Hopelessly awful

“So, do you have plans for the past?” she said to me as I sat in my broken down leather recliner. I got that thing at a thrift store for $35 and she’d never let me down. Sure, she smelled a little bit. The left arm had cracks in the leather, but overall, she was comfortable and certainly dependable. More than I could say about most things.

I cracked open another Miller High Life before delving into my latest companion’s attempts at saving me from myself. It never failed. Either I was trying to save them, or they were trying to save me. And really, since the only one who can truly save a person is themselves, I’m assuming we’re always fighting a losing fight.

“I don’t understand your question, honey,” I said before burping that last sip of beer. It was stale tasting. I’d gotten used to better beer, this was like a watered down version of Abita’s Amber.

“Yes you do, you fucking prick,” she said, slamming down her foot on the hardwood floor. That very same spot on the floor was where we shared a slow dance together about a year and a half ago. Three quarters of a bottle of Jameson first, mind you, but we did share a nice dance. The song was that Urge Overkill cover of “Girl, You’ll be a woman soon.”

And indeed I did know what she was talking about. It was what every girl found out about me eventually. I had a past, and I liked it there.

“You live in the fucking past. You stay there. And I really believe you want to be there!” she yelled.

“I don’t want to be there,” said. “I want us to be like then.”

That was stupid. Now it was her against her. The girl from the past. The one who broke my heart. The love of my life. I’d written those words so many times. I’d wrapped other people’s stories into her story and made them mine again. It was a losing proposition, but it was the only one I knew.

“Randy, you’ve got to get on with your life. It’s been over a decade now, and you still pine for her,” she said, starting to cry now. “I don’t think you know how much this is hurting me.”

I knew, exactly. Sometimes I think I wanted it to hurt. So maybe the one I was with could feel something akin to what I was feeling. Wrong of me? Certainly. But it just kept happening. Whether the relationship was fucking in the back of the stockroom at work every so often with the young reporter from Troy State, the girl I dated for six months and fell helplessly in love with way too fast and way too soon, or a crush that developed because a friend said “this girl’s got the same weird tastes as you” – and she was right, but just too much the same as she ended up hurting me.

“Listen, honey, I was honest with you from the get-go. And that’s a change of pace for me. I said I had a hang up, and she was it. I don’t want it to be that way. I try every day to leave her behind. But she stays. I yell at her. I curse at her. But it’s all in the wind. If I could see her today, I’d tell her to go fuck herself. And you know what? She wouldn’t care one bit. I guess that’s why it hurts. Still.”

“But that’s precisely why it shouldn’t hurt anymore, babe. Don’t you see that?”

I felt more and more like Jim Carrey in “The Truman Show.” Something always felt just a little off. Which is why I think I held on to a piece that was “normal.” A part of my life when everything went right. Even when it was wrong. Until it went to shit. In one night. All at once for me. Probably over months for her. Damn her for coming and acting like everything was OK for those two months we were together in North Carolina after all that time apart while she was in Florida. New Year’s eve was so special to me that it ranks up there as one of the top 5 nights of my life. Sadly, I do rank such things, and did so before I read about it and then watched it acted out in “High Fidelity.”

She looked at me, and sighed. She knew I was thinking about such random things. She was the first person who was able to get me to admit this. That when we were talking about serious things – bills, our sex life, insurance, houses, etc. – that most likely I was seeing pictures of Matt Damon in “Rounders” or John Laroquette in “Stripes” instead of real life. She grew to think it was cute, I believe, even if it was “fucking annoying.”

“You and I, we will be fine,” she said. “When you move to the present. Until then, we’re going to be like this. You drinking. Me crying. I just hope that’s enough for both of us forever.”

She got up and left. Off to the beach. I sat there in my recliner, thinking about the Ken Griffey Jr. Super Nintendo game. And about how hopelessly awful that was.