Three Girls - Girl One - Megan

I don't know what I'm doing. Something is escaping me. I've become such an expert at elusiveness the mirror is slippery in my sight. I can push women away with the vacancy of an abandoned hotel.

I'm not blaming Rachael for this, my faults run deeper than that atrocity. No, I'm not blaming her. The overcoming is my own responsibility.

Three Girls

Megan

Megan is a redhead. Vivacious and positive she is always ready for a smile. Her gorgeous cheeks accomodate those beaming smiles as if she were Audrey Hepburn. I was volunteering at a joint where she worked the front desk as an intern. Somehow I would straggle in the lobby having long conversations with her. Never underestimate proximity attraction. She was highly intelligent but not bookbent out of shape (ie too intellectual). She had an adorable affection for sports. We went to the same high school. She went there after me. We ended up having coffee and dinner-dates a few times. Since my break-up with Rachael was fresher back then, I was an even bigger mess regarding relationships when I knew her. Still heartbroken, even this sweet girl seemed a threat to my person. I had all these feelings for this girl but my stereotypes and fears kept me from really getting to know her.

From what I did see, she could be so conventional. I was still radical to the core after the outbreak of war and Rachael's desolation. The very thought of spending my existence misunderstood at the breakfast table or when the lights turn out at night is still a very real fear for me (I still have nightmares where the kids love me more because I let them us their imaginations and Rachael scowls at me, the difference in their faces ... shake of head). Megan, so far as I know, doesn't have an artistic outlet which is a huge demerit in my book. The fire to communicate the incommunicable is an indespensible ingredient in the recipe. We hint at the depths making them known in some form, we experiment to awaken ground and the gratitude we shoulder for the expression is worth its weight in heartbeats. It takes work to get through the necessitous grime that clogs the arteries of artistic sensibility.

Well, I took her out a few times painfully aware of the outline of her body in her clothes, charmed by her buoyant sweetness that had so much emotion stirring beneath. Her eyes could almost quiver with emotion (I associate that with female hormonal craziness, when girls do that stuff I'm way more attracted to them). I'm not looking for weakness, sensitivity has inestimable strength in my book and I work hard not to exploit people. I just want them to let themselves feel. A Carbon Leaf song goes:

Without a heart to recall
A memory's just a memory after all

Whoever I'm with has to know who they're kissing because I'm damn-well going to know who I'm kissing. If both people believe in the possibilities of the kiss---whew!

I want to believe in everyone's inner artist but I'm not committing until they've activated that higher self to the mysterious proportion that makes things right between us. I'm willing to adjust too. Everyone makes the right sound, the right movement sometimes if they let themselves. It's night a game of rigid choices but an allowance of naturalness, conscious naturalness. But I feared that Megan had strong repressions. There were a few instances that I won't recount here where I raised an eyebrow or two. Despite my misgivings, I felt initially right with her in a mysterious way and our conversation veered into the topic of marriage early on.

Her mom wanted a Catholic wedding. I knew what that meant. I would have to convert to be eligible to have a Catholic wedding. I'd have to lie to marry this girl. "I believe that God is the one and only God ... Jesus died for all our sins." I struggled with that one for days-- Could I lie for love? I've obscured and withheld for love, sometimes just out of fear or because explanation would be too exhausting but I've never really outright lied for love. I've failed to come back with a revision of a story that was true at the time I felt it only to find that version go away massively altered by new information or revised by new experiences, but I've never lied in the moment in front of a room full of people while talking about divinity so that I can hold a woman I love in my arms every night.

Anyway, I like this girl. She was young and figuring life out but that made me feel less threatened. She had a big heart, that goes a long way. But I feared a too conventional life. I'm not rural or urban I'm both, I don't want the TV on every night, I don't want kids for quite a few more years, I want political corruption and everyday reticence to end. I'm the wild card in the deck that doesn't like the cardholder to carry out the plan to preordained specifications, I like the chaos of an unexpected turn of events. I hop like a mad Kerowackian when the filter becomes a funnel. I want someone who is willing to go for a walk in the rain, or ask me to do something even more sensuous. I was afraid I'd scare this girl half to death. Maybe I didn't give her enough credit.

She was going to Scotland and I wasn't going to fall in love with her for two reasons. 1) She might get some hare-brained idea that she would have to stay faithful to me over the course of her year-long adventure . She was young, I wasn't going to stand in the way of her figuring herself out. 2) I would miss her too much if I let myself feel what wanted to arise in me. Unnatural I know but maybe for the better.

My misgivings in part grew from parallels between her and Rachael.

She couldn't make it to see me the day before she left (she left early the next morning) because the co-op I designed for Bumbershoot (where I had to be) was a bit too much to get into when she needed to spend time with family. She cancelled her phone before she left. You see, I used smoke and mirrors to make myself vague before she left I was disappearing like a ghost again, a fabrication in the fog. (In my slight defense Bumbershoot was the culmination of what I had worked diligently a few months for and it demanded almost all of my time in those few days.) I knew where her parents lived but had never met them. If I had a sudden change of heart where I wanted to open communicae with this girl while she was overseas it was unlikely I'd be dropping in to visit her Catholic mother. By this time, my volunteering project had ended and I was worn out on the place a bit. I loved the people I worked with but since their job was to work with writers I felt uncomfortable with the idea that they might believe I had underlying motives to promote my work via friendships. My paranoia against falsehood after Rachael was something I had yet to shake off.

My dear friend Alissa who worked at the said establishment had a going away party a few months later. I went and was hassled by the other folks who worked there. Why hadn't I visited more (I had stopped in once or twice)? When I had stopped in I wanted to ask them about them, not ask them about Megan. Any memory of love or love's starting shoots still felt like a stab in the chest. I didn't want to go there and question myself too often. While hassling me lovingly two or three of the people there mentioned that there was a mystery package waiting for me at the house. It took me awhile but I finally staggered in to pick up the trail of that mystery. I figured somebody I had met while organizing had sent me some wacky gift of writing or art. Instead, I found a note and some CD's I had loaned to Megan tucked into a little manilla envelope. (sigh) She used the word great multiple times, told me to keep writing great poetry and listening to great music. I hadn't thought she understood how important writing is to me. She gave me her e-mail address, ended the note with Love Megan (I can't remember now if it was a heart or just fancy cursive). Still have the note, proof I didn't go off and have a Wizard of Oz dream. By the time I finally got the package she was 3 or 4 months into living in Scotland. I figured she had given up on me by now, if I e-mailed I might be upsetting her balance right as she was settling into some mode of existence there. While I like my balance upset because I now meet the challenge of adaptation well (unless the moist girl I love most in the world goes unbearably dry) (I sometimes fancy myself as a grizzled veteran mountain tracker ready for a storm or any other change in conditions, equipped with the knowledge that I can turn to innovation if necessary), I figured with somehwhat circumspect logic, that she needed stability not another curveball to make her weak in the knees. Letters from me across an ocean ... come on, I couldn't have helped but be terribly romantic. Truth be known, romantics make the best cynics but I am such a sap that I should be working a syrup farm.

It's been awhile since I visited the house altho I have gone there for a few events. She's back from Scotland. Working as an intern again, I imagine. Living on one of my seminal streets. Our roads will intersect again but I question the spark. I want to be understood in the dark, to have someone who knows the dark is light and vice versa. I hold deep affection for this girl. Maybe it's unfair that I've dated her so much in my head but I still feel like being cautious as a cat around a pack of wolves unless the prize is clearly worth the risk. Can I be friends with her? I suppose I'll have to try someday soon.