WRITING TO REACH YOU-BTCB 3

*I really didn't intend to write these in chronological order, but I was walking past one of my old apartments earlier, I started to think about this one, and this story just fits here and nowhere else.

I wish I could say I handled this one differently, but I didn't. I was 21 years old and thought that I was invincible and that I could dodge karma and that I could get away with anything.
It was summer, and I was working at the gym. I was working on moving back to Colorado, this time with OP (see post 2 previous) following close behind as soon as he could.
Many of the people who came to work out at the gym were medical students or law students from the college a few miles away. One of the regulars came in almost every night and lifted weights, then came to the desk to talk to me. I am not entirely sure how he asked me out. I don't remember. I do remember that one night, my mother was visiting and enjoying the facilities, and when she saw WTRY come up and talk to me, she feigned a swoon and smiled. Yes, he was that kind of guy. The one even your mother thinks is hot. (Later when I told him he was a recent law school grad who worked as a court clerk but decided he wanted to go back to school-to MED SCHOOL-she almost died. Seriously.)
Anyway. I remember our dates very well. Most of the time, I was a bit freaked out because he wanted to pick me up (remember, I actually lived with OP at this time) but I worked around it. We went to see "Memento." We went to an outdoor Better Than Ezra concert. We ate at a seafood restaurant that served "just okay" sushi. We went to his apartment and talked about philosophy (wow, I feel like I was smarter then than I am now). I remember one night that I was at his place until late. He invited me to stay. "It's not like that," he said. "I'll sleep on the sofa. You can have the bed." I hated to say "no," but I had to. I had a boyfriend at home, remember? Yeah, horrible, horrible me.
I still can't say I know 100% exactly for sure if I knew what love was back then, but whatever I thought it was, I thought I loved both of these guys at once. It was like a boxing ring...in one corner, OP with his adorable almost-shaved head that always smelled like his lotion, his crazy glasses, his quiet shyness, our nights spent watching "Pulp Fiction" on the living room floor. In the other corner, WTRY with his wonderful ability to talk about the most obscure college philosophy class references, his chivalry, the sexy smile that he seemed to save for only me. Yikes. Just...yikes.
He actually told me that he planned to move to Denver in the next few months. "I have friends there," he said. "Once you get to Colorado, I will set you up with them, so you will know people. And when I move, you will only live an hour away." (!!!SERIOUSLY!!!!)
And so, the night before I was supposed to caravan across the country with my father (and all my belongings) in tow, I went out with WTRY. For some reason, I can't remember exactly what we did (besides go to the pub and drink a beer or two...that could be why I don't remember?) but I do remember where we parked the cars. (We had met, another one of my ways to avoid OP and WTRY figuring out my horrible deception. I couldn't decide! I was going to! I was! Just not right then!) Right across from the gym. And I remember that we left wherever we were, and planned to drive somewhere else. At the car, he stopped me and kissed me. We just looked at each other for a minute, and suddenly, I felt that someone was watching us. We both looked over to see an obviously homeless older man, one hand down his pants, staring. WTRY looked at him and said "Can I help you?"
"WHY YOU STEAL MY SHIT, MAN? WHY?????"
And with that, the homeless man reared back and decked WTRY with his fist. And connected with his lip. (Remember...WTRY was about 6'3" and built like a fireman...all muscle, but not gross bodybuilder overdone muscle. The homeless guy was about my height, maybe 5'4" at the most, and stooped and skinny.)
No, really. Again, you can't make this shit up.
WTRY stood there stunned, hand on his mouth, started to say, "Why did you do that?" when a younger, also obviously homeless man appeared. He had an umbrella in his hand and a backpack on.
"Here, hold this," he told me in a soft voice as he handed me the umbrella. He turned and started to fight with the older homeless man. WTRY grabbed my hand and practically pushed me over to his car and into the passenger side.
"You aren't going back out there yet. We are staying in my car for a while. Those guys are nuts."
I was mortified. It wasn't my fault, but I felt so stupid.
WTRY moved his rearview mirror and turned on his dome light. Sure enough, his lip was bleeding. He looked over at me. "I hope he didn't hit me with the hand that was down his pants."
We sat there for a while.
"I made you something, for the trip," he said. He pulled a cellular phone out of his glove box. A phone? "I have the same phone. I mean, this one isn't set up to work as a phone, but it's an mp3 player. And you attach this connector so you can use it with your cassette player (this was 2001 and I had a 1996 car.) I was touched. He showed me how to use it, and the first song to play was a Travis song--Writing to Reach You. Hence, the name.
I can't, for the life of me, remember how the night ended. It was after 3am and I was set to leave at 5am for a very, very long drive. The night was sad, and touching, and hilarious, and scary, and sometimes I wish I could do it all over again.
I ended up not moving. When I got there, I could not find a place to live (my dad thought that my idea of flying out a few months earlier to find an apartment was silly, heh) and I just suddenly felt...wrong (again, no idea why. Because I was to meet my husband a few years later? Hmm.) I called WTRY from Kansas on the way back home.
"Wait. Aren't you going the wrong way?"
"I'm coming back. Long story."
"Call me when you get back."
And I did. He invited me out. And as I remember, I was getting ready, and OP found his way into my side of the closet and read my diary.
And then I was just too messed up to do much of anything for a while. I never did call WTRY again, and I ignored his calls.
A few years later, I was working a desk job, and out of sheer boredom I googled his name. He was working in Denver. He made it.
And OP? Well, he has disappeared. Maybe he moved back to Rapid City. Maybe he married the ex we always argued about and moved somewhere else. Maybe he still lives with his friends in Illinois. I have no idea.
But I do know that I hurt two great guys, and even though I am happily married now, sometimes my husband says something or makes a face that reminds me of one of the many guys in my past, and I get the weirdest nostalgic feeling. And I feel terrible. And I hope they are somewhere out there, happy, and remembering me not as a total horrible bitch, but as one of the girls who came before.

TWINKIES AND KEDS AT THE CAR WASH

*This is a 100% true story. You can't make this shit up.




I pulled into the self-service car wash with a one-track mind: get the car obsessively clean, and then get to the mall. I told myself I would spend my entire paycheck on clothes and shoes as soon as I finished this one chore.
I got out of the white Eagle Talon (all 98 pounds of me) and looked around. Nobody else in sight. Good. I walked to the change machine, stuck in a five dollar bill, and counted as each quarter hit the metal cup at the bottom. A nondescript sedan pulled in just as I made it back to the vacuum island. I paid no attention to the driver; I just wanted to finish and move on.
Not 15 seconds into my vacuum time, I felt a presence behind me. When I say presence, I don't mean some weird supernatural ghostly cold air presence. Nope, just the feeling I get when another warm body is in my personal space. A creeper. I looked over my shoulder and was surprised to see a very plain looking man in his 40s standing nearly 20 feet away. I guess I overestimated his closeness. He waved at me, then returned his hand to his pocket and stood watching. Great. A man who comes to the car wash to watch 21-year-old art students as they bend over the seats to vacuum their messy cars. He just stood there, watching, waiting. I could see that his once-white polo shirt was a size too small, and his jeans were pleated. (Barf.)
The vacuum finally turned off, and I hung it back up, ready to abandon my car cleaning and speed off towards the mall a little early. "Being watched by weird man at car wash" is grounds for abandoning car-cleaning project and rewarding self early. Yes, definitely. However, when I turned around from hanging up the hose, he was standing right there. Right next to the trunk of my car.
"Nice car, this is. Give you any problems?"
Ohhh, he just wants to buy a Talon, he's just a clueless loser wanting to know about my car. Aww, I thought.
"No. Never. It's nice. But if you buy the 5-speed it's hard to get used to shifting because the seats are so low so the console seems higher."
"Oh." He pauses. "Hey, what size shoe do you wear, like a 6.5?"
What?? How did we get to this? And how the fuck did he know that? That is creepy.
I narrowed my eyes at him. "Yeah. Why?"
"Oh, I thought so. I sell shoes. I can tell size just by looking."
Oh. He is just a little weird. Maybe trying to hit on me and not sure how.
I say nothing.
"Say...I have a pair of Keds in my trunk. They aren't used, they were a display pair. They are your size. Would you try them on for me?"
Why? WHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHY???!!!???
"Er, um, why?"
"Well, would you consider yourself an open-minded person?"
"Yes, of course. What does that have to do with Keds? I don't like them. I wore them all through grade school. They are skinny and pointy and ugly." I point to my Airwalk skater shoes.
"If I were to, say, go over to that store across the street and buy a Twinkie, would you put the Ked on and squish the Twinkie with it?"
OMGWTF this guy is some weird foot shoe crappy chemical dessert fetishist and I bet those Keds came off a corpse. Ew ew EWWW.
"Well...that's a little weird. For one thing, I hate Twinkies and I won't touch one. And I don't know if I want to put on an ugly little shoe that has been tried on by countless misguided women who still think white canvas Keds look good."
"I'll give you fifty dollars."
What? This dude has fifty bucks that he will give me to squash a nasty snack cake with an ugly shoe? What the hell has the world come to?
"I don't think so. I have to go...to, um, work." That was weak. Come on, tell the guy to fuck off already.
He looks at me.
"I thought you said you were open-minded," he whines.
"Yeah, I meant that in a human way, not a Keds way. Thanks, but, er...no thanks. Late for work. Have to go."
I jumped in my car and sped off. As I was turning out of the lot, he ran to the edge of the ditch separating it from the street.
"WELL WOULD YOU DO IT FOR A HUNDRED???!!?!?!?"



Really. True story. Really happened. Me: scared little 21-year-old in a "penis car." Him: weird disgruntled shoe salesman or impostor of one with a weird combination fetish for food and Keds.

Creepier than when my apartment was burglarized.

"ORIGINAL PRANKSTER"-BTCB 2

On an April day he left a note on my car, and it took me a whole day to figure out who it was from.

But I am getting a little bit ahead of myself.

I was working at a music store, trying to go to school, and missing Colorado. I was always cold from the inside as if my bones were frozen, and I had one goal: to starve. I was dating "Clark," who I'll talk about more some other day. The seductive cold gripped me and wouldn't let go, and I began to get very, very ill. I was weak; I couldn't stand to leave my tiny apartment. At work, I wore a winter coat and two of everything: sweaters, pants, hats. The manager saw that I was in pain and didn't say a word about my weird uniform.
It was February, and Valentine's day was looming. I was getting tired of Clark and his habits, his cheesiness, but felt that I was too nice to break his heart directly. I avoided him like any rational girl would do. Which was difficult, considering he worked with me. I thanked him as sincerely as I could for the giant ugly teddy bear and begged off for the night, claiming fatigue. I wasn't stretching the truth very much--I felt like death. The next day, I hung around in the manager's office helping a co-worker process a shipment. We talked about Colorado, and food, and music. I went home, and my body gave in. For the next week, I stayed in bed, calling the store every day and sleeping on the living room floor, only getting up to force myself into the gym. I vaguely remember an emergency room, an IV, blood. After two weeks, I knew I was never going back to work there. It was a relief. No more Clark. No more freezing. No more thinking.

Sometime in March, I started to go back to school. I got a job at a gym. I had a life again. I was still sick, but not hospital-sick.
Some day in April, I went to Wild Oats. I wanted a cake but I bought a tea. I decided to go to the Barnes and Noble down the street. As I pulled out of the Wild Oats lot, I noticed a scrap of paper under my windshield wiper. Thinking it was nothing, I kept driving. After parking at the bookstore, I pulled the paper off and looked at it. It was a note, expressing concern. There was a name and phone number on the bottom. "OP," I thought. "Who is OP?"

Two days later, I called the number and realized just exactly who OP was. OP was the cute co-worker who talked to me all day in the manager's office on my last day at the music store. He remembered everything I had said, and grew concerned after my sudden departure. Since he lived in the next state (my city is on a state line) I wondered what he was doing in a random affluent suburb over an hour away from his home. He really didn't offer an explanation. To this day I wonder how exactly he recognized my car. But it doesn't matter.

OP and I had the kind of first date that you want to last forever. He actually opened up, which is rare for a guy, in my experience. I had too much coffee, and when I stared longingly at the ice cream he held my hand and said "Look at me instead." He understood. He walked me to the door and kissed me goodnight, and as he drove off, I watched until his taillights disappeared into the traffic on Manchester.

The next night, I was carrying some shopping bags up the stairs, daydreaming as usual. "Wouldn't it be nice if there were flowers and a note on my doormat?" I had absolutely no reason to think that there would be; I have a tendency to fantasize randomly. As I got up to my floor, I saw a weird shadow. "NO WAY," I thought. "NO. FUCKING. WAY."
I got to my door, dropped the shopping bags, and looked down. There, on the mat, was a bouquet of Gerbera daisies, and beneath them, an envelope. In the envelope was a card that was just this side of sappy. I called OP right away, and when he came over, I knew we would be together.

At some point, I asked him to move in. He did. We spent nights watching "Pulp Fiction" or driving around or just talking. He told me he loved me. I really did love him. He played "Never Tear us Apart" by INXS for me. He would bring me sugar free popsicles at the gym. He would make my diet hot chocolate exactly the way I liked it. He held my hand in public, he laughed at my jokes, he organized my closet. We made plans to move away together. We shared cars, cigarettes, a bed.
I had no idea that my jealousy would completely tear us apart.
He had an ex. Doesn't everyone? I could tell that he thought that someday, they would be back together. I had never met her, but I hated her. We fought about her more times than I can remember.
And then I did something stupid. I went on a date with another guy. "Writing to Reach You" was a member at the gym. He gets his own story, but he must be mentioned here.
I wrote about him in my diary. OP found it, read it, and left. I didn't understand why he was so sad; I still believed that I was just a replacement for his ex until she came back.
I think that of everyone, he is the one I hurt the most. And the one I regret the most. Jealousy is toxic. It tries to disguise itself as something else, but it is always the black death of something good that you actually have. Don't confuse it with envy, the emotion that surfaces when you covet something that someone else has. Jealousy can only be felt for something that is already yours, and therefore makes a mess of everything by removing the one thing that caused it in the first place.
The end was sad. I think I tried to patch things up, but he wasn't receptive. I will never really know how he felt, or where he is now, or why I acted the way I did. I can only try to remember all the things that made me happy, and hope he does the same.