Letters I won't send.

To BF:
I'm sorry I called you again last night. It was just to let you know that I gave your camera to the front desk of your brother's workplace on Friday so they could give it to him Monday so he could give it to you...whenever the hell he said he would. Per the instructions in your letter you left for me at the front desk of my dorm.
Which annoyed the hell out of me, by the way. Is a Facebook message really so much more fucking trouble than manually writing something in pen when you type 90% of the time and had to actually travel further than the far edge of your futon to deliver the damn letter in person at a place that is still clogged with memories of, well everything? Was it really so fucking much easier to give a letter to a person so they had to flag me down instead of just hitting send your own damn self? We don't even have to be friends for you to send me a Facebook message. Embrace cyberdistance and leave my parasympathetic nervous system alone!
Ahem. You will note that everything's in there, and that I deliberately avoided Brother. I'll miss his snarkiness (I fondly recall snickering when his fake shanking turned into real sucker punches when you made a bad joke. Which was often.), his Lego catalog, and the victories of making him laugh. I won't miss feeling like I'm performing every time I talk to him.
You're a good guy, and I just want to make sure you understand immediately what I'm trying to say. I'm impatient. You know this. I want to be understood, not in an existential sense (although bonus points if that is managed), but in a clear communication sense. You know this. The way you talk around things drives me up the batshitting wall. YES or NO or I UNDERSTAND do wonders to my nerves at strategic times.
But I guess you don't really need to know that anymore, do you? No.
From:
Your ex-girlfriend who has been avoiding that label all week but needs to slap herself in the face with it until she gets use to it

Dear Mike,
I won't tell you how many times I've checked my cell phone for text messages even when I haven't heard the obnoxious unmistakable chime that doesn't mean anything else. It's embarrassing.
I won't tell you how your smell reminds me of my grandma's kitchen. You might take that as an insult (it's not; it just means you smell clean).
I won't tell you that you're the only live friend who's asked me how I'm doing. You might find that needy.
I will say thank you and DAMN IT, MAN, TELL ME I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO FELT THAT LAST THURSDAY and I'm going crazy trying to save you from being a rebound guy. You're too good for that. I like you too much for that.
I don't want to think about this anymore. Want to see a movie that will require all of our attention? It's free and really interesting.
--Your friend

Hey, Katie,
YES, I will come celebrate your birthday with you. Holy Zadie Smith YES. I want to learn how to party.
It should piss me off that you haven't responded at all when I told you about last Tuesday, but by now I really appreciate an excuse to have non-selfish, non-confusing fun.
And maybe you can demonstrate what tastes best with vodka.
Love,
Mel

Twitchy Freshman:
Just go away.

Goodnight, Michael, I'm going home.

My first social outing since Tuesday was inadvertently stumbling into my college's homecoming street celebration, which is called Cockfest 2010. (Our mascot is the gamecock. An angry chicken.) I meandered through said Cockfest to meet a celibate-until-marriage guy friend I find attractive.

I don't believe in the universe molding things just for little shitty ol' me, but that was an amusing train of thought.

I took Mike to dinner because he paid the last time we ate since I had forgotten all my off-campus money. Here's what happened, pulled from an email I sent Jenna this morning:

Ah, Mike. The evangelical Christian with pretty eyelashes, geeky tendencies (Star Wars is like a third wheel with us; always there and hanging out and saying stuff at random times), a warm low voice and laugh unless he's excited (then they sort of vault up the register), and love for Sarah Palin. Two of those things I disagree with. But we're a lot alike otherwise and we have great conversations, and and and. And last night we were sitting on the hood of his car and he gave me a sideways hug (hug count is up to four for this breakup) and we just sat there for a minute, me leaning on his shoulder ("You're really comfortable." "Yeah, I get that a lot." "Yeah?" "No, not really."). Our heads leaned together and we turned to look at each other before he said he should probably get home. The whole evening I had tried subtly invading his space, which didn't work, and then suddenly this.
My onion breath from dinner kept things in the friend zone. I'm glad. I went away breathless and in need of a good yank. That's not unusual, and I know exactly how to take care of it.
Last week, he sent me a text message that said, "My stats professor mentioned you in class today. He said he'd see me in front of Firehouse, walking with a beautiful girl."
Yeah. That was confusing. I left it alone (except for a thanks and some blushing to myself). I refuse to decode the subtext, because it will just make me more crazy. I don't want a boyfriend now. I want to make out with a guy who is saving 99% of all sexual acts for after he's married. When he broke up with his girlfriend (like eight or nine months ago), he talked about how he's not going to make the mistake of kissing someone strictly for lust anymore. This has been going on for the past 14 months, ever since we met in Technical Writing.

On a side note, I love the rhythm of that last clause: WALKing with a BEAUtiful GIRL.

"Good night, Melanie."
"Good night, Michael."

I like that I now seem to be able to separate what my body, heart, and head all want. Body can lust and heart can ache and head's just like, "All right, guys, take the weekend off. I know it's been hard for you both."

So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going home. Dad's coming to pick me up right after my last class. The ride home might be filled with awkward talks that may or may not involve God (please no), or it might just be filled with Johnny Winter.

I'm not going home for the comfort of my parents. That's more effective from a distance. I'm going home for my dog sleeping on my bum and for my copy of Zadie Smith's On Beauty and TV that's not two flights down and usually taken by somebody studying anyway. I'm going home for peace that doesn't crystallize into crushing isolation. That'll be soon enough next weekend. Note to self: make more friends before next Friday.

When I told Mike that, he looked surprised and said, "Well, you don't have to be alone, do you?" Um. No...no of course not. He said, "I could hang out with you," which made me want to ask exactly how he passes his weekend nights up here.

Don't make this more difficult. Push through.

*Note: the D60 is on its way to its rightful owner. Its journey will take all weekend, so I'll explain Monday.

I still have his camera.

I still have his camera--his Nikon D60, to be exact. The one I borrowed two weeks ago for various reporting class projects (there are always at least two going on at once, because That's The Real World according to my professor) and love like my own child. The one that he never uses anymore, and the one that I had in my dorm room when I broke up with him in his car.

I don't know how to give it back if he doesn't answer Facebook or phone messages from me anymore. Keep trying until my name/voice doesn't stab him in the heart and leave it bleeding on his Mac's keyboard? That shit's aluminum; it'll wipe right off, I swear--I just want to give you back your $500 investment in your art, I swear--I'm harmless, I swear--

No. No, I'm not harmless. I wanted to be so badly. It didn't work.