"Have you ever been close to tragedy?"
I've been listening to the mightymighty bosstones all morniiiiiing... Since about 6am. 'course, I only stopped listening to 'em around 3.
That song, as do so many things, remind me of Johnny... Of those glorious first months when we were so intensely best friends that even we'd forgotten that we'd only known each other a handful of weeks and fear-and-loathing-esque days...
Lucky dragged us all out to see American History X when it opened sometime last year. It was the Thursday before Bromont weekend with the ski team... Musta been around March, then.
I had no idea what the movie was about, I don't watch TV, I never have any idea what's going on in the buyme-buyme world...
I was just excited to be invited out with the boys.
I most certainly didn't know it was going to send me into shock. How bleeding-heart pathetic is that?
I tell you, marriage ruined my stainless steel exterior. (speaking of stainless steel, I have a flask of Glennlivett wishing you a very happy St-Patty's day.) Newly divorced and alone and just beginning to attempt to re-establish my identity and whoever it was that I had been before I'd had my personality sucked down the front pocket of an apron and a textbook.
Driving home to my desolate appartment after the movie (the hallway always smelled of rotten sardines and I had no furniture but my bed and my couch and a $50 beat-up kitchen table that was housing $4000 of computer equipment) I told John, the first person I'd *ever* told, about the first stomping I'd seen.
It wasn't a teeth-on-the-sidewalk stomping like in the movie.
It was a full-out traditional stomping.
You kick him until he's down and his alligator-skin briefcase matches his cracked shoes and then you take turns, in perfectly organized hierarchical order, bringing your steel-shod boots crashing down on his face.
There were 8 of us, 7 doing the stomping. I was new, I didn't have 'rank' yet...
I just stood there, watching the progression of some prettyboy's face (he looked about 35, probably had kids waiting at home for him) turn from goldenboy to cherry-cheescake puree...
And I jsut stood there.
Then [insert name here]'s foot came down.
Again with the tradition. Straight down on the nose, then twist, driving it up, up...
I, uhm, I'm going to stop here, 'kay?
Point being, before that evening with John and the movie, I'd never admitted to myself, let alone anyone else, just exactly what it was I'd been doing in those drunken-stupour days.
Stupour is right. Not like last night's hopped-up-on-goofballs-and-guinness stupour. A shock-and-rum-and-power-my-nose-and-try-to-forget-the-faces kinda stupour.
It's so hard, in my office, behind this big desk, my big shiny monitor just like the one I've got back home, elegant heels on my feet, elegant coat sweeping the backs of my calves as I walk, all austere and faker-than-Leon's-promises classy, to figure out how I got here.
You're right Marc, I have no class. And I really don't think I belong here... I wanna go back to when I was so damn sure i knew everything. Back when the little things (little, hah) we knew were making a difference... Back...
No, I don't want to go back. I just want to reconcile these strangely disjointed lifetimes I've had. How did I go from working in a warehouse with a bunch of bad-arsed latino boys, to hating the world so blackly and bleakly that people were made of paper-and-pine-gum, to being married, to getting into medical school, to turning it down and being >this< close to a software engineering degree...
When did my apppartment suddenly grow high-ceiling-and-woodwork? When did I get a cellphone? When did I start wearing lipstick that wasn't bloooo....
There now. Love me or leave me, but it's out. It's not mine anymore. I'm sorry Chuckies, that you had to be the second person to ever hear this story.
I'm sorry about the way you reacted and how I swore that I'd never trust you again.
Neither of us were fair to each other, or ready for each other...
But now you're in LA shattering horizons, and I'm here slowly becoming the 'normal girl' you so desperately wanted me to be.
But they haven't got me yet.
And I'll never forget the only time I've ever seen John cry. He had to stop the car and lie his head in my arms, my goldenboy, star-athlete jockboy with the beautiful friends, who taught me how to smoke $85 cigars and who took me out to restaurants with pink-silk tablecloths, me in my scuffed boots and torn sweathsirt.
That was almost exactly a year ago...
Or 8 years ago. You pick.
So much has changed, only it still hurts, doesn't it?
(By the way, methybeth and cf188, thanks for reminding me that I never used to pull my punches either. And I don't think that's the important bit about growing up. So maybe I'll stop being such a baby then, eh? Maybe.)