ihavebeenfloated

Sarah, don’t read this. I am writing it hoping you don’t read it, so I can be completely open and honest, but I guess we know how full of shit I am part of what I like about you is that you don’t listen to me, so: do what you like, I expect you to.

How do I move forward after today? Which direction do I run in? I’m so busy thinking of all the possible futures that I can’t even begin to focus on how I am going to get through tomorrow knowing that less than six hours away is someone so absolutely stunning. What is going to keep me from dropping everything thursday and saying, you know what, rock’n’roll weekend? You could say reason or restraint or perhaps other words that begin with re-, and then I could say that I met her for the first time when I decided on a whim that it’d be a good idea to drive to San Francisco at the hour of the night that I was usually falling asleep, only to drive home 11 hours after getting there. (Edit: I’m home now, it’s midnight. This means I have been up for two days straight on about two hours of sleep. To say I am compulsive, or perhaps reckless, is to say something not far from the truth.)

I drove the whole six hours, I was driving for about eight hours before I even got to her. I had been up for twenty-four hours when we sat down at Jack in the Box and I couldn’t even eat an order of french toast sticks because I hadn’t eaten in 15 hours at that point and nothing tasted good. I explained to her that coming down off amphetamines—if I spelled that right all on my own right now, I deserve a fucking reward (Edit: No, I didn’t)—feels like this, wanting to eat so desperately but putting food in your mouth is the worst idea ever. This was the first of many times that she furrowed her brow and somehow made her already droopy sad eyes (like mine, yet so much more expressive) even droopier and looked at me with an expression of genuine… something. I don’t even know what, but this:

Matt told me to remember the first thing she said, the first thing she said that turned me on, and the first thing that she said that turned me off, and even now as the hazy sleepy dreamy memories are already fading and I know when I finally sleep I will lose them and be unable to miss her like I do now which will be a relief but also, well, sad—but even now, I can say this:

Matt asked me what the first thing she said that turned me on was, and I said, “uh,” then thought, “everything,” but said, “I don’t want to talk about it.” But: when she—I keep typing “you” even though I am not writing to you, even if you are reading: Hi—furrowed her brow the first time and looked at me like that, I was done for. Gone, Brad was, and left in his place was someone who suddenly felt hopelessly devoted to someone he knows really well while hardly knowing at all.

And therein lies the rub, or something.

I felt like I knew her, who she is, what makes her tick, and all those things suddenly seemed so insignificant when finally meeting face to face. Like: do I really know her at all? And although all her behaviors and actions and they way she carried herself were all perfectly aligned with what I had imagined (and joyously so), there was a problem:

I wanted to treat her with the same closeness we can exhibit across emails and phone conversations, but felt like I wasn’t qualified or justified or some other word ending in -ified. Who was I to just reach out and touch her? How could I? I said to her, this is one of those days where when we part we end up talking later about all the shit we wished we had done, and she said, like what? And then I decided, goddamnit Brad, act.

So when I picked up Alex and Matt from the BART station in and they started quizzing me in various terminology on all the sex I was supposed to have with her, I just smiled and said nothing and let them rattle on with their endless supplies of sex act slang because I knew:

When she punched me in the arm, it meant she liked me, and that I could do the one thing I knew I absolutely had to do so I wouldn’t feel like shit later: I had to touch her. And, so, I held her hand, and she complained that my hands were clammy but held on regardless and, well, my day was complete in a way that anything sexual couldn’t hope to achieve. That was the one thing I envisioned myself pathetically writing to her later on: Goddamn, I wish I had held your hand.

Writing that paragraph was physically painful to me. Who am I? Who is this person? This is another problem:

Matt dropped the L-word when I trailed off saying “it’s just that I think that…” in regards to how I feel about her. I laughed, immediately, either because it was automatic or I knew that if I waited too long to scoff my subconscious would tell me something I am not ready to hear, and I said, “Jesus, no, Matt. If anything, I honestly think that she might be someone worth loving.”

And then I realized that this was the first time in a year, maybe a year and a few months, that I decided, honestly, completely, that perhaps I could actually like someone. This last year or two has been an endless pursuit of ass and emotionless, tenuous connections with the opposite sex. I was afraid that when I came face to face with Sarah I would fall back on brad’s-a-good-friend behavior and not actually know how to want her, but almost immediately I wanted to reach out and hug her and thank her
for existing and that genuinely terrifies me. In fact my eyes just got all watery writing that and I don’t really know why.

Maybe: I don’t know.

I could list the reasons things could go bad. I could, and I planned on it, I also planned on saying what could go good, but suddenly I feel no urge. Why? Why talk about these things? Let me focus on the now, perhaps.

The point is this: I know her. She knows what my head looks like, but it’s like I don’t know her at all. Who is this girl?

This is getting cut short because I need to finish the last fifty miles of drive time.

Ten miles later:

I was already in love with the idea of who I thought she was, and then I meet her and find out she is all that the idea was, if not more. So, then, I ask you, what does that mean?

The first thing she said to me, standing outside her house while I was caught unawares by her while sitting in my passenger seat smoking a cigarette: This is weird.