TEARS

I know how to cry. I just don't know when to cry.

I have this pet theory that states: if I didn't hold back my tears, I would constantly sob, nonstop, without end, without reason. The tight rein I keep around my emotions are the only thing preventing me from total nervous collapse, or so my theory goes.

There are different kinds of tears-- tears of sorrow, for deaths of loved ones and mourning tragic events; tears of regret, when one wishes to change the course of the past; tears of joy, due to overwhelming relief and/or closure; and tears of laughter, my favorite kind, the ones that hint at the sorrow beneath the exterior...

Last night I cried, but I don't know how to classify those tears. They just snuck up on me, for no reason. Okay, maybe there was a catalyst-- alcohol, for example. In addition to being physically allergic to the stuff, another reason why I shun spirits is because they make me emotional beyond belief.

Eve and I were drinking Newcastle and talking. After watching that episode of The Simpsons where Mrs. Crabapple and Principal Skinner start dating, we reminisced about high school and the affairs that occurred between some of our CORE teachers. This led to our opinions on who our favorite teachers were.

I ended up taking the topic back as far as junior high, telling Eve about Mr. Pryor, my 7th Grade English teacher. He was the first teacher that ever told me that I was a good writer. He had this after-school literary magazine, Harmony, that he wanted me to be a part of, and I submitted to him everything that I had ever written up to that point. We adjourned for a few sessions and everything was going swimmingly until Mr. Pryor took an unexplained leave of absence.

Mr. Pryor was a student favorite, because he didn't bullshit and didn't even try to be liked. He was just an ornery, prickly personality, a young curmudgeon, with a sexual ambiguity that only fascinated us Magnet kids-- I never found out if he was bisexual or just gay.

So when his return to school kept being delayed month after month, spanning over a year's time, the natives got restless. We did not accept his regular substitute, Mrs. Craig, and counted the days, hours, minutes until Mr. Pryor came back.

Of course you know where this is going.

The day we found out that Mr. Pryor died of AIDS was a real bummer. At the time, I seemed more concerned with the fact that I was never going to see my writings again, but in the back of my head there was a lack of comprehension, and the best way to deal with such heavy news was to act like it didn't affect me.

But it did. Especially when our Magnet Cooridnator, a lovely woman by the name of Mrs. Truscott, told me that Mr. Pryor himself had wanted me to know that he thought I had talent as a writer. At the time I dismissed it as an adult trying to make a student feel better, but another part of me wanted to believe it was true, that Mr. Pryor had cared about my writing, and that maybe it gave him some sort of solace before he passed away.

That year, the Harmony staff memorialized him with odes and prose pieces. Someone even drew a picture of him. As part of the staff, I had the chance to preview the tribute page before it was printed. I appreciated the contributions of the others, but I felt like they were also maudlin and cheesy, too solemn or too reverential. As much as I liked Mr. Pryor, it seemed to me that canonization was something he would've been offended by, something that would've made him blush, or perhaps cause him to pop out of his casket and call "Bullshit!" right in front of his pallbearers.

So I wrote a poem, and I wish I could recall what its contents were. All I know is, the gist was simple: don't cry for this man. Instead, remember him, apply his lessons to your own life, and be grateful that you ever knew him at all.

Nearly two decades later, I finally cried for Mr. Pryor, on a moderately-temperatured winter evening, in the middle of an anecdote that I was relating to Eve. I couldn't help it-- the first droplet rolled down my face, and she saw it, and she was sufficiently surprised. And I tried to compose myself and pretend like it didn't happen, but she reached over to me and held me tight. She told me to let it go, and I did, all the while rambling on about "Oh, I don't know why I'm doing this, you'll have to excuse me..." and that sort of thing.

Eve has only seen me like this once, a long time ago, when we were in her room, baring our souls to each other, revealing deep dark secrets. She cried on me that night, and I was totally unprepared for the display. I responded with some sadness of my own, and we were even.

As we left my apartment and drove over to The Garage, she told me that she'd cried during therapy earlier in the week. It was a breakthrough, and it also explained why she didn't call me later on that night-- she was too drained to do it. Maybe she thought I wouldn't understand, but here I was, crying in her arms, wondering why the death of a middle school English teacher from years before made me sad.

I think the looks she gave me in the wake of my outburst said it all: she was sort of proud of me, for not trying to be so macho, for not trying to pretend like it didn't affect me, for showing some weakness... for being open.

Two fucked-up individuals like Eve and I understand each other in more than surface ways-- we feel each other's pain because we still carry a lot of it with us. Her therapy session was a breakthrough because she was able to identify the root of her melancholy-- her relationship with her step-mother, who always made her feel unwanted and unloved. Now that she knows the root cause, she can go about trying to repair the damage in her soul, and I know what that feels like, to finally be able to articulate feelings that once seemed unmanageable and disordered.

My therapy sessions consist of writing in this blog, playing music, and trying to find reasonable escapes from my problems. I've got a long way to go, but I feel like I'm getting there.

It's a scary thing, to expose vulnerability to someone who, only half a year ago, I swore I would never speak to again. And yet, when I write, I will reveal things about myself that some people find disturbingly candid, way too frank for blog pages. I write sometimes as if I am not afraid to be judged, and that's because I know there are far worse things in life than being judged by a bunch if people that I barely know.

It's terrifying to trust someone enough that you can show them your less-than-jovial side. And yet, lately I've been doing it a lot. I cried when I spoke to Anna not too long ago. Once again, I didn't know why I was crying. All I knew was that I was scared of losing her to a disease, and it made me realize that there are many things I have yet to tell her. The thought of not having Anna around to confide in and share with shook me up a bit. And so I let my guard down, albeit over the phone, and let the tears flow.

Like I said, I can't categorize these tears. Are they the residue from the last four years of heartache and confusion? Are they portents of things to come? Are they manifestations of the chaos in my own life? A longing to be young again, maybe?

I don't know.

All I know is, I felt better afterwards, and we laughed and held each other and kissed and danced in the night slowly, trusting each other invisibly, knowing each other instinctively...

She's going to be busy for the next few days, tending to Christmas parties and obligations. I have a few of my own that I have to take care of, and maybe we will spend one day this weekend together, decorating a tree, watching Christmas DVDs-- Eve has vowed to make me watch It's A Wonderful Life because I admitted that I'd never seen the movie all the way through. I recommended Bad Santa, and we agreed to have a marathon sometime soon, while huddled beneath blankets sipping eggnog and absorbed in each other's company.

I guess last night was a breakthrough for me. Maybe it wasn't on the scale of Eve's breakthrough, but for me it was a considerable leap forward.

It was Progress.

Hope.

Optimism.

I think it'll all work out for the best.