EVERY MONTH IS "NANOWRIMO" FOR ME

Real quick: A bit of background concerning The Man Who Took My Place:

His name is Dick, and he went to the same high school as me. He was three years younger than me, the same age as Eve. I never knew him or hung out with him or paid him any mind, as upper classmen often do. He was home-schooled by Mormon parents until he was 15, and then he was foisted upon the public education system. He had very few friends, but the kids in the Theatre Arts classes made him feel at home, even if he didn't have a shred of talent.

His father was an abusive alcoholic with a defective gene that made him go a little crazy, past the point of no return. Back in the good ol' days, those days that conservatives wish we could return to, no one spoke about mental illnesses like the kind that Dick's father possessed. And not until recently did anyone know about the hereditary qualities of such mental defects, the kind that don't show symptoms until adulthood.

Anyway, he's off his rocker now. Nine years of methamphetamine-fueled living with Eve, plus his own alcohol problem and personality traits, caused his brain to snap. Maybe it was the fact that he'd gone off his anti-depressants. Either way, he is now permanently fucked in the head, and his condition at this point, according to Eve's therapist, is beyond any type of rehabilitation. It's not an issue of drug abuse or cleaning up his act-- his genes handed him his fate more than anything.

He broke into the office where Eve works, trying to find out where she is now living. He calls her up multiple times a day, trying to talk to her, trying to get her back. He is about to be evicted from his apartment, is not currently employed, and roams the streets on foot, carless and searching for Eve, in furious, desperate vain, wishing to make it all better.


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Eve wants nothing to do with Dick, and of course she is scared of what she think he will do if he finds her. His actions have forced her to get restraining orders and talk with the authorities. And if it keeps up, she may have to testify in court against The Man Who Took My Place, the man she shared almost a decade with, the man that (if you ask me) she loved more than anyone else in her life.

I don't envy her anything.

I invited her over for dinner, expressly for one reason: to take her out to Wilshire Boulevard, where a lecture on controversial printmaking at LACMA was being co-hosted by Laurie, one of Eve's good friends from the younger days. Being on the Graphic Arts Council, Laurie had been doing very well. Happily married, she also had to mourn the recent passing of her mother, due to cancer. This tragedy aside, she has been doing quite nicely, and I run into her everywhere in this small microcosm called The Valley. We keep in touch via e-mail, and she told me of the lecture a week ago. And now, in light of Eve feeling very paranoid about just staying at home and watching DVDs, I thought a little reunion would be in order.

I didn't spring the lecture on Eve until after we'd eaten dinner. We ate, drank, smoked, and I watched in amazement as Otis, sickly and near-death, skewered up enough courage and strength to walk over to Eve when he saw her. I was happy to see him do it, and it made me laugh, because my cat is nothing if not a lover of women. And they love him back, because they feel the warmth vibrating from his furry self, even when he is under the weather.

Eve agreed to drive, and it took us almost two hours to negotiate the horrible Los Angeles traffic. We talked of many things, Eve and I: Memories came to the fore, confessions and revelations, points of view speckled in the air of our conversation...

We missed the lecture but found Laurie as she was about to leave. She was surprised and happy to see us. We ended up going to get some coffee, and then we picked up Daniel, Laurie's British husband, and headed off to a billiards room in downtown Burbank.

I drank way more Newcastle than I should have, but we were having a grand time. Daniel showed me tips on how to improve my pool game (playing by British billiards rules, of course); we discovered that Laurie thinks lepers are funny, while Eve finds hermits amusing; I ranted about politics and why Outkast is an awesome group; it all felt very relaxing, after the week I'd had.

I saw the smile on Eve's face, the smile on Laurie's face, the look of bemusement on Daniel's face... I guess I was smiling too. None of us had any problems to nag us for that span of time we spent in the pool hall, playing boys-against-girls and getting drunker by the second. I don't drink normally, so for me to still be standing after two pitchers was a minor miracle. I think I needed it, to be honest. Obviously my body could handle it, so I was more than eager to bend my mind as far back as I could.

We dropped Laurie and Daniel off at home, and I decided to go meet Eve for a nightcap in the form of some pot smoke, before I made my trip to work in the dead of dawn.


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In her minimally-furnished one-bedroom apartment in Glendale, Eve and I smoked weed out of my pipe and lounged on her inflatable mattress, philosophizing and waxing poetic. The alcohol running through me made me scale down my defensive walls, just a bit, just enough to demonstrate to Eve that I was willing to try and trust her, even if I knew better. Every minute was a prelude to a kiss, and I could feel it as we spoke, looking into each other's eyes, connecting, finding a common ground, comfortable knowing that, in a world where she and I both feel misunderstood, we actually comprehend each other very well. She wanted me to stay, but I couldn't, and I could feel her pull, and even as I knew it would be as easy as reaching out my hand to her and touching her face, it would also mean that I would have to accept everything that comes afterwards, the kinds of things that I'm not sure I am ready for again...

It took all of my might to stand up and walk away from the coziness of her mattress, where she and I reclined and relaxed and unwound. Besides, she had to go to work in the morning, in four hour's time. This wasn't like in our high school days, when she and I would make out until her father woke up and started getting ready for work. I had to be out of her window at exactly 5 AM in those days, and there was a time or two when he even peaked his head inside her room to make sure I wasn't around. It was a twisted comedy, my night missions to Eve's window, my dramatic escapes as I stole away into the early morning, after having spent as much time as I could with her, keeping her up all evening and leaving her to deal with the listlessness of an all-nighter as she trudged through eight hours of mind-numbing school...

True, it wasn't like those days anymore, but what we have here now are a new set of days, and with it a whole new territory. For Eve and I are, for the first time, two adults who have both been wounded and crushed by this plotless, senseless, directionless chaos known as existence, two grown adults who have the time to spend with each other, two people who can help each other alleviate the strain of merely being alive in a deadened world, where everyone else seeks comfort while we make ourselves suffer out of our own self-hatred...

But not tonight. No, not tonight. Maybe some other time, very soon, but for now, I have to earn my money and so does she.

I drove to work thinking about what all of this means, pondering my symbolic relationship with Eve through Holly Golightly, who was her doppelganger and substitute, through whom I was able to make some peace with my emotions towards Eve in her absence. I thought about how she talked to Laurie when we were having coffee and described the ordeal with Dick, and how Eve said to Laurie that it is over between her and Dick, and how I didn't dare show a flicker of emotion, lest I give away my actual feelings regarding everything that was going on around us, all of us, everyone...

I just kept thinking until I came here, and these thoughts were on my mind as I wrote them down, and they will stay in my mind for at least the rest of the week. And that's just how life is, folks-- you want to read about the romance, but sometimes the romance is something intangible, untainted by the mechanics of sex, uncomplicated by the need to make a move or my ego's flighty whimsy. Sometimes the passion can't be contained by passages in a book, or chapters in a novel. Sometimes the invisible bond is unseen for a good reason, as it would look ridiculous and contemptible if ever reified or given shape.

Tonight was deep and luxurious and spontaneous and also a little bit of "just what the doctor ordered". Eve and I were lost, almost forgetting who we were and how we knew each other. The night ended by being bled into morning, and I left her house knowing that it can be genuine, even after all this time, all this hurt on both sides, all this confusion and pain and pleasurable, unbearable agony...