there is no title today
2005-10-31 - 14:57

There's just something funny about us, I don't know. I couldn't explain it and I'm not sure if I want to try. I certainly don't want to define it or figure it out because the way it is is actually quite (I will sound ridiculous but I'll say it anyway) mysterious. As well as - depending on your perspective - hilarious and frustrating.

Last night, I don't even remember exactly what issue we were talking about then, but he said "That's why we're so good for each other". It was something like him saying I'm a certain way and me saying he was a certain way. We're similar, we do and think similar things, but we're also very different and have very different outlooks and habits. And we complement each other and add to each other but also challenge each other. I've said it to him and to myself, we could learn a lot from each other.

We are both idiotically uncommunicative and we were sitting in a red booth in the cheesiest bar in Seattle, me looking out the window at the wet street and the rain with tears in my eyes. So this is it, we were saying, we are only acquaintances.

I began talking about my lack of friends and said that I can't fake liking someone when I don't. So that's it, he said, you don't like me anymore just like that. No, I said, I'm not talking about you.

As it turns out, he thinks I could drop him easily, and I think he could drop me easily. As it turns out, he thought I was the one who needed to talk to him, and I thought he was the one who needed to talk to me.

(As it turned out, I was the one who called him. Of course.)

I sent him an email two weeks ago and I was very pissed off and my email offended him and at the same time he was glad I'd sent it and said the things I did. And I was glad he got offended. ('Glad' isn't really the right word.)

On Friday he offered to help me move. Ha, I said, ha! Later he said, my offer of help was genuine and it was very rude of you to laugh at me. But, but I wasn't trying to be rude, I said.

Later I realized of course that it was rude and I was glad he'd called me on that. Usually I get away with stuff like that.

The next day I told him when he called (in the fucking middle of the night again) that I appreciated his honesty in telling me that I was rude because I was.

Then last night he said he was glad I'd said that, that I'd actually gotten over myself enough to admit it.

You need to get over yourself, he said.

I know it, I said, but I can't do that alone.

It's all very mysterious and hilariously frustrating, you have no idea.

There was much more said. We were both very tense and guarded and angry and so wrong about what was going on in the other's head. But I kissed him on the cheek when he said "that's why we're so good for each other" and he whispered in my ear twice. Which is to say, at first it appeared that there was nothing to be done or said, but after a while we were able to discuss some things and make progress.

And after this very tense confusing but ultimately very good and somewhat resolution-finding conversation in this cheesy karaoke/city-country/trashy bar with lemon-smelling bathrooms we were running through the rain in the streets on lower Queen Anne, looking for Republican, horsing around and pretending to push each other into the flooded streets, rainwater dripping off my nose. I had to pee. The bus went by and we were half a block away and it was beautiful.

Whether this resolves anything or opens up a new way forward is not something I can say. I can't say anything about that. Right now we are the shakiest of friends, I think, with this ridiculously hilarious thing that neither of us can mention to the other.

It might lead to nothing but whether it does or doesn't - it was beautiful and you know and I know and he knows that I need that. He needs it too.