Author and Columnist
NOTE: This entry was created on 3/17/01 from a letter written to Heather.
I assume that Heather will come up again at some point in this reflection, but this seems to be the first time she is mentioned directly.
She took a sharp and permanent dislike of you. For a little while -- I couldn't say exactly how long -- you seemed deeply fond of one another, though you may have always been fonder. Now, I cannot remember much of the substance of your friendship, only the sensations. You met her while working at the Haunted Mansion, where she played a spooky maid/guide through the home, and you played whatever part they needed that night.
She was lithe and pretty, having an Audrey Hepburn style grace. I can't pull her voice out of the ether. I don't know what you talked about. I remember her AOL screen name, which I suppose it is unwise to recollect in print, and her smile. You were in her living room once. All that remains is the tinge of the paint and the location of a chair. The rest of this friendship which you cherished is haze.
Years after this, you will ask, and she will answer that she came to dislike you because you were too much of a sad sack about Kate. I can agree that this would get on one's nerves, but I wondered if there wasn't something more to it. You lacked an emotional availability and exceeded in self-obsession. If you had not, I imagine there might have been a more profound friendship, but I barely have dust on which to make those foundations now.
It's the name of a song one of my best friends in every dimension, Sarah, wrote.
While we are speculating both on young women and your obsession, I have mentioned how you would have been destroyed by a deeper connection with Sarah. The few times you were in the same space -- which is saying something of your best friend in every dimension -- I don't recollect a connection. You wanted one, I know, and maybe the wanting is what made it awkward. On the phone, it could be fireworks. Perhaps the two of you were simply not in the other's physical presence enough to establish in an animal way the comfort of close friendship.
Anyway, that's all a trifle unimportant at the moment. I spoke with Kate last night. I'm TRYING my damnedest to not analyze her into inscrutable little pieces.
Again, it is just a wisp of smoke now, one I am trying to shape two decades later.
Heather was too beautiful by far for you to think that she had anything more than platonic affection for you. You were maybe a decade from coming into your handsomeness -- if you ever truly have. (Get a haircut, stop drinking sugar, go for more walks, realize what clothes suit you in both style and cut. If you have a chance, there are a few mood-stabilizing, anti-epilepsy meds I could recommend; nothing is more attractive than having your act together.)
You had the same experience with Laura H., whom you could barely believe wanted to be your friend. Laura may have had that knack for seeing beyond dark clothing and long hair to the man you were inside: gentle and puppyishly sweet, clever, and funny. Laura saw beneath the artifice, maybe, or I think so now because it is flattering and better explains her fondness.
When Heather left, it was all at once and without announcing her departure. She may have simply stopped answering your calls or messages. You did not know for years why, but you did want her back. Others have given you even less than that, so I am in a way grateful that she gave you three minutes of explanation of your faults, so you knew to leave her alone.
The implication I am weakly dancing around is whether your yammering about Kate -- who was certainly not a fascinating topic to Heather -- put off a young woman who might have been interested in you in an other-than-friendly way if you were less oblivious. This feels like wishful thinking, indeed. She was beautiful, as I've noted, and charming. If she wanted you -- or most anyone, to be honest -- she needed to do nothing more than smile.
This is one of those times where I wish you had taken your angst to a therapist rather than burdening your friends with it. Yes, we would not have this record for me to respond to, but you might have had Heather in your life longer. It is a small tradeoff for a great reward.
I looked Heather up just now and would badly like to smack you on the back of the head. She is a theater professor with a penchant for hauntings and the supernatural. The small bio on her college's site makes her seem every bit the kind, funny, talented woman I barely remember. She is also -- unsurprisingly -- a fellow published author. You slew your right to know her so that you could whine over a young woman who did not want to be your girlfriend any longer.
Can you imagine what it would be like if you had shared in any part of Heather's glories? Can you envision the better-than-ashes friendship you might have now?
She was acting - and this is an awful thing to say - like my Katie again. Erg! It was easier to want a clear break from her when she wasn't in fact her.
Now I am irritated about Heather, so your harping on Kate is especially trying.
In brief reiteration: Kate is a malleable character -- and she should be. She is fond with you because she is fond of you, but it isn't romance. You are not worth that again. She is "your" Katie because it is what you want her to be. It is easy for her to be that without the external influences of her pack, and it is undoubtedly pleasant to be so in small slices.
I am sure you can let it rest here, correct? You won't keep sacrificing and compromising yourself for your mercurial ex?
I agreed to hang out with her today, in a fit of being impressed with her insight.
You are a fool. There is no better word for it, Younger Thomm. I don't hate you -- I never could, despite everything -- but I resent your poor decision-making skills.
In all probability alone. At her house. Oi, I am really masochistic. But I am a self-preserving and very self-aware masochist, so I think I should be able to handle her.
You say masochist like it is a good thing. You are not self-preserving in the least. You cut slivers of your flesh off to lay on her tongue in hopes she will again savor the taste. She won't, so you are left shredded by your own hand.
Fool.
At least she is no surer than I am, so I am not at a complete disadvantage (she just quite literally bears the home court advantage).
She is much surer, having had months in the dorm rooms of others to become so.
Your disadvantage is tremendous and only grows if you keep foolish hope. Your weakness is palpable in your wanting something she has no interest in granting while you have nothing that Kate wants for more than an hour -- and she is getting those hours from others at this point.
And, again, you could have fostered a friendship with Heather, with whom you had much more in common. Not a romance, perhaps, but more of a connection. But you clung to a pipe-smoking, drug-enjoying, genderless college student who was exploring herself with other people.
Oh well, it should be excellent fodder for the short story gods, if nothing else.
Does my glaring at you qualify as becoming the short story gods? I don't recall anything more literary coming from your vile submission to the idea of a Kate months extinct.
I don't need irrational hopes about Miss Kate. They are rather the antithesis of what I genuinely do need.
True, but you don't do much to stop them. You want the hope of Kate almost as much as you want Kate.
Oh, I neglected to inform you what propelled the Hope Elf more than anything else. She will be leaving for a road trip with her brother just after Christmas. She will have a one-day layover back here before going to London for two weeks. She has informed me that she would rather enjoy spending time with me on that day.
I am not saying that you should tell her no. On some level, Kate is your friend. For all you let her do to you, she is not remotely a bad person. But your boundaries are overdue. I do not have a clear memory of what this day entailed -- I am sure it is coming in a future reconstructed entry -- but I am sure that it doesn't involve keeping your distance from her. I am positive that there is only masochism and no self-preservation.