Although I did have a good line where I referred to one as Emperor Palpatine because "he was small but menacing."
No, none of them are important though. Well... except one. This is....
In high school I had Gustav and Carl the Swan. College was a little more.... daring. There was the German guy in my English class...
I wish I had more stories about "Spaetzle" but the only time we really spoke was when my roommate had a dream where Hitler asked her for orange juice and she wanted to know how accurate her dream German was to real German.
And yes, I said it in a German accent like a dumbass.
Then there was the sports management major who didn't really talk to me besides that one encounter at breakfast....
Ok, so college was pretty much high school part 2 but with more homework and more crying.
I didn't experience a real, human relationship until my third year in 2010. I didn't mean for that to sound pathetic. Just like high school, I focused on classes and friends. We dicked around campus and we had fun. It was good times. If I met someone, I met someone, but it was hard. No one really stuck out of the crowd. Or they were assholes. Mainly they were assholes.
I was so picky when it came to getting to know someone. I may have moved out of Jersey, but I was still struggling to let it all go. I wondered every day why the hell I left. What the hell could Florida offer me? There had to be more than a just a Bachelor's Degree.
Well, I found out Spring 2010. I just didn't know it yet.
Like most soulmates of the 21st century, we met online.
So I did. And we played Farmville together.
And it wasn't totally random. His brother was dating my roommate at the time. There was mutual ground between us.
This was the first message he sent me which brought a small suggestion of a smile to my face:
Skippy --> Jirr Burns
"you are friggin awesome! thanks for the nail. (this almost turned into a bad message, thankfully I proof read an caught that i mispelled "anil" instead of nail! lol"
Yes, thank god for proofreading. My typos look like pixie farts compared to his. His brain is more wired for math, I'm the mediocre wordsmith in the family. (That sounds like it should be a sitcom.)
My reaction to his message:
Junior Year was a stressful one. In the fall, I contracted Swine Flu. In spring, it was my first time directing a show (which caused me so much stress, I literally shat my pants for ten days straight.) Yeah, Skippy, you arrived right after the stomach fiasco. I was popping Imodium like tic-tacs. You and the rest of the world probably didn't need to know that, but that gives you an idea of just how BAD I felt that year. Theater mentally and physically broke me. Like REAL BAD. Like, you could cut me in half and count the rings, I'd give a sequoia tree a run for its money.
Anywassails.
When I accepted his friend request I was like "You know what, whatever. I have nothing to lose, my soul died along with my dignity the day I dropped six donuts in a mud puddle and sobbed in the shower for an hour."
I was so in the hole, I didn't want a relationship. Hell, I didn't even want to exist half the time. I figured the moment he met me in person, he'd see just how weird and crazy I was and forget about me just like the others. My baggage weighed more than the supergiant star, VY Canis Major. (Google it, it makes the sun look like nothing.)
A little after a month of being Facebook friends and cultivating the cyber fields, he came down from Washington to celebrate his brother's 21st birthday. It was time to put my theory to the test. Would he run the moment he discovered I was nuts?
Of course, the days before his arrival, I was facestalking him, staring at his photos... judging him.
He was a southern boy in the military, the EXACT opposite of everything I ever thought I'd get with. I had specific qualities and experiences I wanted to fulfill with a man (not sexual, you dirty minds), but I'll get to those in a minute.
April came. Skippy's brother brought him to the campus to meet me and my roommate. He was quite the gentlemen and shook my hand. I noticed the smile never left his face.
And holy crap was he a show-off.
Yes. Yes he did. He was in his brother's car, my roommate and I were behind them and all the sudden we got a Punch and Judy skit at the stoplight.
We hung out around town, went to the fort, the beach, etc. I made him laugh his ass off with my "master skills" at playing pool.
My hand-eye coordination ends at where I need to plant my feet in a chorus line.
Surprisingly, I enjoyed the day. I really needed it. It felt good to forget about classes for a little bit. It also felt really nice not to poop every five minutes. The show I had directed closed a weekend ago and the suffering- the physical and mental- was fading away.
I think he and his brother left late afternoon for Daytona for birthday shenanigans.
But before we parted ways...
I walked back to the dorm... feeling different. I was wondering what this feeling was, so sudden, so new...
Ok, so I lied in the beginning. I'm going to talk *a little tiny bit* about one other dude I kissed. Before Skippy, there was someone who I'll call "Boromir" because one did not simply have his shit together. This was like Fall 2009. When I kissed him, it should have been a Cinderella moment. He did it on a bench under the light of the full moon, the bay water shining silver, the seagulls crying around the moored sailboats, yadda yadda yadda.
But I felt nothing. NADA.
I was wondering when the hell Boromir was going to wrap it up because I still had to write my thesis on transgenderism. And I was like "Wow, the moon is much more fascinating than this."
But Skippy... I don't even know how to put it into words. It just happened and it left me so giddy, confused, and stupid. And, well, feeling different. I felt a pang in what I thought was my cast iron heart.
But I mostly felt giddy.
While he was in Daytona, we texted back and forth ALL NIGHT. Ok, not all night. I went to sleep, he was getting kidnapped by a hooker and his brother took a pallet from a construction site and nearly broke his foot.
They came back the next day and we had to take it easy because sOmEoNe couldn't walk. We ended up at Chili's for lunch. We somehow acquired wet wipes and to this day, I think Skippy still carries one in his wallet.
My facebook status Friday, April 10, 2010 (and its comments):
"Had an awesome time yesterday with the gang! can i rewind and do it again? i don't want to do homework today!"
Skippy: cant wait
Me: can't wait for what?
Skippy: to do it again, before i leave. my bro said that you guys prolly wont be able to hang out again though because of finals.
Me: i have no real finals so i'm free! lol
Skippy: lol YAY!
And I was like-
That was one good thing about being a theater major. No "real" finals. Skippy and I agreed to see each other again when he came back from Daytona. Just the two of us this time.
We went for lunch at a nice restaurant in town. I was still very confused and feeling different.
I was confused mainly because he sat on my side of the table and I thought only weirdos did that.
I'm not exactly sure when this was during the week, but he picked me up in his truck to go someplace and this happened:
If there was ever a bigger red flag for crazy, that was it. The fire alarm was pulled and this was the point he would evacuate the state and drive back to Washington wondering why the hell he ever wasted his time thinking about me.
But that's not at all how he felt.
That final night with him went a little something like this:
On the inside I was like:
This was not at all how I thought it would go. When I cry, I need to look at the calendar and check when it's a good time to lose my shit. It takes a full day to recover. You see, when I cry, my eyeballs get PUFFY. My family always called them "Petey Eyes" after the dog from The Little Rascals. (There's a scene in the old show Bill Cosby won't let us watch where the dog cries and it's sad but cute and yeah, you get it.)
There I was, an emotional train wreck, snot pouring. Skippy's good flannel shirt no longer qualified as "good". To top it all off, it was humid outside. I was a snotty, frizzy, hot mess.
But like a goddamn wonderful person he is, Skippy pulled back my hair and stared into my swollen Petey eyes with a smile.
He gave me his hat, I gave him a giant paperclip. No, for reals, I don't even know where I got it, it was just in my pocket all day and I was like "here, you want it?"
And when we kissed, all the sprinklers on the street came on. I remember how orange the world looked under the streetlights. I remember sweating my ass off. I remember how I still had snot up my nose.
He left for Washington, I went back inside his brother's house and proceeded to cry some more and watch the last fifteen minutes of Lost. I remember I used exactly ten plies of toilet paper because they didn't have tissues.
I didn't cry because he was going. Well, yeah, I did, but I cried because he reminded me of what I lost. Here was this guy that tried to act so cool, but he was really this big doof. He let me escape the world and forget time existed just for a little while. He arrived in the Spring and, being a sailor, he had to go back to open water. It was an all too familiar situation.
I never thought I'd get that feeling back ever again, but here it was. With Skippy.
We talked here and there over the summer via Skype and Facebook. Unfortunately, that faded when I went back to school. I was twice as busy building a set, writing a book, and dealing with my early onset quarter-life crisis. I thought I had lost my dignity last year, but no, I still had trace amounts and they all died the day I washed my feet in the theater lobby bathroom.
I blame YOU, Antigone! You were the death of my soul!
As I said before, I was wondering why the hell I went to Florida. I still didn't know the answer until I graduated. That was when Skippy came back.
And yes, after all that time, I held onto that hat.
I touched on this in the Carl post- All my life, I've been told numerous times that good things come to those who wait. I was very good at waiting. I waited for shows, vacations, for semesters to end and to begin. It was all preparation for the ultimate test. For him.
I was going through my old notebooks awhile back and found something very interesting. I wrote down those specific qualities and experiences I was looking for. There were four of them.
I was reaching for the stars here, but being an avid fan of Cirque du Soleil for half my life, I wanted a circus performer.
He's done all those things and more.
So Skippy, this is a message to you. Don't ever wonder if I'm happy with you. You don't have to wonder. I don't show it well, but you make me happy every day. There will always be moments when I'm moody. It's just my mind at war with itself. Just let the storm blow over and I'll be okay. You'll make me mad, I'll make you mad. We'll struggle to communicate. Just know I promise to be right here. Because you were the one who came back. I always remind myself of that.
The day you came back,
That was when I knew you were the reason. (Cue Hoobastank song here).
I went to Florida so I could be the girl who waited for the boy who would always come back.
Love you, Skippy.
Wow! That was great!
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