“Choke me in the shallow water, before I get too deep…”

Drew is not answering my phone calls. I suspect he is rather angered at my having plans on Halloween, even if they aren’t of the standard male company variety. I would try to explain it if he seemed even remotely interested. But he wasn’t. On the bright side, I’m only slightly worried about the mischief he’s going to get into. Halloween is a lazy susan of harlots but I believe he’s rather sweet on me.

I had a dream about him last night. We were on an airplane together and for some reason the only music was Edie Brickell. He was drinking Heineken after Heineken and I was drinking white zinfandel, both of us angered at the relentless playing of “What I Am.” Eventually it became funny, the two of us laughing so hard tears rolled down our cheeks. This was probably only because we were getting blitzed, but there are few things more fun than getting drunk on an airplane.

I was dismayed upon waking up. I do so enjoy seeing him smile. It’s one of my favorite things in the world. He promised me a curry lunch this week, but with things the way they are at the moment, I probably won’t even see him until the weekend. Sometimes I feel like he’s attempting to condition me, always having some point to make, some minor punishment to deliver when things don’t go the way he desires.

In an interesting turn of events however, Jack showed up yesterday. I don’t know what it is about my attempting something new with someone else that makes all my exes want to come crawling back into my life like jewel thieves. But it makes everything increasingly more difficult. I feel like they are all in cahoots, secretly on a mission to toy with me, to toss my feelings about like some kind of macabre juggling act.

I sat on my bed, watching Jack carefully break up bits of weed and tuft them into a wide-rimmed bowl of a blue-black glass pipe. I studied him for that moment, for it seemed just like every other Jack moment.

He had a longish face, with full, quasi-pouty lips that could snarl themselves into the most unattractive positions or smile so warm I could become putty in his arms. At this moment he wrapped those lips around the end of the pipe, flicked the lighter and sucked while the embers burned brightly. This is how I always saw Jack.

He scratched the bits of a goatee that peppered his face and stuck his tongue out at me, handing me the pipe. I took it, reluctantly, and did what I usually did in this situation. I took the slightly moistened end between my lips, flicked the lighter, and pretended to smoke. Just puffing long enough to crackle the ember and then letting go. Barely any smoke escaped from my mouth and he looked at me disapprovingly. This time, I think I was caught.

His image was arresting. He had long slender fingers and sweet hazel eyes.  We had dated a few years ago, a good seven months or so that in the end turned out to be a fun and memorable waste of my time. I didn’t know if it was because he was a pothead, because he didn’t have a steady job, or just was generally not easy to trust. In retrospect, it was probably all three, plus a few others I couldn’t think of now.

We had our run-of-the-mill good and bad times, neither side ever really outdoing the other. We laughed a lot together but didn’t talk so much. We had good sex but we never fell asleep in each others’ arms.

One summer, once or twice we found ourselves on hallucinogens at the boardwalk on the beach, clutching tightly to each other, pupils like saucers, finding both horror and delight in the phantoms that were painting scenes for us like watercolors. We had a handful of pleasant experiences, but there was no fundamental good that had come from our relationship. He taught me nothing. Things that I had tried to show him had dissolved and drifted away just as fast as they had been introduced.

It wasn’t what I needed. But now, here he was, wearing that worn gray sweatshirt that I used to sleep in on cold winter nights, smelling of weakening cologne and the smoke between us, his hand on my knee.

“Love you, punk,” he said now quietly, his fingers creeping up my knee, resting on my thigh. Although parts of me felt the same, his words were cheap and carried little weight. I don’t know how many girls he had loved in his life, but becoming part of his life had been easy and leaving it had not been. Every six months or so, he would consistently call me a few times a week attempting to get together. At this point he had moved on, started seeing somebody new and was presently living with her.

Her name was Melissa, and she was a slender Latina woman a few years older than I. She had a child, worked fulltime, and I imagine paid most of their bills. He claimed to be unhappy, swore up and down and around the world that he never slept with her and that he pined for me— “the one that got away.”

In my head those words are embossed in silver, written in jet black calligraphy. It’s the ultimate compliment. It’s masturbation for the healthiest of egos. But I felt wretched. I was empty. I had no more to give to him. Nor did I feel that I wanted to give him any more than I had. I pushed his hand down back to my knee and gave it a light pat.

“I know,” I said, smiling a sympathetic smile. To be honest, I didn’t know, and that was partially why I was being so distant. I had been here before. I mean, I was still as attracted to him as ever, and it was difficult to not become a victim to his advances. But I thought about Daniel and the other night and that sinking feeling in my stomach was growing at rapid speeds.

I was exhausted from feeling this way day after day after day. Exhausted of feeling like I was endlessly searching for someone to love and being rewarded with flighty, physical attention all wrapped up in pretty bows. Drew didn’t love me, Daniel didn’t love me and I was pretty fucking sure Jack didn’t love me. Sure, they desired me, sure they liked me; I was fun, could always hold my alcohol, had a raging sex drive.

I removed his hand, stood up and asked him to leave. I dialed Drew’s number and immediately got the voicemail. I didn’t want to agonize over the ins and outs. Whether he was with someone else or just didn’t want to answer… it didn’t matter.

I don’t love anyone. And maybe I should stop trying.

“How high’s the water, mama?”

Between the running water of my dishdoing and Johnny Cash crooning through my stereo, I barely heard the door.

It figures. Just when I am starting to think Vincent has disowned me, he shows up with a bottle of Tuscan Sangiovese and a dozen orange tulips. I don’t know if he’s spatting with Camille or just misses me, and I don’t really care either way. It was perfect medicine for me. I have been staying in and feeling ill since Sunday.

We took our time drinking the wine and discussed Halloween. It’s sort of our anniversary, and we try to spend it together each year. I think this is the longest I’ve ever waited to figure out a Halloween costume. I suppose it’s only normal, my getting older and all, to not care as much as I did back when I was a kid, or high school even. But especially because of all the time we’ve been spending apart, I didn’t expect to be doing much this year. I actually thought I might go in to the bar, see if they needed extra help.

I think I’m over that idea. Vincent inspired me to continue our tradition, dress up and wreak havoc as usual. The verdict is in: Margot Tenenbaum it is. I have to get to the Lacoste store. And I highly suspect I’ve talked Vincent into building me a wooden finger cover. I have a fur coat and everything, it should be easy enough.

The worst part about Halloween is the people. Anywhere you go, you’ve got like four categories of people: the sluts that are going to choose the most obvious costumes imaginable (French maid, whore cop, Blink 182 nurse, ass-showing Dorothy, etc), the people that don’t want to really think at all about something original or something you could put together yourself rather than buying standardized costumes at Party City or something (these are sometimes sluts too), the people who decide to take the opportunity to dress “goth,” which really isn’t a costume but they’ve got all the shit because they were all about it in high school (surprisingly enough, these people can be as annoying as the sluts, more so if they are the “slut goth”), and the people who think so much about being original and irreverent that they come off as hipster, arrogant. That category usually contains me. But I feel pretty good about the fact that this one just came out of air, seems relatively easy and still is cool.

In any case, I’m no longer worried about my estranged relationship with Vincent, I am now looking forward to Halloween, and I think I may even go out after work tonight. Drew called me earlier to ask me what I’m doing Wednesday. I’ll be happy to tell him I have a prior engagement.

I think I may have inspired Vincent as well. He’s decided to be Johnny Cash.

Daniel

Daniel spotted me at a bar last night. I had seen him a few minutes earlier and pondered leaving, or at least moving, to make sure I was no longer within eyeshot. But it looked like he was with a lot of people and he was talking so loudly I was sure he was drunk enough to not be paying attention even if his eyes had wandered my way.

Oh how wrong I was. Once he spotted me, his head bobbed behind his friend’s backside every few minutes to make sure I was still there, doing his best to make eye contact with myself, whose head stayed down for the most part. It was an awkward moment.

I hadn’t seen him since last summer. It was a terrible situation. We had gotten ourselves wrapped up in each other while we had both been dating other people. We had quite a few good times, talked about our similar interests in writing screenplays and watching horror movies but collectively didn’t have a leg to stand on. His skin was bronzed and smooth and his body was almost perfect, his arms and legs toting rippled, warmed muscles and his smile electric with pulsing white teeth.

That summer had been one of my most delirious. We spent days lying in lounge chairs by his pool, drinking peach margaritas and smoking cloves, giving into our hedonistic tendencies, giggling at our fanciful whims. We spent a lot of time together and yet he never told me he loved me, something I always respected about him. One cannot love what one does not abhor at the same time. I strongly believe that. There was nothing of any strength or magnitude between us. I certainly didn’t love him.

And yet here he was, doing his best to get my attention. Finally, I could take no more, paid my tab and made my way to the restroom, in the hopes that he would lose track of me and I would be able to disappear.

No such luck. By the time I came out of the restroom, he was standing in front of the door. I cursed to myself.

“Jolie…” he whispered, in the dim lit area in between the bathrooms and the rest of the bar.

“Hello, Daniel,” I said, zipping my purse, tossing it over my shoulder, doing my best to stay calm and collected. I wanted to skip the drama.

His smile melted the ice I had done my best to gather together while in the restroom. I was instantly attracted to him all over again. It was a bad scene. He didn’t say much, but grabbed my arm and brought me slightly closer. “I’ve thought about you every day,” he said softly.

Now, I hadn’t thought about Daniel everyday, but pretty damned close. He was someone I had thought about for years through high school who hadn’t even known I existed until years later, through mutual friends. I remember dreams I once had about him taking me to prom that never solidified but the time we spent together in these years past seemed to more than make up for those childish wishes.

His arm found its way in the side of my jacket suddenly and in one fluid motion, wrapping around me as if it was a gun finding its way back to its holster, as if it had lived there. He pulled me closer and stepped toward me as well, his lips close to my ear. “I have to see you, Jolie,” he whispered, his warm, unsteady breath hovering about my neck and staying. “It’s been too long for me to let you walk out of here without promising you’ll see me.”

I knew he was drunk but he knew exactly how to work me, even after a whole year of being away. I immediately wanted to sleep with him. But again, I was faced with moral dilemmas. I thought of his girlfriend, dumb, cold and blonde. I thought of Drew, dramatic, troubled, everything I felt that I was. I consistently romanticized, talked myself into how good everything and everyone was.

But nevertheless, he was there; I had been drinking my Ketel sodas and from the smell of him, he’d been drinking gin. I remembered him being partial to martinis so I decided that’s what he might have been drinking. I imagined him doing his best to hold the wide round glass gracefully, handling the olive-laden toothpick, pulling one between his teeth and chewing, laughing at a dirty joke or a drunk girl being picked up at the bar just a few stools down. Then I envisioned how he was when he discovered me, all his grandeur and grace being thrown out the window. I found myself moistening at the thought of him desperate for me, like he had been years ago. I was growing desperate myself.

“Can we go somewhere?” he asked.

I decided to attempt to stop this before it got really out of hand. But when a woman hears those words…

“There’s nowhere to go,” I said shortly.

He smiled as if he had just found me out. “There’s always somewhere to go.”

I fidgeted a bit, wormed my way around his arm, trying to wriggle loose but he just held me tighter, pulled me closer. Grinned.

“If you really, really don’t want to go anywhere with me right now, look me in the eye and tell me so, and I’ll let you go and leave you alone,” he said, making his best attempt at seriousness.

I fidgeted more, looked him in the eye. “I really, really don’t want to go anywhere with you,” I said, straightening my posture and feeling confident.

He wrapped his other arm around me. “You fucking liar,” he said smiling, his dimples in full force before he kissed me.

That next half hour went very quickly, and before I knew it I was in his apartment and my jacket was off. I was already chastising myself for agreeing to leave with him. But the vodka had gone to my head and I had acted irrationally and impulsively, as I had with him originally the summer before.

I was playing with my cell phone, silently starting to plan my exit speech. He had just returned from the other room with music now playing softly and two Coronas in his hand.

“Look, Daniel, I really should be going.”

His face dropped as he sat down on the couch next to me. “But, you just got here. It’s been a long time, baby.” He took a swig of his Corona and inched closer, passing me the long neck bottle over my bare shoulder. I wrapped my fingers around the cold glass.

I sat down the bottle on the coffee table before me. “Where’s Megan tonight?” I asked, biting a fingernail.

His eyes settled down a little bit from the frenzy they had worked up into. “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

I nodded, crossing my arms.

“Come on, you said you wanted to come here.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at his audacity. “I actually said quite the opposite.”

“One drink? Please?” He seemed hopeful, good-natured. There was a twisted honesty about him at this very moment, vulnerability in him that I had never imagined, let alone seen.

I wanted to forget Drew. But I knew that this wasn’t moving on. This was a shot, a joint, a painkiller. Another temporary fix.

I lifted the abandoned beer and took a sip. “One drink,” I said, nodding, looking nervously at him. He grabbed the side of my face with one hand, swept down to set down my beer with the other, and leaned in to cover my mouth with his own…

Today I feel dirty. I’m staying in.

Drinking with shadows

When it rains like today, I feel like I’m being baptized, even reborn. Even though the leaves are dying and drifting from the trees, I still feel like there is much goodness to be discovered, produced, executed. I think my optimism, sadly, has much to do with Drew and little to do with Vincent.

The mystery woman has become revealed. Her name is Camille; she runs an art gallery in Los Gatos. He seems to be rather taken with her, and I’m unsure how to feel about it. I met her this weekend. She’s a tall slender woman, in her mid forties or so, with ash blonde hair I doubt the naturalness of. And she was wearing pearls. Pearls, I say!

She seems very nice. But she is nothing like me. I have a hard time understanding how he can spend so much time with her. She only drinks wine, for chrissakes. I don’t think he’s been drunk in a week. I asked him over for dinner tonight, hoping to get some alone time, some serious updating, but he actually declined! Just to have coffee with her! Coffee! I told him to come over after (how long can coffee really take?) and he said that their coffee conversations often turn out pretty lengthy. I winced, longing for our talks. It’s certainly been awhile. Although I now understand how frustrated he was with me since Drew emerged. Parts of me think he is doing this just to spite me.

I spent a good deal of the weekend with Drew. We stayed in, drank hot buttered rums and watched The Great Gatsby and Bonnie and Clyde. The longer we stay together without being apart, the more I feel that I know him. It’s interesting in an unpleasant way when we are apart for very long; by the time we are together again he almost seems a stranger. The jokes aren’t familiar, the touch isn’t the same. I wonder if he sort of resets himself somehow, so he doesn’t grow too attached to anyone. That thought does not make me sad necessarily, but determined. I want to break him of these ugly habits, bring him back to life.

He calls me his Janie Jones. I have to smile and turn my head so he doesn’t see my eyes well up with tears.

He has a miniature tree on his patio. It’s the only trace of life in his apartment. He waters it diligently, talks to it, has undying faith in its potential. He says he wants to put little tiny ornaments on it when Christmas comes around. He treats it almost like one would a small pet, and although I snickered upon seeing it all happen the first time, it’s really quite sweet. He claims he can’t take care of things. But he seems to be doing a good job with that damn tree.

Johnny came into the bar on Friday night. It was a night that I had been drinking a bit on duty, which rarely happens. But it was not half as uncomfortable as it could have been. He came in with a girl, a short girl with short hair and the slightest bit of a pug nose. She was one of those girls I call pink girls. The kind that never tan, always burn and perhaps grow flush at inopportune times. I wasn’t impressed. He could do better.

It had been a little over two years since we had spoken, but upon seeing him the oddest thoughts emerged, awakened. The two rivets on his back, perfect little spots for thumbs. The way he couldn’t go to bed without the sheets, blankets and comforter just so. The way he would eat tomatoes like apples and put hot sauce on everything.

I watched him at the end of the bar, drinking Jim Beam with this girl (who was opting for Sierra Nevada), while I wondered if she had yet discovered the many secret quirks about him that I always adored. Quirks I thought I had forgotten. It’s funny what entertainment a few drinks and an unexpected encounter provide.

Interestingly enough, however, it didn’t make me miss Drew. It didn’t really make me miss Johnny, much. It made me miss myself. Well, perhaps the self I used to be. I wasn’t half as cynical and jaded back in those days. Nine times out of ten you would see me smiling. I wore more white. I drank 40s. I danced outside in the rain.

I owned the world and yet did not feel its weight on my shoulders.

Great expectations

It’s been a week since I have seen Vincent. At first, I was a bit relieved, as he is always willing to discuss with me how little he thinks of Drew or anybody else I happen to befriend. But it’s gotten ridiculous. He hasn’t even returned my phone calls. The last time I talked to him he actually told me he had a date, someone he met in a wine shop in Los Gatos while picking up some port. Not just any port, mind you. A 47-year-old vintage port, one he was supposed to be drinking with me, one I still haven’t seen and probably won’t.

When I inquired of this mystery woman, he didn’t say much, which is unheard of for Vincent. He is not one to keep a secret, especially from me. Perhaps she’s much older or younger. Or horrendously unattractive.

Whatever the case, I have been lonely the past few days. Drew and I only see each other about once a week, and although I always enjoy myself, it’s a bit torturous for me. We linger in this limbo, not exactly friends and not quite lovers in the traditional sense. It has become increasingly more obvious that he is absolutely terrified of falling in love. Not saying at all that that’s what I’m looking for, but when you are seeing someone for whom it doesn’t even seem possible, it can feel like a waste of time; empty comedy.

I am always searching for meaning. I scour people for depth and humanity, and when there is a bleak landscape, my outlook becomes so as well. We send drunken emails back and forth, mine lighthearted, flirty, his cryptic and discouraging. I often vow to never talk to him again, ignore him completely, stand him up even. But then he will surprise me with sweetness that with him, I often imagine impossible. And when I slide onto the leather of his seats and see that elated smile, I melt and transform into something so weak it’s nauseating. But it washes over me and I fall submissive to the feeling. Bound by lust? Languid energy? Good times? I spend several lonesome inebriated hours trying to dissect it all but usually end up distracted by the goodness between us.

I fear that I am ruined.

On a side note, the bar has just been out of hand for the past week. I smell the holidays coming, just waiting around the corner, preparing to dishearten the masses. Half of me hopes I’m scheduled for these supposedly important days. I imagine my mother, ordering noisy people around a Thanksgiving kitchen, while I’m on vicodin slugging Chardonnay, whipping potatoes and explaining to people I see once a year why I haven’t applied to grad school yet or joined the god forsaken “work force.” I remember last Christmas Eve, Vincent and I the only two people at Bo Town, feasting on crab and hot and sour soup, drinking way too much beer and walking around Christmas in the Park making fun of happy (and not so happy) couples.

I remember the warmth of the eggnog enticing me to honestly embrace my depressed father on Christmas Day, his calloused hands on my face, asking me to forgive him.

Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. I think Gandhi said that.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right…

VBar is horrid. For a good deal of the evening, I sat on an oversized leather box, clutching a glass of whiskey on the rocks, sulking. I drank slowly, let the ice melt, ill-advisedly humoring a few gentlemen who came over, made jokes, asked my name. In a place like this, dark with sparse red lighting, chain doors and music blasting at a volume that I can only describe as inhuman, nobody hears the correct name.

“Julie, hi!”

“It’s Jolie.”

“What?!”

“JOLIE!” By then, they might as well have lost interest. I most certainly have. I don’t like having to repeat my name, let alone shout it. Don’t people converse in non-dive bars anymore? It appears that now it is the cool thing to just drink and gawk at each other, bob heads to inconceivably bad music, until one or both parties are drunk enough to go home (or elsewhere) and fuck. It’s a bad scene, one I have done my best to avoid.

If I had any inkling what this place was going to be like, I never would have met him there. I had heard of VBar before; as a matter of fact my old hairstylist had her birthday party there last year (although I had not participated). And she was a pretty hep cat—one of those rockabilly chicks with the fuck-me-red streaks in her otherwise jet black hair. However she was not one of those chicks that felt the need to devote all her energy attempting a Bettie Page look. And she wasn’t the kind of gal you would be able to talk to for hours per se, but you could probably drink with her all night and get in all kinds of amusing trouble. So you can imagine my surprise finding myself in the middle of an ultralounge.

But there I was. At least it was a Monday. There wasn’t a disgusting amount of people there. As it happens, my date happened to be one of those people absent. I realized this about an hour after we agreed to meet. I abhorred myself for waiting that long, but I was drinking and doing my best to be open-minded, thinking perhaps he was merely running late, perhaps I might meet someone interesting? I should have known better, who is going to prove interesting in a place like that? And what was worse or better, I couldn’t decide; my date must have not been that interesting either, for this was all his idea.

Santana Row seems plucked from someplace else and sloppily glued into this town, a sort of ode to Beverly Hills, (palm trees and all!) where poor kids work and rich mothers shop and eat delicious, expensive things. Stores where clerks have the ability to actually smell plastic and cold hard cash, and follow them. Stores where clerks aren’t called clerks.

I left the bar and walked down its mock cobblestone sidewalks, windowshopping, pouting, wanting another drink. Thinking of Vincent and his unrelenting told ya so’s. Missing Drew. Hating myself for doing so.

I stood in front of Gucci for a while, staring at my reflection. It was growing late. It was cold and dark and wet there, in that little paved paradise for the wicked. I buttoned up my peacoat and sat down on a bench near a coffee shop that had long since been closed, hoping for rain. It never came.

Eventually, I collected my thoughts and walked to my car. I didn’t know if I had made a wrong decision about posting an ad, responding, or caring altogether. Perhaps I should have pursued someone else, someone that wouldn’t have tried to take me somewhere like that in the first place. Craigslist had provided many responses, plenty of nice, attractive, intelligent men who seemed more than willing to go out for a fun, easygoing date, just what the doctor had ordered indeed.

I had offered Pixies, and received house music, no doubt derived from a plethora of male djs with a backwards hat and pierced eyebrow. I was horrified just how obvious it was that my instincts had started to fail me. 

My mind trailed back to Drew, in his black Dickies jacket, sitting at my bar, taking shots with me, laughing, talking about Salvador Dali and the White Rapper Show.

“Hallelujah holla back,” he would say, teasing.

I started driving and didn’t really quite know where I was going until I showed up at his apartment. A little red Miata was in the spot I usually parked in, and even though it was possible that anyone could have parked there, it was then that my emotions overwhelmed me. Everything had slowly but surely bubbled up to the surface. The evening had quickly become a watercolor montage of flashbacks; yelling my name over the deep, maniacal bass of the bar, watching the ice melt, waves of rejection, walking around cold and lonely in the city streets, and now this little red car, another reminder of how little control I truly possessed.

At that point, I regretted the times I said no. I wanted to replace them all with affirmatives, my head dizzy and cheeks warm in Drew’s embrace. But there was no room for the fantasy. My evening was over. I burst into alligator tears and drove away, lecturing myself for the myriad of things I did wrong.

I thought I was ready for this. I know now that I am not.

You have to kiss a lot of frogs…

I’m taking a vacation from Drew and all his abstract problems. Tomorrow night is my first Craigslist date.

I will save the trouble of describing the butterflies in my stomach, the waves of nausea that pass over me, the paranoia and the worry that collect in my brain, breeding wildly.

It took one message to pique my interest so.

Hey everybody, where did Jolie go?
Where did Jolie go?
And where’s my only cigarette?
Please think for me, I can’t bare to.
I’ll just lie here for a while
Wet myself, wet my bed…
I’ve readied it all for her, you know
Clean sheets, incense, a lots of fluffy pillows
Now soiled.
And where’s my cigarette?
Did you check the bathroom, the bathtub?
She sleeps there sometimes;

Water cleanses, you know
Washes dirt away, makes new
Maybe she,

maybe she,

maybe she,

maybe,

maybe she swam away…

I know, I know, they are Stone Temple Pilots lyrics. But they work.
And how did he know I sleep in the bathtub sometimes?