The beat of the drum that I've been galloping to the last armful of hours has been a furious pitter-pat, taratatatata interspersed with choking silences where the mad drummer tangled his fingers in the skein of his own tambour.
Saturday was a mass of confusion, the streets familiar but estranged all at once, as though I was walking the the red-bricked avenues of some story I'd spewed in an angst-ridden moment in my angry years.
Meeting up with Steven, at Concordia, was balanced on the surreal, the halls and doors of the university that I spent so many years drowning in -- suddenly detached, their power mutated, slid along some unknown ravine and lost against a horizon I hadn't thought to look for.
Steven, though, was still Steven, exuberant smile and honest hugs and real. So utterly, wonderfully, real.
Real like I know Callahan's is, somewhere, in some form.
We spent the hours waiting for the show holed up in his office on the 8th floor, serenading the server room, his clarinet and my unpracticed voice that is starting to be able to read the notes and almost sing them.
The show was mind-blowing.
Incredible.
Awesome.
HOLY SHIT kinda awesome.
David was the sexiest pirate I ever seen, and I seen that damned operetta far too many times.
(Gilbert and SUllivan is strangely popular here.)
The soprano shone with the sort of bright light that slams you one in the gut and leaves you gasping for air for hours.
The cast party afterwards was some random party in a bar, my belly full of steamed hot dogs that I'd missed so dearly on t'other side of the ocean, smiles and hugs and even a mutual nose-picking, something I hadn't realized that I missed along with the physical contact.
There was awkwardness, some unexpected, some less than expected. It was a difficult situation all 'round, but there's nothing left to worry about. Resolution, an engineer's manifesto.
Sunday, Sunday was a year in a day, a thousand memories and tears and realizations, closure.
Sweet, simple, honest, closure somehow.
These last months we'd drifted too far apart.
We weren't strong enough for the distance.
But we had Paris and Germany and so many dreams and tears and supportive words and emotions that I can't regret.
A thing.
Save perhaps, that we didn't have the strength, the time, that like the song from my last singing lesson...
"La vie separe ce qui s'aiment... Tout doucement, sans faire de bruit..."
Ahhh, but I love him still and forever, the most tender lover I've ever had, one of the rare few willing to listen for the magic. Willing to understand.
Who healed so many of the hurts with his gentle smile and gentler hands.
Who loaned strength when I needed it desperately.
And yet at the same time, there is a pressure lifted. For the first time in my life lately I haven't known where I want to be. School was easy, and the dot com years of my career like sailing through various milk products, falling into places, choices a question of listing the pros and cons on in a two-dimensional array.
And now? THere are too many dimensions, questions, wants and needs and realizations and possibilites. My five year plan is suddenly vague, ambling, silk threads of a spiderweb furiously flapping in a tornado built of fortune and opportunity.
For the first time, I wouldn't know how to answer it in an interview.
I don't know what continent, country, city, place, I want to be living in. There are so many choices and reasons and needs and some of them wrong and some of them too right to ingore for the sake of simplicity.
I don't know where I want to work, what I most want to be doing. I am on the fine line between a 'puter security architect and someone with too many varied skills, a jackshit-of-arts.
And now, after a day of sweet sadness, remembering the million lessons I've learned, the billion kisses, the perfect curve of his shoulder...
...I am free to wander the aisles of unseen airplanes until I fall upon a clue.
And it hurts
And I love you
And not so much has changed.
When Seb didn't come through the doors at the airport, I called David.
His voice, sleepy, was still his voice, still the voice of a loved one.
And he will always be David, never a nameless "ex", and with perhaps a little more fortune than the madness of the last months, he will always remain in my life.
Just differently.
And happier.
Oh gods, David, happier. I want to hear every laugh and smile and hear the sudden release and climbs onto the steep first steps of new adventures, every doubt and fear and exhilaration.
I still want to hear it.
Always.