Blogprov: [psychodoughgirl6]

[ARCHIVE: As far as I can tell, this was the first true blogprov that I wrote. It was on my old (but still in-use) Xanga site, which at the time was getting more random hits. I remember this story actually went in a very different direction than where I had thought it was headed.]

At what point in a relationship does dating become exclusive? When you're six years old, the answer is a total given. The very moment she says "okie," bickity-BAM, you two are boyfriend and girlfriend. Never mind that neither of you really know what a boyfriend or a girlfriend is, or what you're supposed to do besides walk hand in hand or not pull her hair for once. It's so easy to be "an item" when you're young, because there's so little expectation!

Unfortunately, as you get older, the answer becomes less definite. Grade school adds the extra little layer of swapping spit, but it's still a pretty sure thing as long as she answers the affirmative. High School is the first real change. It's not enough that she says yes. No, now you're expected to buy her a meal and pay for some sort of entertainment and only at the end of the night will you know for sure. The quest is no longer "Will you go out with me?" It becomes "Will you go out with me again?" Just one word, but the concept becomes something totally different.

And yet here it's still possible to get blindsided in either direction. A girl I knew in high school didn't realize that she was going out with this guy until he showed up on her doorstep, bouquet in hand, proclaiming "Happy two-month anniversary!" She rolled with it, God bless her heart, because she saw it as a convenient way to bypass the entire Prom date search.

My ex-wife would tell you... well, she'd prolly tell you to sod off. But if she would deign to respond, she'd probably tell you that nothing is absolute, especially in matters of the heart. For twenty years, I stood by her. Affair after affair, I swallowed my pride and went to the same marriage counselor, even though I never saw results. I never looked at another woman the entire time. And that's saying something! Flying around the world, you see some breathtaking sites with plenty of breathtaking women. And each time, I would look into their eyes, and I would see her.

She was one of a kind. Something... innate about her made me keep going back. Like she had the missing piece of life's puzzle. I don't know how she did it but she made runway girls seem trivial in comparison, and that was when she had just woken up. I'm talking full-on bed hair. Hell, I can't even pick up women in bars without talking about her, which you can very much attest to.

Look kid, I dunno why, out of all the empty stools, you decided to sit next to mine. I don't know why you decided to use the lamest pickup line in the world on a guy old enough to be your father. And I don't know why you've been habitually rubbing your wedding ring the entire time we've been talking. But my guess is that you're like me. You thought the whole marriage would be easier, that you feel stronger about him that he does of you. And you know that you're getting the raw end and sometimes you just get so fed up that you want to do something crazy, something wrong to try to wake him up to how fucking wrong he is.

But then you also know that, when push comes to shove, you'd always take him back. So my advice, kid, is to stop wasting your time talking to an old man and figure out just how to get him to realize how you feel. Because honestly, if she were alive today, I would be doing just that.

[It was always supposed to be an introspection on a failed relationship (which was pretty much all I thought about in college, all five of them). I was going through a very High Fidelity period in my life, so many of my stories tended to have that conversational tone to them. What I didn't expect was that the conversation would become literal. But the line "I can't even pick up women in bars without talking about her, which you can very much attest to," felt natural. From there the story just wrote itself. Writing this helped me remember my optimism. I do regret killing the ex-wife, though. It seems like an easy way out to make a lost love final.]

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Photograph

[ARCHIVE: Even though this is more a personal entry, I put it in because the last sentence makes it humorous in nature rather than simply emotionally masturbatory.]

I had the sudden urge to clean my room, which hasn't changed basically since high school. Under a pile of old Transformer instructions and photographs kept for way too long, I found an old silver frame. The corners had a hatch work of gold trim and a flawless if dusty glass cover. It was a picture of my first love.

I hadn't even thought of her in months, a feat that felt entirely foreign in that single instance. She had never returned my feelings, yet I had held a torch for her for a greater part of my teenage years. She was standing there with her head cocked slightly and a slightly embarrassed grin on her face, as if unable to understand why anybody would want a picture of her. She was wearing nothing special, just a white t-shirt and baggy pants. The legs were longer than her own, so her bare feet constantly stepped on the extra material.

Like I best remembered her, she was clutching a Frisbee to her chest. She was a big Ultimate booster; got me into the sport in the first place. Needless to say, I did it to be closer to her. I did come away with a pretty decent forehand, so it wasn't a complete waste. She was standing in a college quad; our closest bond was that we both felt at home at CTY, the premiere nerd camp of the 12-16 crowd.

She had consumed so many hours of my life, spent dreaming, daydreaming, writing letters never sent. She had been my muse; my unrequited love was the food of my developing artist's voice. But I was an in idiot. I was just discovering how to express myself, which made things very problematic. We played phone tag for a while, and then e-mail tag when the technology became viable. And one day she simply cut off contact. It was like she was dead to me. I never understood why.

In the interim years, there were some half-hearted attempts at reconnecting. I tried the (discontinued) e-mail a couple times. Friends of mine that crossed her path sent her wished to reconnect. I spent a few weeks anonymously reading her blog. Strangely (or appropriately) enough, we never managed to get past the "Hey, is this...?" stage in any of the messages.

All this came back to me as I squatted on my bedroom floor, the dust clouds wafting around in protest of being disturbed. I had thought so many times of throwing out the picture, of forgetting the past and getting on with my life. Be every time I contented myself with just burying it under more junk. I scrutinized the photograph, framed in the very present I had never gotten up the nerve to give her. I didn't need it anymore, and I certainly had no space for it. But my will to throw it out never built up. Despite how much failure and disappointment was etched into this physical memory, I couldn't bring myself to toss it. In a flash of inspiration, I flipped the frame over and popped the back screws. Lifting up the back, I found four hundred dollars I had stashed when I was younger.


Least the bitch was good for sumthin'.

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