again and again

“Have you ever tried to let yourself love again?”

It was a fair question, really. She’d known me now for three years. We’d started out just drinking away our misery together, like so many other women I’ve known over the years. But unlike all of them, I didn’t fall in love with them. Or at least fall into bed with her.

“I did. Once. And it ended worse than the time I really was in love,” I said, slowly tilting my half-empty bottle of “Distillery” Jameson. A bottle I got while on a trip to Ireland that someone else paid for.

I looked at the whiskey in the glass. A nice shade it was. I’d been carrying this bottle around with me, move after move, taking one shot at each stop. There was Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. Then there was Raleigh, North Carolina. By that time, I was ready to finally give up on North Carolina. The state that stole my heart, twice.

So I drove to Arkansas. Never planned on staying. Ended up being there two months. A little while in Fayetteville. Then a short stop in Little Rock. After that, Memphis called. I wanted to try and live in the Arcade Hotel for a month. But, I knew it was long, long gone. But still, I went. Sat under the train bridge that Joe Strummer filmed a scene with Steve Buscemi long, long ago.

I felt sad. So I left. Immediately.

Drove to Paris, Texas. Thought maybe I’d see Harry Dean walk by.

He didn’t.

Into Oklahoma I drifted. I saw a lady I’d met on the Internet. She liked that I liked Level 42. I always wondered why she actually added me. This was in the Myspace days. So I drove to her town -- Durant – knocked on her door, and just asked her.

“Because I was lonely one night,” she said, her red hair glistening in the hot, summer dust.

We’d stayed in touch over the years. I wondered many times if we’d try to spark some kind of relationship. But as time passed, it became obvious it wasn’t going to happen. When I showed up that afternoon, I knew she wasn’t lonely anymore. She had her daughter. Now 12. She had her organic garden. And her boyfriend.

“Not getting married again,” she said. “Just don’t see the point.”

I smiled when she said that. Gave her a hug and thanked her for being a friend. I tried not to hear those words in song form. But damn if “Golden Girls” hadn’t driven it into my head forever…

Next, I just drove. Three days and nights. Stopping in small towns as a drove closer and closer to the border. There was Medicine Lodge, Kanas. Next was Scottsbluff, Nebraska. Two days later, Custer, South Dakota. The next night it was Carrington, North Dakota . I only remember them because I took pictures of signs in each town I slept in.

I didn’t talk to a single person on those days and nights. I listened to the same albums, over and over. Of course it was Lucero. Of course every song reminded me of a woman I’d once known. I often wonder if I should have told each woman after the next about that certain part of me. The “can’t let go” piece of me that holds on to the remnants of the past like they’d kill me if they could get out of my grasp.

Even women I’d met and been dumped or dumped or just passed in the night – naked – got a song. Wasting all of that effort was nothing new.

I used to write down the names of girls who just spoke to me. I stopped one day when I was 24. Living in Arizona, trying to “find” myself in the way middle-class wimps like me do – in college.

Her name was Denise Ragu. I figure if I spell her name correctly, she’ll see this one day. Just like every other lady that put their real name down. We had geology class together. Or some kind of earth science.

She must have marked me as a smart guy – good mark – and started talking with me. We teamed up in lab and I really dug her. She laughed at my awful remarks and my long hair.

One day, near the end of the semester, we got to talking about social things. Yeah, I’m kind of slow like that. It was on a path. I was on my bike, she was walking. We said hello, and it turned to going out on the town stuff. Pretty soon, I started to work up the courage to ask her out. Right before I did, her demeanor changed. She was a smart lady, after all. She knew where I was going.

“Well, I’ve got to go meet my boyfriend,” she said.

“I froze for just a second. Stuttered something about cool, see you later.”

I watched her walk away. The sun was high in the sky and it was hot. Nothing remarkable about that.

I went home and got drunk. Drank 12 Red Dog beers. The beer with a Red Dog on the bottle and a different saying under the twist off cap.

We saw each other in class the next week. She smiled, but sat down on the other side of the room.

The next time I saw her, she didn’t smile.

Pretty soon, the semester ended and I never saw her again.

I stopped writing down names soon after.

I wonder if it was because of her, or because I started dating a girl – what would become three years and lots of booze and fights and fun and travel and angst.

“What the hell are you thinking about now?” she asked.

“All the reasons I don’t want to fall in love. And all the reasons I do over and over.

“Again and again.”