Everything Old Is New Again
August of 2005, and somehow it’s shades of that Spring day in 2002. We were only a couple blocks away from where we are now. We were under much different circumstances then, but suddenly I find us having the same conversation: All light subject matter, mixed with my quasi-successful attempts at humor, and her grandiose plans that dwarf my day-to-day, ‘whatever happens next’ style of living. Awkward pauses. Both of us smiling at each other. Both of us scanning the other for any unspoken subtext. That time I couldn’t take my eyes off her. This time I have to fight to pull my eyes from hers, but I manage…sometimes. Thank God for sunglasses. That time, I came to the realization that she felt the same way I did. This time, maybe that same realization. Maybe not. My mind won’t allow for clarity.
Still though, I find myself thinking the exact same thing I did that day, “My God, the way she looks at me makes me feel 15 again. I am completely disarmed.”
That was three and a half years ago, and yet I find myself again struck by the way she holds herself, the way she smiles, the way she dresses, and especially the way those blue eyes cut straight through my every carefully built defense and leave me with only three words in my mind. How ironic that I can charge audiences money to watch me make things up on the spot, but one look from her leaves me stuttering. What started as a casual conversation and my interest in knowing how she’s been suddenly takes a turn, if only in my mind. Suddenly the realization that I’ve been doing a phenomenal job of kidding myself for three years hits me at 500 miles per hour.
Fuck.
I’m still in love with her.
I pull the sunglasses off. I want her to see the way I look at her. There is a flash of relief as she gets her first good view into the windows to my soul, but it is followed by a look of vague concern. She sees it now. I know she sees it. It’s subtle, but she’s unsettled by me looking at her the way I used to. There’s a familiarity about the way we look at each other. It would be so easy to fall back into what we were…and yet the stakes would be so high. Defenses take over. Guards are raised. There’s a change in the dynamic of the conversation. We’re running past the allotted time for a casual, in-passing conversation on 13th Street. I find myself weighing everything we’ve done to each other since Summer 2003, and I find that I’d be willing to make a snap-decision to pitch all the bitterness and bullshit and take her back starting tonight if I could. I also find that this is not a feasible option, for reasons too numerous to list. The number one reason is a cook in the Haymarket and didn’t seem to be my biggest fan the last time I encountered her with him at the bars.
So here we are, looking at each other. Each of us knows what’s on the other’s mind. Here we stand, at opposite ends of a vast expanse of hurdles. To jump, or not to jump? That is the question.
Not to jump, unless you’re meeting me in the middle. Now I get it. Now years of posturing and unnecessarily pointed encounters make a world of sense. We’ve been protecting ourselves from each other. By that same token, we’ve been protecting each other from ourselves. It won’t matter if you never say it, because now that I get a good look at you, you don’t have to. I know how you feel and I know why you did what you did. Now that I stand on the precipice of leaving everything behind, I understand why you kept me at a distance. It was because you did care, and because you knew that neither of us was the kind to be kept waiting. Now I know why I took unnecessary amounts of offense to every real or perceived action you ever made. It’s because eventually I accepted the fact that I wasn’t getting you back, but I never did stop loving you. I realize the latter fact now. I wonder…is the former still fact, or was I just too afraid of fiction?
“Well, I’d better go before you charm me any further.”
I say it. I mean it. This encounter will be burned in my mind for at least the next couple days, and the longer we talk, the hotter the burn. I try to leave things with one of those ‘closing a conversation with an ex’ lines we’ve all used and satirized, “Take care of yourself, don’t be a stranger.” Good one, genius. That wasn’t cliché at all…
“Do you still want to have lunch?”
“Yeah, I do.”
To jump, or not to jump?
Still though, I find myself thinking the exact same thing I did that day, “My God, the way she looks at me makes me feel 15 again. I am completely disarmed.”
That was three and a half years ago, and yet I find myself again struck by the way she holds herself, the way she smiles, the way she dresses, and especially the way those blue eyes cut straight through my every carefully built defense and leave me with only three words in my mind. How ironic that I can charge audiences money to watch me make things up on the spot, but one look from her leaves me stuttering. What started as a casual conversation and my interest in knowing how she’s been suddenly takes a turn, if only in my mind. Suddenly the realization that I’ve been doing a phenomenal job of kidding myself for three years hits me at 500 miles per hour.
Fuck.
I’m still in love with her.
I pull the sunglasses off. I want her to see the way I look at her. There is a flash of relief as she gets her first good view into the windows to my soul, but it is followed by a look of vague concern. She sees it now. I know she sees it. It’s subtle, but she’s unsettled by me looking at her the way I used to. There’s a familiarity about the way we look at each other. It would be so easy to fall back into what we were…and yet the stakes would be so high. Defenses take over. Guards are raised. There’s a change in the dynamic of the conversation. We’re running past the allotted time for a casual, in-passing conversation on 13th Street. I find myself weighing everything we’ve done to each other since Summer 2003, and I find that I’d be willing to make a snap-decision to pitch all the bitterness and bullshit and take her back starting tonight if I could. I also find that this is not a feasible option, for reasons too numerous to list. The number one reason is a cook in the Haymarket and didn’t seem to be my biggest fan the last time I encountered her with him at the bars.
So here we are, looking at each other. Each of us knows what’s on the other’s mind. Here we stand, at opposite ends of a vast expanse of hurdles. To jump, or not to jump? That is the question.
Not to jump, unless you’re meeting me in the middle. Now I get it. Now years of posturing and unnecessarily pointed encounters make a world of sense. We’ve been protecting ourselves from each other. By that same token, we’ve been protecting each other from ourselves. It won’t matter if you never say it, because now that I get a good look at you, you don’t have to. I know how you feel and I know why you did what you did. Now that I stand on the precipice of leaving everything behind, I understand why you kept me at a distance. It was because you did care, and because you knew that neither of us was the kind to be kept waiting. Now I know why I took unnecessary amounts of offense to every real or perceived action you ever made. It’s because eventually I accepted the fact that I wasn’t getting you back, but I never did stop loving you. I realize the latter fact now. I wonder…is the former still fact, or was I just too afraid of fiction?
“Well, I’d better go before you charm me any further.”
I say it. I mean it. This encounter will be burned in my mind for at least the next couple days, and the longer we talk, the hotter the burn. I try to leave things with one of those ‘closing a conversation with an ex’ lines we’ve all used and satirized, “Take care of yourself, don’t be a stranger.” Good one, genius. That wasn’t cliché at all…
“Do you still want to have lunch?”
“Yeah, I do.”
To jump, or not to jump?
posted by Beav at 6:53 PM
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