Eternal Recurrence, Part II (Suture and Dissolution)

Vigil...A Change in Venue...Would You Like a T-Shirt With That?...The Other Side of Midnight...A Simple Plan (No, Really)...Bringing It All Back Home...Thank You and Goodnight

Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.
      -- Nietzsche, The Wanderer and his Shadow

1/16/99

Dear Dar,

Let me guess: I left you hanging, right? Oh, please.

I woke up at 10am on Saturday. Just over five hours of sleep may not seem like much, probably because it *isn't* much, but it's not unusual for me, particularly at times when I'm emotionally amped. Remember when The First dumped me back in '90? I hardly slept for that entire first week. I think it was a bizarre sort of defense mechanism; it's hard enough to clear my head enough to sleep, and lord knows my subconscious hates me. Seldom do I have pleasant dreams.

So I went on about my business, which mostly involved housecleaning and laundry, stopping occasionally to sit down and pound out more of the previous missive. Our new phone toys helped: caller ID (I feel remarkably more comfortable answering the phone when I know who it is) and voicemail (so I could occasionally hop online to check and see if she cancelled by email).

Paranoid? Yes and no. I considered it more a concession to potential reality; after all, we'd only really known each other for about a day. No reason to distrust her, but no reason not to be cautious and at least steel myself for disappointment. Maybe it would happen, maybe it wouldn't.

Summer called at four. While we were still on, things had changed ever so slightly: the show were going to was cancelled, so the thought was we'd go to dinner then catch a movie. Sure. Both could be gnarly experiences when done at the last minute in San Francisco, but I was certainly game. The new plan was, she'd pick me up at 7pm and we'd meet Lorna and Terminal at the Hard Rock Cafe at 8pm. The Hard Rock on a Saturday night, almost certainly without a reservation. It was bound to be an adventure.

I decided to keep my hair down, partially for variety's sake and partially because it's rude to have big hair in a movie theater. After much rumination, though, I decided to be impulsive--shut up, I know that's a contradiction--and wear makeup. Not full-blown (since I didn't know how), just some foundation to de-emphasize the stubble. Okay, so it's not particularly daring, and nobody even noticed....

...and it certainly felt like a meaningless gesture at best when Summer arrived, not as fully made up as she was at Lilith but more so than for work. And quite striking, of course. I invited her in and showed her the place, such as it is: small and cluttered with almost every inch of wall space covered with posters and pages from magazines, including a shrine to Sherilyn Fenn above The First's computer. She seemed impressed.

After circling for about half an hour, we opted for a parking garage and made it to the Hard Rock just after eight. Lorna and Terminal hadn't arrived yet, and we were told the wait was about half an hour--not too shabby, all things considered. We waited by the bar, starving Summer trying to figure out how to get *something* to eat without waiting for a table and me watching us being watched. The stare factor was remarkably high, particularly from a group of mustachioed pseudo-biker gentlemen who couldn't keep their eyes off me. Ick ick gross. (Just once I'd like someone to walk up to me, take a picture and say, "It'll last longer.")

Dinner was when I got the first inkling (and it's very imporant to keep track of your inklings) that maybe perhaps there might just be the slightest smidgen of a chance in hell of something else maybe possibly developing between Summer and I, though of course probably not, but still you never can tell, and stranger things have happened, am I right or am I right?

I guess it was just that she seemed so...sincere. I've heard my share of hollow compliments, and I'm too self-deprecating to believe compliments anyway, but for some reason when they came from her (usually along the lines of how beautiful I am), they sounded real. At one point she commented that it's a shame people aren't more willing to tell other people when if they find them attractive, for fear of being considered inappropriate. Now, I seriously doubt that was intended as bait for me--but I leapt on it anyway. I said I'd wanted to tell her she was beautiful from the first moment I saw her, but didn't for obvious reasons. She laughed, hugged and thanked me.

She also revealed that from my first day at the company (yes, earlier that week) people were plotting to get us together: "Summer, why don't you go talk to the new guy? He's goth, just like you!" Predestination, indeed.

Before we left, Lorna and Summer went to use the restroom, leaving Terminal and I alone at the table. Me and Summer, fine. Me and Lorna, no problem. Me and Terminal, not so good. As I'd implied, there was a certain tension between us. We made the most miniscule of small talk, and then he said, quite apropos of nothing: "I just wish Summer thought of me as more than a friend."

Suddenly it all made a lot more sense. He was in love with her. Of course. Lord knows I would be if I were him.

All the same, I tried to be as noncomittal as possible, saying I was happy to have her as a friend, which wasn't a lie. With any luck, he'd agree and it would be left at that. To a degree, I suppose it was that I was too busy working out my own rapidly emerging feelings for her to want to deal with his long-simmering ones.

He wasn't taking any of this modest nonsense from me; seems she'd emailed him (Friday after lunch, I assumed) all excited about having met this new guy at work. He didn't specify, but I suspect she'd probably already outed me to him. In any event, she was already spreading the word about me to her friends.

I was at an increasing loss for words. I laughed a little and said that I'd never been considered competition before, and that it wasn't my intention.

That wasn't quite it; I wasn't competition to *him*, anyway. He bemoaned that he could never be her boyfriend because he lacked the "jerk factor." A phenomenon with which once and future eternal wallflowers such as myself are all too familiar: the more desirable a girl, the more likely she only goes for genuine assholes. He referred to Krycek as the current example.

Duh! Of course! I hadn't put it together before, but yeah! Krycek was a guy I'd met at Lilith the night before, and who had actually spent most of his time there clinging to Summer. Didn't register on me at the time, but I suppose I had other matters on my mind. If anything struck me about him, it was his ultra-femmeyness (much more so than my own), what with the rather unpleasant makeup job and his long blue hair. Not to mention his apparent inability to smile. Granted, I can be morose with the best of them, but in his case it seemed to be an affectation. (I know, I know, from a goth? What are the odds?) So this was the boyfriend she'd told me about at lunch on Friday, the one with whom she was about to break up. She was into femmey guys. Wow. Wow, wow and wow. Explained a lot, maybe. A female trannychaser, in essence. Could I possibly be so lucky?

He went on a bit more. Lorna (whom he was ostensibly with) was nice enough, but "not like Summer." Lorna had always been pretty and was accustomed to being treated that way, thus her attitudes towards other people was based on that, while Summer had been a late bloomer--she still describes herself as a tomboy--and is a bit more sympathetic to those not so aesthetically blessed. In any event, Terminal's self-image was even more fucked up than mine, gender issues notwithstanding.

Lorna and Summer returned from the restroom (and perhaps a conversation almost as loaded), and we headed out. Next was the movie. It was 10:30pm, not the best time to decide what to see, particularly amongst a group of four people. Fortunately, I have a Cinema Degree, so I'm Trained For This Sort of Thing. You know how handy that can be, Dar.

Considering the showtimes and what theaters were nearby, it was between Elizabeth and A Simple Plan. Being a group of goths the inclination was the arty period piece, but I was able to a lean us towards A Simple Plan because, if nothing else, it started at 10:55 rather than 10:45, and those ten minutes could make all the difference in the world: Summer and I had to move her car out of the parking garage, and there was no telling how long it would take to find a spot on the street. Not to mention I had no particular interest in Elizabeth, though I underplayed that aspect. Still, I almost immediately felt guilty. Who was I, an interloper, to make these decisions?

I won't go into the thrilling details of moving the car, so suffice it to say by some miracle we made it into the movie on time. The theater wasn't packed, but the people who were there tended to be on the loud side, including a group of drunk teenagers in the back. Which just made me feel more like I'd made my first major misstep. Lorna and Terminal didn't really matter to me as much, but I had the sinking feeling that Summer wasn't enjoying the movie and would have been much happier in Elizabeth.

During the film I also had a revelation, one which came as quite a shock. This person, whom I'd only "known" in any sense of the word for roughly 36 hours...I could see myself being with her. As in, only her. As in, not with The First. As in, if I were to ever leave The First, this is where I'd want to go.

Perhaps it was just a knee-jerk reaction to the first person with whom I'd ever seemed to share anything resembling a mutual attraction. Perhaps it was the environment--weird as it sounds, how you see a movie with someone is very telling. But there it was. The First and I had been rocky for quite some time, and Summer was breaking up with her boyfriend, and she'd made it clear more than once that she thought I was cute, and...god. There was just so much about her that was so appealing...in many ways things that were the polar opposite of The First. Could it be The First and I had grown apart so much?

All the same, I was able to concentrate on the movie. Much to my surprise, they all really liked it, in spite of being a dark modern story involving unpleasant country folk in perpetual snow. In fact, it reminded Summer quite a bit of back home. (Have I mentioned she's from the south, Dar? What are the odds?).

Afterwards, we said our goodbyes to Lorna and Terminal and went to Summer's car; she was more willing to drive me home tonight. On the drive back we talked a bit more about our respective relationships, past and present. Except, of course, in my case, where the past and present were the same. Among the reasons why I've never been unfaithful to The First, I explained, was that the opportunity has never arisen. Except for one instance with someone who quickly proved to be completely fucking insane (hence I count them as a statistical aberration at best), not once in eight years has anyway found me attractive enough for it to be an issue.

Almost immediately Summer said that was very difficult to believe, since she found me hot from the first moment she saw me. The way she blurted it out, I couldn't help but accept it as genuine. I admitted the possibility that perhaps someone else had as well but had never remotely hinted at it. (Sure. In eight years. It's not like people conjoin all that often, right? And that sacred "we're not married but plan to be someday in the future" vow, surely nobody would dare upset such a bond.)

It was about 1am when we got to my place, and she came inside so I could write her instructions on the best way to get from my place to the Golden Gate Bridge--if you're not familiar with my part of town, it can be kinda confusing. She didn't leave until about 3:30am.

*Nothing happened*. Which is to say we didn't have sex or anything remotely like that. We did sit on my bed, and I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of her presence in my home...but physically speaking it went no further. I did show her some of the stuff in my closet, and the hormones I'm taking (reading the labels was when she found out Sherilyn is my femme name--it had simply never come up before), and a few other odds and ends. But otherwise we just sat and talked.

There was something else, though, something which I'd heard about but never experienced before then: sexual tension. The feeling mutual desire of which, for whatever reason, cannot be fulfilled. It was new to me, but I recognized it all the same. In theory I could have acted on it (and I keep telling myself that I *didn't* blow a major opportunity), but I didn't. Things were wonderful enough as they were.

It was a particularly telling experience in another way: up til then, I'd assumed that the hormones had pretty much obliterated my sex drive. I now know that's not the case. My sexual desire towards The First may be a thing of the past (and in a lot of ways it had always seemed somewhat conditioned; I had sex with her because she was my girlfriend and essentially taught me how to in the first place), but were to I have the opportunity with Summer...I'd mentioned on the drive over that I could probably count the number of women I've been genuinely sexually attracted over the course of my life on both hands, while the average guy would require those plus a six-toed foor just to keep track of one day. Well, my figure had officially gone up by one.

When Summer did finally leave, I walked her back out to her car. Oddly, she apologized for saying she'd thought I was hot, just in case it had made me uncomfortable. (Perhaps it had originally been meant as a sign that she did in fact want to sleep with me that night. It might explain the apology, but I doubt it.) I assured her that no, it didn't make me uncomfortable at all, I just wasn't used to people finding me attractive--it was a very new experience. But not one that I minded, and she could feel free to tell me that any time she wanted.

We hugged goodbye (I kissed her cheek this time), and she got in her car and drove off. Thus ended my first week at the company.

---

So where are things now? On Monday I installed ICQ, and we mostly communicate that way (keeping up appearances at work, you understand). The First and I have all but broken up--we had a long, very emotional talk on Tuesday night. Summer's name only came up a couple times, fortunately; while she's something of a catalyst, our relationship has been disintegrating for quite some time. Summer and I have gone to lunch a few times, and as I mentioned we went to a movie last night and have vague plans to see some others. (Including Velvet Goldmine, Dar. Ah, irony.)

The simple fact is, The First and I are growing apart. I'm not looking forward to it when it finally, really happens--both the emotional and practical aspects, because our lives are very closely intertwined. And The First's unemployed, meaning she can't move into a new place, and we decided a long time ago that if it should happen, I'd keep the apartment and she'd get the car, meaning she'd probably end up back in Fresno. Not something I'd want to wish on anyone.

Summer also confessed that if her and I weren't both in the midst of painful breakups (hers a little farther along, it's true), she'd have probably have asked me out by now. Leaving The First and going to Summer...if she'd really have me...it's a scenario I never could have imagined. And it may not happen. The First and I might both chicken out, stay together and get more miserable, while Summer finds a new boyfriend and my heart breaks just like Terminal's (or The First's, certainly). Or we break up, but Summer decides she doesn't want to get further involved with me and/or has found someone else. Or...well, there are lots of ways it could all go horribly wrong. Of course; breakups aren't supposed to go well. They're meant to be painful and ugly.

But if The First and I are destined to split up anyway, and I can't help thinking we are...long before I even knew Summer existed The First was saying she was uncertain of our future, and that I didn't seem willing to put the necessary effort into saving the relationship--but at the same time not explaining what said effort would entail, because I'm not at all sure.

Whatever happens next, I go into it recognizing the risks. It's a very real possibility that the end result will be me alone with my pain and guilt (no matter how wonderful it sounds or how much I want it to happen, I must accept that,ending up with Summer is ultimately a pipe dream--there's about a 99% chance I'll fall flat on my face), and it's a safe bet that no what, matter The First will be badly hurt. She wants us to remain together much more than I do, and still can't handle the concept of not living the rest of our lives together. It's difficult for me to accept too, but by her own admission, change has always been terrifying. I grew up with everything constantly changing around me, usually completely out of my control. Within a year my life will probably be different than I could ever have imagined...

...but I'm just curious to see how the rest of the month goes.

---

1/17/99 7:22AMPST

I wrote most of the proceeding at work between noon and 5pm on Friday. I'd hoped to mail it off from work, but wasn't able to for assorted reasons.

At about 3am on Saturday morning, The First and I broke up.

We're still living together because she quite simply has nowhere to go, but our romantic relationship is over. Lots of pain and anger and crying have been involved, and will no doubt continue to for quite some time.

Everything is changing.

Next: The Short Goodbye...Hail to the King...The First Night...Real Time...It Never Rains Under My Umbrella...Enter Sandman...12:15PM (The Moment of Clarity, Part I)...Retail Therapy...Stigmata...2:30PM (The Moment of Clarity, Part II)...The Medication is Wearing Off...My Descent Into Madness...Nightswimming

Sherilyn,

I wanted to send you a little note to thank you for taking care of our son when he was alone. I'm really thankful to you for doing this.

I know we didn't start very well but that's in the past and we are looking forward for another year living "together."

We want to wish you all the best for this coming year.

And if you feel that we need to improve in some areas to make our living situation more enjoyable please let us know.

Happy Holidays.

Eternal Recurrence, Part I (Conjunction)

Week of Unrest...Answering the Door...Raw Fish and Raw Words...Ain't It Funny How We All Seem to Look the Same?...Never a Bridesmaid, Never a Bride...A Declaration of Love...My Face For The World To See...Pandora Hunt...Future Plans...Hope and Fear

1/11/1999

Dear Dar,

I apologize for the length, and bothering you with this at all, but sometimes I feel I have a story I need to tell. Occasionally it's actually interesting, but nothing is perfect.

I first noticed her during my third and final intervew in mid-December, as her desk was right outside the office of the VP I was talking to. Of all the people I walked by she was the only one who made an impression on me--naturally, she was a goth girl whose hair had the requisite bangs and was colored a lovely shade of red. Predictable? Me? Yeah. In a huge way. To bring up my favorite Lou Reed/Warhol line for the zillionth time, I always fall in love with someone who looks the way I wish that I could be. Which is not to say I fell in love with her per se, but you know what I mean.

So I started on Monday, January 4. I had many names and faces thrown at me, most of which I promptly forgot. No matter, as I was more concerned with getting settled into my new computer, figuring out how their site is put together, etc. As it happens, I didn't actually get any work assigned to me until Wednesday afternoon, by which time I was more than raring to go.

On Monday, being my first day, I kept my hair tied back in a ponytail just to be on the safe side--a little higher on the back of my head than is considered regulation male, but the way I'd worn it during the interviews. And I didn't make any attempt to hide my bangs (I can proudly say that I've never once tried to brush them back or otherwise obscure them).

On Tuesday I wore my hair down in the basic Betty Page / Ramones style. No comments from anyone.

On Wednesday I decided to go for broke and put it up in pigtails, a look I'd been experimenting with for the last month or so. Initially I'd promised myself I'd wait until I could at least prove myself as competent at my job before I started letting my freak flag fly. But doing so struck me as dishonest; this is who I am, and if the computer industry shied away from oddballs, it would collapse for lack of anyone to actually do the work. In any event, nobody said a word. The stare factor went up a little, but if anyone had any problems they didn't say anything.

On Thursday I did the pigtails again; by now I sensed that everyone was pretty well used to it.

Now, up to this point I'd still seen her around the office, but hadn't spoken to her. I don't suppose I felt I had anything to say beyond commenting on her hair, fashion sense and the simple fact that she's very beautiful, but that all seemed inappropriate. She didn't seem like she would mind, being remarkably friendly and open. So I kept to myself. (...and as you know all too well, Dar, there's still a part of me--in spite of how much I've grown and changed and matured over the years--which is intimidated by beautiful women. Based more on admiration than any kind of actual desire; I can probably count the number of women I've been sexually attracted to on both hands.)

Around 1pm she went around asking people if they'd eaten yet. My standard lunch of a can of Slim-Fast (some things never change, huh, Dar?) was long since consumed by then, though I asked why she wanted to know. She said she was looking for someone to drag to lunch with her. I've never regretted my habit of having lunch at noon quite as much as I did at that moment. I elected not to offer to go with her anyway, since it would appear way way way too desperate.

So I suggested we go to lunch on Friday, since I was new to that part of town and could certainly use a native guide. She accepted. I returned to my work, vaguely astonished at what had just happened. There was just one problem: I couldn't, for the life of me, remember her name. If we'd even ever been properly introduced, which we might not have.

I spent most of Friday morning expecting her to call it off, and also trying to figure out just what the hell her name was, lest the situation get too Seinfeldian. Before long I heard someone else say it when talking to her-- no, that couldn't be right, could it? The company's intranet--which kicks major ass over Autodesk's, no great shock--has a neato employee identification system, complete with a picture (mine will be taken next week). I looked her up, and...

Her name was Summer.

So, Summer and I went to a sushi place a couple blocks away. Seems that given proper provocation, her and I are both endless gabbers, and we apparently provoked the hell out of each other. Rather than wait for the ice to break, we just ignored the ice altogether and assumed the other was someone we could trust; I suspected the mutual identification of each other as goths helped, and I would later learn that was the conventional wisdom.

After about twenty minutes I came out to her; hey, she'd told me she loved my hair and even bought up the Betty angle on her own. It just seemed like the right time. And she laughed at my jokes. The importance of that detail can hardly be overstated.

She invited me to go to a goth club with her that night, something called Shrine of Lilith. I certainly couldn't think of a good reason not to--The First was in out of town, I had nothing planned and had never been to one of these things before--so after making absolutely sure I wouldn't be in the way, I accepted. The previous day I didn't even know her name and couldn't bring myself to talk to her, now she was inviting me to go clubbing with her. Okay. This was agreeable.

I admitted I wasn't sure I'd really fit in, but Summer was convinced. She said that I'd probably have a ton of people hitting on me and/or complimenting me on my hair, and that at the very least her friend Lorna would be jealous. Yeah, sure, whatever.

I called and told The First, and she was cool with it; she admitted to being surprised by how *not* bothered she was by the thought of me spending a night on the town with a grrl I'd just met. Trust is a good thing. She knows damn well that I'm not likely to do anything I shouldn't.

Fortunately, Summer was vehicular (I take the bus to and from work); we left at five and headed to the Haight. Her friends Lorna and Terminal would be meeting us out there in front of New York Apparel around 7:30, and Summer had some thrift shopping to do. We went from store to store in a whirlwind, mining for gold. For her, that is; I couldn't really justify buying a new dress or anything, and I was already wearing all black. It was nice going shopping like that, though, as I haven't done it in a couple years. Not since...well, you know, Dar. Not since Louise left.

When I first saw Lorna approaching, I did something of a doubletake; I could swear it was Pandora, the manager of my old video store and one of my primary visual inspirations. In terms of body type, fashion sense and even makeup, Lorna was a dead ringer for Pandora. (A goth waif is a goth waif, I suppose.) Her face reminded me more of Bebe Neuwirth, but that ain't a bad thing.

Summer described Terminal as a goth-surfer, and that's as good a description as any. He was the only one of us whose hair was its natural color (dirty blonde, being a surfer and all) and not in pigtails. She also said he's one of the sweetest, nicest people she knew. The significance of that phrasing didn't register with me until much later.

We ate at an Indian restaurant in the Castro, then went to Terminal's to get ready. Besides fixing my hair (took it down, brushed it out and redid the pigtails so they'd be more presentable), I didn't have much to do except watch the others get ready. Terminal wore what I gathered was his standard uniform--think Gary Oldman in Dracula, when he first arrives in England and is following Lucy--and no makeup, but watching Summer and Lorna was fascinating.

As Summer was putting on her stockings, she commented that she'd try to not flash me again like she did while trying on dresses in New York Apparel earlier in the evening. I told her, quite honestly, that I hadn't even realized she'd done so. She laughed and said that was the sign of a healthy relationship.

I paid close attention as Summer put on her makeup, because it's not something I'm very good at. (My own damn fault; I don't practice enough.) Though there wasn't time this particular evening, she expressed interest in doing mine sometime. Which is not dissimilar to removing a thorn from my paw.

We didn't actually make it there until midnight. After going inside, not fifteen seconds passed before a girl bearing a striking resemblence to Valerie Solanas ran up and announced that she loved me. I glanced at Summer, who shot me a knowing, almost triumphant smile. The girl said she loved me because I was wearing white sneakers (Asics Gels, to be precise), my hair was in pigtails and she hated everyone else there. Not having the foggiest idea what else to do, I thanked her, smiled and bowed slightly. The girl ran off again, and Summer was positively glowing.

Shrine of Lilith had two main components: a bar and a dance floor, fortunately located in different rooms altogether. My immediate impulse was to stick close to Summer, then I realized I should be brave and venture out on my own. Besides, I was on a mission--this seemed like exactly the kind of thing Pandora would attend. I hadn't seen her since the Folsom Street Fair in Septmeber, and even then it was just a few minutes and we were both in foul moods. The rain at the time didn't help. But I wanted to see her now. More importantly, I wanted her to see me. And for her to tell Louise how I'm doing.

Summer, on the other hand, wanted me close by, as she intended to introduce me to all her friends. I was e'er-so-slightly irked that she referred to me as "her friend from work," which didn't help my anxiety about feeling like an outsider/poseur--but since it was usually followed by going on about how cute I was ("Don't you love his hair? Wouldn't he make a fabulous Betty Page?"), I didn't object. This sort of adulation was incredibly new to me, and I decided not to get picky about little details.

I never was actually hit on, though I sensed that at any given moment there were at least a few sets of eyes trained on me. Which is to be expected in a situation like that, particularly when you're new (everyone clearly already knew everyone else) and as noticeable as I apparently was.

Eventually I wandered about on my own. Pandora wasn't there, but I did run into an old friend, someone I haven't seen since I lived on campus at SFSU in '95, a tiny little thing named Becky. (When I told The First I'd seen Becky, her immediate reaction was "Oh, yum.") It took her a few minutes and quite a bit of memory jogging for her to recognize me; no great shock, since when she last saw me four years previous I weighed at least forty pounds more and had brown hair sans bangs or pigtails.

Becky was utterly amazed by my transformation, and couldn't seem to bring herself to talk about anything else. Upon realizing that it would in fact be interpreted as a compliment, she said she was astonished that I looked as pretty as I did without any makeup. I ruminated aloud that she might only be telling me what I wanted to hear, and she pointed out that she simply doesn't work that way. (Very true; she'd always been one of the most brutally honest people I knew in those days, and I'd been surrounded by people who were so full of shit they squeaked when they walked.) After a while we went our seperate ways, but that officially made my evening. Not being recognized by people who haven't seen me in a couple years is one of my goals. And my reunion is '01, so time is running out.

Around two, after having danced for a while, Summer and I found a place to relax and talked more. I had to reassure her frequently that I was, in fact, enjoying myself--it's not always something I express very well. It was amazing to think that 36 hours previous we weren't entirely sure if the either was aware of our existance. We talked about our relationships with our mothers (which aren't entirely dissimilar), relationships in general, future plans, that sort of thing. Anything and everything. She informed me that I had in fact caused some measure of confusion at the office; at least one person had asked her about "the new girl."

She also asked me something I didn't have answer for: what do I like to do? What do I enjoy doing? What brings me pleasure? It's remarkably difficult for me to think in those terms, of my own pleasure. The best I could come up with is watching a really good, emotionally powerful film, and all too lame and ultimately unpredictable experience. A fantastically lame answer.

We left at about 2:45; Summer and I were sober (I don't drink, and she drank very little), but Lorna and Terminal were toasted. We've been over this many times before, Dar--I don't begrudge people the right to get drunk, but I hate being around them when it happens. I found I was particularly developing a certain distaste for Terminal. He was very sweet, sure, but something else was going on. Then again, when I'm with two girls and a guy, in most cases I'll wish the guy wasn't there.

In any event, there was definitely some drama happening between Summer and Lorna, as there always is with drunk people. I just can't fathom why so many people find alcohol is necessary to enjoy themselves, particularly when the price at the end of the evening and the next morning is so dear, but I suppose most of what I do is mysterious to them, too.

It also came up that they had an extra ticket to some dance show happening on Saturday night, and would I be interested? As appealing as a day of rest at home sounded (the last few weeks had been busy, to say the least), getting to go out with Summer for a second day in a row was much more so. So I said yes.

After dropping Lorna and Terminal off at Terminal's, Summer took me to the bus stop at Market and Castro. She was driving back to San Rafael and could have taken me back to my place and without going substantially out of her way, but she was unfamiliar with my part of town and talking her into it didn't seem worth the effort.

So I gave Summer my phone number and hugged her goodbye. Based on the angle of her head I think she expected a kiss on the cheek; alas, I goofed that one up and got a faceful of hair. But there'd be other opportunities to get that one right. I hoped. Maybe it was all a fluke. Maybe this was it. No call on Saturday, not seeing or hearing from her until Monday at work and then even nothing, and our friendship would burn out as quickly as it had flared up. Just like Louise, but more compressed.

I walked into my apartment at 4:15am Saturday, exactly 24 hours after I'd left for work on Friday morning. My mind was racing. What happens now?

A good question, but not one that will be answered in this message.

Next: Vigil...A Change in Plans...Would You Like a T-Shirt With That?...The Other Side of Midnight...A Simple Plan (No, Really)...Bringing It All Back Home...Thank You and Goodnight