Ventricle
July 31, 2003
The plan, such as it was, involved three months of dropping off the radar. I gave myself the summer to disappear and let the calm Californiana weather wash my mind clean. And then, back at school, at some point in the fall, when I'm not really expecting it, the news will arrive, and it will be my task to absorb it without crashing. Because there will come a point, oh yes there will, when she'll acquire a sweetie, and then some point when I find out about it, and what really matters is whether I'm miserable for a month after. And I figured that summers have worked for me before, that that much time with my head in the sand is a pretty good buffer of indifference. This, at least, was the plan.
But Christmas came early this year.
July 30, 2003
There's a difference between the lies you tell other people and the lies you tell yourself. You can go forever without the former falling due, but every single bullshit lie you tell yourself will come back to haunt you. But at least lies are like debts also in that if you're careful about making your payments, things on the day of foreclosure are far less severe than they might have been.
That, at least, has been my experience.
July 15, 2003
I have the worst gaydar on the planet. My favorite place for tango classes out here is an art gallery co-owned by S------ and T------, two guys who also co-teach the classes. It didn't take more than a few minutes for me to peg them as gay, between their affectionate bickering and their stylishness. Wrong and wrong. Then there was U------, one of the nicer girls in the class. It was like she and one of the other girls were joined with glue. Hugs, massages, and plenty of handholding. Plus U------ wanted to lead and to dance only with the other (female) followers. So I figured she was lesbian. Wrong again. In fact, S------ and U------ are dating.
I'm not really resentful about all this; I just feel kind of dumb.
July 12, 2003
Q------ says that she wondered whether to warn me when I started dating R------. I have tried to explain that no warning, no matter how truthful or prescient, would have made a lick of difference in my decisions. We are inaccessible to our past and future selves; the emotional turns of our lives make sense only as they are experienced. In this particular case, I was at the corner where Strained Desparation Drive and Excessive Optimism Avenue intersect, and that's a pretty potent combination, the kind that sets you up to be taught a lesson.
And indeed I learned mine: optimism is right out.
