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THIS MODERN LOVE, Chapter 6This story may contain adult content. |
| Written by Crimefighter | |
| Wednesday, 13 August 2008 | |
“Ryan, can I ask you something?” It was the second night in a row that I had felt this happy, cuddled and close in the same corner of the couch, laughing, joking and kissing our way through bad t.v. and episodes of “Big Love,” the next chapter in our saga of HBO series. “Yeah?” I sigh. It’s big and it isn’t, and of course I’m second-guessing myself already. “Well, actually no, nevermind.” “What? Just say it!” he insists, his voice tinged with the annoyance that anyone feels when you play this game with them. “Um…” I’m looking down, away, anywhere but at his face. I feel like a shy 12 year old talking to my big crush, and we’re stuck in that friend stage. “Is it naïve to think this could be it?” He pauses; obviously I shouldn’t have said anything. “Well, I don’t really think about stuff like that,” is his diplomatic answer. “Yeah, I know,” I agree, but I want him to know where I’m coming from. “I guess it’s just that – well, I just think you are so perfect for me, you know? I mean, I love how we can be so silly together, and we make each other laugh, and I think you are so cute…I don’t know, I feel like you just fit so perfectly with me. But then I think, that’s dumb! I mean, I’m so young, we’re so young, this couldn’t really be it. There’s so much more stuff to do, you know?” “I know, I feel the same way. But I try to focus on what’s going on now, rather than worry about all that ****.” I nod. I just hope I feel like this when we’ve been together for years. No no no, why do I always get stuck here? Ryan is still talking. “But I do love you a lot. I think about you all the time, and I have so much fun with you when we’re together. And I don’t feel complete without you around.” I nod, agree. I just hope I feel like this forever. God damnit, why must I do this? Is it the difference between male and female DNA? When I focus on the future and worry about it too much, Ryan always asks me, “Are you breaking up with me?” And it’s the farthest thing I have from my mind – I’m talking about how much I love him now, why would I want to give that up? But sometimes it’s all I can think of, and I’ve learned now that its something I have to bury, to hide, so I don’t scare him. I don’t even know why it’s so important to me, its not like I’m trying to plan my life. We go back to being happy lovebirds, laughing at autistic children (more specifically, the girl in Autism: The Musical who cannot voice an original word but rather repeats every question she is asked, like some human parrot.), cringing at the clichéd dialogue of The Number 23, and kissing each other’s noses, lips, cheeks, faces and even ears in between. I feel romantic. The next morning is another story. I wake up, alone, to the horrible sound of some cat in heat calling out to me, or the impending doom the beep, beep, beep of a truck backing up instills. I turn it off. I go back to sleep. Five minutes before I need to leave for work, I awake and spring up with the energy of someone who cannot be late. My clothes are waiting for me, so I grab them and begin to dress. Being alone most mornings, I have worked out a system of putting on back zipped dresses without help. Of course, this morning, my system backfires and the zipper ends up splitting. Stress abounds as I work to escape from the now defunct dress while trying to find another dress that fits the tights and shirt I already have on. Needless to say, I am late. To top it all off, tonight is a night I do not see Ryan usually, because he has band practice from 7-10:30. All we have are our emails. I write to him, still seething from the morning, “i want to claw out the throat of everyone. i want to suffocate a small animal. i want to maul your face, scratching and beating you until you are literally a ‘bloody pulp.’ or maybe i just want to smash a watermelon with a mallet.” He ignores my violent outbursts, writes back, “I’m so in love with you. You’re my beautiful babydoll.” He truly is what separates me from insanity. **** The weather is getting sunnier, sort of. It’s the kind of days that starts off bright and beautiful, and end with gray skies and wicked winds. It is one day before the start of Memorial Day weekend, the start of BBQs, parties, lazy days, a parent-less house, sleeping in with Ryan, a 3-day work week, and then our short, but deserved, trip to the Outer Banks, North Carolina. It is hovering over my head, just out of reach, but first I have to endure the sad truth of time. I watch the trees bop and bounce from the wind outside my window, marvel their greenness. I do a crossword puzzle on People.com, check my email constantly. I look at the time; it is 4:36 p.m. and I am losing my sanity. I don’t even have the heart fluttering realization that I will get to see Ryan tonight; it is again a band practice night. He no longer works at a job with constant email access, so the emails have become scarce, occasional. On days like these, though, I can’t refrain. I write to him, “i miss you. i really hate that i'm not going to see you tonight. i would say, if you get out of practice around 10, come over!...but i know thats not gonna happen. :( i'll just have to bide my time until tomorrow. sighhhh... i wish you would get a real job so you could pay rent with me so we could get our own apartment. hmmm??? i'm tired of not being able to sleep with you every night.” I contemplate going outside for a cigarette. It seems like a viable option. I notice a set of labels that I have ignored all day. (Part of my job is to label postcards – junk mail essentially – and send them out daily. Shitty tasks like this are what make my life oh so realistic.) I should probably take care of those first. It’s 4:44 now. At least its almost 5, and once you get to 5 it’s the home stretch. O look, an email from Ryan! “I hope i get out early tonight. i really do. i want a real job as well just so i can pay rent. i feel like i've been letting you down and it really stresses me out. it seems like our plans of moving in have been foiled by me. ugh.” Ryan is full of self-hating assumptions such as these, and I wish I could save him from it. The perils of an optimist-realist dating a dark pessimist. All I can do is assure him. “you shouldn't feel like that...i can't afford to move out right now anyway. i just really want to! i make $1600 a month though, and let's see...$90 car insurance, $50 phone, $120 for gas, $300 for food = $560. Paying rent and utilities, I'd probably only have $300 left over...and thats not enough to pay my credit card bills. mother ******!! i need a raise. or maybe i could just win the lottery. or find a pot of gold! don't feel like you've foiled our plans. life has foiled our plans.” Sadly, the whole exchange has only cost me 5 minutes. That’s it; I have become so bored, I’m going to do work. I paste labels on postcards, and stamp the postcards, then print out more labels, and use those on more postcards. I check my email every 5 minutes, not because I am OCD, but because emails need to be answered the moment you receive them. Otherwise, they pile up, and suddenly you’re faced with several demands at once, and you’re so afraid you’re going to forget one that you print out the emails in an attempt to save your memory, but sadly, not the trees. This is probably not something that could happen now, considering the awful slowness that suffocates me, but the email reflex has become a habit. I’m full of them. I do my timesheet, another arbitrary, time-wasting, activity. At 5:55 p.m., I sneak out. I wish Ryan was going to be at my house to greet me. I sincerely wish there was a pot of gold I could find and provide me with a life I can’t afford. All I want is a hole in the wall. With central heat, cable tv and a washer and dryer. Why does that feel so unattainable? After mind-numbing traffic, I come home. I pick at leftover pizza, and gobble up a chicken pot pie, despite my constant promise to start eating healthier. The rest of the night is uneventful. I watch tv. I clean my room. I finish reading the Spin magazine I got in the mail yesterday. I take a shower. I go to bed early. At least I’m a little bit closer to my 3-day weekend. Time passes, we go to parties and get drunk, come home and wish we had our own place. Saturday night, Memorial Day weekend, my parents had all but promised they would be departing to Virginia Beach, allowing Ryan and I to do the most innocent thing we love to do and sleep near each other. Well, they lied. When I came home early from a party I wasn’t sure I had wanted to leave and heard from my brother, Devin, that they had not left, that they were not leaving, and that our plans were ruined, I was seething. I seethed in the basement while Ryan and I watched tv, listening for the garage door. When I heard it, I raced up the stairs, sure that I had the upper hand. Tom, my step dad, came in first, hands up, apologizing. “I’m sorry, we didn’t know how long it was going to take. Have you ever bought a car? Do you know how long it takes?” I don’t care. No one has ever been forgiven that easily by someone as angry as me. “I left early because you guys were so worried about Devin, said you couldn’t leave him alone for one second! And now I hear that you guys have been gone for hours with him alone…that doesn’t make any sense! Why did you make such a big deal about it when you guys didn’t even care?” Tom rolls his eyes, but it’s a regular reaction from him so I brush it off. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he sounds defeated, “it took us a lot longer than we thought. Don’t you remember how long it took to buy your car? We’re sorry, there was nothing we could do.” “You could’ve let me know!” I am not losing this battle. Tom throws his hands up in the air. “I don’t know what else to say besides I’m sorry.” With that, he walks back out to the garage, no doubt to warn my mother. She walks in several moments later, an apology already on her lips. It’s the same old argument of we-didn’t-know-how-long-it-would-take, and I realize that parents will always have special circumstances and will never be held as accountable as you would be by them. I’m desperate now, knowing that that’s the end. Ryan and I go another night alone in our beds. Maybe not. I almost whisper it, “Can Ryan spend the night?” In fact, I do whisper it because my mom asks me to repeat myself. “Is it okay if Ryan spends the night?” She rolls her eyes too, and puts her head down, shaking it from side to side. “Ask Tom,” is all she says, and I know what’s going to happen. But I argue it anyway, and lose to the excuse that his moral fiber is what rules the house. Halfway through I start crying with as much dignity as I can, and walk out when the conversation no longer means anything. I go downstairs, where Ryan is waiting. “What happened?” he asks, the same worry and fear in any guy’s voice when they see a crying girl. I plop down on the couch, shaking my head as more tears spill out. “I asked if you could spend the night, and then got into this whole argument with Tom about it and he was just like ‘Its my morals, I don’t think its right’ when all I want is to have you next to me. Sometimes I just get so scared without you there, you know?” Ryan nods. “And I just wanted you around, cus this basement is so big and dark and I start convincing myself of all these crazy things and I just freak myself out, you know?” Ryan is rubbing my back, my arms, just nodding along to what I’m saying. “But I’m just so sick of this. I’m tired of not having the freedom to be able to do what I want. I just want to move out SO BAD, but I can’t because I don’t make enough money and I’ve got too many bills to pay.” Currently, I’m crying hard, hyperventilating, basically freaking out. “And so its just this ****** thing where I can’t move out because of all my expenses, so I can’t have any say in what I do, and I just can’t stand it. I’m so ****** tired of having them looking over my shoulder all the time. I just want to get out of here and I can’t!! I feel like walls surround me and I can’t climb over them, I can’t get out and I’m so tired of feeling trapped!” Ryan is still rubbing my body, kissing my skin. “Baby, you just feel hopeless right now. Everyone gets that way sometime, you just have to take a deep breath and let it go. Someday we’ll get our own place together, I promise. Don’t worry, okay?” I nod, and hug him. I’m still choking on my tears, so I don’t speak to try and calm down. “We can still stay up late right?” he asks with a smile, and I return it. At least tomorrow night I will have him in my bed. My Ryan. Copyright 2008 Crimefighter |
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