Author and Columnist
A little on Alison, though she will appear further on in a way that KC did not.
Decades later, I do wish that Alison and I were still in contact. I wrote her an email a year ago, touching base, but her tone boiled down to a terse "Why are you bothering me?"
You'll one day learn to leave people alone when they make that clear and save yourself a lot of grief.
You dated Alison twice when you were fifteen or sixteen. I suspect that you broke up with her both times because you didn't feel as though the relationship was the right one for you. There are worse things. You told her that you wanted to stay friends and then baffled her by calling a day later and treating her like a friend. She assumed from prior experience that "I hope we can still be friends" was a weak brush-off.
And she was your friend. With my privilege of retrospection, I can winnow down the girls you should have kissed to a generous third. Alison was always among the keepers. You have never wished you hadn't been involved with Alison. You, at turns, considered her one of your best friends. It was likely that she felt the same.
I suspect that she doesn't want to be in contact with you because you are connected to the life she left behind in a hometown that never loved her. To the best of my knowledge, you never did anything to offend her. Maybe future entries will prove this wrong.
To speak more of her, knowing both that she will be a recurring part of what is to come, might be superfluous. Let her linger in her past tense.
Conor and I click. I think I could understand the boy even if he spoke Cambodian, just because his gestures and body language are so vivid. [...] But catching him once a year is generally a fluke and I've already seen him twice this year. Seems unlikely that I'd [b]e gifted again.
Conor, on the other hand, just broke from your life. He was often a hard boy to reach. You assumed that you were still best, though parted, friends on some level. Then, though you knew where he lived and had mutual associates, he never said another word to you. I was not paying attention to when this happened. The last time I can be certain that he knew you was when you introduced him to a girlfriend whom you will not meet for around eight years. I cannot tell you the moment things may have gone wrong between you. If, indeed, they did, and it was not only what Conor's mental health required.
So, I am not so sure about the clicking, all things considered. If someone does not consider you as important as you consider them, you are not on the same wavelength.
My friend Alison is trying to convince little Zanna lesbianism is an option because men are generally sucky. It's not to her, she just needs time. Trust me, I know how to tell if a girl is straight!
Okay, where even to begin with this that will arrest the worst of my cringing on your behalf?
You are not great at telling if a girl is straight. You do excel at telling if a girl is barely interested in men because there is a good chance that there will be a mutual, ill-fated attraction.
This person you are talking about? Not straight. Not, at that, a girl.
Wren--let us not deadname Lawrence now--isn't a lesbian. Wren is married to another man, Fyodor. They are both well regarded and talented artists living cultivated New York City lives where, if one judges by their media presence, they appear to be queer aristocrats in 1800s Europe (Wren, Western Europe, Fyodor taking the East as a proper Russian).
The only part of this that you are aware of is that Wren is a skilled artist. Everything else might come as a surprise. Though, if you are being completely honest with yourself, not that much of a surprise.
I am waiting for Fyodor to release a tarot deck, for which I gratefully paid months ago.
Wren took an increasing distaste to you, though it came to a head over Nancy, a young woman to whom he may have been attracted or only attached. He may have cared about her in this fashion--or you only remember it this way--but you had her attention and didn't deserve it. (Not that you did much with it before telling Nancy that you couldn't continue wasting her time.) That seemed to be the final straw.
Men have fallen out for worse reasons than a woman.
Plus, I would be personally offended if she did not pass her genes on
Even then, you were not keen on the assumption that all people needed to reproduce. You wouldn't want that burden laid on you. You had no business, even in jest, laying it on Wren. What Wren contributes to the world--what you contribute--is art.
[...]I think she has wonderful ones.
He does.
Perhaps if you had been more open to him at the time, more understanding of his inner tumult, you would be in closer contact than having a few friends-of-friends and eagerly awaiting his husband's tarot deck.
I doubt you've met someone who made their life so completely and uncompromisingly their own.
(I do not believe that he thinks ill of you now, per se. I assume he does not think of you at all.)
Here we have three people from the same town, in the same friend group, all who have abandoned the lives they led before and, with them, you. Largely, you are not at fault for this, having not been the source of their need to cut you out. This 1999 entry seems unwittingly to contain the twee, moralistic foreshadowing for my response, which is a touch cloying.
Look at this Very Special Lesson I am foisting upon you.
