2006-03-16
Ultimately, Matthew is Coming Here Next Week
"Oh come on."
"No, really. Boys like you more when you act like you don't like them at all."
"That's so stupid."
"I know."
"That's why I am only dating men now and I'm also going to date below my looks."
"Be careful on that hon - the genetic pool and all. Good teeth are important."
"I have bad teeth anyway and I'm never having children, what do I care about genetics?"
..."My parents' dog has to wear a diaper."
Silence at the lunch table
"It's really kind of cute! No! It's cute! It's like a little bowl of diaper for dogs and it's shaped mike a baby diaper!!"
"Sarah, don't you get any ideas for Rosie!"
"Uhhhh. Rosie doesn't really need to worry... about.... that. I listened to Bob Barker when he told me to help control the pet population."
Then I winked at my client across the table because it was the right thing to do at that horrible, familiar moment.
Meanwhile, my counter-part started illustrating a little with her hands, about the diaper, and I had to take a great big spoonful of crab dip and shove it in my mouth, mostly so that I would be unable to comment but also so that I could tune out and concentrate hard on chewing, thereby avoiding the imminent choking that would result from my continuing to tune into a one-woman conversation about doggy periods at a table full of cleints.
...
"Why would I support you in Rollerderby? The money I would spend getting skates for you is going to have to be spent on your broken bones and missing teeth."
"I've been very supportive of your chosen sport and staunchly encouraged you though injury on top of injury and listened with a sympathetic and not uninterested ear. Would a little 'Go Sarah!' kill you?"
"I don't agree with it and I won't support it."
"At least my sport requires a helmet and I'm going to wear the optional mouth guard!"
�I will not give you my blessing.�
�If I was a child, you would put me in a full-contact sport to get some of my anxiety and shit worked out.�
�Maybe.�
�Well, same dif now but since it�s the 21st century, I�m going to point out that back in the 1980s, helmets would not have been required and now they are so I am doing what we both agreeing would have needed to be done were I a surly teen.�
�God, shut up. You�re 32 years old. Do what you want. Don�t come crying to me to pay for your missing teeth.�
�MOUTH GUARD!!!!!�
...
"Can you get this massive project out by the end of March? Remember, it needs to look really cool, be separated and formatted to reach two different audiences, and we need it to be catchy and cool. Can you do it?"
"No problem."
...
"You should send your letters to the White House for real."
"No, I don't think I'll do that. I don't want to know in advance that the next time I go to the airport, I am going to get pulled out for a security check, a kilo is going to be planted on me, and I am going to spend my birthing years in a Federal Penitentiary."
...
I'm tapped today.
I'm going to skate tonight and I'm sore already and pissy and my vocabulary is moving between two main words: "Whore" and "Goddammit" and if I don't stop at the store on the way home, sometime shortly after I get home from skating, you can be rest-assured that "fuck" will be charging to the top with a bullet on the Most Used Words Today list.
But Matthew is coming to town next weekend and I'm so happy that I have been crying about it all day.
I'm crying because I'm happy but I'm also crying because he's going to get here and then he's going to leave and that is going to be infinitely sadder than when he moved away in the first place.
But mostly I'm teary because there's so many memories that keep coming at me from when Matthew lived here and how he's my very, very, very, very, very special person who I would never want to date.
For starters, he's a big fag.
Next up, he's gross about bodily functions and a long time ago, befouled my couch, or so I heard.
Then, he over-commits and I would never be Number One the way I need to be when I am in a relationship. Sue me. I'm not always sure and you need to tell me and if that's all it takes to keep me happy, then you're a lucky man who falls in love with me.
Finally, he's like... I dunno. He's like my best friend. I dyed his pubes for him and he ear candled me. There's just not a spark.
But there is deep, satisfying, important, meaningful, heavenly, unconditional love and an unspoken thread between us that allows for an instant to become a year and for a word to become a book.
I can't wait to see Matthew.
arizonasarah at 2:32 p.m.