"somewhere other than inside the out there" -- part ten.
no, no, it's doesn't blossom or grow or spread its tiny seed through the winds of change over a pristine meadow where we hopelessly end up running toward each other in slow motion, arms out stretched and goofy grins. that's not how love works, unless you're goddamn insane in that unpleasant state institution sort of way with the runny mashed potatoes and charming way of insisting that the king squirrel lives in the money tree.
no, no, love just doesn't work that way.
love doesn't work at all. it meanders, stalls, and slacks off until you're damn near perplexed with miscommunication, unparalleled self-deprication, and a serious saturday night voice mail issue.
it's a pale fat bloke half naked in a lawn chair on your front yard, sweating and stinking while picking leftovers from his teeth. yes, it's unpleasant. it's a disease. and it's your problem.
in the best times of love, you're really just giving that man a shower and a tasteful double-breasted suit, hoping that he'll make a life for himself and get his large ass off your property.
but somehow and someway, it's the most intoxicating syndrome. your personally distilled whisky in a short crystal tumbler with five thick cubes of ice and prisms in the beads of sweat collecting on the clear surface. the most mind-numbing and gorgeous spectacle your young little heart ever sank its teeth into. fucking beautiful, the creation of destruction. it can be all of that business, sunsets and candles and a shared cherry on a sundae.
the very best drug is still a drug.
ah, i'm preaching again. i'm sorry. i'll get on with the story.
he called me the next night and wanted me to meet him and his roommate down at the middle east for a show (of a band i'd never heard of and of course would later fall in love with). i had a paper to write, and i told him so.
"so! come on, meet us down here. you'll make it just in time for kill holiday."
"i can't. seriously. i'll hang tomorrow."
"promise?"
"i promise."
and he called me the next day to cash in my check.
we watched movies, and i sat uncomfortably in the apartment that i'd had too much of months before.
but then we talked and talked. our conversation rose and dwindled, exposed and insighted.
i told him about how awful my summer had been and about how out of my element i felt at my parents' new house. i told him about how the girl at the bank looked at me and how i hadn't made any friends. i told him how funny it was that blink 182 was on trl, and we laughed truly when we saw the get up kids on 120 minutes an hour later.
he told me about his summer and how many drugs he had done. he told me about how he hated things now and how she had been the light from a single flame. he told me about his roommate's breakup and how he was worried. he told me that i'd really like cursive and we should rent "the serpent and the rainbow" sometime.
over that next month, we spent incredible spans of time together. more than politics and the mtv generation and hopelessness and pop culture, we talked about love.
we put each card down on the table. jealousy, the queen of hearts. obsession, the king of spades. honesty, the ace of diamonds. we examined each aspect, ranging from simple break-ups to that true connection.
i had a quirky love once for a boy in high school. we were together for two years, and i loved him. i loved him so much that i knew i had to let him go to get closer to being who i wanted to be. well, it was because i loved him more than i loved myself. (i know, the cheesy hallmark moment writes itself.)
you see, there had to be a delicate balance. and that's what i told him.
if you're going to have a right kind of love, inspiring and devoted, burrowing and open, you have to remark upon the delicate balance.
there is love and there is friendship. i'm not saying that the two are independent of each other, quite the opposite. with friendship comes honesty and loyalty, and i'm using the very core idea of friendship. i'm not blabbering about that person you do favors for or who you've known since third grade out of habit. i'm talking about that person that you love and adore who teaches you just as much as you teach them. there is a recognition in true friendship that you keep teaching each other, a mutual collaboration whether unspoken or unknown. you just are together. it just fits.
for example, i have a best friend. well, to be fair, i have many "best friends" who i'm terribly close to. but i do have a best friend who above all else is my bread and butter. someone who i can be silent with and who never asks me how i'm doing in any serious tone. he is the yin to my yang and all that. we didn't "decide" to be best friends. this wasn't something we planned out with little army men and a magnifying glass. it, one day, was just apparent. i love every bit of him. he is definitely one of the greatest men that i have ever known. and, you know what? it is just so. sure, we spent ridiculous amounts of time together over lunch or in class or on film shoots or hating the same people. but now, we live hundreds of miles away from each other, and it is still just so. he's the person that i would call at three in the morning with a dead body problem. he's that man who held my hand at the funeral, and he's also the same person who sat next to me at graduation. we have the most delightful and awesome friendship.
now, many people have suggested or heavily implied that he and i would be a perfect couple. in fact, my love told me that as well before i reminded him of the delicate balance and how sometimes it just isn't that way. some people insist that we're in love with each other. many people are intimidated by our closeness.
but as explorer says, "it's funny how people can just talk and talk about things that they know nothing about."
you see, it has nothing to do with sex or ruining a friendship or anything like that. he's an attractive man. i'm sure that i'm not so bad myself. but it just isn't so. those undeniable feelings of affection and love just do not live in that part of our hearts. we would do anything for each other, but we have never even been inclined to view each other romantically. i've known him for over four years now, and we do love each other dearly. it just isn't so. that entity does not exist between us. what we are, it is so much higher and brighter and more honest than all of that.
so you have friendship.
then there is love, and i've already given you my take on that.
now the delicate balance is putting love in one hand and friendship in the other and working them until they are palpable and giving and together.
the very defining nuances of friendship, honesty and loyalty and education and trust, must merge and coincide with the terrifying faces of love, lust and heart and kindness and tenderness and protectiveness. if you are to have a rare and true love, they will also be your epitome of friendship. finding that balance between beast and beauty, between being raised catholic and finally letting the guilt go, between honesty and tenderness, is the impossiblity of love.
it is a delicate balance.
and i told him just that.
we expanded and brooded on it. we sat on the back steps to his apartment building and sacrificed packs of cigarettes to the cause into morning light.
it was so simple. i had nightmares (for many years), and i was scared to sleep for weeks at a time. he rarely shut his eyes and read to me through many nights. we had become the very golden calf of friendship.
sometime near halloween, things got complicated.
i began to think a bit too much. i went to my parents' house for a weekend, and i missed him in a fairly damaging way. i chewed on the inside of my cheek and thought about how i just wanted to go home. it was that moment that i realized that his apartment was home to me and i had this love, scratching at its little door. the little door was waning under the pressure, giving in to sore and sharpened claws.
one early morning, we had spent the evening in my dorm room watching movies. i had an early class, and my place was closer to campus. what were we watching? it was um... fuck. what was it? oh! it was "celebrity." we were watching "celebrity" and he was sitting on my bed. i was curled up next to him.
we had gotten to this point where we slept in the same bed together. we never did anything. it was just, when we slept, we were together. we hugged a lot, and we were terribly comfortable together.
so we were watching the movie, and my head was next to his leg. i was almost asleep for the first time in a few days, and the clock was pushing seven in the morning. the sun had already risen and was running in through my window. he was playing with my hair, just pulling his fingers through it and lightly touching my neck, something he often did to get me to sleep when he knew that i needed rest.
my eyes were closed, and the dialogue started weeping through my mind, all runny and faded. i was a mere two moments away from actual sleep. my eyes suddenly opened, and for the first time, i felt really safe. i felt safe because i had this friend trying to help me sleep, and i had this love for this man pouring out of a broken down door. no one had made me feel safe like that since i was a little girl, still afraid that kidnappers were always plotting how to get into my room, and my dad would read me stories until my eyelids drooped. it wasn't safe in a protection from harm way. it wasn't that all the troubles in the world vanished. it was that i felt safe with my own problems and imperfections. i was not being judged. i was safe and needless of defense.
and so my little heart, with its little door torn wide open, pushed my body up onto my elbow and kissed him.
and he smiled that smile.
and he walked me to class.
unspoken and known, we ignored the complications that would arise from that morning for the short walk to my shakespeare class. we just held hands and rejoiced in the awkwardness that was well worth it.
the complications could wait for the cover of night. right then, the sun belonged to us.
