An absolutely fantastic day yesterday... Olympia threw me a party. It was my six-month anniversary of being here (the longest I've EVER been away from Binghamton; hear that, kids? I may have escaped the Curse yet...), and since Olympia is just a sucker for a party, it evidently decided to throw me one.
Spent a productive afternoon backing up old emails so that I can soon ditch my old hotmail account. It was very pleasant; gave me a good feeling to think about some of my old friends (and some of the gahd-awful MISCHIEF we got into...); gave me an even better feeling to think that many of them are no longer in Binghamton, that they're roaming the planet, doing their own things... and who knows; maybe some nice person from my more-mischievous days will show up on my doorstep someday and say, "hey, Helena, whaddup?" Old emails are the BEST.
As I was leaving the computer in the library, a woman next to me asked, "Are you from New York?"
"Uh... yeah, originally."
(Brian and I had this long discussion about what to say when people ask, "where are you from?" You have to throw the word "originally" in there someplace, or people think you're going BACK.)
The woman was now pointing to my shirt. I realized I'd worn Peter's old shirt that says "BINGHAMTON" across the front in rainbow letters, with a pink triangle dotting the "I." I hate that shirt. I absolutely despise that shirt. I don't know why I wear it sometimes. Yesterday, I'd forgotten all about it. The woman said: "I was born in Binghamton, you know..." She had this blush of pride about her cheeks. She must have escaped a number of years ago. It was nice to meet another of my kind. Actually, if we'd hung around longer and spoken for a longer time, we would have found we knew people in common... LAST time I met a Binghamtonian in Washington, we discovered that she'd been good friends with a coworker of one of MY good friends. Everybody's connected.
And so I left the library feeling connected. The cosmos shrunk until it was one of those glass fishing balls they sell in pretentious novelty shops. I held the glass fishing ball in my hand. I wiggled it around, threatening to smash it. Then I changed my mind, grinned at it, and just poked at the cosmos-fishing-ball with a piece of library scrap paper. I kind of tickled it.
Across the street from my apartment, I discovered the first blackberry of the year. It wasn't EXACTLY ripe, but it was still pretty damned good. HELENA ATE THE FIRST BLACKBERRY OF THE YEAR!!! Wheeeeee!
(I've been whining about these damned blackberries since LAST August... Humor me, okay?)
(I was also very pleased to note that the beans on the Scot's Broom plants are turning black. First they turn black, then they harden into these rattling shells, and then, on hot days in August, they burst open with the sunlight. I'm not SUPPOSED to be happy about that, because Scot's Broom is invasive, and non-native, and is eventually going to take over, like, the rainforest, and kill all the nice trees, and then we're all fucked, BUT, for now, it's very pretty, and I LOVE it when the beans turn black and explode... It's the coolest damned thing...)
(I'm way too easily amused...)
Got mail for the first time in like, a month, yesterday. The college post office is severely understaffed and underbudgeted, so anything that anybody has sent me to the old address is stuck, maybe forever, in Olympia's version of the Dead Letter Office. Letters to Santa Claus, letters to God, and letters to Helena, right there in the Olympia Dead Letter Office, until somebody gets their ass screwed on correctly and starts forwarding stuff...
But, I DID get mail yesterday! I got a letter from my penpal in Scotland, AND...
A couple of months ago, I was having a very lonely day. The kind of day on which I would have normally stayed in my room having Audiogalaxy Download Races all day. But I'd been having download races all day the day BEFORE, so I was lonely AND bored, and I forced myself to go out for coffee... At Otto's, there was a beautiful looking group of freaky kids hanging out in one of the booths. I felt like the Abominable Helena, and they sat together, laughing and joking, with their faces shining and their hair falling gently into their eyes. Nice, happy, attractive young people always seem so completely unapproachable when you're feeling moody. But, for one delightful instant, one of the young men looked up at me, and our eyes met, and we ALMOST grinned at each other... ...and then we both looked away again. And I sat there thinking that if I was Louise, I'd go over there. If I was Marianne, I'd invite myself home with them. Hell, if I was anybody but moody, grumpy, lonely, Abominable Helena, I'd at least say hello...
Anyway, the group started to leave, slowly. I was a little bummed that I'd missed my chance to say hello, so I went out for a cigarette. And -- no lie -- the kids had all gone next door to look at CD's... Except for the tallest one, the one with the long, dark hair whose eyes had met mine. HE was having a cigarette too. And he struck up a conversation with me. I can't remember most of what we talked about. He said he'd seen me at the bar writing. I said I was feeling kind of moody and lonely. He started talking about alienation, and loneliness, and... I don't know... Dude was talking like Eleanor Rigby was his great-aunt. He had this kind of far-away look, but he also managed to look RIGHT at me, which lonely, moody people REALLY ought to appreciate more than they do. Then, Michael -- for that was his name -- began telling me about Portland, and I explained to his friend about how to navigate Seattle... As the group left, Michael called over his shoulder for me to look him up if I was ever in Portland... "I have a shop on 28th and..."
"28th and WHAT???"
"---"
Now, stuck with the impossible task of looking up "Michael in Portland," most people would have given up before even making an attempt. Hell, who in their right mind goes to another city to look up somebody they'd talked to for fifteen minutes at a coffeeshop??? Like, nobody. Seriously, nobody does. But, what the hell; I was in Portland, so I asked Jürgen to cruise me around 28th, looking for my friend (my friend of fifteen-minutes-in-a-coffeeshop, to be sure, but what the hell; the guy was NICE, and he'd cheered me up; and you should move the good karma back to nice people if you can, right?). I found a store that was a likely candidate, and sure as hell, the guy behind the counter described his coworker, Michael, as a tall guy with long dark hair. So I left a little note: hey, what's up, rememeber me from the coffeeshop in Olympia?, I actually did look you up, so...uh... hi... here's my address and email if you want to say hey." I leave STUPID notes, spur-of-the-moment...
So! Anyway! Yesterday, two minutes after picking and eating the very first blackberry of the year, I received a hand-written card from the boy in the coffeehouse! The kid I talked to for fifteen minutes about alienation, and Belle & Sebastian! I thought only crazy folks like ME bothered with hand-written cards and things...
I figured that all of this -- the blackberry, the woman from Binghamton, the card from the coffeehouse kid -- constituted a party. It was my six-month anniversary, after all... I think, to force me not to feel AT ALL homesick, Olympia conspired to give me a fan-freaking-tastic day. So I made myself some clam chowder (the home-made kind, not the canned kind...) with some kalamata-olive bread, and cheerily celebrated being alive, all by myself. Hell, I even threw in two loads of laundry I was having such a kick-ass day...
Then Jürgen came over.
I yelped: "Jürgen! I had a blackberry today! And my friend Michael -- the kid from the coffeeshop, remember? -- wrote me a card! And I met a woman from Binghamton! And the Scot's Broom beans are turning black, and soon they'll turn rattley and explode in the sun!!!"
I got the feeling Jürgen didn't care much about any of those things. I think my friendly relationship with the Scot's Broom might have been a little disquieting, as he spends his days killing it, and spends his nights worrying about killing it. One of these days, just to be a bitch (and to practice being a radical), I'm going to tie myself to a Scot's Broom plant so that Jürgen can't fuck with it unless he forcibly removes me... Heh! But mostly, I think he was just upset that I hadn't saved him any clam chowder. He said: "It's nice to see you smile."
Then he started bitching about work. He hates the kid he works with. He hates the fact that he didn't have anything to do all day.
Then, he was upset about bad drivers, people who can't park, and people who legitimately wanted to pull into a perfectly good parking lot, but who were thereby forcing him to drive an extra twenty feet to allow them in... He made this half-admiring, half-jealous, somewhat unpleasant comment that I folded clothes like I worked at the Gap. I told him that his eyes were a pretty color, and he said, "What, red?" I said: "No, kind of like the bay on a rainy day." He said: "Great." I looked up the word "sneak" in my dictionary, because Jürgen believes the past-tense of "sneak" is "snuck," which it isn't. (It's "sneaked.") There is, of course, no "snuck" in the dictionary, but then Jürgen protested, insisted on checking another dictionary, and then CONTINUED to protest that "sneaked" could not possibly be a word.
"In other words, that I couldn't possibly be right?"
"Did I SAY that?"
"Why don't you look it up on dictionary.com when you get home." He growled that he would, because he was deeply skeptical. Gahd-damn, I'm tired of that shit. So I'm ten years younger than Jürgen; so he's been on more continents than me and he speaks more languages and cooler glasses. So what: I can't be fucking RIGHT once in awhile, even having SHOWN him that I'm right, with TWO dictionaries? I've had teachers yell at my classes for the old sneaked/snuck thing; what the fuck does it matter NOW, all the things I know, and think about, and say, and do, if, everytime something disagrees with Jürgen, he shoots me down and insists I must be wrong. I'm really, really sick of that shit.
I said: "Let's get you home. I don't like it when you're tired and impatient to get home..." Then, of course, Jürgen had to protest, and say he wasn't impatient, and he told me to stop sulking, which I wasn't doing. I was merely trying to minimize the amount of time Jürgen would have to be awake, thereby minimizing the amount of time I would have to listen to him bitch about how much everything sucks.
I lay in bed, thinking, before I fell asleep. What a freaking GREAT day! People just seemed to smile more. Traffic seemed to be less shitty to pedestrians. The mountain had seemed brighter, and closer, and bigger. It had been a good day to skip down the hill singing a song, which I'd done. It had been a good day to talk to a lonely old guy at the bus station about his grand-daughter, which I had done, even though the dude was kind of nuts. It had been a good day to play a Björk tape and make dinner from scratch. It had been a good day to do laundry, and write, and go to the post office to buy stamps, and smile at random passersby, and say hello, because I'd eaten a blackberry and a nice stranger had sent me a card...
...And in maybe an hour, Jürgen had managed to kill my good mood by griping about work, and traffic, and his partner, and the fact that I couldn't possibly be right about "sneaked."
What the fuck am I DOING with this person?
...this person who STILL refuses to tell his ex-girlfriend he's seeing me, who refuses to actually "break up" with her, even after two years of being apart, because it would hurt her too much...
...this person who "loves" me but goes into these nasty rages whenever he's driving, and drives like a fucking maniac.
...this person who lies to me, who lies to me by omission, who hides things from me, and who then thinks he has the right to be ask, multiple times, if I ever slept with my ex-neighbor Douglass. (Which, no, I didn't, although I did play strip poker with him, among a number of others...)
...this person who tells me I'm skilled enough for any job I want, who tells me my resumé is fantastic, and then, after I've handed that resumé to gahd knows how many potential employers, insists that he help me revamp it. Twenty minutes ago, it was perfect. And suddenly, "well, how many jobs has it gotten you, Helena?" As if I didn't doubt myself enough already in that department. He revamps it so that it doesn't sound anything like me; so that it's just one big lie, and I sound like I was simply born a leader, a customer service representative, management material, an independant worker... Maybe my resumé will get Jürgen a job...
...this person who freaks out on me every damned time I want to be in my own house, without him. ...who throws a temper tantrum when I say, "listen, I think I'm going to wait for the rain to stop and then go home..."
...this person who fights with me, calls me crazy, implies that I'm a snoop, playfully slaps me (WHICH I DO NOT LIKE!!!), talks down to me, puts on this wounded air as if I'm this cruel, pretentious, cuntrag of a woman... and who THEN wants to have sex, despite the fact that he's been acting like he absolutely hates me...
...This person who managed to destroy a day-long good mood in less than an hour, because he just had to walk into my house bemoaning the state of the world and insisting everything that happens does so to fuck with him.
Why?
...Because it's less lonely?
...Because he's black-mailed me by swearing to commit suicide if I leave him? Because he's told me a couple of times that, for me, he broke the heart of another woman? Because I'm like, the sunshine of his life or some shit, and I've been feeling too guilty about the idea of walking away?
...Because breaking up involves fighting, and fighting sucks, and I just want it all to be over with, no hassles, no fuss, no tears, no whining that the world is out to fucking get him, and I'm some kind of monstrous, traitorous, cruel bitch?
...Because part of me is actually attracted to this sort of constant greyness, this neurosis, this negativity? Because the black, ugly, sad, self-pitying part of me actually really loves Jürgen?
...Because I have no fucking self-esteem and don't think I could do any better than being called sweet names and complimented, being invited on various adventures, and occasionally being listened to, in exchange for frequent belittlement, and being used as a sex object?
WHY have I written no fewer than TWO "Dear John" letters (available, for your convenience, at Wet Cleanup, but I'm gonna make you dig...), and then been too chickenshit to give them to him, or make them public?
Why do I let wonderful days go to hell because my boyfriend walks into my house, talkin' shit about a pretty sunset, as it were?
Michael, the coffeeshop boy from Portland, wrote to me: "...what a strange energy here in the Northwest! I hope you are making every day here beautiful! LIFE IS REAL! With love, Michael."
And I was so happy, because life IS real, and it WAS a beautiful day, and some nice kid I barely knew had told me so, even though he had absolutely nothing invested in me aside from a fifteen minute conversation and a glance... And I'd eaten the first blackberry of the year... And I finally got mail at my current address... And... everything IS beautiful! And everything IS real! And I believe in elves, and that nothing is a coincidence, and that I am alive and should fucking do something about that, like ACT like I'm alive... I want to write, I want to breathe, I want to eat good food, I want to dream sweet dreams...
...And I don't want to be with somebody who depresses me and makes me feel stupid and tired, just because it keeps me from being lonely...
Lovers do not "need" you. Lovers don't even just "love" you. Lovers are supposed to uplift you... not to help you do things, or to do things for you, but to inspire you, to make you feel good enough, to do them for yourself, and for the rest of the world. Lovers aren't just people you're sleeping with; they're people who say, very quietly, until their breaths: "you can do better than you're doing now, because you are alive, and you are beautiful..." Lovers are not just people you share toothpaste with; lovers are people who trust you, whom you share things with whether you're in the same house or not, whether you're in the same part of the world or not... Hell and damnation. I MISS that.
Jürgen left a note on the table saying he'll stop over at my apartment after work. But I won't be there after he gets off work. It's Saturday. Today, I intend to spend most of the afternoon and evening writing, then I'm going to eat something, and then I'm going to The Spar to hear the jazz band and drink a rum & coke. Hell, maybe I'll get really wild and have a vanilla screwdriver. By the time Jürgen comes over, I'll be downtown.
Maybe he'll come back to his own apartment, and sit down and read this. Maybe he'll actually listen to me for once.
I really wanted to do this in a much less vicious way, a much less public way... But it's so damned difficult to get through to somebody who's always too pissed off or stressed to give you the time of day, unless he's fucking you. If this is how I have to do it, this is how I have to do it. I'm sorry. I forgave you for hitting me a few days after my birthday, and chickened out of telling you to fuck off. I forgave you for having this herd of Secret Girlfriends, or ex's that aren't really ex's, and chickened out of telling you to fuck off... But yesterday, you ruined my party. My six-month anniversary in Olympia, which was filled with wonderful things, and you walked in and griped. And I cannot forgive that.
Yeah, this is a pretty brutal, and crappy way to break things off with someone. I HAD to do it this way. You really DON'T listen to me. And when you do listen, you discount what I'm saying as unimportant or inaccurate. So. I want to break up with you. I want not to be your girlfriend anymore. I WOULD like to be your friend, but there's this impossible load of pressure and tension involved in being your girlfriend. You have too much invested in me. You want too much from me; you have me put up with shit that Helena just doesn't put up with. I should have broken up with you the night you started that guilt-shit, threatening to off yourself if I ever "betrayed" you. I don't CARE if that's how they do it in Hungary; it isn't the way we do it here in the United States, and it isn't the way you keep Helena around and loving you. I like you; I think you're brilliantly smart; I think you're thrillingly interesting sometimes; I think you value adventures to a fantastic degree; I think you're friendly, and polite, and rebellious, and freaky, to all the right degrees. I appreciate you, and I care about you; I even love you. But it's over. If you would like to find a way to remain friends with me -- and I sincerely hope you do -- please make some excuse to come over to my apartment (you still have your onions in my refrigerator), and we will talk.
And, in my apartment, in the interest of the health and safety of my growing rosemary plant, as well as the health and safety of myself, there will be no bitching about things that have absolutely NO importance whatsoever. There will be no talkin' shit about pretty sunsets. We will talk, like human beings who live in a world where the first blackberries are ripening in our town.
~Helena Thomas*