My Best Girl

“Is that the way you feel?”

It seemed like such a simple question. A throwaway, just in the middle of a long conversation kind of thing. A softball lobbed out over the plate.

Never did I see it as a gurgling, teeming sign of what was to come from this girl. This woman that I’d fallen in love with. Plummeted even, into love.

“I don’t play the guitar,” I replied with a smile. That smile I get when I’m trying to be cute. The girls always seem to like it, and I’d never really thought I was doing anything differently. But, years later, when my teeth started to look like that of a street urchin with 20 years of heavy meth used under their gums, I realized that I didn’t smile like that anymore…

“That’s not the point,” she said. “Do you believe those words?”

Those words were this…

“The only girl a boy can trust, is his guitar.”

Yeah, based on my experiences, that’s been pretty well the truth so far. That’s what the song means to me, I said, continuing : But I don’t think it’s an absolute. That’s exactly why I’m sitting in this car with you, because I want you to be the girl that proves it wrong.

“I just think this song is mean,” she said. “All girls aren’t bad. We aren’t all liars. You can trust me.”

I do trust you, I told you that, I said. I knew right away that I phrased that really poorly. But hey, like the man said, “I was never that good at the words, anyways…”

We drove a little bit longer. This was one of the few times she was actually driving. Always her car, as my 1988 Acura was definitely not date friendly -- no air conditioning, bad brakes, and windows that didn’t work. Her car? A 2008 Ford Focus. Funny, that car reminded me more of my ex-girlfriend than the one I was driving did. And that used to be her car.

Why? Because we used to drive around and when we’d see a Ford Focus, inevitably one of us would say “Ford Focus Probe.” Again, why? Because we were dorks who hated both of those cars. It’s one of the few things that I can sit here now, years later and hear her voice. I once had a tape of her voice. A tape of the last phone message she left me before she broke my heart. Strike that, before she stabbed it with a rusty screwdriver and mashed it around a bit. Yeah, that’s what she did. I listened to that tape just once after we broke up. It made me cry.

I threw it away during the great purge, but that’s getting ahead of myself. Or maybe telling a completely different story. I do that. Lost in thought, the train of it gets off track.

So we’re driving to someplace, my guess is it was at lunch for me -- dinner for her. This was before she had moved in. Before I fell in love with her three-year old kid. We were still getting to know each other.

And maybe my answer to that question. Maybe my insane obsession with the band that sang that song started to make an impression on her.

She knew my heart was fragile. This we “talked” about via e-mail, myspace messages and texts.

I look back on that now and all of that was research for her. Finding out my passions. Finding out my weaknesses. Finding out what made me, well, me.

And my broken heart was part of me.

I told her about Emily. I told her how she did me in. How I spent so long just drinking and moaning and wasting time.

So my feelings about a song by my favorite band about how women, you know, break you heart, should not have come as a surprise.

“I just hope you don’t look at me that way,” she said as we got out of the car to go to Logan’s Roadhouse, a cheesy steak joint in town.

Baby doll, I said, I’d break my guitar for you if I had one.

She smiled and kissed me. Groping me in just the right place right as we got to the door of the place. We pause for a second, kissed one more time. She looked at me with those gorgeous eyes and I just plain melted. I’m just a sucker for them. Always was. Still am really. Last time I saw her, she still had that power.

She had me in her hands, could have done anything to me and I would have smiled and said yes to it.

She slipped her hand into my shorts. I got a hard on just as the doors opened an a couple came out.

“Oh, sorry,” she said.

We ate dinner, she a giant steak, me a catfish plate of some kind.

After paying for the meal, we get in the car. She turns on the ignition.

“…and she’ll neh-ver breaaaak myyy heart….”

“Ugh…not this,” she sighed.

It is a great song, I said with that same smile.

“You would think that, wouldn’t you.”

I should have known right then, it wasn’t gonna last.

***************

My Best Girl

(*Inspired by the Lucero song and a real night in my life)

****************

letters

I wonder if she’s ever written a letter?

That’s a valid question nowadays. I figure the more the years go by, the less likely it is that a person has ever written a letter. They may still have received one, because people who used to get letters may still be sending them.

It’s a lot like e-mail’s slow death. While they’ve only been around a couple decades, they’re going bye-bye (not really, since facebook really is just e-mail, but not really…) Letters on the other hand, have been around since paper.

I used to love writing letters. And getting them.

The last letter I wrote was to my grandmother. I should write her more often.

Before that, it was Crystal.

Which is where I just began this story. I wonder if she’s ever written one?

One night we were talking about communication. About how we should do better at it. Especially with the looming her moving out of my apartment 60 miles away coming up. Little did I know then, that the entire conversation was pretty much a lie. Just like every thing else, it seems in that ugly relationship.

Honestly, other than the girl that got my virginity, Crystal is the only gal that I don’t have good feelings about anymore. And it’s all because she was just a liar. As bad of one as a person can be.

I should have known when we had that conversation. She had already surmised that the written word, for me, goes a lot smoother than the spoken. At least when pressed. When stream of consciousness hits me, I can talk up a storm, but when I’m asked a question, not so much…

(and that’s where I lost interest last night…)

***

The dead silence of the place is comforting. The eye of the storm must be passing over. The rain has stopped. The wind has stopped. And so has that howl. That deafening howl. The wind doesn’t try to frighten you, it just does. Because it knows that you know there’s nothing you can do to slow it down. You can stand inside a building. It will knock it down. You can get in your car. It will pick it up and toss it. You can run. But it is faster.

For now, it’s gone.

So, like any sane person, I go outside and assess the damage.

A couple of flipped over trees. A downed power line. The bar’s window is shattered.

I walk down to the beach. It’s been decimated. The sand is at least four, five feet lower off the dunes. There are a few cliff-like areas where the beach was strong, but the water just carved out a path around it.

Then, just like before, the wind starts up again. Howling like an aircraft’s engine. Then the rain. It stings as the wind slaps it against your face. Not as bad as the sand, however, which hits and cuts into your skin.

But instead of running the couple of blocks back to the house, you stay on the beach. This is too good to miss. And you may never live at the beach again. Hell, you may never live again. So why not?

The water is like beer. It always looks that color here, never blue like they tell you it should be. Or even green like the place is named for “Emerald Isle”, ha. Too much military dumping I guess.

The wind adds to the illusion. Blowing the frothy bubbles about like the foam on a good pint of Guinness. It’s warm too, just like it should be.

I watch a big swath of the foam drift up towards me. I stick my hand down into the sand and grab a giant piece of it, shoving into my mouth. The salty taste makes me feel good. I don’t know why, but I’ve always loved getting salt water in my mouth. I’m surprised that I didn’t drink it as a kid. Well, on purpose at least. The drinking of it after a wave knocks you under doesn’t really count. Especially when you’re filled with fear as it drags you underneath the current.

The ocean is one thing I’ve never been afraid of. I never had to conquer a fear of the water.

But right now, it’s menacing. I do respect it. And it seems to be telling me something. Every time I inch closer to the water, a giant wave cascades along and pushes me back.

“You know better,” it seems to be telling me.

Just like my last girlfriend. The one who didn’t write letters.

I wrote her. She said she’d write me back.

Never did.

I’d write her again.

Nada.

After she broke my heart, using the same rusty screwdriver that I had wedged out of my chest from the last time, but stupidly left sitting on my mantle, to rip my heart open again -- I wrote her again.

She sent me an e-mail, months later.

Apologizing.

I fell for it again.

And she didn’t need a weapon this time. I realized it before it got too dangerous and I just ran away, broken again, but only dripping blood and not spout out of me like a geyser.

Live and learn.