unattainable

My birthday weekend was fun-filled and eventful.

Friday night I attended Rose's farewell party. She has decided to make the move up north. Apparently, Los Angeles was killing her inside.

I can't tell you how many women I've met in the past five or six years who came to L.A., ran out of steam and high-tailed it back to where they came from, or perhaps another city.

Los Angeles is a tough nut to crack.

I met some of Rose's friends, some of them impossibly beautiful females with "Unattainable" stamped into their foreheads. And yet I think I did alright, now that I am sporting a beard. Something about the facial hair makes me appear to be my actual age, which leads me to believe that there is something about a man who looks younger than his years that women find somehow deceitful or wrong.

I shaved the beard shortly before Christmas, after a full month of letting it grow as thick as I could. I literally watched myself get younger in the mirror as I shaved off the beard section by section. After that, I decided to let it grow again, with minimal trims and grooming.

Surprisingly, people like the beard. True, they can't recognize me at first if they haven't seen me wearing it yet, but once they settle in they are pleased by it. I'm not sure what it is exactly, but I am elated by it because I like to toy with my appearance, and a beard makes me feel as if I am in disguise or have somehow changed my physiognomy significantly.

I guess if I had a girlfriend right now, she might object... or she might like it. It appears that having a beard might lead to me having a girlfriend again.


*/*


I feel like I am finally ready to have a relationship with someone again.

Rose's departure was a bit sad for me, but I think I know now what she meant to me. I was never sure if I was just pining for companionship or if I was really head over heels for her. I feel now that I was just dipping my toes in the water and seeing if I was stable enough to pursue something with all of my heart.

With Rose, I was not 100% ready. But I also know that what I wanted from her was not based in physical attraction. Rather, Rose brought out my desire for romance again. Courtship. Holding hands. Looking into each other's eyes. Deep conversations. Baring souls and sighing.

I showed up late to the party at the Formosa Cafe. There were a lot of people already there. I mingled and hung out with JJ and Mack, the boys from my band. They were the ones who introduced me to Rose, and were also there to wish her a safe trip up north.

I saw her and she smiled and hugged me, wanting to take pictures. She was on her way to drunkenness. I gave her a gift, a kitschy handbag designed like a Chinese takeout box. Inside the box was a volume of modern poetry.

I hung out for a spell and met her friends, the unattainable ones. Foremost out of the lot emerged Jenny, a firebrand of a girl who stood 5'10", aged 24 years, and had done more in one lifetime than you could squeeze out of six others: a pilot, a singer, a dancer, a traveler, a model, an actress, an artist, a trophy girlfriend... she'd been there and done that and been that and done there fifty times over.

And she was talking to me.

I tell you, it's the beard.

However, I made the mistake of leaving the party to go with the Missing Digit boys over to Lava Lounge, where a friend of a friend's band was playing. I don't regret going, though-- as lackluster as the Lounge was compared to the Formosa (possibly informed by the sad revelation that Lava Lounge is closing its doors for good at the end of February) I needed to get out of there and breathe, lest I give in to rheumy emotion and confess to Rose that I thought I might be falling in love with her and that her leaving would render me vulnerable and sullen.


*/*


I ended up returning to Formosa just before 2am.

The population of the party had dwindled. Indeed, Firebrand Jenny had left long ago, and all that was left were a few stragglers.

Rose didn't see me as I walked in. I stood next to her for almost a full five minutes, watching her sway tipsily on her stool as friends hugged her and said goodbye.

Then, as if on cue (it always seems to me like it's on cue) she turned and focused her bleary eyes on me, and she smiled that grinny smile that habitually melted my icy heart.

"Jamessss," she slurred.

"Rose."

"Oh James," she said, as she hugged me long and hard. And when she pulled away, her hands were still on my face and my arms were around her waist. Her fingers massaged the fluffy wool of my jaw.

And we stood like that for a long time.

"I'm going to miss you," I said.

Rose stared at me as if she could kiss me on the lips. "I'm going to miss you too. But I'll see you in April."

"What, are you coming down to visit then?"

"No... JJ and Mack said you guys are going to play up north. Didn't they tell you?"

I paused. I thought about it. Then I replied, "No, they haven't."

"Really?"

"Hey, I'm just the bass player, what do I know?"

She laughed and kissed me on the cheek. And that was the last I saw of her before she left Los Angeles.

The next night, before we did our show at The Whiskey, I asked the boys about April. They laughed and said they had only suggested that they might go up north and play a show around springtime.

"Man, she musta been pretty wasted," Mack said.

I put on a fake smile and said, "Yeah, she really was..."


*/*


I felt lots of love from family and friends this past weekend, so I know that I am loved and that I have people to love in return. But I am craving romantic love now.

I want to come home and be with a girl and talk about our days and sit on the bed and laugh and joke and chat and maybe kiss and hold each other and caress and snuggle and not necessarily have sex but simply be, with each other, comfortable and carefree.

It's been a long time since I had something like that.

Even though it didn't pan out with Rose, I am glad that it brought me around to this fine point of knowing what it is that I want. I am not sure if I would've wanted anything intimate with Rose because it wasn't her looks that had me enthralled. Her smile was intoxicating, yes, but only because of what spawned the smile, not the smile itself.

Her smile stemmed from a positive belief in art and life.

She had me musing like I hadn't mused in who knows how long.

The last time I went through this was with Holly Golightly, shortly before she went back home to Florida. After Holly departed, I met up with Eve again and picked up where we left off, which was followed by an interim where we both dated other people. Then, Eve and I hooked up again and that lasted for a spell, but eventually it fell apart.

And now I'm on the verge of loving again, and this time I know what I want, and I think I know how to get it... but it's going to take patience, time, and a liberal dose of humor.

And as for Rose, I suspect (in hindsight, of course) that maybe she was just waiting for me to make some sort of declarative statement or bold move. It may not be as over as I think. I may still have a chance one day to discover what she has to offer, if I just take my time and not obsess over it.

In the meantime, I will reevaluate myself as I enter into what seems to be a whole new identity, thanks in large part to this growth of facial hair covering the lower part of my face.

Lately I've been getting strange girls to talk to me right out of the blue, without having to say or do anything. Ironically, my feeling has always been that a beard rendered me less desirable, but I guess I have been wrong all along.

I'm sure there's girls who dig the baby face, but maybe I should see where this goes and decide what to do as the tides of fate bat me to and fro.

It'd be nice to take that approach for a change.

Yes, I think I'm ready to have a worthwhile romance again. Everything around me is pointing to this as my next move. Now all I have to do is remember not to take things for granted or assume that it's easy. That's been my problem in the past: Getting too comfy, getting soft and lazy like the inside of an oyster.

Spring is nearing, and I want to be prepared.