PETTY

After two years and half a million words lost to the cyberwind, I think I finally know two things about blogging:

1. What kind of blog I am writing here,

2. What kinds of blogs I like to read...

The answer to Number One is related to the answer to Number Two.

1. I thought I was writing about life in general, about the new urban myths and the post-9/11 heartaches, about trivial issues juxtaposed with the weighty columns of history, about art and literature and the contents of garbage cans... but now I realize that I'm just writing about my own little life, and the petty dramas that I magnify into epic struggles between polar opposites.

2. My favorite blogs are written by women, and include the salacious details of their love lives, as well as petty dramas wrought large to magnify the epic struggles between polar opposites.

What's more: I think my blog falls into the same category of blogs that I like reading. There's nothing of real importance here for anyone else-- it's all for me. On this blog, I don't write to entertain anyone. I write because that's what I do, whether anyone reads it or not. After two years of doing this, I've managed to write about my life in a comfortable manner, because there are many things that I don't care to keep hidden. I mean, what's the use of writing if I'm not telling you the kinds of things that most people would never iterate out loud?

I don't know if I can continue calling what I write 'pataphysical. I mean, I think my perspective is 'pataphysical, but I don't explore what that really means... which is just as well, because neither did Jarry, and he invented 'pataphysics. At least, Jarry never let on that 'pataphysics was really a bunch of hooey, which is why I love it.

Anyway, so I met up with Eve over at the Garage. This was a watershed moment, in that I hadn't seen her in almost five years. How would I react? Would I get mad? Lose my cool? Act a fool?

She was waiting in her car as I pulled up. Paulie hadn't arrived. There was one of Paulie' friends standing in front, leaning on his ten-speed bicycle. He had on riding gear and was eating Thai food from the take-out box.

I talked with this person first. His name is Phil, and he is an albino black... or rather, an African-American whose skin is "white" but still retains African-American features. He looks European more than anything. I've seen pics of albino blacks, and maybe that was a bad description: Phil is more of a half-breed anyway, because only one parent is black. His skin is as white as an Anglo-Saxon, though.

After chatting with Phil, I walked over to Eve's car. She looked pretty much the same, but noticeably skinnier. I worried for a moment, wondered if she was still doing speed. I know she's been a vegetarian for over a decade, but I didn't know what her deal with the meth was at this point.

There's a lot of things that I don't know about Eve right now, and that's probably a good thing. I am not asking her any personal questions. I just don't care to hear it right now. As far as I can guess, she is no longer with Dick, The Man Who Took My Place (if I hadn't deleted my Archives, I could link you to that ancient post), and is going to therapy, and has been working at the place where I contacted her for at least four years.

That's all I know. For now, it's all I want to know.

I could tell she was apprehensive. She knows that I haven't been very happy with her, as evidenced from my self-imposed five-year exile. But I just don't have the energy to read her the Riot Act.

Paulie showed up, and I got to business, telling her what we were aiming for, showing her an almost-finished version of the cartoon, getting her feedback on the whole thing. She was impressed; she wanted in. I told her to sit down at the computer and show me what she had.

In half an hour, she'd drawn (using the mouse) a Disney-esque chihuahua in Photoshop, without ever having used the program prior. It was fully colored and realized. She asked a lot of questions, mostly related to how the program works. I showed her a few things I'd learned over time, courtesy of Peter. And Peter was gracious enough to show Eve some things as I left them to work out the details.

I told her that she should stop by the Garage whenever she could, to get some time on the computer. She doesn't have a computer at home, and her work computer is strictly for work.

By the time she left, I was feeling a bit more relaxed, less guarded. But it's strictly business. We kept the small talk to a minimum. I don't want to know how the family is doing, how her brother is doing, how her mom is doing; I don't want to hear about her sister, who was a little girl when I last saw her; I don't want to know what her dad has been doing since he retired.

I don't want to know any of that.

It's not like she didn't try to open the dialogue up a bit. She made references to in-jokes, things that only the two of us would know. She wanted to see where my mind was at. I didn't let anything pass through me-- one of the virtues of being such an aloof armchair psychoanalyst is that I know when I've given off some telltale sign of my true emotions. I can feel it if I let an unchecked emotion slip into a visible grimace or a furrowed brow. I am hypersensitive to such things.

I didn't let anything show.

Saturday night, the rain came down like gangbusters. Eve left early, to get home incident-free (she can't drive in the rain for shit). I stayed at the Garage until late, then drove home and crawled into bed. KRTH 101 was playing The Beatles, from A to Z, all weekend long, and I fell asleep with the sounds of the Fab Four gently rocking my ears.

Sunday morning, I called a number of people. No one seemed to be home. No one returned my calls. My only plans were to go to Ellen's house and drop some bass tracks on that ass. Other than that, I was suddenly saddled with a grip of free time. Not even Paulie was heard from, and I even thought that I had forgotten to pay my phone bill for a moment.

Then I got a call, and it was from Eve. I had wanted to call her, but I decided that, at this point in the game (and let's not delude ourselves here-- it IS a game) I would not call her unless it was urgently necessary. This is so that I keep my sanity about me, and for no other reason.

She called me to ask if she could come in Monday. I said that it would be fine. She asked about a Photoshop tutorial book that Peter had promised. I told her he had it, and would produce it on Monday. I told her I would call her when I was en route to the Garage, approximately around the time she would be getting off from work.

Eve was the only person who called me on Sunday, other than Holly Golightly, who telephoned me while I was at Ellen's place and left a voice mail. I wondered, later on in the evening as I watched the Yankees/Red Sox game go into extra innings, if the fact that Paulie didn't call me up even to check up on me had anything to do with Eve's appearance at the Garage.

It seems to me that the reason why I haven't "gotten over" Eve is that no one else in my circle of friends has gotten over her either. She's on everyone else's mind just as much as she was on mine. Paulie never stopped talking to her, and I really got sick and resentful of the whole "keep 'em separated" vibe I was getting from everyone. I'm not stupid-- when someone tells me not to show up at the Garage for another hour, I know that it means that a certain person is there, a person that everyone assumes I don't want to see.

I guess it's just an instinct to not want to pair people in the same space, if they have any differences that need to be mended. But it's also hypocritical, if you ask me, to talk about how I should "get over" someone, only to find that the someone I need to get over is still everybody else's friend.

In other words, why does everybody else get to be "cool" with Eve? I'm not asking people to pick sides-- I just think it's peculiar that my friends want to keep us apart "because someone might make a scene"... since when has anyone in my circle of friends wanted to avoid a scene? They LOOK FORWARD to causing scenes between people! Why is my situation any different?

It was fun to see the shocked look on people's faces when they saw Eve and I... in the same room... actually talking to each other! Oh, the horror! It was an image that went against everybody's preconceived notions. She's my ex-- I'm supposed to hate her, right? She did me wrong, and everybody covered it up, and everybody still talks about it except when I'm around... and now they are forced to deal with their social cowardice.

Like I stated in an earlier post, they probably think that I am going down a familiar route, that I'm setting myself up for another catastrophe. Everyone thinks they know what's best for me, and (as usual) they are wrong.

You see, I'm in love with the fiddle player in Ellen's band.

That's my latest crush. We rehearse Thursday, and I can't wait for the day to come. She is incredibly beautiful, talented,... and probably has a boyfriend, or is married, or is otherwise taken.

I saw her at the last rehearsal, and I got really shy when she came in late. I didn't say anything to her-- I didn't get a proper introduction because I ducked out to have a smoke at the crucial moment. But I couldn't take my eyes off of her when we were rehearsing. And I couldn't think of anything to say to her, not even a simple "nice fiddle"...

She's the one who has my heart in a bind right now, not Eve. I want to be friends with Eve, to shut up the gossippers and prove the naysayers wrong. But I also want to move on with my life, and the only way to do that is to pick the terms by which I choose to live.

And if that means that people are uncomfortable with my new alliance with Eve, then maybe they should've thought of that when they were playing along with this high-school baby game, trying to have their cakes and eat them too. Did they ever think about how awkward it made me feel, knowing that they still kept contact with my ex when I wasn't around? No, they didn't. They just figured that I didn't want to see her, and they might've been partially right... but then again, they never asked me my feelings. How could they know what's in my heart without asking?

None of my so-called friends ever figured that she and I would make peace, and the looks on their faces say it all.

Now, they can't talk behind our backs about our situation. Now, it is out in the open, and everyone has to do their whispering in plain view.

I don't have time for these types of games anymore. High school is long gone, but unfortunately the mentality lives on.