RESCUE

My streak of bad luck continues, with my 1985 Chevy Citation II eating shit on the 14 North around 4pm on Sunday.

I was on my way to my niece's 5th birthday party in Lancaster. It was a Chuck E. Cheese party, and I'm really pissed off at missing it. But even more than that, I am now back to square one as far as transportation goes. Looks like I'll be adding more posts to the En Mass blog in the next week or so.

I crossed the freeway to get to the call box and get a tow truck out to me. When the tow truck driver arrived, I mentioned my flight across the center divider to him and he asked me if I valued my life. I laughed. "Evidently not," I replied.

He towed my car to a gas station on the corner of Soledad and Sand Canyons, halfway between Valencia and Acton... in other words, in the middle of nowhere. I gave the tow truck my last bit of money, and I don't have a cel phone, so all I had to make do with was my calling card.

Nobody was around-- my mom's side of the family had their cel phones turned off while they were at the party; my dad and his wife were at Bible Study; and Eve, whom I had plans with later on, was out shopping. I got a hold of Paulie, and he said he'd come out and get me as soon as he was done pulling his trailer out of the driveway. I ended up getting a hold of Down Low, who said he was "down" to pick me up. However, I got a hold of Eve eventually and told Down Low that, while I appreciated his being "down", his car was just as fucked up as mine, and that he didn't have to come out now that I had Eve on her way. I also called Paulie and told him not to worry about me.

We'd made plans to eat dinner, watch The Simpsons season premiere, and then watch Season Six of The X Files on DVD. She was out getting the goods for dinner when she finally got my call. She dropped the groceries and headed out my way immediately.

I've come to realize a lot of things about Eve lately, things that I should've known back in the day when we were together. For one, I've always known her to be ready to help out at the drop of a hat, but I never let her help me. I was always telling her "thanks, but no thanks" because I felt like I was imposing on her. But now I've come to realize that she likes to help out. She enjoys giving of herself, especially if it's for someone she gives a damn about. I never let her have a chance to help me back in the early days, because of my pride.

She picked me up in less than half an hour, and we were on our way back to my apartment when she brought up something I had said Friday night, when all of us went out to Chinatown to celebrate the check for animation copyright getting cashed. After dinner, I ended up at her place, where we smoked lots of pot, watched Big Trouble In Little China on DVD, and stayed up until 6 in the morning, talking and laughing.

At one point, I brought up the fact that I am never sure if my friends would ever be able to "drop everything" to come to my aid. She told me to close my eyes and put myself in the situation of someone needing to be rescued. I did. When I opened them, she looked at me and said, "See? You are that person, James. All I ever see is that everyone around you wants you to do better, and you need to recognize that. They are there for you."

As we drove to my place, she said, "Funny how life works, isn't it?"

I had to agree. "I thought about what you'd said the other night as I waited for you to show up. It really hit me hard. It also helped me to center myself, so that I wouldn't get frustrated."

"I think you are learning a lot of things today," she said.

She dropped me off and went back to the grocery store, while I aired out my apartment-- before I left, I had fumigated the pad to rid it of fleas. My cat Otis is due out of the hospital, and I wanted to make sure that he didn't end up sucked dry by bloodsucking insects again.

Eve showed up and cooked me a delicious macaroni and cheese dinner, with a side of spinach and the biggest bread loaf we'd ever seen. I watched her cook for me and felt a swelling of great pride, as well as great love. She was doing this for me. She was shelling out the money for the food, in addition to picking my ass up and saving our evening, and now she was preparing it, all the while apologizing for what she perceived as "making a mess" in my kitchen.

Instead of trying to take control of the situation, I let her do her thing. It was a graceful, beautiful thing to behold. Watching someone cook is like watching an artist paint, or listening to a musician play-- you notice the nuances, the variations, the special ingredients and secrets that go into any labor of love.

She brought a 12-pack of Newcastle, and after the day I had I definitely needed a drink. Of course, I became loose and talkative, showing more of my emotions than I normally do. We laughed ourselves silly as we watched The Simpsons, and I used the commercial breaks to run out and change the loads of laundry-- I had to wash all of the blankets I'd used to cover up things in my apartment during the fumigation.

I raced back inside with a fresh blanket, warm from the dryer heat. I draped myself in it, and she laughed. I told her to jump inside with me, to share the warmth. She loved it. We sat in the blanket, sipping Newcastles, smoking cigarettes, and watching episodes of The X Files that I had never seen before.

Friday night, she and I stayed up until the dawn. I had to leave and go home to meet someone in regards to certain "things" I had procured on their behalf. I know, though, that had I stayed any longer, she and I would've probably let ourselves go. The vibe was right, but I was still feeling hard-to-get, like I needed more convincing before I could slip back into that role with her.

So as we watched the X Files DVD, I felt my defenses falling to the wayside, even more than on Friday. We were laying together, laughing drunkenly, reminiscing about how crazy we were back in the day. We remembered some remarkable episodes, like the time she and I were walking and she flicked a lit cigarette up in the air... and it landed on the street, perpendicular to the ground! I've re-told that story to countless others since, and no one ever believed me. I told them I had a witness, but to no avail. Thus, her remembrance of that one-in-a-million event reassured me that I wasn't crazy, that it had happened, and that I wasn't the only one who'd witnessed this.

I started to realize that the one thing I had been missing for the past five years was her friendship. Eve and I were once close friends, and we shared a lot between us. It hadn't been lost, even with all the drama and hurt. I felt like we were teenagers again, being silly and cracking up at everything around us.

I was smiling from ear to ear.

She even drove me to the bus stop, to catch an early morning ride to work. She would've driven me all the way to work, but I felt like she'd done enough for me already.

And so I sit here, wondering what the future holds for us. Last night seemed so right, so real, and for the first time in a long time I am not dwelling on the fucked-up shit. It's easy to dwell on the fucked-up shit, because it happens so often, and it can really make you feel like a turd. But then there are those moments, with good friends with whom you share a detailed history, when it all makes sense.

The fac that I had to wait over ten years for a moment like this should make me bitter, but I also feel like we've both grown in exponential ways since that time. She had to go through her lessons, I've had to go through mine. We have met up once again, to discover that we are still the same at the core, but more mature and more willing to let the other in.

We're not playing any games.

And so I sit here, with the smell of hair still in the air, with the things she said to me reverberating in my head, and the hours we spent watching old TV shows seeming like too short of a time. I felt like I could've stayed there with her for another all-nighter. She and I were giddy from the excitement of reacquainting ourselves with each other.

I think the next time we get drunk and hang out, there will be more. I'm no good when I'm drunk-- I get bold, I get brave, I gain liquid courage... I don't have any expectations, because it's been such a blast to reconnect with her. Will there be dark times up ahead? Of course-- with everyone, there are dark times to handle. The real question is: Can we weather it together?

I don't know the answer to that one, but it's all right-- what's more important is that she and I are friends again, like nothing ever happened. I have no more beef, no more grudges, and apparently she never had any with me to begin with-- her issues with me had to do with her own insecurities, her need to prove herself to me at every turn, her anger at the well-intentioned-but-callous things I said during our relationship.

This week will be interesting: Already she has offered to drive me where I need to go, and I think I have no choice but to take her up on that offer. I have to make it up to her somehow, I have to reciprocate and make it less one-sided. But then again, my lack of judgement towards the way she lived her life for the past decade might be my biggest and best gift to her, the one thing that I can bestow upon her that means just as much (if not more) than her sweet gestures of loyalty.

Life is weird, surreal, twisted and topsy-turvy. It never seems to change for me-- always a crisis, always a situation, always something that I feel needs to be written about or made into music or drawn... My life is a blank canvas upon which I paint with the colors of existence, drawing from the palette of experience.

I really don't know what I'm going to do, especially since I am still thinking about Katie, who called me when I was out to see when our next rehearsal was going to be. It is all up in the air. I feel like I am juggling several different objects in my hands, and some of them have dropped to the floor but yet I keep on juggling the other items, in an attempt to soldier on and not let the gravity of mishandled priorities keep me from my rhythm, my pace.

When I get off of work, the fact that my car is dead will hit me, and drag me back to reality. Until that moment comes, I'm on a high that required no drugs (she left her pot at home and I smoked all of mine yesterday morning) and just a little bit of concession from the both of us.

We'll see how this all pans out.