Funny thing about the
obvious-- sometimes it only slaps you in the face in that dead zone between the
past and the
present. I had the same sense of
impending doom with a double-scoop of
ambivalence as
Diomedes (a close personal friend who has regrettably chosen to spend his time in
Poughkeepsie.) That
Friday the 13th was a strange time for me, and as I sat on the phone with the mine and Diomedes' mutual male
gossip queen friend, I was filled with the very same
excited guilt. As you might have imagined, I wanted her too. In fact, I believed that this girl might have been the solution to at least a handful of my scads of
problems.
But it's funny how the space of two school years and an
entirely new life can put the past in perspective. This girl, of whom Diomedes, myself, and our ill-fated friend were all
enamoured turned out to be an
entirely different person from who we all thought she was. Looking back at this node now, a crystalline memory of how things were, I know the
truth.
Not too long ago I found out that the very night that this lovely young woman suggested that she and my friend needed to "
spend some time apart to
test their relationship," she got
somewhat inebriated and proceeded to
fornicate with two
gentlemen who were a good six years older than her and whom she hadn't even met before that night.
But it gets
better. The following
spring, another close friend of mine confessed to this girl that he was in
love with her. It is important to bear in mind that he had been a
loyal friend to her since before I had even known him, and that he couldn't keep the feeling inside of him any longer. She then proceeded to
hook up with him for an hour or so and then push him away in disgust.
For
weeks and
months she would neither talk to him nor
acknowledge his existence. A few weeks before
graduation (a humble ceremony coupled with a well-rehearsed speech by a well-paid speaker), this very same girl approached my very same friend, a smile cracking her
porcelain face. She
hugged him, and asked him to
carry packages.
That
summer after
junior year in high school, she was beautiful and perfect. I always
beg for the truth, but I sometimes wish I could live in the
blissful lie of Friday July 13, 2001.