Yesterday was the 23rd of the month. This is a date that those who have read this for a long time probably know I hold dear to my heart; so dear it verges on the sacred. Because it was on the 23rd of December 2005 that David and I "fell in love".

I say it in quotations because I am not really sure that is the correct statement for what happened; but whatever it was that happened happened on that night, and because I cannot really explain it is why it is such an important day. It makes me want to rewrite the line in LA Story:

As far as I am concerned there are only three truly mystical places in this world: the desert outside of Santa Fe, the Tree of Life in the Arab emirate of Bahrain, and the bar at the corner of Perry and Exposition, because that’s where I first met him, and that’s where I first touched him.

Ok, not exactly. I had met and touched him before. But the sentiment is the same.

I feel inclined to talk about David tonight, though I tend to talk about my feelings towards him less now since we have moved to Dallas . There are more people who read my blog now who know both of us in person, which makes it a very odd thing to want to confess and profess over. It is easy enough to talk when the audience is anonymous. It is a completely different matter to start meeting people who know him as the David before we were together; who haven’t stumbled upon this blog knowing NEITHER.

Though, oddly, I feel completely unselfconscious around those who have met me since – Brandon, Jenny, Kat, Bicycle Mark. I guess the confessional nature of blogs period brings blog people together in a way that is different. But this is another story.

David and I met the Christmas of 2000, when I was very blonde and very skinny (for me), and he was 23 and clean-shaven. He introduced himself to me, as he recognized me as an old classmate/friend of his sister’s. Because I am confident and he was adorable, I told him he was spending the night with me and NO ARGUMENTS. We got a hotel room at the La Quinta on US75 with my friends Jeremy and Kattie. I think Jeremy was disappointed I brought along this young thing, as he was quite hopeful to have a threeway with me and Kattie. Certainly he would have if David had not introduced himself; sorry, Jer.

David and I haven’t talked about where we each were emotionally at that night, or even the in-between time much. Often I think that that night was a very healing one for both of us, and maybe that is why we held a little bit of a candle after. I certainly know that I had come off a year of an angry (but not devastating) breakup; a year wherein I trained and completed a 400-mile bike ride AND had some slut-therapy, totally fun but lacking in any tenderness at all. I was, admittedly, a little loopy.

I can only make guesses about David at that time, really. I know now how close-knit his family is, and he had recently lost his grandfather, which must have been very sad. He had also recently lost one of his best friends to a shocking violent crime (which, to this day, I cannot fathom how he and everyone else here who was close to her has dealt with it). Not that I think I’m so great or anything, but I wonder if maybe I was just the thing he needed during a low time. It probably could have been anyone.

So perhaps because I needed someone to actually adore me and he did too, these are reasons enough to remember each other for so long after.

Whatever it was, we fucked, we crushed, we separated, we fell in love with other people, we broke up with other people, we fell in love with each other. Depending on which one of us you are talking about, it may or may not be in that order.

I may be completely wrong about all of this.

**********

Last night David drove home really drunk and I was so angry I did not know what to do with myself.

I know so much of it – most of it – has to do with growing up and loving someone in a more complete way that ever before. Knowing how delicate the entire balance is. LIFE. How, as Lillet and I discussed today, as you get older you realize how VULNERABLE you are; how one mistake can ruin everything. Can take him away; can make this lovely life we have created and built upon null and void.

I used to scoff at the WORRY that seemed to always consume my mother and grandmother. Mind you, I do not want to react in the same ways to worry. But I no longer scoff.

It has been a hard month around the house anyway; Marley gone, which was more on my heart than I knew it could be. I’ve started working full time in a job I am not certain about yet. And something else between us this month wherein really I was in the wrong, I read something I shouldn’t have, but the content was very hurtful. The first time I ever felt hurt by him, and it really wasn’t even his fault I should know about it.

Girls: be curious, but do not be too curious.

Anyway, lord knows I am not one to preach to anyone about drinking too much. By a younger age than him, however, I had two drunken driving incidents that scared me out of it… possibly enough to be the reason I have kept my living to non-driving cities.

Hey, how come Boston?

So I don’t have to drink and drive, mate.

The first was a time I drove back to the girlfriend’s and my apartment and I was so drunk I didn’t remember getting home (managed to parallel park on Shawmut – man I am an AWESOME parallel parker), and she shamed me so I don’t think I have driven a car with more than a couple of beers…. ok, three… in my system since.

The second was a drunk bike accident. A car actually hit me – I went over the handlebars and onto the side of my face. I have only fleeting memories of it – an Amsterdam STREET JUNKY was actually kind enough to get me home once I said where I lived – I woke up with a shiner and a hell of a chunk of skin missing from my cheek and I prayed to a god I don’t believe in that if you PLEASE PLEASE don’t scar my face (vanity!) I will never bike/drive drunk again. I wasn’t scarred, and I do not anymore.

I admit, I have been plagued with mild worry since we decided to move to Dallas – will David be ok? Will he fall into bad habits? And I cried and cried this morning because I was, honestly, scared my worries may have been correct.

It must be very strange to stay in the same place since you were born. I think revelation and maturity seriously must happen much later in a lot of cases. At the very least, you must get bored very easily. And if you lack direction, as I think David did for many years, you must do stupid things out of boredom.

I became very afraid this morning that perhaps David just cannot be a different person here than he was when he was here before.

I did not know David very well before we made the very brash decision for him to move to Boston. But I think it was a very very very good thing for him, me aside. Perhaps I project, but anything that breaks one out of a rut, or a spiral, or whatever, is good for the spirit. For the soul.

Maybe I take it to extremes myself – i am so scared of ruts that I either act impulsively or get overly depressed – but I think he was well due for it, and it changed him by far for the better.

David has made me so proud. For him, for me. He is so good. So I do not want to see him slip into stupid habits just because of geography; I do not want to be sick over him driving drunk again. Before I see another 23rd of the month I’d rather move to another city, or be by myself. I love David, but I am really selfish. I’d rather be by myself than worry about whether I’m going to hear he has died in an accident. Dramatic, since it only happened the once, but still. I am given to running away, after all.

I may be completely wrong about all of this.

*************

We are as happy as people can be, without making themselves
ridiculous, and might be even happier; but, as a matter of taste, we
choose to stop short at this point.

O Davey. Love  love  love  love  love! Let’s eat nothing but doves, love. All our life.

Also, let us always ride bicycles.