Wrote this a while back. It'll be 'internet wednesday' or something like that.
As I was trudging through the tundra to class, I overheard two young ladies seriously debating something I never thought possible. The discussion broke out when one of the girls claimed that the other's 'relationship' wasn't official until they both changed their status on facebook.
Perhaps I've come across something very grave. This is the great continental divide for web-based networking. On the one side, I stand facing west, ready to flow majestically into the pacific. I will live peaceful like a river otter, cutely cracking nuts (or whatever it is those little monsters eat) on my belly as I lay on my back and lazily float the day away. Behind me stands this young woman facing east, trolling down the dirty Missouri to the muddy waters of the Mississippi and out into the polluted Gulf.
This girl clearly weighs her life spent online equally with her actual life. How can this be? I remember when there were debates raging (and sometimes still do) about video games and their effects on the youth. I brushed this idea off very easily because I knew firsthand what it was like to fall from a height or to be hit with something large and heavy. It hurt like hell. I knew the distinction between the real and the imagined because I lived in both worlds. Transformers and Voltron and Thundercats where all my friends when I imagined flying around through space to distant worlds. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were there whenever I wanted to daydream up a trip to the shit filled sewers.
On the other hand, when I went outside and played in the woods or the creek near my house, my friends were the neighborhood children. My red headed cousin would visit every summer. We would have a glorious time and almost every day would come home with a new set of bruises or cuts. We were stupid fucking kids.
This girl, her friends are the people she knows from school and her other friends are her online friends. The problem is that there is no separation, her real, live friends contact her through text messages and online chat. Her imaginary friends and her real, physical friends are one and the same.
That continental divide earlier is no figment of my imagination, it exists. Perhaps I'm the youngest of the older generation and she's the oldest of the new. Maybe I'm tied up in there more than I think, maybe none of this even makes sense and I'm a fool for bringing it up. There is a difference between her and I, though. I see the internet much like I viewed those cartoons and played those video games, as if they exist in another realm. A realm of bits and bytes and internet titties. This is good and healthy, or so it seems.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Sunday, April 13, 2008
look, babe, what's wrong with us? (the julie chronicles pt 4)
part 4, maybe the end.
I decided I'd fucked around enough putting this whole awkward morning exchange off. It was time to go downstairs. If I didn't go down soon, I had a feeling my breakfast would get burnt. Either that or if I waited too long then breakfast would get cold. If I had to choose, I'd rather deal with Julie than have a shitty breakfast.
======
The first time I broke up with her, it was after the better part of a year being together. I had all kinds of issues when I tried to quantify my feelings for this girl. I remember asking myself if the amount of time spent together should be taken into consideration. It was hard for me to think of the time we spent together, time that I spent with someone, as wasted. Was Julie a tramp? Was I an asshole for not seeing it sooner? I liked her but she was kind of a bitch. I was honest with her while she liked to hide things from me. We spent a lot of time together and I felt comfortable with her. I was a man. She was apologetic. It's not like I had anything else going on.
Once we did get back, things seemed to be going really well. We'd get together nearly every afternoon for about three weeks, smoke pot and fool around. The ground picked up its first coating of white for the season sometime during those weeks, we didn't notice and couldn't have cared less. I forgave her, we got over it and moved past it, but I never forgot it happened.
Jules started staying at my place almost every night at that point. My roommates kept giving me shit about the whole thing though. Every time she left in the mornings, John would come running upstairs to my room and ask if Julie was going for a jog to "get some real dick." John was under the impression that Julie was "brainwashing me with pussy and weed."
======
I got up out of the chair and stood there, took a deep breath, and walked towards the door. I shouldn't have been wary of this girl. She was someone I might have loved at one point, maybe I could again. Before my foot touched the top stair, I was smiling a little smile. I wasn't mad at Julie for staying over, but I wasn't exactly enthused either.
======
We stayed together until the end of that semester, but I always looked back on those first 3 weeks together as 3 of the coolest, most comfortable weeks I've ever spent with someone. We spent most of our time together for the rest of that semester until finals rolled around. At the time, I was on this "finish my senior year strong" kick and I had a lot of paper writing to do. Julie went to a party with some of her friends on one of those work nights of mine. It was the Saturday right before classes were over. I got a call from John.
Me - "Yeah, I told you I'd call you when I was done."
John - "Right, but Julie's here. She's tanked and making out with some dude."
Me - "What the hell? What dude?"
John - "I don't know, some dude with a beard. He's got a blue shirt on and a goofy hat."
Me - "Fuck it. Whatever, I wanna finish this. I'll deal with it later."
I didn't get done until much later that night and never went out. I asked Julie about it the next day and she said she didn't remember. She said she wasn't sure what happened, but she woke up at bearded dude's place.
======
I was a couple stairs down, treading quietly. All these memories and feelings this girl was bringing forth weren't making for an awesome day. It's tough, that whole relationship thing. That was a long time ago, I was a different person now. I was younger then, I had questionable morals and a more idealistic outlook. I narrowed my eyes as I steeled my resolve to finish this confrontation through to the end. I was older, wiser and stronger.
That second semester of my senior year was a wild one. I had almost all the classes done that I needed in order to graduate save for a few electives, mostly blow off stuff. I hadn't talked to Julie since New Year's Eve. It was one of those nights that started late, I wasn't that drunk by midnight and so I stayed up until 5 in the morning calling people and leaving voicemails or lecturing anyone bold enough to answer. The call to Julie came much later on that early morning. She sent me a text message the week before wishing me a merry Christmas, so when I was drunk off my ass I felt it was the best time to wish her a happy New Year.
The worst part about the whole thing happened the next day. I woke up just before noon to a pounding coming from upstairs. A friend of mine at home hosted the party and I wasn't real familiar with the layout of the house. I stumbled upstairs from the basement and found that I was the last to wake that morning. The pounding was my roommate Derek, he was stomping on the floor arguing with someone about something or another. There were a couple people spread out around the living room and my other roommate John was in the kitchen making himself a bowl of cereal. I was glad that they were able to come hang out over the holiday.
John - "Morning sunshine, how's the day treating you?"
Me - (pulling out a chair and sitting down, I grabbed at a bottle of water on the counter) "Give me that."
John - (with a mouthful of cereal) "What the hell happened to you last night?"
Me - "What do you mean? Nothing, I was here the whole time. Is there anything else for breakfast?"
John - "You could have a beer. Breakfast of champions. How long were you on the phone last night?"
Me - (checking my calls) "I don't know, I think I just called my mom and then my brother ... ahhhh fuck. 48 minutes here on a call to 'Jules.' Why'd you let me do that? Asshole."
John just laughed. I tried to forget about it. Don't know what was said, she was probably too drunk to remember herself. It made me think more self-referentially the next couple times I went out and got crazy, though. I was a bit more careful with who I called.
It'd been about 2 months since I broke things off with Julie that last time. It'd been about a month and a half since the drunk dial she got from me on New Year's. It was important to me that I wasn't being a dick about things. So when I saw her, I would always exchange some minor pleasantries. I was trying to stay on the high road. It was weird sometimes, sure. That didn't stop me from trying to move on with my life. The pleasantries devolved after that month of being back at school.
I saw Julie one day at the library while researching for a paper for some class that didn't really matter. I waved, neutrally. She waved back and I went to a computer to look up some books. In the middle of writing down the books I wanted, she came and sat next to me.
Her - "Hi."
Me - (leaning back in my chair) "Hi, I'm kind of busy."
Her - (leaning towards me, almost whispering) "Yeah, ok. Well, I wanted to talk about what we talked about on the phone on New Year's."
Me - "Wait a second. I want you to know that I was hammered drunk, shit faced to the extreme, whatever you wanna call it. I don't remember even talking to you. Not to be a dick or anything."
Her - "I figured. I wasn't as drunk as you were though. I told you I was sorry and you said it was all right."
Me - "Well whatever I said was all right might have been at the time but that doesn't mean it is now. I don't want to get into this. Like, not at all."
Her - (she grabbed for my hand and I pulled away) "All right, maybe some other time. I miss you. I want you to know that I feel bad too, I don't know. I miss you. I miss you."
Me - "Yeah. I'm going to get books. Write this project up right fast and ... well, maybe I'll think about calling you later."
It was hard to put my foot down with Julie. She looked cute. I had to keep myself mentally prepared for anything because she knew me very well, knew me well enough to know that as soon as I told her I'd think about calling her, I would eventually do so. I made her wait a couple days before doing it, but I did. The next night we had dinner together. By the end of the week it looked like we were back together. By the end of that weekend people were wondering where we were because things were back to the way they used to be. We spent most of the week indoors getting re-accustomed to each other. By the end of the following week we weren't on speaking terms anymore. It's hard sometimes.
I waited until we were "back together" for one week and I went out with my roommates, got tanked and made out with a girl from my Intro to Islam class, Katie. She's the one that originally got Julie all excited. Julie thought I would cheat on her with that girl because she was thinking of cheating on me, maybe with the bearded dude. At least that was how my thought process was going, I thought it was poignant. Almost like, haha, got you bitch!
======
I reached the bottom of the stairs and made the turn towards my kitchen. My bong was sitting in the middle of the coffee table in my living room alongside a couple of empty beer bottles. Apparently the festivities of the night prior were not quite enough and when I got home, I decided I needed a nightcap. Taking a couple long bong rips after getting home from a bar was one of my favorite things to do. It helped center me before going to bed. I thought all these things because they pointed towards me having a reason to get centered before bed. That reason, just around the corner, had a really sweet jam playing on the radio. It's amusing, the things I think about to distract myself.
======
Julie blew up when she found out that I was kissing some other girl. I calmly told her she deserved it. That she had it coming, that I was just letting her know it wouldn't be tolerated.
Things never were the same as those first months or those three beautiful weeks during the fall of my senior year. Our relationship didn't die completely. I knew I could count on Julie to always be there for me. Even though I hated her sometimes, I knew who she was and still had feelings for her in spite of it. She was loyal, but fidelity strangely wasn't a factor in her idea of loyalty. She was like the cat that would run away from home for a while but always came back. Kind of, I didn't see myself as her home by any means.
We spent the better part of the following year seeing each other every two weeks or so, once a month we'd get together and smoke pot and drink until the sun came up over a weekend. We'd fool around most of the time but it never moved past that until the following spring.
There had been two girls I went out with while still spending illicit evenings with my ex. It was strange, Julie was seeing other people and so was I, but we were both still kind of seeing each other. I never questioned it, I didn't want to because I knew that we didn't work well being 'together.' We'd go so far as to talk about the other person when we'd meet up. She would rate her fling against me and I would rate mine against her. It was a very self-conscious and honest undertaking that we were venturing in on. I think at some point that honesty morphed itself in my mind and made me somehow forget the greek tragedy that was mine and Julie's relationship.
That following spring saw a rebirth of Julie and I as a couple. It had been over two years since we met and we had slowly developed a comfort level again with each other. That round lasted from April to June and we started fighting. One thing that could never be said about Julie and myself was that we lacked passion. The unbridled emotions that flowed forth when we would fight were terrific. In one day I would hate her, love her, loath her, want to kill her, have sex with her, want to toss her down a flight of stairs, and then at night we'd fool around and cuddle.
We started fighting one drunken night and she pulled a knife on me. It was a steak knife from the kitchen, I could tell, as she was holding it to my throat.
Me - (grabbing her wrist) "I'm going for a walk, maybe go pick up a prostitute or three."
Her - (dropping the knife) "FUCK YOU!!! But, I won't stab you, not for real anyway. You just make me so mad!!"
Me - (pulling her head close to mine) "Look, babe, what's wrong with us?"
She couldn't tell me, so I kissed her instead.
June rolled around and I told her I needed a break. That was the last time 'together' but I saw her every once in a while. I'd get drunk and call her, or she'd get drunk and call me. Sometimes I'd see her 3 or 4 times in one week and other times I wouldn't see her for a month or two. We would inevitably get together though.
======
Relationships are hard sometimes, I thought, as I stood in the doorway to the kitchen. This past stretch of being apart from Julie with no drunk dials and no word was longer than usual. I'd made some progress in a normal relationship with an interesting girl I'd recently gotten re-acquainted with in the frozen food section of the supermarket up the block. It was poetic, in a way, that it was Katie in the kitchen.
Katie - "Good morning. You were a drunken wreck last night."
Me - (smiling) "Yeah, I've been trying to piece everything together. Did I do anything embarrassing?"
Katie - "Nothing more embarrassing than anything I did. I made a mix cd the other day I forgot about, how do you like it?"
Me - (sitting down at the table) "It's great. I mean it, heard it upstairs. It reminded me of some of the old days."
Katie - "The old days? Let's make some new days, you want to go for a walk after this? Maybe read a book outside? It's such a nice day."
I leaned over the table and kissed her. It's not like I had anything else going on.
I decided I'd fucked around enough putting this whole awkward morning exchange off. It was time to go downstairs. If I didn't go down soon, I had a feeling my breakfast would get burnt. Either that or if I waited too long then breakfast would get cold. If I had to choose, I'd rather deal with Julie than have a shitty breakfast.
======
The first time I broke up with her, it was after the better part of a year being together. I had all kinds of issues when I tried to quantify my feelings for this girl. I remember asking myself if the amount of time spent together should be taken into consideration. It was hard for me to think of the time we spent together, time that I spent with someone, as wasted. Was Julie a tramp? Was I an asshole for not seeing it sooner? I liked her but she was kind of a bitch. I was honest with her while she liked to hide things from me. We spent a lot of time together and I felt comfortable with her. I was a man. She was apologetic. It's not like I had anything else going on.
Once we did get back, things seemed to be going really well. We'd get together nearly every afternoon for about three weeks, smoke pot and fool around. The ground picked up its first coating of white for the season sometime during those weeks, we didn't notice and couldn't have cared less. I forgave her, we got over it and moved past it, but I never forgot it happened.
Jules started staying at my place almost every night at that point. My roommates kept giving me shit about the whole thing though. Every time she left in the mornings, John would come running upstairs to my room and ask if Julie was going for a jog to "get some real dick." John was under the impression that Julie was "brainwashing me with pussy and weed."
======
I got up out of the chair and stood there, took a deep breath, and walked towards the door. I shouldn't have been wary of this girl. She was someone I might have loved at one point, maybe I could again. Before my foot touched the top stair, I was smiling a little smile. I wasn't mad at Julie for staying over, but I wasn't exactly enthused either.
======
We stayed together until the end of that semester, but I always looked back on those first 3 weeks together as 3 of the coolest, most comfortable weeks I've ever spent with someone. We spent most of our time together for the rest of that semester until finals rolled around. At the time, I was on this "finish my senior year strong" kick and I had a lot of paper writing to do. Julie went to a party with some of her friends on one of those work nights of mine. It was the Saturday right before classes were over. I got a call from John.
Me - "Yeah, I told you I'd call you when I was done."
John - "Right, but Julie's here. She's tanked and making out with some dude."
Me - "What the hell? What dude?"
John - "I don't know, some dude with a beard. He's got a blue shirt on and a goofy hat."
Me - "Fuck it. Whatever, I wanna finish this. I'll deal with it later."
I didn't get done until much later that night and never went out. I asked Julie about it the next day and she said she didn't remember. She said she wasn't sure what happened, but she woke up at bearded dude's place.
======
I was a couple stairs down, treading quietly. All these memories and feelings this girl was bringing forth weren't making for an awesome day. It's tough, that whole relationship thing. That was a long time ago, I was a different person now. I was younger then, I had questionable morals and a more idealistic outlook. I narrowed my eyes as I steeled my resolve to finish this confrontation through to the end. I was older, wiser and stronger.
That second semester of my senior year was a wild one. I had almost all the classes done that I needed in order to graduate save for a few electives, mostly blow off stuff. I hadn't talked to Julie since New Year's Eve. It was one of those nights that started late, I wasn't that drunk by midnight and so I stayed up until 5 in the morning calling people and leaving voicemails or lecturing anyone bold enough to answer. The call to Julie came much later on that early morning. She sent me a text message the week before wishing me a merry Christmas, so when I was drunk off my ass I felt it was the best time to wish her a happy New Year.
The worst part about the whole thing happened the next day. I woke up just before noon to a pounding coming from upstairs. A friend of mine at home hosted the party and I wasn't real familiar with the layout of the house. I stumbled upstairs from the basement and found that I was the last to wake that morning. The pounding was my roommate Derek, he was stomping on the floor arguing with someone about something or another. There were a couple people spread out around the living room and my other roommate John was in the kitchen making himself a bowl of cereal. I was glad that they were able to come hang out over the holiday.
John - "Morning sunshine, how's the day treating you?"
Me - (pulling out a chair and sitting down, I grabbed at a bottle of water on the counter) "Give me that."
John - (with a mouthful of cereal) "What the hell happened to you last night?"
Me - "What do you mean? Nothing, I was here the whole time. Is there anything else for breakfast?"
John - "You could have a beer. Breakfast of champions. How long were you on the phone last night?"
Me - (checking my calls) "I don't know, I think I just called my mom and then my brother ... ahhhh fuck. 48 minutes here on a call to 'Jules.' Why'd you let me do that? Asshole."
John just laughed. I tried to forget about it. Don't know what was said, she was probably too drunk to remember herself. It made me think more self-referentially the next couple times I went out and got crazy, though. I was a bit more careful with who I called.
It'd been about 2 months since I broke things off with Julie that last time. It'd been about a month and a half since the drunk dial she got from me on New Year's. It was important to me that I wasn't being a dick about things. So when I saw her, I would always exchange some minor pleasantries. I was trying to stay on the high road. It was weird sometimes, sure. That didn't stop me from trying to move on with my life. The pleasantries devolved after that month of being back at school.
I saw Julie one day at the library while researching for a paper for some class that didn't really matter. I waved, neutrally. She waved back and I went to a computer to look up some books. In the middle of writing down the books I wanted, she came and sat next to me.
Her - "Hi."
Me - (leaning back in my chair) "Hi, I'm kind of busy."
Her - (leaning towards me, almost whispering) "Yeah, ok. Well, I wanted to talk about what we talked about on the phone on New Year's."
Me - "Wait a second. I want you to know that I was hammered drunk, shit faced to the extreme, whatever you wanna call it. I don't remember even talking to you. Not to be a dick or anything."
Her - "I figured. I wasn't as drunk as you were though. I told you I was sorry and you said it was all right."
Me - "Well whatever I said was all right might have been at the time but that doesn't mean it is now. I don't want to get into this. Like, not at all."
Her - (she grabbed for my hand and I pulled away) "All right, maybe some other time. I miss you. I want you to know that I feel bad too, I don't know. I miss you. I miss you."
Me - "Yeah. I'm going to get books. Write this project up right fast and ... well, maybe I'll think about calling you later."
It was hard to put my foot down with Julie. She looked cute. I had to keep myself mentally prepared for anything because she knew me very well, knew me well enough to know that as soon as I told her I'd think about calling her, I would eventually do so. I made her wait a couple days before doing it, but I did. The next night we had dinner together. By the end of the week it looked like we were back together. By the end of that weekend people were wondering where we were because things were back to the way they used to be. We spent most of the week indoors getting re-accustomed to each other. By the end of the following week we weren't on speaking terms anymore. It's hard sometimes.
I waited until we were "back together" for one week and I went out with my roommates, got tanked and made out with a girl from my Intro to Islam class, Katie. She's the one that originally got Julie all excited. Julie thought I would cheat on her with that girl because she was thinking of cheating on me, maybe with the bearded dude. At least that was how my thought process was going, I thought it was poignant. Almost like, haha, got you bitch!
======
I reached the bottom of the stairs and made the turn towards my kitchen. My bong was sitting in the middle of the coffee table in my living room alongside a couple of empty beer bottles. Apparently the festivities of the night prior were not quite enough and when I got home, I decided I needed a nightcap. Taking a couple long bong rips after getting home from a bar was one of my favorite things to do. It helped center me before going to bed. I thought all these things because they pointed towards me having a reason to get centered before bed. That reason, just around the corner, had a really sweet jam playing on the radio. It's amusing, the things I think about to distract myself.
======
Julie blew up when she found out that I was kissing some other girl. I calmly told her she deserved it. That she had it coming, that I was just letting her know it wouldn't be tolerated.
Things never were the same as those first months or those three beautiful weeks during the fall of my senior year. Our relationship didn't die completely. I knew I could count on Julie to always be there for me. Even though I hated her sometimes, I knew who she was and still had feelings for her in spite of it. She was loyal, but fidelity strangely wasn't a factor in her idea of loyalty. She was like the cat that would run away from home for a while but always came back. Kind of, I didn't see myself as her home by any means.
We spent the better part of the following year seeing each other every two weeks or so, once a month we'd get together and smoke pot and drink until the sun came up over a weekend. We'd fool around most of the time but it never moved past that until the following spring.
There had been two girls I went out with while still spending illicit evenings with my ex. It was strange, Julie was seeing other people and so was I, but we were both still kind of seeing each other. I never questioned it, I didn't want to because I knew that we didn't work well being 'together.' We'd go so far as to talk about the other person when we'd meet up. She would rate her fling against me and I would rate mine against her. It was a very self-conscious and honest undertaking that we were venturing in on. I think at some point that honesty morphed itself in my mind and made me somehow forget the greek tragedy that was mine and Julie's relationship.
That following spring saw a rebirth of Julie and I as a couple. It had been over two years since we met and we had slowly developed a comfort level again with each other. That round lasted from April to June and we started fighting. One thing that could never be said about Julie and myself was that we lacked passion. The unbridled emotions that flowed forth when we would fight were terrific. In one day I would hate her, love her, loath her, want to kill her, have sex with her, want to toss her down a flight of stairs, and then at night we'd fool around and cuddle.
We started fighting one drunken night and she pulled a knife on me. It was a steak knife from the kitchen, I could tell, as she was holding it to my throat.
Me - (grabbing her wrist) "I'm going for a walk, maybe go pick up a prostitute or three."
Her - (dropping the knife) "FUCK YOU!!! But, I won't stab you, not for real anyway. You just make me so mad!!"
Me - (pulling her head close to mine) "Look, babe, what's wrong with us?"
She couldn't tell me, so I kissed her instead.
June rolled around and I told her I needed a break. That was the last time 'together' but I saw her every once in a while. I'd get drunk and call her, or she'd get drunk and call me. Sometimes I'd see her 3 or 4 times in one week and other times I wouldn't see her for a month or two. We would inevitably get together though.
======
Relationships are hard sometimes, I thought, as I stood in the doorway to the kitchen. This past stretch of being apart from Julie with no drunk dials and no word was longer than usual. I'd made some progress in a normal relationship with an interesting girl I'd recently gotten re-acquainted with in the frozen food section of the supermarket up the block. It was poetic, in a way, that it was Katie in the kitchen.
Katie - "Good morning. You were a drunken wreck last night."
Me - (smiling) "Yeah, I've been trying to piece everything together. Did I do anything embarrassing?"
Katie - "Nothing more embarrassing than anything I did. I made a mix cd the other day I forgot about, how do you like it?"
Me - (sitting down at the table) "It's great. I mean it, heard it upstairs. It reminded me of some of the old days."
Katie - "The old days? Let's make some new days, you want to go for a walk after this? Maybe read a book outside? It's such a nice day."
I leaned over the table and kissed her. It's not like I had anything else going on.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
more beat than your butthole (chronicles of Julie pt. 3)
third part, better than the first.
I got up from the bed feeling much better than the first time. Sitting down in my chair, I flipped my laptop open to see a few things. Checked the weather, read an email. Send anything stupid the night before? No, good, didn't look like I was anywhere near the thing at all. Occasionally I'll get out of hand on "Tequila Tuesdays" but it looked like my only problem from the night before was the visitor in the kitchen.
I kicked my feet up on the desk and lit a cigarette. The first cigarette of the day is always the best, and it was even better that morning. My bedroom caught the morning sun and the smoke would dance as it floated off the tip. I leaned back and exhaled, thinking about how things could have been a lot worse than they were. If Julie stayed over the night before and wanted to make me breakfast, I'd let her. As I was reclining in my chair, I started to think of some of the good times that we'd had.
===========
It was a couple months after that drunken night down at the bar and Julie was spending the weekend at my place back home. My parents had gone to Vegas for a long weekend and my brother was off at a friend's house. He never cared much about what I did even when he was home.
I smiled as Julie's eye caught mine over the glare of my lighter.
"Pass that bowl already!" She joked as she punched my shoulder.
I passed the pipe with the lighter between two of my fingers. She grabbed both, lit it and took a deep breath.
"You're an all right girl, you know that?" We were smoking a lot of pot in those days, but I never over did it. Julie had the habit of smoking too much and cooking various types of chicken. I would smoke too much and get intellectual, it worked out because we'd talk philosophy over a plate of spicy grilled chicken.
We worked well together at the bar, too. We'd both get ourselves nice and drunk and magically appear safely back home the next day. I personally think that was mostly my doing, but I'd be lying if I said I remembered many rides home from bars, ever.
We were getting comfortable with our situation. I hated the idea of trying to start something over the summer, but it was working out despite my fears. I figured things would either fizzle quickly or it would turn into some kind of perverted phone relationship. Nothing bad happened at all, things were actually going really well.
The rest of the summer went much the same, I would visit her and she would visit me. Sometimes we'd meet in the middle and I even had dinner with her parents once or twice. Things were moving to enter into a new stage in the relationship by the end of that summer and I felt fine with it. I liked this girl, she liked me. It's not like I had anything else going on.
As school started back up again in the fall, there were a few bumps in the road. The first couple weeks went past in the blink of an eye that year. I was excited about being so close to the end of school, the situation with Julie kept moving along, and none of my classes started before 1 in the afternoon.
Eventually the days got shorter and the nights, colder. I went out one night with my roommates to a party across campus. The place was packed by the time we got there because Derek decided to crack open a handle of whiskey before we left the apartment and we started doing shots. At some point between the second and third stop sign on the trip over, the empty bottle was thrown out the window. It was shaping up to be a fantastic night of merriment and revelry.
We pulled up to the house and saw that people were piled in tight like immigrants in a pickup.
Me - "Look at this bullshit. It might look like fun now but with that many people, this party is gonna be more beat than your butthole in about 8 and a half minutes. ... More beat? Beater? Which one is it?"
John - "It's more beat, I think, and I hope you were talking about Derek's butthole."
Me - "It was a fucking phrase, people say that"
Derek - "My butthole is not beat up. Fuck you guys." He slurred.
I was starting to slur a bit too and I didn't think what I had said about the buttholes made any sense but I remember I went with it. It's not always what someone says, it's how confident they are in saying it that matters. We decided to go to that party, in spite of my protestations earlier and continued annoyance at the proceedings, because John went to high school with someone that lived there. This connection did not go unused as within a few minutes of walking in the door I was asked to play beer pong with John's friend because John was terrible. The previous partner had gone outside to smoke and never came back, I didn't care why because I was really in the mood for some kind of game and I had some practice at this particular one.
That night is one of the biggest reasons I hate text messaging. At the time though, I liked the idea immensely. The first game went well and as I started talking to John's friend, I realized he was a generally tolerable human being. Some might even have called him a "sweet dude." I was text messaging Julie to come to the party as the second game started.
I like to think that it's my good looks and charm that bring home the bacon, but it might be my wit. Maybe it's because when I start to get drunk my eyes narrow. I drink and I get bedroom eyes, it's weird, I know. The alcohol might have made the girls on the other side of the table look better. All I know is that I started chatting to the dark haired one, Katie. I was talking shit to Katie, text messaging Julie, and about to sink the last cup to get Katie's team off the table.
We won that game, and the next, but Katie stuck around for a while. I wasn't thinking about doing anything with Katie and I wasn't exactly getting the vibe that she was into doing anything with me either, but that didn't make things look any better to the untrained eye. Julie walked in to see me engaged in an argument with Katie.
Me - "Vin Diesel's way cooler than Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris is, in fact, an asshole."
Katie - "Chuck Norris would kick Vin Diesel's ass. Period. You're smoking crack rocks if you think any different."
Julie - "Heeeeeyyyy baby, who's your friend? I'm Julie, by the way." She introduced herself to Katie.
It was a totally innocent argument anyone could have found themselves in with anyone else at any given point in time. Julie made it a little awkward for a minute, but Katie left. No harm, no foul. We lost the next game and I wanted to leave, but Julie had wandered off. I figured she wasn't very far so I went out for a cigarette to wait.
The air was cold enough to see your breath. I love those first fall nights where it's cold enough to do that, I always walk around pretending I'm some kind of steam breathing dragon about to terrorize a small town. Katie must have seen me walk out the door and wanted to say goodbye before she left. It was kind of embarrassing to be seen walking around like a drunk dinosaur huffing and puffing all into the night. So when Katie saw me and started laughing, I did too. It was funny, I was drunk and my phone started ringing.
Me - "Hold on a second, lemme get this. I wanna tell you something."
Katie - "Ok, but my friends are leaving."
Me - "Yeah babe, outside. ... That's just my friend, don't worry about it. ... Yeah, come outside and let's go. ... Yeah, bye, get out here. ... I'm sorry, actually that's what I wanted to say to you, Jules gets weird sometimes when she's drunk."
Katie - "Oh it's no problem, are you talking about that awkward exchange earlier?" She forced a polite laugh.
Me - "Yeah, she's really a nice girl. But I gotta go find her around front."
Katie - "I'm going that way too."
Julie didn't say anything when she saw me walk around the corner still talking to "that girl." She waited until later when we were back at my place. I guess it looked bad, I still don't know. It was entirely innocent, or mostly innocent. We got into an argument about it regardless.
Julie - "You seemed a little friendly with that girl."
Me - "Jules, I just met her a few minutes before you walked in and then I saw her outside later on. It was a coincidence. I wasn't getting friendly with anyone."
Julie - "I saw what I saw and it looked like you were getting a little friendly with her."
Me - "Julie, I don't want to deal with this shit right now, you're drunk ... I'm pretty drunk, let's just go to bed."
It went on like that for awhile until I let it slip that if I knew she was going to be acting like that I never would have told her to come. She took this to mean something entirely different. She was madder than hell and it was cute. I probably shouldn't have laughed at her that night either, but she reminded me of a toddler throwing a tantrum. I told her that, thinking it would calm her down, but it didn't.
It was a couple of weeks after that night and I wanted to surprise Julie with some kind of peace offering. We fought a bunch of times after that party because, basically, some words were thrown around that neither of us meant. I still really liked her, but we both needed to apologize to each other and be serious about things before anything got out of hand. I bought a bottle of wine and took my nice bong and a bag of weed over to Julie's place. She mentioned earlier that day that she needed to study for some test she had the next morning, so I figured if I went over later she might be in the mood for some making up, so to speak.
Worst. Idea. Ever.
I walked up to the door with the bottle stashed in my bag hoping I could keep it a surprise. Julie's roommate answered the door and told me that Julie would be right downstairs. We were past the point in our relationship where I waited for her to come down any stairs, anywhere. So, I walked up the stairs and turned the corner to her room and found it was locked. I started knocking on it.
Me - "Hey Jules, open up. We gotta talk."
Julie - "Yeah, gimme a minute."
Me - "What the fuck? Seriously girl, I've seen that before."
She came to the door and opened it, but not all the way. She told me she was busy studying with someone from class. I told her to open the door, that I had weed and wine, and they were two of her favorite things. She told me it was an important test. I told her she needed to open the door before I got mad. She refused, I got mad.
Turned out I arrived just in time to interrupt Julie and her friend from consummating their evening of study. She cleared her study friend out of her room and we talked. She chose this time to tell me the whole truth, thinking that maybe if she were honest I would be fine with her plans to fool around with some dude from her stats class. We argued about a few things, I called her a few names and she called me a few of her own. I stormed out of her house with the weed and wine and kept it to myself that night.
Since she didn't technically cheat on me, I took her back eventually. I didn't know what else to do, I really liked her, I hoped we'd be able to move past the whole thing and go back to the way things were.
I learned one important lesson that night at the party, that text messaging is the devil. I would later learn another lesson, that things can never go back to the way they were.
to be concluded...
I got up from the bed feeling much better than the first time. Sitting down in my chair, I flipped my laptop open to see a few things. Checked the weather, read an email. Send anything stupid the night before? No, good, didn't look like I was anywhere near the thing at all. Occasionally I'll get out of hand on "Tequila Tuesdays" but it looked like my only problem from the night before was the visitor in the kitchen.
I kicked my feet up on the desk and lit a cigarette. The first cigarette of the day is always the best, and it was even better that morning. My bedroom caught the morning sun and the smoke would dance as it floated off the tip. I leaned back and exhaled, thinking about how things could have been a lot worse than they were. If Julie stayed over the night before and wanted to make me breakfast, I'd let her. As I was reclining in my chair, I started to think of some of the good times that we'd had.
===========
It was a couple months after that drunken night down at the bar and Julie was spending the weekend at my place back home. My parents had gone to Vegas for a long weekend and my brother was off at a friend's house. He never cared much about what I did even when he was home.
I smiled as Julie's eye caught mine over the glare of my lighter.
"Pass that bowl already!" She joked as she punched my shoulder.
I passed the pipe with the lighter between two of my fingers. She grabbed both, lit it and took a deep breath.
"You're an all right girl, you know that?" We were smoking a lot of pot in those days, but I never over did it. Julie had the habit of smoking too much and cooking various types of chicken. I would smoke too much and get intellectual, it worked out because we'd talk philosophy over a plate of spicy grilled chicken.
We worked well together at the bar, too. We'd both get ourselves nice and drunk and magically appear safely back home the next day. I personally think that was mostly my doing, but I'd be lying if I said I remembered many rides home from bars, ever.
We were getting comfortable with our situation. I hated the idea of trying to start something over the summer, but it was working out despite my fears. I figured things would either fizzle quickly or it would turn into some kind of perverted phone relationship. Nothing bad happened at all, things were actually going really well.
The rest of the summer went much the same, I would visit her and she would visit me. Sometimes we'd meet in the middle and I even had dinner with her parents once or twice. Things were moving to enter into a new stage in the relationship by the end of that summer and I felt fine with it. I liked this girl, she liked me. It's not like I had anything else going on.
As school started back up again in the fall, there were a few bumps in the road. The first couple weeks went past in the blink of an eye that year. I was excited about being so close to the end of school, the situation with Julie kept moving along, and none of my classes started before 1 in the afternoon.
Eventually the days got shorter and the nights, colder. I went out one night with my roommates to a party across campus. The place was packed by the time we got there because Derek decided to crack open a handle of whiskey before we left the apartment and we started doing shots. At some point between the second and third stop sign on the trip over, the empty bottle was thrown out the window. It was shaping up to be a fantastic night of merriment and revelry.
We pulled up to the house and saw that people were piled in tight like immigrants in a pickup.
Me - "Look at this bullshit. It might look like fun now but with that many people, this party is gonna be more beat than your butthole in about 8 and a half minutes. ... More beat? Beater? Which one is it?"
John - "It's more beat, I think, and I hope you were talking about Derek's butthole."
Me - "It was a fucking phrase, people say that"
Derek - "My butthole is not beat up. Fuck you guys." He slurred.
I was starting to slur a bit too and I didn't think what I had said about the buttholes made any sense but I remember I went with it. It's not always what someone says, it's how confident they are in saying it that matters. We decided to go to that party, in spite of my protestations earlier and continued annoyance at the proceedings, because John went to high school with someone that lived there. This connection did not go unused as within a few minutes of walking in the door I was asked to play beer pong with John's friend because John was terrible. The previous partner had gone outside to smoke and never came back, I didn't care why because I was really in the mood for some kind of game and I had some practice at this particular one.
That night is one of the biggest reasons I hate text messaging. At the time though, I liked the idea immensely. The first game went well and as I started talking to John's friend, I realized he was a generally tolerable human being. Some might even have called him a "sweet dude." I was text messaging Julie to come to the party as the second game started.
I like to think that it's my good looks and charm that bring home the bacon, but it might be my wit. Maybe it's because when I start to get drunk my eyes narrow. I drink and I get bedroom eyes, it's weird, I know. The alcohol might have made the girls on the other side of the table look better. All I know is that I started chatting to the dark haired one, Katie. I was talking shit to Katie, text messaging Julie, and about to sink the last cup to get Katie's team off the table.
We won that game, and the next, but Katie stuck around for a while. I wasn't thinking about doing anything with Katie and I wasn't exactly getting the vibe that she was into doing anything with me either, but that didn't make things look any better to the untrained eye. Julie walked in to see me engaged in an argument with Katie.
Me - "Vin Diesel's way cooler than Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris is, in fact, an asshole."
Katie - "Chuck Norris would kick Vin Diesel's ass. Period. You're smoking crack rocks if you think any different."
Julie - "Heeeeeyyyy baby, who's your friend? I'm Julie, by the way." She introduced herself to Katie.
It was a totally innocent argument anyone could have found themselves in with anyone else at any given point in time. Julie made it a little awkward for a minute, but Katie left. No harm, no foul. We lost the next game and I wanted to leave, but Julie had wandered off. I figured she wasn't very far so I went out for a cigarette to wait.
The air was cold enough to see your breath. I love those first fall nights where it's cold enough to do that, I always walk around pretending I'm some kind of steam breathing dragon about to terrorize a small town. Katie must have seen me walk out the door and wanted to say goodbye before she left. It was kind of embarrassing to be seen walking around like a drunk dinosaur huffing and puffing all into the night. So when Katie saw me and started laughing, I did too. It was funny, I was drunk and my phone started ringing.
Me - "Hold on a second, lemme get this. I wanna tell you something."
Katie - "Ok, but my friends are leaving."
Me - "Yeah babe, outside. ... That's just my friend, don't worry about it. ... Yeah, come outside and let's go. ... Yeah, bye, get out here. ... I'm sorry, actually that's what I wanted to say to you, Jules gets weird sometimes when she's drunk."
Katie - "Oh it's no problem, are you talking about that awkward exchange earlier?" She forced a polite laugh.
Me - "Yeah, she's really a nice girl. But I gotta go find her around front."
Katie - "I'm going that way too."
Julie didn't say anything when she saw me walk around the corner still talking to "that girl." She waited until later when we were back at my place. I guess it looked bad, I still don't know. It was entirely innocent, or mostly innocent. We got into an argument about it regardless.
Julie - "You seemed a little friendly with that girl."
Me - "Jules, I just met her a few minutes before you walked in and then I saw her outside later on. It was a coincidence. I wasn't getting friendly with anyone."
Julie - "I saw what I saw and it looked like you were getting a little friendly with her."
Me - "Julie, I don't want to deal with this shit right now, you're drunk ... I'm pretty drunk, let's just go to bed."
It went on like that for awhile until I let it slip that if I knew she was going to be acting like that I never would have told her to come. She took this to mean something entirely different. She was madder than hell and it was cute. I probably shouldn't have laughed at her that night either, but she reminded me of a toddler throwing a tantrum. I told her that, thinking it would calm her down, but it didn't.
It was a couple of weeks after that night and I wanted to surprise Julie with some kind of peace offering. We fought a bunch of times after that party because, basically, some words were thrown around that neither of us meant. I still really liked her, but we both needed to apologize to each other and be serious about things before anything got out of hand. I bought a bottle of wine and took my nice bong and a bag of weed over to Julie's place. She mentioned earlier that day that she needed to study for some test she had the next morning, so I figured if I went over later she might be in the mood for some making up, so to speak.
Worst. Idea. Ever.
I walked up to the door with the bottle stashed in my bag hoping I could keep it a surprise. Julie's roommate answered the door and told me that Julie would be right downstairs. We were past the point in our relationship where I waited for her to come down any stairs, anywhere. So, I walked up the stairs and turned the corner to her room and found it was locked. I started knocking on it.
Me - "Hey Jules, open up. We gotta talk."
Julie - "Yeah, gimme a minute."
Me - "What the fuck? Seriously girl, I've seen that before."
She came to the door and opened it, but not all the way. She told me she was busy studying with someone from class. I told her to open the door, that I had weed and wine, and they were two of her favorite things. She told me it was an important test. I told her she needed to open the door before I got mad. She refused, I got mad.
Turned out I arrived just in time to interrupt Julie and her friend from consummating their evening of study. She cleared her study friend out of her room and we talked. She chose this time to tell me the whole truth, thinking that maybe if she were honest I would be fine with her plans to fool around with some dude from her stats class. We argued about a few things, I called her a few names and she called me a few of her own. I stormed out of her house with the weed and wine and kept it to myself that night.
Since she didn't technically cheat on me, I took her back eventually. I didn't know what else to do, I really liked her, I hoped we'd be able to move past the whole thing and go back to the way things were.
I learned one important lesson that night at the party, that text messaging is the devil. I would later learn another lesson, that things can never go back to the way they were.
to be concluded...
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