Mood: Waiting for the night to come
Drinking: Two-fisted, even
When you don’t do the out-of-town thing for Memorial Day weekend, you usually end up on your ass in front of a screen of some sort. Computer. Movie. TV. I chose the TV option this weekend.
I did spend *some* of the holiday weekend off my ass…took the LeeLoo for a multitude of walks, went for a long motorcycle jaunt with Boy, did the barbeque thing with friends, spent Saturday on the boardwalk in Santa Cruz (mmmm, taffy) with S and MTB and Boy. Sunscreen was liberally applied. But there was a whole day when Boy and pals went off-roading and I opted to skip the jouncing over rocks and through mudholes and sit on my ass.
Having recently finished the Firefly DVD set (have I mentioned how much I’m loving Joss Whedon, again?), I needed some new distraction that would last longer than the average movie-minute. So I decided to go with the cliche and order up some Sex and the City. (I had never seen it before, mostly b/c I always thought it looked almost as stupid as Britney Spear’s stage outfits. Plus, I’ve always had a full slate of favorite shows and not much room for promiscuous WASPy bitches.)
I have to preface this confession by saying that Sarah Jessica Parker is on my “Euw!” List. I’m not a fan, never have been a fan, never will be a fan, and get rid of that nasty mole already! But I was weakened by boredom and, let’s face it, a fairly large helping of cat-killing curiosity.
So. Three Sex and the City discs later, I’m in Season Two and already over it. I’m sure this is blasphemy to some, but this is my web site, so all the Carrie Bradshaw fans can shut it. I’m not going to waste space with a list of reasons of why I don’t give a shit about SATC (bad writing, bad clothes and dirty, dirty whores). But I will say that it got me thinking about my own single girl days.
Back in college a girlfriend and I came up with the theory that there are two basic specimens of female in the dating world: The River People and the Desert People.
River people float along all carefree with the wind in their hair, docking their little shapely boat at any place along the riverbank that looks welcoming. Meanwhile, the desert people stumble along with cracked lips and sandblasted skin, searching the horizon for any sign of an oasis, and often going for years without seeing one.
Translation: River people are the girls who are NEVER without a boyfriend. They often have a new boyfriend before they bother to discard the old one. And the Desert girls are the ones with large stretches of empty space in their love lives. Which is not to say that they don’t have plenty to fill up the space. But they are more often than not “without”.
I, of course, was a Desert person, and tended to hang out with Desert people, also. I had four real boyfriends and a handful of flings from the time I was 18 until Boy hitched my star to his wagon (or vice versa) when I turned 28. Before Boy, my longest relationship was 9 months. With a year or two or three of desert in between.
I’m glad I was a nomad, though. I liked it out there. I got tough. I got creative. I got busy with my own life. I learned how to be independent and self-sufficient and how to hang on to my girlfriends. But as a typical desert-dweller, I also learned how it felt to be the “pal” gal. The one the guys call to go rollerblading down Michigan Avenue at 2 in the morning with the rest of the “guys”. The one the guys call to fill out the group of holiday skiers. The one the guys call to talk about the girl they really like. Yup. I was a most excellent gal pal.
(Thank god Boy never wanted to be pals.)
Anyway, it all reminded me of a little thing I wrote back in 1997. A little thing about a boy who thought of me fondly as one of his very best “gal pals”. And it didn’t even matter that, had he asked me, I would have (most likely) said “No!”. What mattered was that he didn’t. What mattered was that he called me up, often, late at night, to talk about someone else who took his breath away…
BREATHING
He called to say
she left him
breathless.
Tongue twisting
around his eyeteeth
while he looked for
perfect words
and spoke the wrong ones
stupidly.
Knees knocking
at the door of
manliness since
he saw her in church
so he couldn’t be
horny.
Heart leaking
love jelly
through the seams
of his chest and his
missing rib ached
when he finally blinked
to breathe.
He called to say
she’s beautiful
intelligent
and sweet. She
makes him laugh
and makes him
dream but he won’t
tell her that.
She makes him
nervous.
He called to say
“Thanks for listening.”
He can tell me
anything.
Yeah.
I always leave him
breathing.
-Lo, who would never have survived the river, anyhow.
LaDonnaWitmer 