i surrender. in this game of love. maybe.

hello folks- sorry for the unplanned break. i have been writing but not always sure on the sharing. this piece is about a library date gone wrong (we needed a date story). and don't worry i haven't given up on love just playing in the game. or maybe how i decide to play in it. all my thanks as always.

In the quiet. Of this library. Nothing exists. But the sounds. Of page turning. Keys punching. The whisper growing into. The wrapper moving. The forgotten cell phone ringer not silenced. In the quiet of this library. We found the conversation. Among others. Overheard by us. Too funny not to interject. Our laughter. Then the shaking of the hands. Exchanging of words. The distance of wanting a study break. And each time I would see him in this library. He would break the silence. First with words. Then with an ask out to drinks. Me wrapped in a yellow dress warm outside but trapped in this library. Him motorcycle helmet on top of his computer he never seemed to use. To be hit on by an undergrad made the yellow of the dress shine into my face. And then the blow of the kiss from his hand to his lips and out towards me. Flattered I was.

In the quiet of this library. In the quiet of living in this library. Of the quiet of the social life I had created. I depisied and relished in. In the quiet of the stairs I found he wasn't my junior but my peer through the maze of the circular stair wells down- the city scape bubbled around us the hills slide and the houses danced under the spotlights of the sun making a surprise appearance within the shyness of the fog.

In the quiet of this bar I look at him. Taking my glasses off in defeat. The short river of a line moves in between the sea of my greenish eyes. My anchors of hands fall onto the sides of my face painted beautifully for this first date. In the quiet. I didn't know what to do. I had talked. He had asked for a story after he told me he almost left. Before I got there. Because people don't always show up for these things. Way to complement me upon entering. The stories I tell-my true and tried funny stories -that the target audience of six to 70 years old seem to fancy but not him. Not a smirk, not a laugh, not a smile, inside or out. I am sinking in this silence.

I ask about him. He performed the soliloquy of boredom. I am boring. I am bored. I only do boring stuff. In every form, in every tense. Boring and more boring and wait boring again. In the quiet. I am lost. Lost in the library in the work and in finding him. And upon exiting the walls of books peppered with computers and in this bar company dark and drinks and anticipation in the quiet I learn. I learn the quiet. The quiet of him on this date is defeating me. I prompt about him coming to America. Shot down again. I am at a loss and the art of talking and listening and getting strangers and teenagers and new friends are lost in the quiet. As my white flag raises slowly while the rivers around my eyes opens up and the anchors I feel underneath release down.

In the quiet. I find. That first dates aren't great all the time. That the quiet interlude of a study break might only live in the walls of research. In the quiet of this bar as I sit next to this man I feel as if we are in our first fight. I finish my beer. I go to the bathroom. Pleading for help from God or friends or the universe. In the mirror I stare. In the quiet. It doesn't have to be this hard. In the quiet. I come back. But stay in. He decides to move his piece towards me. In quiet. I listen. In quiet. I know. That this first date will be our last. That some can only live in the the place you meet them and can't cross over into another place on the board of the game of life. He finishes his last drink. His 4^th in 2 hrs.

In quiet we end the date. In quiet I know that is the strangest date I've ever been on. In the quiet. Of my heart and my head. I hear the movement of what could be outside. There is a drizzle reminding of what was. I surrender not on this date. But in this game. In the quiet. I let go. For this moment. For a few. Until. The pace picks up again. Quietly.

true story: i just got hit on by the energizer bunny of linguistics

hey folks- this is based on a quick write for it was a crime. enjoy and as always thanks for stopping by. . .

It was not a crime to walk way from him at the corner of Guerrero and 16^th right before the strike of new day. He sat there- more like stood there-with his appropriate uniform of bartender-but he was off tonight- the tattoos that clung and danced up his arm kept company by his tightish button down plaid shirt sleeves traveling up his arm. His ears had spaces growing for what I could never figure out- it just looks so very painful. Metal circles pushed the space between his ears to what he has created.

Talking non-stop, talking from the happenstance of standing next to him at the bar. At the bar earlier in the evening. It isn't a crime to talk to someone at a bar, of course not. Its the common ground church of the 20 and 30 somethings. The rotary club of our generation. The school of life. Where we put on our best dress-sometimes- and stand together as we befriend each other sprayed in our choices of denial, or release or freedom or poison or just the need to play some trivia on a Tuesday night. The light of a bar the next day always awakens the reality of what happened there in the dark could never with the lights falling down with the sun shining in.

Not a crime to speak to someone I didn't know. For I always do. Its one of my favorite pastime other than making out. Its half the eating up of time and space. But the other half is sometimes a conversation breaths air into my lungs. As soon as this man began talking I knew something was wrong with him. I just didn't know what. See I spent the last 10 hours figuring out what was wrong with others. At my jobs. I didn't want to figure this guy out. This reader of problems and hopes and dreams even deserves a night off. His language quick and fast sprinter like but there was not an end to the 100 meter dash. Just going again and again the energizer bunny of linguistics. He reminded me of myself upon too many coffee cups swigged down my throat. A Carl Lewis of sorts. But the finish line forgotten. I begin to look around the room. For my friends at the bar.

It was not a crime to have him join our trivia team. Our group small against the other big. He was a good team player. Sometimes. In and out. Outside. For a smoke. And back. To the bathroom. And back. The quick fire quick and the movements of the hands jerky. It is not a crime to see a man falling into pieces in front of you on a Tuesday night. But it might have been a crime for me to do something. To try and pick him up and super glue- I think I got some in my back pocket- and say how can I help you. He fell apart little by little I watched as he fell to the sticky bar ground. Just watching. So when his word of me and my beauty. Came. And his love for my last name. Everyone does love it. His desire to find a woman who bears the strength to keep her name. My beauty. He was a lapsed Catholic. You can't leave- we need more drinks. High five, we won. You are so beautiful. I would love to kiss you or have sex with you. You aren’t leaving. You say you will come back. I want to leave with you. Are you hungry?

He trails behind me as I exit from the wooden picture of the city corner canvas. Walking through. Don't leave your friend, I say. Don't worry she won't leave. She owes me a bag of coke. Do you guys want some? I got to give it to a guy who would share in the world of the drug of choice of secrecy. I decline and say I am trying to quit- the standard line for these type of situations even if the truth is my nose does not travel across white lines. It wasn't a crime to walk away from him on that street corner still talking and swaying and moving and begging and falling and complimenting- it would have been a crime to do any more.

what if i let this what if die?

Death. I have written about a death of a name. How can a name die for you? Good question. Just get involved with a few guys with the same name and they seem to let you down in a heart and gut wrenching way. So much you begin to wonder there might be a tragic flaw in a name. I vowed to never date a man with the name C. I shake a hand with someone attached to this the name. And I cringe. Inside. I hear someone say the name from afar and I stay there. I stay away from them. From those C’s.

After I fell for three men with the same name- I let the name die for me. I ended up being left with a doubled park dumping and an almost broken nose (my doing from a drunken night of debauchery-aftermath due to the break up-see previous blog entry). I was left with a bad highlight job of blonde- I needed a change and some lady I didn't know made me blonde to forget. I was left with him showing up on my doorstep with a b-day present months after he dumped me. And me not wanting him upon my door. He left me with one final email. I never responded. Later I heard he had gone off the deep end. At least I wasn’t left with that.

Another. He left me with one less book on my shelf- my favorite book Unbearable Lightness of Being and wondering what would have ever happened if he had really took a chance. He later found me. And came to give it round. Kissing me upon my doorstep. Anticipation of years made me feel faint. For the first time. But he ran away again. Left me wondering.

For years, I did. Wonder. What ifs from the beginning stages of life sometimes we hold onto to them too long. Until he almost died. And I had to tell him. And wonder until. I couldn’t anymore. The last time I saw him was in hospital room. He might be healthy now. His body. But a fatal flaw of a man who would rather be full of potential than fail is not a tragic hero but a sad estate of affairs. If death doesn’t breath life into your bones into your body nothing will. Needless to say. He let me pass through his life again.

What ifs. Were better for him. He stopped being a what if. After one last summer of living out our past college days of infatuation. I walked down that hall of the cold clinical hallway and pushed the button to the elevator. Wanting to run down the hall and say goodbye. Or just say no. Don’t die. Not now. Because as I walked slowly and purposefully. I never wanted this what if to die. I wanted it to grow and flourish into something. But it had. As it lay lifeless inside of me. In that hospital. The elevators door open. Two faces appear before me. I hesitate. Not sure. If I can. Walk away. For good. I find my place in the elevator as the doors close in slow motion. Closing my view. Smaller each minute. Until it disappears. Dying. The death. Of me wanting it to work. He didn’t die. But we did.