the backward stroke

I think in terms of time, all the time. Last night I even had a conversation with Doctor Dos, a friend from high school, concerning time travel.

I theorize that it is almost impossible to travel back in time, because the universe is expanding forward and we cannot reverse the will of the universe. However, if we were to accelerate forward in time, to the exact point where the universe stops expanding and starts contracting, then we can ride the "backward stroke" (as the good Doctor put it) and travel past the departure point (the present) back into time, going with the flow of a cosmos whose reality is reversed like that of a DVD rewinding.

Or, if you buy the notion that the universe expands like a balloon being filled with air-- that is, it expands then stops and contracts slightly before expanding again --then it might be possible to pinpoint the exact moment when a contraction occurs, and ride the backward stroke for a relatively short amount of time. You'd only be able to travel backwards for maybe a century, if that.

Now all we need to to do is make the accelerators. If we were to use the first theory, all it would take would be to plan an space mission that would keep a man in space for as long as it takes to reach the end of the universe expansion. That could take billions of years, but a man in space might only have to live up there for a few decades before coming back down to catch the universe as it contracts and ride it back into the modern day.

Got it?


*/*


Like I said, I think in terms of time, all the time. And one of the things that has always bothered me about Eve is: If she wasn't that into Dick, then why did she stay with him for nine years?

I asked the same question of my good friend Flora, who got married after high school and spent eight years in misery before she left her husband. The negative part of me wants to say that these women didn't want to admit they were wrong, and so they stayed with their men in an attempt to save face.

There is truth to that, but there's more to it. There's always more to it.

For the record, I can't imagine myself ever spending more than a few years with anyone, mostly because no one has ever wanted to spend more than that amount of time with me. Or rather, no woman has ever felt like she deserved to spend the rest of their life with me.

Of course, that's utter bullshit, because first of all no one deserves anything in this world, and second of all it would imply that I am hard to live with. I may be stubborn and independent, but I am not hard to live with.

Anyway, I think about Eve and me, and when you break down the fourteen years we've known each other, it goes like this:

The first six months of our relationship was pure friendship. After about a year, we were in love. Technically, our first go-round lasted a little over two years, but it was interrupted by obstinate parents and terrible circumstances.

We broke up, and we were distant acquaintances for the next five years. Then, I broke off ties with her, because Dick forbade her from seeing me... and she listened to him. She put the love of a man she barely knew over my friendship, which was going on seven years at that point.

Five years passed, and our paths never really crossed, despite her close proximity to my work and home. So out of twelve years, only seven were really spent knowing her, and out of the seven only two were even remotely intimate... not counting the fact that her parents deemed me 'untouchable'.

Anyone else in their right mind would've taken the hint a long time ago and just moved on. It wasn't meant to be, they'd say.

Well, I'm an idiot.

After five years of silence, we found each other again-- or rather, I found her, and she allowed me to approach her. We made up for lost time.

And now, two years later, we are back at square one again: friends.

She gave her best years away to someone else, and yet I'm the one she loves.

Makes me wish she didn't love me.


*/*


There's this tendency in all human beings to assume that the green grass on the other side is really as green as it seems.

In all those years spent apart from her, I always thought that I was a mere blip on her radar. I had to think of it that way, in order to keep the pain at bay. It was easier to think that she never loved me than to think that she made some bad decisions concerning me.

Much easier.

This past weekend, not only did we decide to be friends again, but I proved it to her by not taking advantage of a situation where we were all shit-face drunk. I drove her home and then I drove myself home. She thanked me for not being a typical man.

I've never been a typical man.

And last night, she decided that I was "ready" to see something she had written years ago, when she was with Dick, when I stopped talking to her.

She opened a box of papers. Eve told me that they were the only things Dick returned to her after they split up. She pulled two pages out: one a rough draft of a poem, the other a slightly more polished version of the same poem.

I won't reprint it here, because I have already taken the words and composed music to them. Thus, to reprint them here would be akin to giving the song away for free... and the song isn't done, so you'll all just have to wait.

But they were good words, meaningful words. They were good enough for me to set music to them, and they touched my heart because they acknowledge something that I have always wanted to know about her.

Did she ever think of me when she was with Dick?

The answer is yes.

The gist of the poem is that she was testing out a typewriter and this free-form piece flowed out of her.

She wrote that she lost me, and that she was richer as a working person but poorer for the loss of her dear friend. She was wondering where I was, and if I was happy, and if I was being loved.

She never showed it to me because she didn't think I'd understand it. She feared I would misinterpret it. She was right. I would've taken it as a testament to our lasting love, and my ego gratification would have known no bounds.

Instead, I see it for what it is: an admission, a confession, a secret she never wanted to come to terms with, a regret perhaps.

I read it over and over after I left her apartment. I then paid a visit to the Doctor to procure illicit drugs. I doped myself into a stupor and read the words again.

I heard music in my head. It was a tune I'd written years ago, music with no lyrics. I can never marry words to music if I write the music first, but whenever I start a melody using the words, I always come up with a ditty. In this case, the music had been written so long ago and yet it came to the fore of my thoughts naturally. These words were the catalyst.

I rarely use other people's words, but these words could've been mine at one time.

I finished the song around 2AM, and then I sat on the couch and cried tears that I have never cried before. It felt as if my jaw was going to break apart. I couldn't make any sounds other than a pathetic whimper.

It was the release of years of doubt and self-hatred.

I never knew how she felt about me during that five year exile. She isn't very good at showing me that. Maybe it's because it's too intense, and can break your jaw open and flood your eyes with salty water.


*/*


I am experiencing an ever-shifting array of emotions currently. I go from sorrow to anger to euphoria to epiphany in the span of a few minutes.

I told her last night, before I left, that I was terrified of these new prospects. I shared a few things that I never would have let on if we were still romantically linked.

What's happening is: I'm learning to feel again, after years of pretending that she never mattered.

The numbness is wearing off. And I will be a wreck for a while, a schizophrenic basket-case teetering between despair and elation.

Bear with me, please. It's only a temporary phase, just like all these events and episodes that make up the fabric of my relationship with the best friend I have ever had.

At the moment, it is a heavy burden. But in the long run, is is fleeting.