Love and Money, Home and Here
I know two girls with the same story. Each works in a restaurant in Lincoln, Nebraska. Each has blonde hair and a charming personality. Each is held up before the rest of her respective staff as a shining example of how to serve not only her customers, but her company. Neither of them really belongs here. Each of these blonde, charming girls left the familiar confines of Oklahoma to come to Lincoln, Nebraska and it was all because of some boy. Not being able to see a picture any bigger than young love, each of these girls came to a town that kids from Nebraska only come to because...well...it's in state. For kids from Lincoln, it usually means they couldn't go to college out of town or out of state, so they came to the University, or to Weslyan.
For kids from elsewhere in Nebraska, well, we're here because we wanted out of wherever we're from, but we weren't sure we could afford-either finacially, emotionally, or both-to leave Nebraska. As for kids from out of state, unless they're on atheletic scholarship, the kids from Nebraska can't help but ask them the same question: Why did you come here? Of all the places in the country...why Lincoln? Lincoln is not a place one dreams of going. It's not a place one dreams of staying if one knows any better. It's the kind of town where you need a damn good reason to come here. It's also a town that if you allow yourself to get lulled to sleep by its sneaky, small-town-masquerading-as-a-real-city ways, you'll miss your damn good reason to leave. For these two girls, their reasons for being here disappeared almost as quickly as they must have started as teenagers in a place where nobody batted an eyelash at words like "y'all" and "Boomer Sooner."
I'm a waiter in a Lincoln restaurant. My hair gets kinda blonde in the summer, and sometimes I'm exemplary, sometimes not. Sometimes I'm charming, and sometimes people don't "get" me. I left Omaha and came to Lincoln because, well, there used to be this girl. She still exists, but we do not. Not in the sense of there being an us, anyhow. I wanted to go away to school. Maybe Missouri, maybe Purdue or Colorado State. That's right, any of the bustling metropoli of Columbia, Missouri, Fort Collins, Colorado, or West Lafayette, Indiana. Anywhere other than here...but they say that love changes everything. They don't often say that love itself changes.
My life, it seems, was bound to be intertwined at some point with those of two girls from Oklahoma. One of them is a coworker, and a sweet girl who has no trouble at all understanding how I could fall for a girl who roots for my team's hated rival and still says "mah" instead of "my" after 5 years in Nebraska where there is no accent, especially when she's excited. The other, the one I fell for, went from coworker to love interest sometime after I was swiftly fired from my most recent "last job" last fall. I almost forgot all about how she used to catch my eye until she showed up at a party one night in early February looking like everything I ever wanted: undeniably sexy, but classy, clearly brilliant but a little ditzy (like me) and just aloof enough to almost belie the kind of winning personality that can make people in a small town masquerading as a real city always tip her 20% while the rest of us wonder who thinks five bucks on a 70 dollar meal is an acceptable gratuity. The way she looked sent me the subtle message that I ought not forget that she's beautiful, but that she's not "that kind of girl" either, so if I thought I was after her, I'd better pack a lunch.
It only took me the night to get her number, but it would take me weeks to get her attention. I waited to call her, as is the custom, and she blew me off. She had more important things to do. I wished I did, too, but I couldn't stop thinking about her. I eventually deleted her number from my phone after a couple more failed attempts so that I could avoid embarassing myself by calling her anywhere near as much as I wanted to. The very day I gave up on her and mourned the loss of whatever was not to be, she responded.
So it went. I gradually wore away at her defenses, sometimes by being patient, sometimes by being bold. I brought her roses to work on Valentine's Day, mostly because I wanted her to have them, but partly because I wanted to make sure that she and everyone else at that restaurant knew I was set on having her. "Who are those from?" the girls would all jealously ask. Each time she'd answer, I'd have to cross her mind, and she'd have to explain whether or not we were an item. Along with the roses, I left her a card telling her to clear a date for the Friday after the next when we could allign our busy schedules at least for a night and have dinner. I thought it was all very smooth until I realized that I had brashly sauntered in with my dress shirt, roses, and a card asking her to take the 30th of February off and go out with me.
So it went. Sometimes I was smooth, sometimes I was an idiot. Somehow it worked, and somehow I talked my skittish heart out of ruining the whole thing for me. I have a hard time falling for a girl. I develop crushes easily, but to try fall for somebody, to let them grow into you and become a part of you, is a scary thing. In my mind's eye I could see her heart and mine, slowly spreading roots into one another's. That frightened part of me could see the hole that would be left if hers were ever torn away from mine. The longer we were together, the more we grew into one another, the bigger that hole could be. Night and day, in the back of my mind, almost as loud as the voice that said, "She's amazing" was the voice that warned, "She's going to leave." Always chiming in right behind that second voice was another that retorted, "So are you." It was deja vu. Suddenly the ceaselessly cyclical nature of life had brought me around again, and I was standing at the place on the wheel of life where I stay in Lincoln, Nebraska and wonder how long it will be until the girl I'm crazy about realizes there's no good reason to be here any more and leaves me lagging behind like I always do. While I couldn't block out the realization once it had happened, I could take solace in the fact that she was hellbent on living with her roommate after graduation and her roommate preferred to stay here. If her roommate was here, she was here. I was here either way, so it was fine. I took my solace and fell for her. Then the bottom fell out.
The roommate, a girl of Middle Eastern descent and Canadian citizenship, graduated this weekend. My girl did not graduate, just the way I didn't graduate a while back, and she hated it, just the way that I hated it. The roommate's Canadian/Middle Eastern family all came to see it happen, and to coax their baby home to Toronto. It worked, and I just found out. Just like that, the roommate is moving home, at least for the summer, and my girl from Oklahoma is left to face the possibility of doubling her living expenses while taking summer class in a town she wouldn't be in at all if it weren't for some guy who stopped being a reason to go anywhere 5 years ago. She can't afford it, financially or emotionally. Summer classes exist all over the country, especially at home. Home only exists in one place. Here there's only me, and I have only existed for two and a half months as far as she's concerned. Besides, she's made that mistake once. At home she's got family, friends and another guy who probably lies awake at night thinking about how she'd still be his if not for the inexplicable nature of Lincoln, Nebraska. She still wears his sweatshirt and the mark he left on her heart. The odds are stacked against me, and I can only do my best, which has proven to be less than enough in the past. In the past, I at least knew the girl I was losing would be coming back to Lincoln, so maybe it didn't have to be over. This time, there's no reason to come back to Lincoln. This time has "permanent" written all over it. She has less than a week to decide.
Now it's 6:30 AM on my one day off and I'm wide awake, listening to "Ramona" by Guster over and over. The song is somewhere between sweetly happy and desperately melancholy. The words echo in my head, "Ramona, you're Miss Oklahoma, and you miss Oklahoma..." A couple weeks ago this would have been relatively fine. I was being scared and distant and so was she, and we were both doing some great posturing about potentially toeing the breakup line. It was classic "I'm scared of falling in love with you" stuff, but at that time she could have told me point blank that she was leaving and I would have been arrogant enough to act like I didn't care. I'd have saved the realization and the mourning for later. Then I spent some more time being distant and realized how much my own absence made my heart grow fonder. I missed her, and that meant something. When I saw her again, there was something I hadn't felt with her before, and hadn't felt from another girl in a long, long time. I felt safe. My guard was finally, totally down, and so was hers. We fell in love. I felt it happen, but I thought I'd bide some time before I said anything. I wanted to be sure I meant it if I was going to tell her that I loved her.
Now it seems stupid to ever bide time at all. Now I just want to bury my face in her hair and whisper, "I love you" the thousand times I've thought it since I realized it, as though it will give her any reason other than those three words and the hope of a future with me to stay here. Guster chimes in, "When I was younger and thought of myself, I never dreamed I'd become like this..." A tear rolls down my cheek and I tell myself over and over what I told her as though it were a mantra, "I don't want you to go, but I can't ask you to stay for me." "I just want what's best for you." I whisper it to myself over and over. "I just want what's best for you. I just want what's best for you..." Each time I say it, something that used to be hardened within me cracks, then shatters, then falls away. I'm right back to 2003. Feet in the baby pool, tears down my face. She is being torn away from me. I can see the hole forming in my heart, and the metaphorical bleeding that will take what will seem like forever to stop.
That same voice that warned of her inevitable departure is now at the forefront of my mind and throwing a certifiable tantrum. Kicking, screaming, tears, snot and absolute begging. Pleading. Groveling. Guster again, "...a snap of your fingers, an end to the arguement. Anything for you, love." Now it's me and not a voice in my mind who is begging aloud, if only in the solitary confines of my own room. Doubling over, whimpering, tears, snot, and absolute begging that waited until too late the last time this all happened. No more Guster, just me, "Please just stay until the fall, the winter, the spring, forever. For me? With me. Please, I'll scratch your back for hours. I'll run my fingers through your hair until you fall asleep on my chest every night until forever falls away. Please, I'll do anything. Please...I love you."
For kids from elsewhere in Nebraska, well, we're here because we wanted out of wherever we're from, but we weren't sure we could afford-either finacially, emotionally, or both-to leave Nebraska. As for kids from out of state, unless they're on atheletic scholarship, the kids from Nebraska can't help but ask them the same question: Why did you come here? Of all the places in the country...why Lincoln? Lincoln is not a place one dreams of going. It's not a place one dreams of staying if one knows any better. It's the kind of town where you need a damn good reason to come here. It's also a town that if you allow yourself to get lulled to sleep by its sneaky, small-town-masquerading-as-a-real-city ways, you'll miss your damn good reason to leave. For these two girls, their reasons for being here disappeared almost as quickly as they must have started as teenagers in a place where nobody batted an eyelash at words like "y'all" and "Boomer Sooner."
I'm a waiter in a Lincoln restaurant. My hair gets kinda blonde in the summer, and sometimes I'm exemplary, sometimes not. Sometimes I'm charming, and sometimes people don't "get" me. I left Omaha and came to Lincoln because, well, there used to be this girl. She still exists, but we do not. Not in the sense of there being an us, anyhow. I wanted to go away to school. Maybe Missouri, maybe Purdue or Colorado State. That's right, any of the bustling metropoli of Columbia, Missouri, Fort Collins, Colorado, or West Lafayette, Indiana. Anywhere other than here...but they say that love changes everything. They don't often say that love itself changes.
My life, it seems, was bound to be intertwined at some point with those of two girls from Oklahoma. One of them is a coworker, and a sweet girl who has no trouble at all understanding how I could fall for a girl who roots for my team's hated rival and still says "mah" instead of "my" after 5 years in Nebraska where there is no accent, especially when she's excited. The other, the one I fell for, went from coworker to love interest sometime after I was swiftly fired from my most recent "last job" last fall. I almost forgot all about how she used to catch my eye until she showed up at a party one night in early February looking like everything I ever wanted: undeniably sexy, but classy, clearly brilliant but a little ditzy (like me) and just aloof enough to almost belie the kind of winning personality that can make people in a small town masquerading as a real city always tip her 20% while the rest of us wonder who thinks five bucks on a 70 dollar meal is an acceptable gratuity. The way she looked sent me the subtle message that I ought not forget that she's beautiful, but that she's not "that kind of girl" either, so if I thought I was after her, I'd better pack a lunch.
It only took me the night to get her number, but it would take me weeks to get her attention. I waited to call her, as is the custom, and she blew me off. She had more important things to do. I wished I did, too, but I couldn't stop thinking about her. I eventually deleted her number from my phone after a couple more failed attempts so that I could avoid embarassing myself by calling her anywhere near as much as I wanted to. The very day I gave up on her and mourned the loss of whatever was not to be, she responded.
So it went. I gradually wore away at her defenses, sometimes by being patient, sometimes by being bold. I brought her roses to work on Valentine's Day, mostly because I wanted her to have them, but partly because I wanted to make sure that she and everyone else at that restaurant knew I was set on having her. "Who are those from?" the girls would all jealously ask. Each time she'd answer, I'd have to cross her mind, and she'd have to explain whether or not we were an item. Along with the roses, I left her a card telling her to clear a date for the Friday after the next when we could allign our busy schedules at least for a night and have dinner. I thought it was all very smooth until I realized that I had brashly sauntered in with my dress shirt, roses, and a card asking her to take the 30th of February off and go out with me.
So it went. Sometimes I was smooth, sometimes I was an idiot. Somehow it worked, and somehow I talked my skittish heart out of ruining the whole thing for me. I have a hard time falling for a girl. I develop crushes easily, but to try fall for somebody, to let them grow into you and become a part of you, is a scary thing. In my mind's eye I could see her heart and mine, slowly spreading roots into one another's. That frightened part of me could see the hole that would be left if hers were ever torn away from mine. The longer we were together, the more we grew into one another, the bigger that hole could be. Night and day, in the back of my mind, almost as loud as the voice that said, "She's amazing" was the voice that warned, "She's going to leave." Always chiming in right behind that second voice was another that retorted, "So are you." It was deja vu. Suddenly the ceaselessly cyclical nature of life had brought me around again, and I was standing at the place on the wheel of life where I stay in Lincoln, Nebraska and wonder how long it will be until the girl I'm crazy about realizes there's no good reason to be here any more and leaves me lagging behind like I always do. While I couldn't block out the realization once it had happened, I could take solace in the fact that she was hellbent on living with her roommate after graduation and her roommate preferred to stay here. If her roommate was here, she was here. I was here either way, so it was fine. I took my solace and fell for her. Then the bottom fell out.
The roommate, a girl of Middle Eastern descent and Canadian citizenship, graduated this weekend. My girl did not graduate, just the way I didn't graduate a while back, and she hated it, just the way that I hated it. The roommate's Canadian/Middle Eastern family all came to see it happen, and to coax their baby home to Toronto. It worked, and I just found out. Just like that, the roommate is moving home, at least for the summer, and my girl from Oklahoma is left to face the possibility of doubling her living expenses while taking summer class in a town she wouldn't be in at all if it weren't for some guy who stopped being a reason to go anywhere 5 years ago. She can't afford it, financially or emotionally. Summer classes exist all over the country, especially at home. Home only exists in one place. Here there's only me, and I have only existed for two and a half months as far as she's concerned. Besides, she's made that mistake once. At home she's got family, friends and another guy who probably lies awake at night thinking about how she'd still be his if not for the inexplicable nature of Lincoln, Nebraska. She still wears his sweatshirt and the mark he left on her heart. The odds are stacked against me, and I can only do my best, which has proven to be less than enough in the past. In the past, I at least knew the girl I was losing would be coming back to Lincoln, so maybe it didn't have to be over. This time, there's no reason to come back to Lincoln. This time has "permanent" written all over it. She has less than a week to decide.
Now it's 6:30 AM on my one day off and I'm wide awake, listening to "Ramona" by Guster over and over. The song is somewhere between sweetly happy and desperately melancholy. The words echo in my head, "Ramona, you're Miss Oklahoma, and you miss Oklahoma..." A couple weeks ago this would have been relatively fine. I was being scared and distant and so was she, and we were both doing some great posturing about potentially toeing the breakup line. It was classic "I'm scared of falling in love with you" stuff, but at that time she could have told me point blank that she was leaving and I would have been arrogant enough to act like I didn't care. I'd have saved the realization and the mourning for later. Then I spent some more time being distant and realized how much my own absence made my heart grow fonder. I missed her, and that meant something. When I saw her again, there was something I hadn't felt with her before, and hadn't felt from another girl in a long, long time. I felt safe. My guard was finally, totally down, and so was hers. We fell in love. I felt it happen, but I thought I'd bide some time before I said anything. I wanted to be sure I meant it if I was going to tell her that I loved her.
Now it seems stupid to ever bide time at all. Now I just want to bury my face in her hair and whisper, "I love you" the thousand times I've thought it since I realized it, as though it will give her any reason other than those three words and the hope of a future with me to stay here. Guster chimes in, "When I was younger and thought of myself, I never dreamed I'd become like this..." A tear rolls down my cheek and I tell myself over and over what I told her as though it were a mantra, "I don't want you to go, but I can't ask you to stay for me." "I just want what's best for you." I whisper it to myself over and over. "I just want what's best for you. I just want what's best for you..." Each time I say it, something that used to be hardened within me cracks, then shatters, then falls away. I'm right back to 2003. Feet in the baby pool, tears down my face. She is being torn away from me. I can see the hole forming in my heart, and the metaphorical bleeding that will take what will seem like forever to stop.
That same voice that warned of her inevitable departure is now at the forefront of my mind and throwing a certifiable tantrum. Kicking, screaming, tears, snot and absolute begging. Pleading. Groveling. Guster again, "...a snap of your fingers, an end to the arguement. Anything for you, love." Now it's me and not a voice in my mind who is begging aloud, if only in the solitary confines of my own room. Doubling over, whimpering, tears, snot, and absolute begging that waited until too late the last time this all happened. No more Guster, just me, "Please just stay until the fall, the winter, the spring, forever. For me? With me. Please, I'll scratch your back for hours. I'll run my fingers through your hair until you fall asleep on my chest every night until forever falls away. Please, I'll do anything. Please...I love you."
posted by Beav at 4:35 AM
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