I was supposed to be blogging at least once a week but that fell to the wayside I'm afraid. Since I'm pretty sure that my blogs are 190% longer than most others yet more mind- bogglingly stuffed with too much about me, it maybe okay to write less often. However, I am going to attempt to link OTHER blogs into this blog so that it's more interesting. I just discovered this wonderful Swedish woman, Emi, who has been writing letters to Marc Jacobs. It looks like she is stopping for now but it's a gem:
http://www.letterstomarcjacobs.blogspot.com/
There is also Heidi Swanson at 101cookbooks.com. Trust me, I'm a doctor so you should go to her site for wholesome tasty recipes, photography and links to blogs such as Emi's (insert: I stole Emi's blog from Heidi).
Okay, back to me. I should be partially off the hook from not blogging due to my fishing trip to Alaska last week (pun intended, pun intended darn it!). Yes, I really do like to fish, it's not just to impress the boys. I like to eat fish, I like the great outdoors and for someone like me with borderline manic tendencies even while on 'vacation' it's good to have a project when not at work. The reason this trip was super-sized for me was that my new/old boyfriend (should I call him manfriend since he's all grown up? Boyfriend is just so, 1990) got on a plane and joined me. Now, this should be a normal manfriend/womanfriend (no, sounds stupid) event but we are not normal. Or typical. Or regular. He is called Ben, BTW, and I have known him since I was 19.
I was a fresh- faced small town girl now living in the big city (well, I wasn't totally apple pie and pigtails but almost) in the early 90s when the height of fun music (80s pop) and grunge was flowing through our earnest little veins. Outfitted in our grubbiest flannel button ups and clunkiest Doc Martins one of my galfriends and I went to hear a rock show at the university. It was the same old set up: a dark small venue with dankly sticky floors, too many people and a horrifically bad sound system. I'm sure I had in mind just another evening of jumping around and acting cool before heading back to my dankly sticky crowded house that I shared with 5 other 19 year olds. At least those were my thoughts until the moment he started to sing.
I know this vagina talk all sounds the same "the minute I locked eyes with him I knew he was the one" or " there was no one else in the room except he and I" but I swear it felt like that. Ben was a 23 year old pretty decent rockstar singing his lungs out on the stage. Mostly New Wave ballads from gems such as Modern English, REM and Simple Minds. But to me, he sounded like perfection mixed with hope and comfort. I was mesmerized. I turned to my wonderful friend (whom I am still friends with. I even own her first wedding dress 'just in case'......) and said "Hey Kirst. I'm going to know that guy for a long time". She is much more normal than me and just looked perplexed. I then pushed my naive little self through the sweaty crowd and climbed up on stage. True story.
This is the part where you should know that no one in my family has any musical talent whatsoever. Okay, maybe my little brother can play the base but that's it. This didn't stop me from joining the high school choir or singing at the top of lungs in church (they actually had to ask me to sing with a 'little less enthusiasm' at church). But I really can't call myself a singer in any way, shape or form. So what possessed my brain to jump on stage with a very good singer who also happened to be a good-looking male that I was potentially convinced could be my soul mate is beyond me. I stood up and asked if I could join in. I'm sure he was trying to be polite so he amiably allowed the torture of REM's "It's the End of the World As We Know It" to happen. If you don't remember this song then go pull it up on ITunes. It's got a lot of very, very fast and confusing lyrics which I proceeded to butcher like a young lamb on dirty cutting board.
The rest of the sequence was a blur but it ended with phone numbers exchanging, dates happening and a year of 'hanging out'. I'm not sure what we really were except that I have always remembered that the smell of Ben made me feel that I had returned home. It's a mix of musty, sweet goodness that is nearly impossible to describe. Sadly, my enthusiasm for our casual hook ups didn't end up as an LTR. I barely met his friends or family and not sure I learned his middle name. We certainly didn't exchange birthday gifts but for some mysterious reason I did meet his parents one Christmas eve. Another blurry act in the play. But he sure did make me laugh. Somewhere near the end of my 20th year he stopped calling and my pride was bruised. So just after my 21st birthday I once again had a brilliant epiphany and decided to show up at a bar I knew he sometimes frequented. As (bad)luck would have it, he was there! Little drunk me ended up slapping/punching this 200 lb singer/boxer/bartender in the bar. His cousin luckily pulled me off before I could start spitting or scratching and further humiliating myself. Our first chapter ended, book closed.
Are you still with me on this story? Good, as we aren't done yet. Fastforward 4 years and I find myself single, 24 and in my first year of graduate school. Oh, and lonely, did I mention that? I had now had a couple of 'city' boyfriends under my belt and felt more confident in my dating prowess and what I could offer the opposite sex in terms of companionship. I'd learned that hooking up generally doesn't get you a boyfriend and that I wanted more out of relationships. I randomly stumbled across Ben's number in my book (this was pre-cell phones) and decided to check in. Why would you call a guy who basically ignored you after which you made a huge fool out of yourself in a public place in front of his family you ask? Dunno. I blame youth, hormones, or that thing called fate.
So I called and surprisingly he agreed to go on a date. This led to a few more dates over the next couple of months and even more surprisingly, I found myself really liking him beyond the confines of a bedroom. Crap. My confidence wasn't that strong. Suddenly the "he's the one/soulmate/this is it" feelings all came rushing back, the very same ones I experienced as I watched him sing "I Melt with You" (it has since been brought to my attention that this was his signature song to ALL of the girls back in the day- uber cliche). What does any 24 year old insecure girl do then? She panics and decides to dump him first before he figures out who she really is and leaves her again. I busied myself with boys I liked less and stopped returning his calls. I remember one vague phone call that I did take during which he basically chewed my ass for being a terrible person for ignoring him. And that was it. Chapter two ended, slam book shut again.
Until last fall when Facebook happened (wait, I did see him in Target once about 6 years ago and was going to say hi until I saw the pretty girl he was holding hands with. I dove under the bra rack until they passed and then quickly ran the other way. Did I mention how brave I am yet?). It had been 12 years since I'd spoken Ben and, insert fate, loneliness or hormones here again, I typed his name into that naughty social networking site. I figured at 40 he would have 2.5 kids, a lovely wife and be just another face in my collection of 'friends' who blankly stared at me from that side panel. Well.....it didn't quite work that way so here we are again, 13 years later and fresh off of our first event that involved an entire day of breakfast, lunch and dinner together (3.5 days to be sort of exact). We didn't kill each other and in fact, got on eerily well.
I have made this blog TOO BLOODY LONG but just want to end by saying we both love fishing, he still has that smell that makes my tummy feel funny and I have no idea what our future together holds. We have mutually agreed to not slap, punch or ignore each other again, no matter how our script turns out. I'm hoping it expands from a flimsy brochure into a series of very dense novels but then again, I truly am a hopelessly romantic sap of a woman. Please don't tell anyone that, I'd hate for my tough as nails front to be torn down to only reveal my sensitive, vulnerable heart that longs for 'the one'.
- Single and 37 (at least for now posts the optimist)
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