So... I'm kind of an asshole

I'm back home in the Boston 'burbs for the labor day weekend, visiting the fambly. I made the mistake of digging up my high school yearbook from the attic last night. There were a lot of track related pictures of me and, since I've been running again, it inspired me to bring the fire back. So this evening, round eight-fifteen I set out on a run towards my high school and did some half mile repeats on the track under the lights. I over did it a little and made my run home a sort of walk/run combo. No big deal. It's the 'burbs though, and it's summertime so you know some asshole kid has to come driving by in his mom's minivan and scream out the window at me "woooooooo!" Now this brings back memories.

Let's get in the way back machine and take a trip to July of 1994. Hair was still fairly big here in MA and IQ was running pretty low. Me? I was pissed off. My high school girlfriend had broken up with me over Christmas break from college and, during my summer home, she'd been jerking me back and forth on a chain. I was pretty easy to jerk back and forth on a chain back then. Hell, I'm still pretty easy, but I digress. I was mad and I decided to throw myself into running. I'd spent the end of spring track injured and I'd finally gotten myself back up to health over the summer. I'd work all day in a spoiling hot warehouse for stupidly low wages, then I'd head home, eat, wait for the evening to cool, and set out.

Now, this is Massachusetts in July so, by "evening to cool", I mean 80 degrees and 90 percent humidity. After the first few miles of my run, the thick cotton track T-shirt I'd unwisely chosen to wear had been removed and wrapped around my fist. I was down to wearing my skimpy shorts and running shoes and my anger at all womankind. With about a mile left to go, I ran by a group of kids. Two guys and two girls. Big hair, baseball caps on at stupid angles... the whole deal. One of the big-hairs got a look at the glory of my 120 pound, 18 year-old frame and whistled.

"Oooo. Sexy!" she mocked.

Fuck you. I thought. Actually, I didn't just think it. I said it, with accompaniment of the appropriate hand gesture. The funny hats were not pleased.

"What did you say?" asked tough guy number one.

I slowed, then turned and ran backwards a few steps. "You heard me." I extended my hand towards them and beckoned with my finger for them to come get me.

"Get him!"

It was on.

I turned and ran, trying to not go too fast that I would lose them. My plan was to run them out a little bit, get them out of breath and then turn and see if they still wanted to fight. I didn't care how many or how big they were, back then, I could have run them into the ground so badly they wouldn't have stood a chance afterwards. I got a little too much adrenaline in my system though, and found myself too far ahead. They were out of sight around the bend behind me when I slowed and turned again. I could hear a car pulling up and car doors opening.

"There's a guy running up ahead!" I heard. "Get him!"

Uh Oh.

So they gave chase in their car. One of them was bright enough to suggest that they pull up ahead of me so I wouldn't be too far gone by the time they got out of the car, but I simply crossed the street and kept going, leaving them no choice but to chase on foot or pop a U-turn. One opted for on foot so we ran about a half mile. At some point, his shoe fell off, so I stopped and waited while he put it back on, then we ran some more. He gave up and I turned and looked at him, but we didn't fight. It had gone out of him. He left and I trotted home, feeling slightly vindicated, but giddy and full of energy, not thinking about my ex for the first time in a while.

Now, faithful readers, back to the present day. Naturally, this little car shouting incident reminded me of that fateful night, so long ago. I'm older now and supposedly wiser, and they were just kids, so I just watched them as they drove to the intersection about two-hundred yards ahead and slowed for the light. It was the Five Corners intersection, infamous for the long waits at red lights. Do I really want to be an asshole? I thought. Yeah. I do.

I ran them down. Two hundred yards at a sprint, keeping my eye on the intersection to make sure they would stay stuck at the red while I caught up. Traffic the other way still had green while I closed in. I had plenty of time, so I slowed my steps and ran out to the side of the passenger window a little so they wouldn't hear me or see me coming in the mirror. The passenger window was rolled up now, but the little shit in the car with his hood pulled over his baseball cap was looking straight ahead. Good. He'd no idea I was coming.

I strode right up beside the car, leaned in towards the passenger window, put on my best killing face and screamed: "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Kid jumped about two feet off his seat. The look in his eyes when he caught sight of me was priceless. I gave him my biggest shit-eating grin and a slow, sarcastic wave. Not so cool after-all, are you kid? Then I turned my back to him and slowly jogged away.

Yeah, he was probably seventeen and I should probably feel ashamed about making a teenage boy shit his pants in his mom's car, but tonight I was a teenager too, and pissed off, and not about to take shit from anybody and, somewhere in my town, there's a high school kid out for a training run who's not going to get whooped at by these assholes ever again. Score one for our side.

I Think The Thing You Said Was True

I remembered last night's dream as I started my shower this morning. I was just soaping up when I heard knocking coming from the other room. This isn't unusual as a particular acoustic property of my apartment makes noise coming through the window from the alley behind echo off the front wall so that it seems to becoming from the front of my place. Normally this wouldn't have bothered me, but then it all came back.

I was in the shower when I heard a thump at the front of the house. Again, this is not uncommon so it didn't bother me. Then, suddenly, it was dark. It was not as though the lights had gone out, but more as though the light had simply been drained from the room. I turned forward towards the shower curtain and I felt the heaviness of a presence just on the other side of it. I had heard nothing enter the room, no footsteps, no breathing. I was scared, but not terribly so. I searched for a weapon, knowing I would fight and that it would be futile. I felt resigned.

The presence shifted forward and wrapped itself and the curtain around me. I felt its weight on me, preventing me from moving. I was more confused than scared. What was this and where had it come from? Again, resignation washed over me. I awoke face down in my bed just as a long, tired sigh rushed out of me from the back of my throat.

I've been reading too many vampire novels. I turned onto my back and went to sleep again.

Back in the light of the morning, I turned off the shower, listened for a few minutes for the sound to recur, and then cranked the faucet back on and went back to my business.

Interlude

Listen.

Though you're reading this with your eyes, listen. Hear these words with your heart, because it's very difficult and I'm only going to try to say them once and I'll probably get them wrong, but I need you to understand.

You want to think that your life is big and important. Of course you do. Everyone does. You want to think of the big important things, but you shouldn't and it's not. It's small and it's insignificant and I don't mean to belittle it at all, because it's the small and the insignificant that make the difference. It's not your overwhelming love or your tidal waves of passion or your all consuming grief. It's nothing to do with the depth of your soul. It's "I made casserole. Come and sit with us." It's a letter in the mail. It's five 0-clock on a Saturday when you know your friends are waiting for you. It's the small things-- the spaces in between. Remember this.

I'm only going to say it once.

We Only Get So Many Days

I went to the bar at the end of my evening, because I wanted to be around people before I went to bed. I sat with my whiskey and looked up at the movie they were playing and minded my own. I thought about chatting up the pretty girl on the barstool next to me, but the body language was all wrong. She was casting glances at me, but maybe only because I was looking at her first. She kept her back to me and didn't seem approachable. Then again, fuck it, I thought. I turned towards her in an overt way so that she would have to either face me, or diss me completely. I struck up and awkward conversation about the movie they had playing and took it from there.

We stumbled. We hit a few dead spots. I threw out some jokes that were big misses, but I did OK. We did OK. She was a little shy, which makes it harder, but it seemed like she genuinely wanted someone to talk to, so I kept it up. By closing she was leaning towards me when she spoke, her arms brushing mine on the bar. When the lights came on, her friends had left and I walked her to her car, which happened to be parked next to mine.

The moment came, where I was required to make a move-- to ask her for her number or, if I wanted to be bolder, ask her back to my place-- and I did nothing. This is hard for me to do in such a situation-- to do nothing. I felt like I was dissing her and, I suppose I was. I liked her well enough, but we didn't quite click and that's what I'm looking for. There are times when I've chickened out when the moment came, and there's part of me that's nagging me that this is what happened here, but it's not. I could have done it, and it would have been easy, way easier than striking up a conversation was in the first place, but I didn't. I'm through with all that. I want something real, a real connection and that wasn't what was happening here. I could tell that after only just a few minutes. I should be proud of myself for following the rules I've set down, but I'm not. I'm just home alone again.

And now I have one less.

You Wite A Lot About Relationships, Don't You?

This is true, and I think I've pointed it out before. There's really no denying it. This blog and the one preceding it are really nothing more than steaming piles of low-grade emotional goo, and I'm fine with that. I really am. Perhaps it's a problem that I'm only moved to write by the saccharine. I have, after all, plenty of good stories. There's the one about leading a carload of punks on a chase on foot during a night run in my suburban home town and the one where I poke my left eye with a palm frond, get it patched over, and then catch a cold and wind up shuffling around my friend's apartment, glass of wine in one hand, wadded up Kleenex in the other, making pirate sounds and generally crashing into things on my left hand side (Aaaargh! Thump. *sniff*). Then there's the story about almost freezing to death on a mountain in New Mexico (though that one is, admittedly, a little sappy in its own right) and countless others.

I've got scores of stories I could tell you to disprove the notion that I'm little more than a Hallmark Moments cards writer reject, so why don't I put them here? The fact is, Mac, that this isn't why I blog. I spend 99% of my day in the really real world being a total jackass, so there's got to be someplace for the warm, angst-y stuff to ooze out. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to trot that crap out at the pub and, besides, I'm too busy getting blitzed and starting at some girls tits while I try to recount the details of The Time I Melted My Right Middle Finger on My Bicycle Tire to get into all that. Time and place and modes of expression lend themselves to certain topics and the relationship stuff is what comes out here, on my couch at midnight when I come home from the pub alone. Wouldn't you much rather hear the story of Danny McIrish and I watching the sunset in our wheelchairs at the park from me in person anyway? I tell it so well.

Sometimes, you can be very brave

My friend told me this once in a conversation about a woman with whom I'd been smitten for a some time. I had finally met back up with this woman after a few years and much back and forth, to find the attraction was still there, but that she was still committed to a relationship that, by her own admission, was going nowhere. I had told myself not to pursue things further; to wait and see if she called me back. It was the polite thing to do, I argued, the less pushy thing. It was when I mentioned this to my friend that she said it.

"Sometimes you can be very brave." Her point was, be brave now. There was nothing to lose in telling this woman how I felt. There was everything to gain in telling her that, if she felt the same, she should leave this nowhere relationship and be with me. If that was too pushy, so be it. Life gives you few second chances (I'd blown the first one years before) and you take them, or you live to regret it, and that's that.

So I told her what I wanted and it didn't work out that time. Later, I did get a third chance and, as chance would have it, I would have been better off leaving well enough alone. Some fantasies are best left as just that, but that's not the point of this story. The point is, that my friend was right.

There's someone who I've been thinking about for a long, long time; someone who is single and smiles at me in a way I've never seen her smile before and maybe that's nothing and maybe it isn't, but it's high time I took steps to find out. I've been biding my time, waiting for the perfect moment, deciding how to ask her without being too pushy, without making her uncomfortable. I've been, in short, chickening out.

It's hard sometimes to know when you are being patient and not too eager vs. too scared to ask for what you want, but after failing to ask her out today, because that perfect moment didn't arrive, I found myself driving home alone and very disappointed. And then my friend's words came into my head.

"Sometimes, you can be very brave."

She had said them over an instant message chat, but I heard them in my head in her own voice: clear and straightforward, but with warmth. She had meant it in the best possible way, but the corollary, while unspoken, was plain: Sometimes, I am not.

And that is what I was tonight: not brave. I can keep waiting for the right opportunity-- when not too many people are around, when she doesn't seem busy, when I have her attention and I can gauge her interest level as we speak-- but perfect moments are rare and I could be waiting for a long, long time, while someone else is brave enough to act. Instead, I can walk right up to her the next moment I see her and ask her out. She can say no, may even be more likely to say no than if I'd caught her at the right time, and I'll have to wonder if it could have worked out if I'd been more patient, but at least I'll have tried.

I can be very brave.