we go again. If I could have another shot at Eric B., I would give my, well, I don't know. But it's not like that for him. I am his best, best friend, and that's all I'll ever be, and I will always wonder why it wasn't different.

Sean: Some people are just way, way out of my league. Pretty self explanatory. He was amazing, but I could never fit in the world he lived in, and now, ten years later, that's okay.

Rob: Rob, Rob. From Rob I learned just how powerful physical attraction is. We worked together, running lines for a phone company. I was the only girl, tons of men, so I got a lot of attention. Rob, though, was more than attentive. Rob was a smoldering, burning, aching connection that was never going to happen. We worked together. I was not going to be that girl, at the job, the one girl and she's sleeping with one of the guys. But oh my god, it was difficult. We would be in a meeting and just not, at all, paying attention. We would be talking and realize that neither of us had any idea what the other was saying. And we were not kids, so we didn't bother pretending it wasn't going on. The frustration was killing us. He would go to smile at me and instead would just bare his teeth and walk off. Once we were out by the trucks, hooking up the ladders, and he came to my truck and stood there and then he picked me up and set me against the truck and leaned on me and said Can I just kiss you? Can I just, please, kiss you? And I was staring at him and didn't say anything and then he put me down, put my ladders away, and went back inside. Every day was impossible. We couldn't work together. And then they started laying people off. And Rob went in the second layoff, but he was at a job that morning so I knew it and he didn't. He would find out when he came in that night. So I went home and took a shower and sent the kids to Diane's, and watched baseball until he showed up, which he did, about half an hour after he got laid off. I don't know how he knew where I lived. But I knew he would come, and oh man. He didn't even knock. He opened the door and I turned off the game and that was the end of that. And I had never seen anything like it, and knowing that you have that effect on someone is intoxicating, and it feels very, very powerful. There have been men since that I see a little of that in and I realize that it is a tool, a weapon, and that if we wanted we could run them with it. But we don't, and that's fair, because they can't help it.

Melina: There are always other options. The end.

Scott: I am not ready to talk about Scott at this time. But from him I learned that there is nothing in the world, nothing, that I cannot live through.

Brian: People will tell you whatever they think you want to hear. Brian was the rebound after Scott, he was there for survival purposes only, and he knew it. At least he said he knew it. He said that it was all right, that he knew what it was about and that was all right with him, but it wasn't. He wanted things, and was angry when I didn't give them to him, when he knew perfectly well they were not mine to give. People really will say whatever they need to to get what they want.

Racer X: Sometimes people really mean exactly what they say, and sometimes they really are who you think they are, despite your stunned disbelief. Racer X was the first person post-divorce that had nothing to do with Scott, or rebounding. He was the first incidence of seeing what I wanted and taking it, for no reason other than that I wanted it. It had nothing to do with him as a person, really. And it was the same for him, and he said some very strange things along the way, things that could only have been in jest because who says things like that? But they were all true. I just assumed he was kidding the whole time. Once I had mentioned to a co-worker my concerns over the fact that X is really, truly, so astoundingly attractive and she said Well, it's a good thing that he knows what's important, then. I said What do you mean? She said You're smart and clever and hysterical and amazing and it's good that he sees that because we both know you're not going to win any beauty contests. I was amazed. I told him about that, later that evening, and we laughed and he said That's funny because really, I really am that shallow and don't actually care about any of those things. At the time, see, I thought he was kidding. He was not kidding. But he was incredibly hot, which is another thing that I learned. I can hold out for someone that I am attracted to, whether he is conventionally handsome or not, either way I can choose. But X did some really unseemly things in the time that I knew him, things that floored me and made me question a lot of things about him, until I realized that all along, he had said he would do those things and he had never lied, never lied. I just didn't listen because that kind of behavior is absurd and incomprehensible to me. But it was helpful in my interactions with everyone that came after him, because I realized the importance of honesty and forthrightness from day one, hour one, second one.

Johnny: You can't always get what you want. I want to be completely, fully, head over heels for Johnny. But I'm not. But that doesn't mean that I don't have anything for him. I don't have the kind of feelings that people write songs about, I don't have passion and drive to make him happy and be happy with him, but I do have things that are just as important. I respect him and find him fascinating and want to talk and listen in turn and I do, really, want to make him happy, but I can't, not on that level, because I don't love him, I don't feel that for him, not the way he does. And I want to. I really, really want to, because he is a good guy and he thinks I am the greatest thing, ever, and how often is that going to come along anymore? My instinct is to set aside what I feel and know and just accept it and him as the best thing I could ever do, but I am not going to. My inclination is to be that for him, even if it is not really how I feel, because what I want is for him to be happy. But that's not fair to anyone, so for the first time in a long time I am setting aside something real, something that I want, because I am hoping for more. And that is something I have never done. I have always gone with what's right in front of me because I am always afraid that I will regret it later. I do not care, really, if I regret this later. Right now I am looking for more and I'm willing to sacrifice today for the hope of a different day, and a different situation, and a different feeling. Who's to say it won't be him, this time next year? I'm okay with not knowing, and for me, that's a big, big step.