Sometimes, procrastination is a good thing. Sometimes, by fluke, happenstance, or fate, my procrastination genes just take over, and then things occur to which my procrastination cocks its’ little head at me and says, “See? Aren’t you glad you waited?”
This is one of those times. The scoop I had for you Tuesday night is nothing compared to the scoop I had for you today. Or, for that fact, all that is STILL nothing compared in light of what just happened an hour ago.
Procrastination: Making me a better blogger. Truth. But for this entry, we’ve got to go back in time a little bit for it to all make sense.
Monday, August 17th, 2009, night:
It has been six days, 300 miles, six hours, and two states away from each other since I have spoken to Perfect. After fleeing from Burlington home, and from home to Saugerties to help my trainer get her L judging license, and then gone back home and after dragging feet and heavy heart, made it back to Burlington, I, although not completely at peace with him, have calmed down enough to realize that I can still be angry and miss him at the same time, and maybe it’s time to start mending some bridges hastily burned. I send him the world’s most simple text to bridge that gap of silence that has lain uncomfortingly, heavily, and ominously between us:
“Hey killer.”
I go to Cait’s to help her sort through the latest miscommunication mess with her boyfriend, and while there, receive a text back from Perfect. In the heat of the heated moment with Cait, I look at the display on my phone that shows his name and throw it back into my bag with a disgusted, “You. I don’t want to talk to you now.” Cait gives me a look that merits an explanation for me, and she hears out my disgruntled raging at one of her best friends with the calm air that I had previously been reserving for dealing with her.
“He’s just like that sometimes—he clings for awhile, and then he needs his space. It’s not you; it’s him. It’s something that he does. And he was clinging to you when you were together—I’ve never seen him cling that hard to a girl he’s seeing ever before.”
Hmm. Food for thought.
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009, midday:
I am having a picnic on my bed. It’s Naked Tuesday, and I have a spread of all things good to eat and Season Four of SATC, which I swear I will run down the laser imprints on “Ghost Town” and “Baby, Talk Is Cheap” with all the watching that I’ve been doing in, oh, the past two months.
I pause the screen on Carrie’s email to Aiden, and re-read it for what must be the 50th time, feeling it hit all the same old familiar chords of, “Amen, sister!”
“Another big problem—I’m surrounded by memories of you…in my apartment, on the street, that little Moroccan restaurant we ran into when it started pouring rain on us and you kissed me over the cous cous. (Rookie tactical mistake not to have a memory-free environment. Why did we have to go so many places?) Anyhow, I’m not holding out hope that you’re going to change your mind about us. You probably have a new girlfriend now, or several new girlfriends, and I missed my window and I’ll just have to live with that. …Because I know now (too little too late, or better late than never?) that what we had was real and rare and special, and they way it felt to kiss you is the way I always want to feel.
I hope you write me back, but if you don’t, I understand. Just know that I’m thinking about you, and I miss you, and I’m still sleeping on your shoulder when I close my eyes at night.”
In the middle of this, I realize that maybe it would be a good start to text Perfect back and let him know I’ll be in town today to go swimming. His response startles me into fits of glee and hope the likes of which I haven’t seen in myself since the no-baby culmination of last summer’s pregnancy scare.
“Man you guys pick the worst days! Lol, I am seeing my friend for the last time and then hanging with my friends from Mass! Lol.”
His frustration, despite the LOL’s to lighten it, was palpable.
“Hahaha, then it really is the universe’s timing fault and I’m not being crazy and you’re actually not also being a crazy person and avoiding me?” I asked, giddy with glee.
“I am so busy!” he replied.
I called him on the fact that that wasn’t a real answer, though thanked him for refraining from commenting on the me being crazy bit, and we continued seriously talking about our lack of good timing/seeing each other for awhile, among other things. At one point, while discussing packing for his departure to college, he replied to my observation that packing is always the hardest with a, “No! I am a guy, remember?”
“Hahaha, yes,” I told him. “I think we established that fact.”
It was the first time since the dissolution of our mutual union (how many different ways can I say “break up,” I wonder?) that the fact we had in fact, seen each other naked and had sex came up. For two very flirty and sexual people, it was the equivalent of jumping on thin ice, especially since we used to be champion sexters. I wondered if he thought it was as big a step for us as I did.
I ended the conversation a little after, citing the fact that I had brownie cupcakes to go bake. “If I don’t see you today, see you soon?” I asked after we both decided that since my timing for visiting him always seemed to suck, it was on him to plan the timing from now on.
“I will try for it,” he answered, and he meant it.
It was further drilled in when I closed with an “ok killer—later,” and he did something he hadn’t done in a few weeks—sent me back a closing statement of his own, a nice little wrap-up, the bow on the top of the conversation.
“Later.”
Trying from him is all that I ask for—if you try and it still falls through, than oh well—at least I know the thought is there. I sat back at the end of our lovely three hour conversation, and I felt good. We had discussed what I wanted to with him, and had assured each other that avoidance was not the issue here—timing was. I wanted to see him. He wanted to see me in return. We were both being logical and grown-up about discussing things in a mutually beneficial way. Finally, I was doing things right.
It wasn’t until a half an hour later that I realized we had just had another very “relationshippy” talk. Too “relationshippy” for two people not in a relationship. Stumped, I sat back and surveyed the facts. We talk almost every day for hours. We still, with varying degrees of success, want and try to see each other. We still work through our problems respectfully, commitedly, and truthfully. We are, basically, still in a half of a relationship, just minus all the fun parts, like sex and sharing a bed and shower.
“Just resign yourself to the fact you’re stuck with me and everything will be so much easier,” I wanted to say. “Why are we not together?”
Really—why are we not together?
Naked Tuesday, AKA: Tuesday evening:
Last Tuesday, Naked Tuesdays came to be as a sort of inside joke between Alli and I. While we were at the Pots in varying bad moods over the weather and situation Perfect had put us in earlier by basically what was taken to be blowing us, or, well—me especially—off, we had snarkily been joking around about how if he did in fact make his way the arduous half a mile down the road to the swimming hole, he would find our clothing splayed over my Civvy’s hood and jump to the conclusion we were skinny-dipping. Which would lead to him dropping trou immediately and then crashing into the woods to find us, in fact, clothed. Which would lead to some hapless giggling from me, who has, after all, seen it all before, and if I can’t pounce on his naked form, at least give me some hysterical laughter about the absurdity of the situation of there being a ready and willing woman and no boning to be had. And Alli would merely, in her cattily sardonic way, raise a lofty eyebrow and say, “Heeeey, Perf. What is it, Naked Tuesday?”
(This, by the way, is still one of my favorite mental-picture daydreams. Because it could really happen. And this is exactly how it would go.)
We ended up instating Naked Tuesdays as a tradition of our own when we, as usual, got naked on the side of the road to change after swimming. So it was only logical that this Tuesday, the fledging tradition would carry on. And you know, since we’re on a secluded back road, why not dare to go topless? I hate those tan-lines, anyway. And if you’re topless…why not just be naked?
Skinny-dipping isn’t new to me. I’m from the land of the hippies, born from hippies, grown up in a Naked House, and befriend by skinny-dipping fanatics. An exhibitionist by nature, it doesn’t take much to convince me to get naked. The feel of water on bare skin is amazing, despite the fact I am pretty sure my tits made like balls and curled into my body once submerged in the I-can’t-even-explain-to-you-how-chilly water, because they were definitely more small and perky than I remember them ever being on warm dry land. Like every other relationship, you need to take your roommates out of the apartment too, for some quality bonding time. So it was, however, my roommate Kim’s first time skinny-dipping, and when she and Alli both realized that along with the fact it doesn’t take much to convince me to drop my garments, it also doesn’t take much to convince my naked ass to do stupid, naked things, they dared me to go streaking down the road to the car for the camera.
Let me state now that what Alli and I, in the four previous times we had swam at the Pots, had only watched a grand total of two cars pass by. Already today, in our Naked Tuesday adventure, there had been five. I considered it only a chance on time before the next passed. But hell—gas money and an ice cream were on the table for me. I really did need that gas, and I’m never fool enough to pass on ice cream. (I am a woman, you know. The Holy Trinity in life is SATC, sex, and ice cream. And if I can work all three to coincide together, all the better.) They would allow me my bottoms, just for propriety’s sake, but these were my mom’s vintage teal string bikini bottoms, and damn is the elastic on those weren’t finally giving in to Father Time and refusing to stay on or anywhere around my ass when I was doing anything other than stand still. Diving and say, running, made them flee for the safety of my ass-cheeks faster than you could say “thong,” and I’ll be damned if I was going to waltz slowly down that dirt road, which would be karmically begging for someone to drive by.
Instead, I clutched “the girls” and ran, scaring the shit out of the neighbors’ dog as I came tearing down the road, one arm thrown across my bouncing chest, the other flailing with my car keys. The poor dog crashed out of the bushes on the other side of my road from my car, took one look at me, jumped straight up in the air three feet, and then turned tail and booked it back home. I don’t blame it—wet, cold, half-naked, and with my bikini bottoms hiding somewhere the sun don’t shine, I would have ran from me, too. And of course, right as I scrambled back down the hill to the swimming hole with camera held triumphantly in hand, a car passed. Well, I hope they enjoyed that sight.
All toll, seven cars passed that evening, including one that may or may not have been John, Knight in Shining Honda Armor’s mother. So, seeing as Worcester is an exceedingly small town, I feel confident saying roughly half of the town has now seen me naked. Well, that’s certainly a way to get my name or, um, body out there for general knowledge. Take that, Worcester girls! Do you have an ass like this?
The evening was further drawn to a close and a conclusion of theme of “What The Fuck?” when, while driving away into the growing blue and blackness of the night on Minister Brook Road, as we were all singing along to Big & Rich’s “Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy,” (one of my newly re-claimed favorite songs,) a ginormous black bear loped across the road in front of me. Luckily, Alli was in the middle of filming one of our infamous travel videos, and she caught the sound, at least, on tape, as the three of us started shrieking like, you guessed it—girls. Actually, I was doing a sort of voice undulation from shriek to bellow. “BEAR! THAT was a BEAR! That was a MOTHERFUCKING BEAR!!!” About 30 seconds of girlishly flurry and exclaiming later, the car once more descended into silence, and then we all picked up at the next chorus with nary a word about the wildlife. Another example of why women adapt to change so much more quickly than men. All the men I know, especially some of the men I know, Perfect included, would be back on the side of the road where the bear ran into the woods again, tire irons in hand, making plans on how to best subdue said bear with their bare hands, debating the manliness of the situation. My roommates and I, on the other hand, had had enough “bareness” in our day to let the bear become an interesting side-note and go on with life.
Earlier, when we passed the gas station/convenience store in Worcester, I had noticed, (ok, maybe not so much “noticed” as “saw and started wailing,”) that Perfect’s 4Runner was parked in the parking lot with “For Sale” signs on both driver’s side window and windshield. Other than the fact that I am inexplicably attached to this car that has tormented me so much because, although they say that every third car in Vermont is a Subaru, let me tell you—another every third car in Vermont is a Toyota 4Runner, and roughly half of them are from around the same era or color that Perfect’s trusty, growly 4Runner is, and I see them EVERYWHERE, it also brought up the question of, well, if we had been looking for the 4Runner in Montpelier all afternoon, and it was here…what was Perfect driving? Damned questions aside, I gazed longingly at the hulking shape across the dark lot as I fueled up. Alli noticed my longing . “I don’t think I’m going to get to christen it,” I told her, a hint of desperation clinging in my voice. “He and I talked about it, but I don’t think it’s going to happen before it gets sold. It’s going out there, to someone else, undefiled!”
“Or you could see if it’s unlocked and roll around naked in it,” she said, trying to cheer me up.
Once with gas in the tank and all members of Apartment 607 and the excursion back into the car, I drove across the lot to linger by the 4Runner’s side. If you haven’t caught on by now, I’m a car girl. I’ve always been hopelessly attached to cars, starting back in my childhood when I named the family station wagon after the car in “Robocop” and clung to its back bumper sobbing when my parents traded it in. Now, I channel my interest through more productive ways, such as reading “Car and Driver” and “Road and Track” magazines and identifying all the parts under the hood of the Civvy and talking shop with my male friends and mechanics. (Though I still do name all my cars.) As I idled next to the 4Runner, Alli, once again playing devil’s advocate, looked over at me. “Do you have lipstick with you?”
“Of course,” I said, a little affronted. I may know where to find an engine belt, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a girl! “I’ve got my make-up bag in the back seat.”
“Kiss his windshield,” she urged. “He’d love it. C’mon.”
“I think I’ve already done enough reckless behavior today. I think that may be pushing it.”
“Come on. You’ve done this much. Might as well top it off. It’d be great. I dare you.”
If you can’t tell, daring me gets shit done. I slicked on MAC “Lustering” and smacked a kiss against the driver’s side window right over the white paper with the price on it. “And if he asks if it was me,” I told Alli as I jogged back to the Civvy and slid in, slamming the door, “I’ll say it was for good luck to get it sold.” Not.
I went home, and, still elated and a little punch-drunk from my afternoon of bliss and daring, left Perfect a Facebook post, of course. “Ohhh lordy, Mr. Perfect, when you miss things, you REALLY miss things. Well, roughly half of Worcester has now seen me bare-ass naked, and I scared someone’s dog to hell and back by accident when running down the road. And did you know, you live near very large black bears? Because guess what? One ran into the road in front of me. (All involved are fine. Though there was lots of screaming.) Can you beat that evening?” (Please keep this post in mind. It is very important later in this continuing story.)
It wasn’t until the next morning, standing in the shower, that I realized this Naked Tuesday had been the 18th—the two month anniversary of the Great June ’09 Downsizing of Perfect and I.
Thursday, August 20th, 2009:
While walking downtown with Emily and relaying the events of Naked Tuesday with her, the point came up that Perfect had never, in fact, responded to my Facebook post. This is nothing new, however—even when we were together, he would rarely respond. In fact, he only ever sent me a grand total of two Facebook messages. So I generally don’t sweat it, other than being minorly pissy about it to myself at odd moment, like when I’m standing in my closet, putting my jewelry on and it pops into my mind. However, Emily is affronted.
“He could at least text you in acknowledgement or something, even if he doesn’t post back!” she told me. “I mean, really—he likes to text you—can’t he at least give you a “hey, got your post—sounds like an interesting time,”?!”
I’m more blasé about this, but let me tell you something now, because this little demand of Emily’s also becomes quite important a little later on—the Universe is manifesting right now, right this second. I know you may not be into New Age-y shit like this, but I am, and I’m telling you, it’s true. So open your mouth. Tell it what you want. It’s listening right now—make your demands and prepare to be surprised.
Friday, August 21st, 2009, midday:
I am sweaty and sore from the gym, unshowered, disgusting in the midday humidity and muggy heat, and sitting on the porch of a campus dorm with Cait, listening to her tell me how everything is now great with her boyfriend. I refrain from saying “I told you so” in a fifth grade cadence. Instead, I decide that as long as we’re talking about The Boys We Were Previously Mad At, I may as well tell her Perfect and I talked and made up. As I explain to her our conversation, I start to see an odd light in her eyes, and Cait begins to wiggle like, again, a fifth grader, waiting to be excused for a potty break. I know this particular wiggle. She’s got something to share with the class.
She lets me finish my story and then quickly and almost breathlessly adds in. “Girl Who Slept On The Couch The Night You Slept With Perfect is mad at Perfect for the way he’s been treating you,” she says in a tumble of words.
“Oh?” I ask. Girl Who Slept On The Couch The Night I Slept With Perfect is now—haha, how funny life works out sometimes—now a casual friend of mine through Cait and Perfect.
“Yeah. I guess he was talking to Joellen about you and she told Jordan and Jordan got mad at him.”
Her wigglyness is putting her in danger of falling off the porch’s railing by now. My curiosity is piqued as well. “Oh, do tell,” I implore her.
“I guess he was talking to Joellen about how “oh, there’s this girl that I really like hanging out with and I really like her and being with her, but we just never see each other and I’m always busy when she’s around.” And Joellen was like, “well, you need to not be busy and you need to see her if you like her. And stop being stupid about it.” And then Jordan ripped him a new one and was like, “she still likes you, so stop being stupid and making excuses and see her again.” And I want to talk to him about it, too,” she added, spent from carrying the information so long before getting to deliver it, sighing contentedly.
Let me recap, here: Joellen is Perfect’s oldest girl friend, a partner in crime since they were both knee-high. She’s the friend I was supposed to meet the day of the “Save Our Style” clothing debacle, and the friend that Perfect always said I would get along with famously because we’re so similar. With Baby Mix back down South where he goes to school, John pretty much convinced I am great and Perfect is stupid for being stupid and letting me go, and Cait having conflicting interest, Joellen is who Perfect is left with for the whole “confiding things”.
Thankfully, Joellen is a girl, and like most girls, can’t keep something to herself when she feels strongly about it. And again, thankfully, we have mutual friends all too eager to beat the tom-toms and pass the word along. So, long story short: Perfect, after re-immerging from his “I’m a painfully practical man and I’d rather deny myself my feelings than get hurt” two month stupid-coma, managed to confide to someone who, despite never meeting her, likes me enough to beat him senseless with female logic and pass the word on to another girl who also beat him senseless for it, who then got the news to Cait who made sure to deliver it to me.
Now it was my turn to almost fall off the railing.
I vibrate home with happiness and mentally start to conduct my speech for the next time I see Perfect. It begins with a crooked smile and an “Are you done being stupid now? You wasted two perfectly good months of summer you could have been getting spectacular regular sex and having fun, you know,” and ends with something like, “why don’t we give it a try? It doesn’t have to be serious or a relationship—it can be casual. I have no disillusions that you’re not going to be meeting new people and flirting, and so am I. But I get out of classes Friday afternoon, have weekends off, and don’t have to be back until midday on Mondays. I could probably visit you twice a month, if you’d come up once a month. We can see how it goes, and then decide from there if it will work, or if no harm, no foul, it won’t. Honestly, we might as well.” In the middle, there’s a bit of “I’ve missed you; you apparently still want to see me and aren’t over me; maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be; we talk all the time; we might as well still be together for everything we do…yadda yadda yadda.” You get the drift. You’ve heard it all before. Now it’s time for him to hear it.
