Delirium of Desire

A few years ago there was this girl. I first encountered her when my mom was in town nearly three years earlier. She served our lunch, and as the years went by I never forgot her. I don't know what it was about her, but she had something I wanted.

After that day, I'd see her out sometimes. At a bar one night. Two months later playing pool. Six months later at a restaurant. I'd always think to myself, "There's that cool girl." And she was. She was fucking cool, and I had never even talked to her save for that one time, that one lunch. And even then the exchange wasn't personal.

Then one night we came face to face, and she engaged me. Dare I say even charmed me? And she asked for my number. She called the next day and asked me out. Then she stood me up. Fucked up.

True to form, I couldn't just let that happen. It was wrong. I never got her number, so a couple weeks later I decided to have brunch at her restaurant. As I approached her, she looked up at me with a suprised and fearful look on her face. I greeted her and politely asked, "Why did you ask me out if you were just going to stand me up?" Fumbling around for the words, she nervously said, "I'm sorry. I forgot." With a smirk I replied, "Sure you did. Well, I know you're working, so I won't keep you." I walked back to my table and finished my meal.

Shortly thereafter she came outside to my table and pulled me aside. With her head half lowered she extended an apology.

"You could have called and canceled. I waited on you. I waited on you too long. I don't mind being canceled on, but not showing up was just... not cool."

She asked me if she could have one more chance, and I asked why she thought she deserved one. She said she knew that she didn't deserve anything from me, but please, could she try to make it up to me. I don't know why I said yes. There was just something about her.

"I get off work at 10:00 tonight, and I won't wait on you again. We'll see if you show up."

She did show up. We hung out. Had a few cocktails. Shot some pool. When it was time to go, she asked if I would give her a ride home. Certainly I could. When we got into my car, she stammered for a moment until she finally said, "When I saw you in the restaurant that day and you came up to me, I have never felt so ashamed in my life. I didn't know what to do. I'm sorry I stood you up. I'm sorry for not calling. I'm sorry for not calling later. I just... "

Then she handed me a crumpled up index card. "I wrote this," she said. "I have gone back and forth in my head all night about whether I should give it to you, but here. I wrote it for you."

I still have that beat up index card. It's lived in a drawer for the past three years, but I've always known exactly where it is. It read, "Once you get to know me you'll love to hate me. At least that's what they all eventually say. The look in your eyes tells me to stop and pay attention for once in my life, but my life never stops. It's constant like the pull of gravity - rarely questioned but always there. Apologies handed out at every turn like parking tickets. Can't wait 'til death - I mean rest. Same thing. Yet the power of life keeps on giving. The sanctity of people in my life is my fuel to keep on going - my own gravitational pull to my heart. Without I'm nothing."

I asked her, "So what's so bad about you?"

She hesitated for a moment then told me she was a drug dealer. She told me that's why she stood me up. She was at a party and doing a lot of business and was being completely selfish. She was aware that she was supposed to meet me but didn't call.

I don't know what it was about this moment that stirred me. Maybe it was her candid and genuine confession. She wasn't working me here. She was simply being honest. She had countenance. Perhaps it was forced by my own hand a little bit by confronting her in the restaurant, but here she was sitting in my car - this alcoholic and cocaine addict.

"Do you want to spend the night with me?" I asked. "Yes, I do," she said. So we went back to my house. We stood in my kitchen and I poured us both a shot of whiskey. Then I grabbed her head, pulled her to me and kissed her. It was good. Very good.

I took her upstairs to my bedroom. I kissed her up against the closet doors for a while then we climbed into bed, and she did things to me. She made it happen for me.

She left the next morning to go to work and asked me to come see her for brunch. "I don't think so," I told her. I didn't go to brunch. I went to sleep.

She called me that evening. She seemed strange, fumbling her words a bit like she wanted to tell me something.

"Whatever it is you're trying to say, go ahead and just say it," I said. That's when she told me she had a girlfriend. They were moving to Michigan together the next month.

"Okay," I said. "I would have preferred to have known that before we slept together, but okay."

She seemed really confused, and I was strangely confused myself. Why didn't all this bother me more? The fact that she stood me up. Or that she was a drug dealer. Or that she had a girlfriend. To this day I still am not sure.

We became friends. The last five weeks she was in town, we spent a lot of time together. It was fun. Then she left town, and we kept in touch.

She called me late one night in October, about four months after she moved away. She told me she was in love with me. I told her that I loved her, too, because I did, but with my next breath I told her that I would never be with her. No, I would never be her girl.

One night as I lay thinking about her, I wrote something. A love poem. But I never gave it to her. It was never really hers to have anyway.

Music of the moment : Lifelong Fling


The moon blind-sided the sky again
As we grabbed loose ends of the tide and then
The slippery slide
You know I can't say when
I ever took a ride that could slap me this silly
With roiling joy
Lazy as sin
Lyin' up in heaven with my special friend
And the space he's in
It can make a girl grin
In the beginning of a lifelong fling

I wrote down a dream
Folded the note
Slipped it in the pocket of my tattered coat

I wrote down a dream
In invisible ink
It never was mine I'm beginning to think

I wrote down a dream
What more could I do
I drew myself a picture and the picture was you

I wrote myself a riddle
I said, What I wouldn't do
To give something good
To a love like you

I wrote down a dream
Folded the note
Passed it to you we stepped in our boat

Sailed 'round the world
We were hoping to find
More than the sum of all we left behind

I wrote down a dream
But what was it now
And why does it feel so distant somehow

Did I take too long
Did I get it wrong
You're still the missing line in my favorite song

~ the lady love