Please Come Home So I Can Stop Writing Stories About You

So this past year in my non-fiction workshop, we spent the majority of the semester writing and re-working a story on loss.  This was one of my drafts and even though I don't use his real name, it's pretty obvious to those of you who know me who this is about.

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I was in love just once before.  Me and this guy, we were together for awhile- like, really together.  We used to drive around in his car and pick out houses we liked and he would say, "that driveway is big enough for all my cars" and I would say, "that porch would be a great place to sit and read".  Then he would say, "tell me you love me" and I would say, "I love you".

I think I was in love just because he told me I was.  I haven't really figured that out yet.

But this one, this new guy.  He's something else.  I have to take deep breaths when I'm around him; big gaping gasps that catch in my throat and make my chest rise.  He looks at me like I'm crazy.

"Why do you still get nervous around me?" he says, and I answer "Cause I have a crush on you."

I strongly believe that crushes are a lost art.  Not enough people have crushes anymore.  They have infatuations; they're enamored.  I like crushes, they feel weird.  Fuzzy or something.

So this new boy.  Let's call him Jack.  In one of my college English classes I had to read this essay by this guy named Nims and he went on and on about the importance of vowels and consonants and how they create the meaning of a word.  It's all about sound, this guy Nims kept stressing.  Sound sound sound.  So if i were to try and find the meaning of Jack, I would have to realize that he begins with a fricative and ends with a plosive.  Ja-ack.  Nims says this means he is drastic and cuts off airflow to the lungs.  I guess I buy the drastic part, but I may be biased.  I do have a drastic crush on him after all.

The thing about liking someone enough to think about them constantly, but not yet liking them enough to be driving around picking out houses, is that you tend to let them walk all over you a little.  I certainly have my share of footprints on my back.  Big, drastic, airflow-cutting footprints.  Like that time he was supposed to come home for my 21st birthday and see me before I went out to dinner with my girlfriends.  He came home alright, but went straight to the tattoo place to get his rib piece colored in, conveniently calling me to hang out just as I was driving into the city to make my reservation time.

"Sorry, the guy took longer than I thought he would.  It looks cool as shit though."

I'm jealous of that tattoo.

But of course, when he got in a car accident last summer, I stayed with him for two days straight, shaking him awake every three hours so his concussion didn't get the best of him.  His whole family was down the shore that weekend so once Jack was feeling better I drove us down to meet them.  When we got there, his dad grabbed me and hugged me and thanked me.

"You better keep this one around Jacky." He said.

I looked at Jack and nodded.  "You hear that?"

Jack laughed and popped open a beer.

I once read this quote that said, "Crushes are supposed to hurt- that's why they're called crushes."  I don't know how I feel about this quote.

My old boyfriend, he used to tell me I couldn't break up with him because no one would ever love me like he did.  He told me it didn't matter that I had lost touch with my friends.

"Look at my parents, at your parents," he would say as I sat crying because once again my roommates had gone out on a Friday night without me.  "They only have like, what, two, three friends?"

I wasn't so convinced so I would just keep crying.  That's what most of that relationship was: me crying, him telling me how much we loved each other.  So you can imagine my surprise when he began emptying his drawer on Valentine's Day.

"You're cheating on me."

"Um, no I'm not."

"Well...I have to go."

So that was that.  Moving on.

Jack and I had known each other for a year before we started dating.  Well, I guess in our case the term "dating" deserves a bit of explanation.  He isn't my boyfriend and I am not his girlfriend.  Actually, I'm not even sure if we're allowed to see other people.  But when we're together, everything is lollipops and butterflies and deep kisses and that works for us.  So we're "dating".

I remember the first time we spent the whole weekend together; it was only a couple of weeks into our pseudo-relationship.  He came to visit me at school and we spent the whole two days in my bed, watching movies and switching between being the big spoon and the little spoon, only getting up to go to the bathroom and open the door for the Chinese food delivery guy.  By the time he left that Sunday, my sheets smelled like orange chicken and his cologne.  I didn't change them for a week.

Jack is the first guy I've been with that I've actually been attracted to.  This is an unnatural concept, even to me.  See, when you go through junior high and high school being the awkward tomboy, only to arrive at college to a Polo-clad roommate whose new goal in life is to girl you up, you tend to still maintain your original mindset of being the "cute" girl.  Never pretty, never beautiful, certainly never hot.  So as someone who had gone her whole life settling for anyone who would give her attention, I was shocked that this boy, with the tattoos and freckles, the blue eyes and muscles that twitched seductively every time he banged on the drums in his band, actually liked me back.  Not only that, he calls me hot and says I could stand to gain five pounds.  The kid encourages me to eat...he is my Brad Pitt.

My friends, that is, the ones that returned after the infamous Valentine's Day Dumping, are wary of Jack.  They think he's unreliable.  Which he is.  They think I'm getting in over my head.  Which I am.  They think I'm crazy for putting myself in this situation, especially considering the circumstances.  I do not disagree.  But, as I tell my friends, it's about settling.

"I've spent my whole life settling.  I'm sick of settling."

"We know," they tell me, "but we don't want to see you get hurt."

"I've been hurt.  It's not so bad."

Jack's in the Air Force.  A few weeks ago he left for Africa; his very first deployment.

I have the message he sent me tacked up to the bulletin board in my room- right next to my grocery list and the picture of my cousin and I from two Thanksgivings ago.  I printed it out as soon as it popped up on my computer that one morning, as I was packing my bag full of books on John Donne and Adrienne Rich and William Blake.  Being an English major came with an extra thirty pounds of dead and cynical poets.  It jumped onto my screen in bright red letters: New Messages!

I clicked on my New Messages (!) and saw it was from him; I guess he somehow found a way onto the Internet over there?  I opened it up and printed out the promise of just one to two more weeks.

After four weeks of hanging on that bulletin board, that stupid bulletin board with that stupid grocery list and that picture of my cousin from that stupid Thanksgiving, the reflection from the sun through my window had begun to fade the ink on my New Message...!.

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A lot's changed since I wrote that, mainly the fact that he did come back, but then went to Iraq...and then came back and now he's there again.  Patti's trying to get me to enter this writing contest where you submit a true story, and I'm thinking of sending in either this one or the little thing I wrote about graduating college (a bunch of posts back).  So Jil and Cristin and whoever else, if you could just go ahead and give me some feedback, that'd be greeaaatttttt :)