On the roof, 3Am

I thought it could clear my head. I shouldn’t have brought the rum. It was Wednesday morning, 3Am. Simon and Garfunkel never crossed my mind. I had had all of these ideas, you know? The dangerous thing about these ideas, for me, was that I had never been able to envision alternatives. Once your assumed future becomes an impossibility, you’re left with no expectations, right? And then you have to rebuild it all again. This takes time.

What I’m trying to say here is, once all of your goals have been set on fire and stomped on, you’ve got to take a minute. So, I went out on the roof. I listened to music, I drank that rum. It was late/early, but I didn’t feel sleepy, just tired in that way where you don’t want to stand, to walk, to move your head, to think. It was warm on the roof. The shingles felt reassuringly gritty on my back. I wasn’t going to slide away.

I couldn’t stop thinking.

Miranda touches me too much.

My professional prospects are approaching zero.

No woman, (and especially the one woman, Albertine), would ever love me‘ (pathos)

Perhaps I should get a cat.

I spent some time thinking about the names of cats. It was pleasant. I went through the Proustian, Shakespearian, lowbrow, highbrow. . .
For a moment, Brian Jones sounded appropriate.

Three drunken teenagers walked down the street. I tried to stay still, to not let myself be framed in the window light behind me. I worried about them calling a cat burglary into the police. Embarrassing.

A raccoon crossed through the caramel glow of a streetlight. Its humpbacked walk made it look prehistoric, carapaced, feral. I thought about coyotes.

I thought about Albertine, in bed, alone. I wanted a cuddle.

I finished my rum. I had been drinking it from a plastic water bottle, which now smelled like the kitchen floor on the day after a party. I stood up, climbed back through the window, turned the music off. I decided that going to bed would be appropriate.

self image

This morning I ran far and fast. I was shirtless and lithe. I hopped rocks and took corners. I was tanned by the sun and my muscles felt used. I felt young, handsome, unstoppable, charming. Yes, somehow, running made my charming.

This afternoon I was alone in my office. I went unattended. I hoped my email was dead, simply because that alternative was preferable to the knowledge that no one wanted to correspond with me. I felt tired, old, ugly, forlorn.

Thie evening I walked downtown. I had changed into nice clothes. A well-fitted shirt and my favorite blue jeans. I thought about blue jeans as America’s most valuable cultural export. I felt clever. My hair blew in the wind. I felt tan and confident again. I could have used some conversation, though.

insomnia

Last night I couldn’t sleep because of the stifled concerns susurrating across my bedroom, like buzzing flies or the sound of hard sleet on thin windowpane. I had some wonderful, tortured insomnia. After laying in bed for hours, uncomfortable to the point where sleep was no longer worth attaining, I thought about getting up for work, housecleaning, fucking. . .options for how to divert myself were considered and rejected (one was desirable but impossible, the other two did not seem distracting enough). i decided to go outside. I put on some pants and a fleece.

I walked downstairs and out the door. I wondered if my roommate would hear me leave. The air was cool. It was 3:03 A.M. I unlocked my bicycle and rode it around town. My eyes hurt.

The first bus to the Denver airport leaves at 3:20, and spring break
starts tomorrow, so many of the bus stops were filled with undergraduates
and their baggage. The only other people I saw were the late night drunks
and the too-young looking hook-ups swerving their way home. They all had better things to do than I did. They were going places with family and friends. They were going to have sex or cuddle or sleep it off. Wonderful. I stared at them. I was jealous. I thought about riding up the hill and waiting the three hours until dawn. Wouldn’t that be romantic? It seemed like too much work. I thought about bicycling by Albertine's house, just to feel close to her. I imagined the awkward conversation that would ensue if by I ran into her through some bizarre happenstance, what I could tell her to explain away my presence in her remote neighborhood at four in the morning.
At four in the morning, everything seems ill-advised. I stood straddling the top bar of my bike. I was crippled by indecision. There were no desirable alternatives. The empty town was lonelier than my bedroom. I went home. I made a quesadilla. I went to sleep. Going home felt incomplete. Going to sleep was nice, for a while. The quesadilla could have been better.

anticipation/expectation

While we are supposed to be working, we talk. We talk with our eyes on our computer screens; there is no eye contact, no keyboard-and-mouse-work, either. Maybe we're distracted by the too-quick-for-human-eyes flash of the screen, maybe we're maintaining an illusion that work could commence at any time, or maybe we would just get exhausted from the uninterrupted eye contact that ensues from real conversation. We talk without looking at each other.

We talk about me, because it assuages my reduced sense of self, and because Miranda would rather concentrate on me. At least my traumas are amusing. They are trifling enough for office discussion.

Lately, we discuss my rampant expectations, my boundless ability to wait and hope and dote on a woman I barely know. It's all a result of my impatience, my desire for resolution. If I sit there without talking to Miranda, I think about the last conversation I had with ex-boyfriend-bound Albertine. I diagram it. I dissect it. I wonder what she meant when she paused and said, ". . ." So, I ask Miranda.

Miranda may be in love with me. I've never been able to tell.

I relate the details to her:

“But she kissed me at the end!”
“She said she was ‘homesick’ for him.”
“She was forthright with me. Is that worth something?”
“I’m in love with her.” I pretend to be joking.
It’s all quite boring, really. Miranda acts rapt.

She touched my shoulder twice today. I pulled away a little.

While I wait for Albertine to call, or not call (in which case I will call because of my overwhelming need to feel that final rejection instead of the tortuously slow diminishing of hope that occurs otherwise),, I have Miranda. She’ll listen to my half-concealed obsession and my unconcealed impatience. She’ll say:
“you’re a good guy”
“you’re really exposing your neck”
“she’ll call back”
I don’t believe her, but I like that she listens and that she compliments me, because she may be in love with me. But, she may just be a flatterer.