He said, I keep forgetting you’re the craziest person I know, and I smiled real big, like it was a complement. It kept getting later and I kept getting drunker and I found myself wanting something different than what was happening.
Why can’t you just let it be what it is? a friend asked me later.
I can, I said because I felt like that was the right answer to give.
But maybe I can’t. Maybe I want what I want. Maybe, at this point, there’s nothing for me to lose because I don’t value what I have.
* * *
Sometimes it’s just nice to keep how you feel about someone to yourself and call it your own. You know?
No, I don’t know.
* * *
I was on my way to Dog Eared Book, looking for someone I hadn’t spoken to in a very long time. I wanted to ask him, Can we be friends again. I had not planned to do this but found myself, after yoga, wanting exactly that.
On my way to his work, he passed right in front of me and I called out his name. He turned around and I said, Can we be friends again.
Yes, he said. I would like that very much. He started to apologize, to say that I was right but I wasn’t. Because it wasn’t about who was right.
A couple of hours later, I sat across from him at Cafe Revolution and he was talking and I was listening and then I stopped listening and just looked at him, on mute, gesturing, telling a story, and I felt so happy to be sitting right beside him. I thought of shouting his name and saying, Do you know how great you are! Do you!
* * *
Can we wait for Britney? my friend asked. Just two more songs, we’ll wait just two more songs. We were at Badlands. I always end up at Badlands when I visit San Francisco.
I told him I’d wait all night.
We didn’t wait all night. Britney never came on. But we danced and danced and danced until we wanted another drink.
Later we went to the Lexington and Zeitgest but they were closed and we joked that we were sad San Francisco shut down so early on a Sunday. We went back to his apartment and I felt guilty for drinking with him because I knew he was trying not to drink.
I keep thinking how you said that one out of ten times is really bad, I said.
This is like number eight.
I didn’t want him to have a bad night ever. Because on bad nights, I feel like he’s out there, in the dark, by himself. When I want him somewhere light, somewhere safe. I put my head in his lap and then fell asleep.
