WebKittyn Warbles
Sunday, August 29, 2004
Zee Past
I was talking to an old gf of mine the other night, we were going over the past and the stupid things we did and we got into this deep conversation about how the sins of the past shape the person of the present. Ok, not as heavy as sins but things we did and people we dealt with who were part of making us who are today.
She's married now, out of the three of us I'm the holdout on getting married. We spent a lot of time blathering and it just got me thinking of my past a bit. And then while I was thinking I realised I should warble it instead of just thinking it. Get the thoughts of the head as they come and that leaves some room in the head for other thoughts, productive thoughts.
You are now entering the past, the present does not exist here.
There were three grand relationships in my life. Two of these times I can honestly say I felt love, the third I thought I did and I tried like Hell to feel love but in the end I realised I didn't and couldn't. And yes, the two were definitely love.
I snort derisively at those who say you can only fall in love once, that's romance novel drivel. It is very possible to
feel love multiple times..
Jerry was the one I tried to love and out of the three, the only one I ever came close to marrying. I can look back now and see that the best part of the Jerry saga was when I first met him and we went through that whole Sherry thing. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on Jerry, I wake up every morning glad I did not marry him and the only thing I learned from my time with him was how important a true friend is. How I made the right decision choosing a friend of 15 years over a love of 1. Validation of the self.
And then there were Michael and Frank. Sort of ironic that the two great loves of my past life were both, in their own way, doomed from the start and one wasn't even a relationship.
Michael was everything the 80's was. He had the Robert Chambers look without the sociopathy. He was intelligent and quick with his wit and he out and out snubbed me in no uncertain or subtle terms. I suppose I was bored in my life and Michael issued a challenge that ended up running almost three years and to this day remains the best three years of my life.
Michael was yuppie scum with a major attitude and he often treated me like crap. Nothing serious, nothing bad, but he was not considerate at all and would often be rude. He had his gaggle of freaky friends I hadn't won over yet and since none of them had a girl, Michael wasn't supposed to either.
It was like a game of cat and mouse, it was a chase and a challenge and it was often crazy. He would tell me "I love you" one night and the next day claim he was drunk and couldn't remember and he was going out with the boys. It took a year to win acceptance from his friends and when it happened it confused him and for once I had the upper hand.
Michael was also the only man who has even fallen asleep while receiving oral sex. Wow, did I just write that? Yes, I did, Bunky. This is my warble land. He was drunk off his ass and we were parked for some reason in the middle of a golf course and I was as bombed as he was. This was the night of my company Christmas party and he and I had been messing around in the stall in the women's bathroom when the band walked in (men and women) to smoke a joint and surprised the hell out of us. It was a night of many memories and his dozing like that was definitely one of them. *snickers*
It went on like that for almost three years, never really a relationship but it was always Michael and Heather mentioned together and it just sorta was. I think it started to fade when we became too much like a couple. The eccentricity was gone, the magick that was the mutual cat and mouse had finally dwindled.
It didn't end bad but it didn't end the way it should have.
And then there was Frank. Frank is hard to explain, he was the only one to ever break my heart without there ever having been anything. Along with all of that, Frank was also the single most influential person in my life and it was Frank who showed me the world of the internet and gave me a headstart into the future.
Frank was the most brilliant man I had ever met when we crossed paths in the early 90's. He was a professor of Philosophy at the college I was working at, I was the Dept. Asst. (secretary) for the division his Dept. was in. He was not only brilliant, he had lived. He had spent some time in a Buddhist monastery, he introduced me to the world of Zen and he compared me to Nietzsche. He looked like Kevin Spacey and was 15 years older than I. He was scatterbrained and funny and he would occasionally sing as he walked the campus. He had a long black wool coat he would wear with a white silk scarf... He was Captain of his town's volunteer fire department..
He was also the Director of the school's baby distance learning program. DL was unheard of back then, it was done on a dos BBS and it met with sneers and jeers in every direction. It was considered so pointless they wouldn't give him a staff. He had one student helping him with the technical end and one other professor helping with the admin end and that was it. I had just recently gotten my first computer and he talked me into taking a DL class or two. Instant karma.
I took it DL like nothing else. I recognised instantly the potential for this program. I saw students who would otherwise sit an entire semester and not raise their hand once posting like crazy. I saw barriers of race and religion not there to cause judgment as people freely shared opinions and ideas. I saw this all being possible because of the commitment of Frank and Frank alone.
He quickly become not only my hero but someone I had strong feelings for. Unfortunately for me, there was a Mrs. Frank and she too worked at the college part time and I knew her.
Gradually I came to work with Frank on the DL program. I wrote the entire manual for new students, I trained new faculty members, I sold the program to hesitant faculty and administrators, I gave demos, I gave out my home number if people needed help and I was constantly online to get questions. With this, I spent an alarming amount of time with Frank in a small classroom turned office. I worshipped him from afar.
The way I felt for Frank was really no secret. Al (the other professor in the program) and Joe (the tech guy) knew what was in my head, as did Frank. There was chemistry with him, there was always flirting and long looks in the eyes but it never went past that. It could have, I would have laid down right there in the office had he shown the go-ahead but he never took advantage.
There were a few times things came close. We would go out to the karaoke bar on occasion after orientations or finals and we'd all get drunk. Legs touching under the table, fingers touching reaching for the ashtray.. Telling me he had to get up and walk away and leave the bar right then or things were going to happen. And actually leaving! I was speechless, he said it in one quick breath and was out the door before I could process it. The only time I went to kiss him goodbye and our tongues met..
It was agonising and sweet at the same time. I made mistakes with Frank, I put the man on a pedestal no one could fill. I learned that he was indeed human and not perfect and it crushed me. Frank ended up leaving his wife but it wasn't to be with me. It was to be with his girlfriend whom he had had for a long long long time, almost as long as he had been married.
In a strange way, it was almost as if he was putting himself into some sort of penance. This woman he went to had a lot of serious issues, he went there as a caretaker as much as a lover. One thing I always respected about Frank was the fact the he didn't go for it with me. What he was doing was complicated and possibly not right but he wasn't a greedy man and he didn't take what was willingly offered.
I loved Frank deeply and truly, enough to put aside my feelings and be there for him as the friend he needed as he got hit with major bad mojo at home and the usual horseshit at the college. Frank and I never lost the closeness, it just became something other than unrequited love.
Frank did things to my mind no one else has ever been able to do and for that I was completely hooked. He made me think in ways I didn't know I could achieve and he was just so amazingly brilliant. To this day Frank remains the most intelligent and charismatic person I have ever known.
And there they are, the 3 big relationships of my past. I'm sure a shrink could have a field day with them and my patterns but shrinks aren't going to be reading this.
When I think of Jerry, I want to spit.
When I think of Michael, I laugh.
When I think of Frank, I think.
I don't live in the past, I don't look to go back and re-ignite the past. But these are my annals and from Jerry, Michael and Frank I have drawn much and added it to who I am.
/end warble/
<-- Steal me!
