Holy Fuck, This Guy Tried SO HARD.

My heart hurts so much this Valentines Day, even as I make lots of art and celebrate all kinds of love past, present, and future. It would be much easier if I could be angry, bitter, if I could blame The Shy One and myself for teaming up to break our own hearts. Instead, I keep coming back to:

Curiosity.

Wonder.

Acceptance.

Maybe even the building blocks of peace and hope.

Yesterday, I did the maybe-ill-advised thing of pulling The Shy One’s texts out of the “recently deleted” folder (Who knew that was even a thing?) and gave it a little backwards read. Not all four thousand something texts, I only made it as far back as December. But I read enough to have my heart broken open by the truth: The Shy One tried his heart out until the very, very end.

He loved me. I got very, very loved, dear readers. There’s no amount of pain and loss and grief that can stop me from admitting it.

I’m glad I undeleted those texts long enough to rescue his last picture of the moon. To read his last “I love you too, Ma’am” (Kissy face emoji) There was hope and cuteness for our Tuesday date. I don’t fully understand why I couldn’t make it to that Tuesday night, or to our first trip together that was supposed to be this weekend.

Without the fight for his attention, without the pain of waiting to hear from him and missing him all the time (Well, I do still miss him, but it’s different. Because I’ve accepted my longing. Because we’re both free to build the lives we want.) I could scroll through those texts and feel the love from him that I couldn’t always feel when we were together. When we both were trying so, so hard.

It makes me wonder all over again (Without the fix-myself-so-this-can-work pressure) if I’m just someone who is incapable of being loved by a man. Because of the years without them. Because of the fear and trauma and anger and all these years fighting the patriarchy.

But I must be capable of being loved, because I was, I am. I almost believe what he said about loving me forever, even as he was ending things.

I think looking back on those texts (Which I have since re-deleted, and then deleted from the recently deleted) was a good experiment. Even in a moment of such loss and hurt and Valentine’s Day, I cold feel how dedicated he was, how much I was adored. One of my heart’s major quests!

I still feel guilty that I just couldn’t let it be enough, that I couldn’t have made it another day, another week.

Whenever we were at odds, grace is what he always asked for, and what, for the most part, I gave. Grace is what I feel today, with all the sadness. Now that I’m not fighting for whatever I was fighting for, grace is easier to feel for both of us. It’s possible to feel kind, empathetic, even a little at peace.

Grace.

Perfectly 1993 Guy, Part Two

 

Of course I found my 1993 Docs available online in my size when I Googled them for this picture. My birthday IS coming up! 

 

I’ve been realizing that this story has a LOT of me just being a terrible person, I’m sorry! Thinking about First Bitchy Gay Guy really opened a can of horrified-with-myself, not just because it’s when I first learned and applied the term “f** hag”. It’s also dawning on me that every relationship in this no-contact High Fidelity has more than two people involved, though not sexually—I guess that really shouldn’t be a surprise.

 

Anyway, the general bad-personing. In high school, I’d cultivated a shoplifting habit. Just little stuff: cigarettes, nail polish, a small mountain of Easter candy to support a VERY brief flirtation with bulimia, etc.

 

But with FBGG, things really escalated. I don’t really understand why he liked goading me into theft—he certainly didn’t want for anything. He and Perfectly 1993 Guy were the first rich friends I ever made, at least they seemed rich to me! Even so, remember when ATMs had envelopes for deposits? Using his bank card, we would make fake deposits and then withdraw as much cash as we could from each one—usually around 300$.

 

That’s how I afforded my first pair of Docs. Though I understand now that they are just kind of ordinary well-made shoes, they seemed like impossible treasures. We took the PATH train and the subway all the way from New Jersey to St. Mark’s Place to get them, a momentous experience I remember as vividly as any love scene. Those shoes were beautiful. (Just a heads-up, this story has a LOT of the word beautiful in it! It was my favorite word then and probably is now too.)

 

The ATMs at least have the air of the impersonal to them. BUT. Just once, FBGG and I dined and dashed. I think every hard waitressing day I ever had later on (There weren’t as many as I deserve, I was a TERRIBLE waitress but it was so much fun. But that’s another chapter.) was a repayment of Karmic debt. Even though I don’t believe in Karmic debt!

 

Maybe even worse, when we DID pay for our coffee and pie, I remember us leaving mere pennies as tips, justifying it as “Well, they already get paid.” !!!!!!!!!!! I should devote the rest of my life to One Fair Wage. One night, on a roadtrip to my hometown, the waitress asked if we had meant to leave just eleven cents and we said yes. She said that she would rather we leave nothing. I SWEAR TO GOD, years later, that waitress became my kind, wonderful, perfect-to-share-a-smoke-with boss at another diner. I truly do not deserve the blessings in my life.

 

Okay, enough confessing for now.

One more variation-on-a-theme though: I remember calling Favorite Aunt from a payphone to update her on my whirlwind friendship with FBGG. “He’s in love with you, just wait and see!” I guess she was taking a break from shipping me with The Boy Who Sewed Me A Pillow.

 

Although I’d resolved at the beginning of the summer to get more serious about being a lesbian (Doing my own bi-erasure but also just wanting to satisfy the urge…) My First Bitchy Gay Guy kept insisting I’d like his best friend. So, on my day off from the Six Flags, I got the two of them in for free.

 

If I  had invented a fictional boyfriend for myself, it would have been this guy. He had soft, curly brown hair that went past his shoulders Eddie Vedderishly. He was softly fit and had a rich-boy’s late summer tan. He had an adorably crooked nose and sweet brown eyes framed in beautiful fluffy eyelashes. He had on some band t-shirt and green Doc Martens. I made way too big a deal about how we all had Docs on: Everyone’s looking at us! No they’re not, he said, so blasé about the magic shoes.

 

I could NOT believe I was about to ride roller coasters with him! It seemed and seems impossibly romantic. The three of us went to get in line.