Three women, three stories, then a meandering examination that goes basically nowhere.
Summer 1991
When I was a couple months shy of turning 13 I met a girl named Nicole. I’d had “girlfriends” before I met her, girls for whom I had little more than the ill-defined flush of being slightly more than friends with, but there was something about this girl that awoke in me feelings none of the others had. I loved her. In retrospect, a stance I’m hesitant to take because I don’t want to discount the emotions of a younger version of myself (what he felt was real to him, even if the version of me writing this has felt things that put them to shame,) it was little more than an elaborate crush. She may have only been three years older than me, but to me she was a woman. Writing now, I have only the vaguest image in my head of her, an amalgamation of Marisa Tomei and Betsy Russell, but to that boy she was the most beautiful person on the planet.
We lived in a small, fairly tight-knit neighborhood where everyone knew everyone else, so she became friendly with my family pretty quickly. She would come over to visit, for dinner and movies, or just for game nights fairly often. She became a regular fixture in our lives in one way or another, and I remember it being an unalloyed joy. And while I could write extensively about that time, something I did exhaustively when the feelings were fresh and still real, I won’t because it would be silly and would distract from my overall aim here. So I will tell the story I’m meant to; it’s merely important to have the background for the tale.
Sometime around the middle of the summer, a few week short of my birthday, my family went up to the Russian River in the North Bay for a day on the beach. Because she had been so close with us all, my parents invited Nicole along for the trip. I remember little of the actual day itself, I’m sure it was lovely as the area is beautiful, what I do remember is a conversation she and I had at the end of the day in a moment we were alone. Sitting in the back seat of the car she asked if I liked her. Being too taken aback by her directness, and lacking the proper emotional vocabulary, I didn’t respond the way I should. I remember vividly thinking “No, I love you,” but it was beyond my grasp so I just sputtered an unconvincing “No.” It feels now like a stupid question to ask because, in every possible way I knew how at the time, I’d shown her what I felt for her. I think she was just giving me an opportunity to be straight with her, in a way the casual gifts of poetry and roses apparently weren’t. But I’m sure she saw past my inability to respond appropriately and was, I think, touched.
When we got back home, the family gathered around the T.V. to watch the film Next of Kin starring Patrick Swayze. I lay down on the floor with my head propped up on a couch cushion with Nicole lying next to me a few feet away. My parents each took their places in their chairs, and my sister sat on the couch behind Nicole and I. Unusually, as it was something we’d never done (save for a few times when a projector was involved,) we turned off the lights to watch the movie. As time wore on and the hour grew late, my parents decided to go to bed and leave us kids to finish the movie without them. At some point shortly after, Nicole turned so that she was resting her head on my chest facing the T.V. If I quiet the memories of subsequent years, and ignore the aches and random pains a life lived recklessly have gifted me, I can remember the feeling of her head resting there and how thrilled I was at the casual intimacy of it. I feared ruining her enjoyment of the movie, or in any way bringing an end to this unspoken moment of connection between us, so I shallowed my breathing to blunt the rise and fall of my chest. After probably twenty minutes had passed, she asked me to pause the movie. I did and she turned over to face me. I don’t remember the actual words spoken, but the gist was that she apologized for having to move. She didn’t want to but apparently the beating of my heart in her ear was too distracting. More words passed between us. A silence of some length stretched on with us just looking at each other in the glowing light cast by the T.V. before she repositioned herself back next to me, a few inches away rather than feet, and the movie was continued.
March 25th 2006
For this story I have an actual date because it both means more to me and because I wrote around, and in vague reference to it, on the old home of this blog.
Before I tell that story I have to, for the sake of symmetry with the previous, write the following (truncated) version of events. In the summer of 2004 I had been working at a Trader Joe’s for about a year and had become friends with several people there. One of whom was my previous partner in the original blog, of which this is both an archive and private continuation, called Scott Free and Crotch Buddy. He and I were having regular BBQ parties at his mother’s house on weekends, but wanted something more adventurous to do. He came up with some ideas, all of which were pretty crap honestly, before I suggested we rent a boat and hang out on the Delta for a day. We were hashing out the details at work one day, admittedly unprofessionally in front of customers, when on impulse he invited the woman I was in the act of ringing up at the time. Her name was Ashley (of whom the less said the better.) She, probably correctly, demurred and finished her transaction. A couple minutes later she came back into the store and gave him her phone number saying that, while she couldn’t make the boat trip, her and her roommate were new to the area and would be interested in hanging out sometime. The boat trip came and went; I narrowly avoided a maiming, without further plans being made with Ashley. My friend was having problems with his girlfriend at the time, not enough quality time for just the two of them, so he planned a month of no group hangouts so they might spend some time alone. Out of a fear I both thank him for and will probably never understand, he felt that if too much time passed between meeting and hanging out with Ashley, we’d lose out on a new friend or two. So he placed upon the shoulders of the two least outgoing members of our band of idiots the responsibility of planning something to keep her in the mix. Of the remaining two core members, being the one with slightly more ability to speak to another human being, I was given the job of organizing something. I called Ashley and made plans for her, a bizarre creature I’d fear I’d imagined (I’m still not sure he wasn’t created in a lab) if there weren’t photos of him, and I went to see I Heart Huckabees. It was October 10th 2004, a day I will likely never forget as it was the day I first met the woman I would someday marry. Courtney.
The second I laid eyes on her, my heart was no longer my own. With less effort than it takes to remember what I had for breakfast, I can picture that moment with a crystalline purity nothing before can match nor anything since diminish. Time passed, much of it was spent with the four of us hanging out late at night talking and playing cards, and I allowed myself to believe that what I felt for her I actually felt for Ashley. She was just too beautiful and smart for me to ever believe she could feel anything for me. I can’t say why I thought Ashley would or, for that matter, why I even thought I wanted her to. I mean, I was never attracted to her, either physically or intellectually, but it was what it was. I realized my mistake, made an error of judgment which blew up in my face, but it ultimately lead to a friendship between Courtney and I separate from the group.
Again, time passed and in surprisingly short order, the feelings I’d had buried for her resurfaced. She began feeling things for me that seemed to match those I felt for her. We spent even more time together, said beautiful things to each other, and eventually dated for a while. Not consistently, it would take far longer than I should’ve allowed for that to be the case, but it was wonderful. And then, as these things go, it wasn’t. We broke up for what felt like the final time and it was made clear to me that we would never speak again. It was difficult news to take, but I deleted her number from my phone to prevent the temptation to fruitlessly contact her. (A step that feels almost performative at this point as, even now when I’ve had no need of it in so long, I knew that number better than I did my own.) 110 days later I was visiting my father in a nursing home when my phone rang and that number I never expected to see again showed up on the screen. I walked outside into the rain, answered and a miracle I never expected occurred: Courtney wanted to see me again.
I drove out to the city as quickly as possible, parked, and stood outside a building I had thought I’d never be welcome in again. Calming the thundering of my heart in my chest I waited a few minutes before ringing her buzzer. I was worried that she might have reconsidered, but I needn’t have been. Almost before I took my finger off the button, the door buzzed and I was let in. I walked as calmly as I could up the stairs to find her already waiting at her door. She greeted me with a brief, almost tentative, hug and ushered me in. Dressed in her pajamas, she crawled up onto her bed, nestled herself against her pillows, and wrapped a blanket around her legs. I sat in a chair across the room and we spent the rest of the next 13 hours talking. I won’t say what we discussed, not because I don’t remember much of it (I do,) it’s just not germane. The following morning she had planned to go to a Buddhist temple in the city. Originally she thought her boyfriend at the time would go with her, but he wasn’t interested so she asked if I’d come along, I think because she didn’t want to part as much as anything else. I said yes and gave her some privacy so that she could get ready. She showered briefly and got dressed, choosing a dazzlingly bright daffodil colored shirt that always looked incredible on her. It had tiny buttons at the neck she always sort of had trouble with so she asked if I’d help her. For the first time since our brief hug at the beginning of the night we touched. My hands shook as I struggled with the buttons, both from my constant difficulty with issue requiring finesse and the emotions I’d been doing my best to control all night. Standing so close, in such a vulnerable and caring position, it was hard to ignore my still present love and desire for her. I finished my task, accidentally brushing the soft skin of her neck in the process, and we stood for a few breathless moments staring into each other’s eyes. I now think back and believe she probably wanted me to kiss her, but no matter how much I desperately wanted to, I didn’t. (I knew she had a boyfriend, and as much as I had zero respect for him, there are just certain lines I will never cross.) We gathered our things and went to the temple, where we sat through a class on meditation with the head priest (or whatever they’re called.) We parted ways reluctantly and she walked off to meet up with her boyfriend. I watched her walk away and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that even if I never saw her again, we’d made no plans or promises otherwise, something inside of me would always belong to her. Uncertain what, if anything, lay ahead for us I drove away happier than I’d been in a long time.
I had class, then work, then my friend and I had plans to see a band we were friends with play a show about an hour out of town. Having no time to sleep before any of this, I powered through on the adrenaline still coursing through me from the time spent with Courtney. School flew by and work passed even quicker, all with no further contact from her. As I said, we’d left things in such a way as to have no assumptions or expectations, so I was not bothered by the silence. Besides, she had less going on that day so for all I knew she was catching up on the sleep she missed the night before. I went to the show, heard some good music, had some good times, and helped the band load out after the show. As I drove home that night I got another text from Courtney asking me to call her when I had a chance, it didn’t matter how late. I dropped off my friend, finished the drive home, and called her. She informed me that she had broken up with her boyfriend after parting ways with me that morning and asked if she could see me the next day. We set a time, said our good nights, and even with the excitement and hope welling within me I finally managed to get some sleep. I had been awake 43 hours straight and I couldn’t have cared less or been any happier.
July 2017
[The length of this thing is getting out of hand.]
Following my divorce it took me a long time to even start to move on. It took a lot of therapy, and changing therapists when the first one made it uncomfortably clear she wanted to fuck me. Therapy coupled with the tragic death of my young niece, and an unwelcome (staggeringly cruel) text message from someone I’m sure was related to my ex-wife (the area code matched that of her family) with a link to a website announcing her impending wedding to another man. Needing an escape from the soul crushing pain of all of that, I took a month off work and took a trip to Georgia by myself. I travelled around the state seeing what there was to see, did some camping in the mountains, and was considering moving there before an altercation in Savannah put paid to that idea. While travelling around I became friendly with some people I’d met along the way. There was a guy out from Nashville touring around with his band, a couple from Poland who I’d weirdly already met at a party earlier that year in the city, and then there was a woman who was also from the Bay Area but working on a project in Savannah. Her name was Alanna.
The trip came to an end and I went back to the Bay and to work. I stayed in touch with my new friends for a while after I got back. I received offers to come out to visit the couple in Warsaw, traded albums back and forth with the Nashville guy and drove down to L.A. once to see his band play, and made plans with Alanna to hang out next time she was back in town.
She and I spoke with increasing frequency. When she came home for the holidays we went out to lunch a few times, saw a band we both liked play, and she invited me to a party her family was throwing at their vineyard. I thought it was just a facetious name for a house in the North Bay with a grape vine or two, but upon arriving at the address given I found out otherwise. It was a proper, massive, vineyard. Set against rolling hills of vines, they had a beautiful home that was a mixture of rustic French and Italian design. Not in a pretentious or showy way, just a home that clearly evolved and grew to reflect the history of the family that had lived there for so long. The party was fun, her family all really liked me, and when she had to go back to Savannah I was invited to other events in her absence. We talked frequently while she was away and made plans for things to do when she moved back at the end of spring when her project was finished. She came home and we hung out pretty often. I don’t think either of us had any specific intentions for it to become anything more, I didn’t anyway, we were just two people who had a good time together.
Every year her parents throw a big 4th of July party for family and friends. I was invited and they offered to put me up in their guest house for the period leading up to the party. During the day I would help her father and brother around the vineyard, learning about making wine, and helping Alanna and her mom prep for the party. At night we would all have dinner, drink wine, play games, and talk. The 4th came and the party was enormously enjoyable. Evening came around, a post-lunch/pre-dinner lull settled in, and Alanna wanted to get away for a break before the party ramped up again after nightfall. So we walked out into the vineyard and along the rows of vines up into the hill overlooking the house. She told me she was taking me to her favorite place on the property, and when we got there I could see why. The view high up on that hill, green ranks of vines stretching out in all directions, the beautiful old home she’d grown up in nestled amongst trees, was stunning. We sat on the ground for a while looking out at the scenery and talking. Eventually we lay back in the grass and, propped up facing each other, talked about how it felt like there might be more between us. I would be lying if I said it had never occurred to me, we got along very well and she was exceedingly pretty, but I will say it was difficult to even begin to consider as I was still in love with a woman I could never have back. The slowly setting sun shown off her face, revealing golden undertones in her olive tinted skin, as we both smiled and decided to find out what came next.
How These Stories Ended
Nicole was in foster care and was taken away a couple weeks into the fall, gifting me my first taste of heartbreaks to come.
Courtney…will in all likelihood always be too painful to really come to grips with the end of. Words can never even begin to approximate what she meant to me, what in so many ways she still does, or the pain of losing her.
Although it took a while, Alanna and I eventually succumbed to the cognitive dissonance of my caring for her while still being in love with someone I had no rational reason to be anymore. I was in every conceivable way free to give myself to another woman, I was divorced and Courtney was remarried, it’s just hard being as emotionally available as she deserved while some deranged part of me felt like I was being unfaithful. I eventually made peace with still being in love with Courtney by accepting part of me deep down always would be, and let go of the feeling I was being unfaithful, I just regret hurting someone who really cared for me and deserved better before I managed it.
The Point
I sat down to write this with the intention of it being considerably shorter in length. My main impetus was born out of a conversation I had with someone about the events detailed in my previous post (a slightly edited version of which I posted on Facebook.) I was asked why it took me so long to tell anyone about that night. The only response I had was if I told even a single person about every unusual thing that occurred I’d have no time left in my day for anything else. It’s not that I never share; I just generally end up sharing stories where I’m the victim of my own recklessness. Fell off a cliff I should have been nowhere near (narrowly avoiding both death and disability,) nearly chopped off my foot while trying to keep a camp fire going in a thunderstorm after coming a foot or so short of being hit by lightning, broke my leg slipping off a rock and falling into some rapids (being forced to set it myself) leaving me stranded in the mountains for two weeks with three days worth of supplies. Those kinds of things are what I tell people and if I had less heartbreak to work through I could’ve used some of that therapy to figure out why. Perhaps some part of me feels those kinds of stories are expected of me. Or maybe they just hurt less in the telling. I’ve never told anyone about the man I saved from a suicide attempt two years ago, or the woman I helped escape an abusive boyfriend three years ago, or the four hours I sat talking to an old guy at the library earlier this year because I noticed him crying to himself, or the time I inadvertently spent a day working at a food bank in Washington while on a road trip. I keep those stories, mostly, to myself and I have no earthly idea why.
Having had that conversation, and the subsequent thoughts detailed above, I came here to work through the nature of personal stories. Why do we tell them? Why are they more than the mere recitation of facts. Do we tell them, either to ourselves or others, because in doing so we hope to make sense of the events they’re about? Do we turn facts into narratives because that’s just how all those individual details come together when placed side by side? Like a bag of Lego scattered on a floor, those details are complete in and of themselves, but they seem to only achieve their potential when put together into something more. I think we tell ourselves stories to give shape and meaning to an existence that would otherwise be the formless chaos of our time here on Earth. I think we tell them to other people in order to share something of ourselves through them so that we might be seen. And, sometimes more than we’re necessarily willing to admit, I think we tell them as an act of exorcism, seeking to be rid of an experience by binding it in words and releasing it into the world.
I personally want my stories to mean more than just bringing order to chaos, more than narratively structured facts, more than lived-through riddles to be made sense of. But I tell most of mine in this place where no one knows I do it. I do so mostly in the form of private posts so I’m not doing it to share something of myself. I have a memory that records nearly every moment like it’s being etched in steel, so I’ll never need help to remember any of these stories so I’m not even sure why I do it in the first place. Occasionally I’ve wanted them, upon their re-reading, to bear signs of hope that the joys of the past could be visited upon the future in some way. Other times, I’ve wanted them to remind me that my ever changing present never bore signs of the joys to come. (I remember how I felt before all of the stories above and I had no reason to suspect they lay before me.) And sometimes I just need them to remind me of the pain I once felt, and ultimately lived through, when I need to be reminded. I don’t know, I thought I’d come to some conclusion about all of this in the writing, but I haven’t and this is already far too long to think I will at some point.
I probably could have worked through all these thoughts without telling those stories, but in someway they factored into my thinking around the topic. I could have done without backgrounds, given I’m the only one who will see this and will never need them, but the stories felt hollow without them somehow. I could also have chosen different stories, where Courtney is concerned there are ample to choose from, but these are the ones that came to mind. These are the ones that some part of my brain thought, by telling in this way, I’d perhaps find some insight into what I wanted to work through. Or maybe they’re just the ones I hoped I’d find some larger personal meaning in. Do you see one? Do they say something about a past version of myself; including, I suppose, the one writing this to the future one reading it? Should I have ended this about 2,000 words sooner? If so, drop a line. It’d probably be a terrible waste of the time travel necessary, but you’d know better than me. You usually do.
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