I just spent quite a bit of time looking back through my old entries, to see if I've already written about this. I'm pretty sure that I have, but I couldn't find it.

So maybe I'm having an actual original thought. Wouldn't that be something?

Anyway, one of my many problems is that too often I think that I'm more important than I really am. Not to everyone, just to the people who are most important to me.

It's like I think, This person is very important to me, so I must be very important to this person. This is something that we share. We are important to each other.

A while ago, this problem reared its ugly head. I got an email with some very very very disturbing news. Basically akin to a death sentence, metaphorically anyway. And as if the news itself wasn't bad enough, I was one of about ten people who got that same email. I remember thinking, Wow, this news really sucks donkey balls and, more than that, I really fucking wish that she'd told me in person.

I wanted special treatment. I felt like I deserved special treatment. Because she is very special to me, a part of me just assumed that the reverse was also true. Even now, the realization that I'm wrong about that assumption is not something I'm able to accept.

So I'm basically being a baby. I haven't responded to the email. I'm still waiting to talk to her, to give her a chance to talk about it with me in person. It wouldn't soften the pain that this news has rained down upon me, but it might make it a little easier for me to accept, if I knew that it was bothering her even a zillionth as much as it's bothering me.

Look, I don't mind being a nobody to the other seven billionish people on Earth. Another face in the crowd, another address in an email. But to be generic to that handful of people who are anything but generic to me?

I don't like that feeling very much.

Not very much at all.

Plus, I've got this fucking cold.

That's how many gallons of snot have left my nose since yesterday afternoon.

About 700 of those gallons have, thankfully, left through one or more nostrils. But the rest have drained backwards into my throat and sent me into wild coughing fits.

How can the human body generate this much snot? Well it's a fucking medical miracle, that's what it is.

(continued from a couple of entries ago)

After a couple of seconds, I guess a little tiny sense of familiarity crept into my head. I began to feel that I should know who this cocky loud pretty girl was, but I had no real chance to investigate that feeling because that's when her friend finally spoke.

"What are you doing?" she asked the blonde. And then she said her name.

She said her name, and a door inside my head creaked open, and I remembered.

I remembered a party, in Hancock's field, a long time ago. I remembered waking up in the back of my parents' Mercury Comet, wearing only my underwear and a jacket. I remembered digging through the trash on the floorboards, looking for my keys and my shoes and my pants and my shirt. I remembered finding all those things, and I remembered also finding a little blue sock, and one of those hair barrette thingies, and an empty bottle of Jack Daniels, and an empty condom wrapper.

I remembered going to a basketball game at school a couple of weeks later, and being greeted like an old friend by a cute blonde girl wearing a Providence High School Jacket. Being greeted like more than a friend actually.

I remembered confessing that I didn't remember meeting her, being with her, at all. That I'd woken up in the back of my car alone and confused and unclothed. I remembered how she laughed that off, and how she'd said that she'd have to try harder to be memorable the next time.

I remembered that the next time started about fifteen minutes later, in my cousin Jeff's station wagon.

I remembered countless nights after that, sneaking out of my house with my friend Eddie. I remembered that he'd drop me off at where she worked, or to where she lived. I remembered lying on her bed, holding hands and listening to Pink Floyd. I remembered doing a lot of other things in her bed.

I remembered the night she told me that she loved me, and how I'd echoed those words right back at her. I remembered how we started to tell people that we were engaged. That as soon as my basic training was over, and I was stationed at my first base, we'd get married and raise kids and we'd always laugh about how, on the night we'd met, I was too drunk to even remember her.

I remember how everyone said we were crazy.

I remembered how she'd come to the Air Force induction center to see me off. I remembered holding her close and telling her that I'd see her again in a few short weeks, and that we'd be together from that moment on.

I remembered that I'd never seen her again.

Not for more than 23 years.

Until lunch today.

So once I picked my jaw up off the floor, I just looked at her. I had no idea what to say, what to ask, what to feel. She saved the day by doing all the talking. She's been married for a long time. She has two grown children. She still loves Pink Floyd, and she still has most of The Wall memorized. I stammered out that I do too.

She said that I hadn't changed a bit, which was a beautiful lie. I said that she hadn't changed either, and as proof I offered up the fact that it had taken me so long to remember her.

We didn't discuss what had happened, back in 1983. Why she'd moved. Where she'd gone. There wasn't time for any of that, and there wasn't really a need for any of that. We were each others' distant past, and that was all that we were.

As I gave her a hug and said goodbye, I wondered if it would be another 23 years before I saw her again. I wondered if I'd do a better job of remembering her in 23 years. I wondered if I'd even remember my own name in 23 years.

Anyway, I guess that makes it official. I have officially run out of women. Time to dig out that little black book from high school, and start over.

Stubib code-ass wedder.

This is kinda cool to me.

I was sitting at The Hard Rock in Louisville for lunch. I usually go to The Pub, but it was too crowded today, plus I wanted some potato skins.

Anyway, I was sitting at the bar, and down about four or five seats from me were two hot girls. A short-haired blonde and a long-haired brunette. Both pretty, but in very different ways. One sexy and sultry, the other perky and vivacious.

So I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out which one was the hotter of the two. I know, it's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it.

I kept glancing over there, getting no closer to making up my mind as to which was hotter, and eventually the blonde caught me looking. She kind of smiled. I smiled back, then turned back to my food, 'cause I'm all shy and shit. I could see out of the corner of my eye that both girls were now looking at me, though I couldn't hear what they were saying. Probably arguing over which of them was hotter, I figured.

I'd just about decided to stage a kissing contest between them when the blonde spoke to me.

"You kept looking over here at us for a half-hour, and now you've suddenly stopped. What's up with that?" she asked in a not very nice way.

"Well," I said. "I was trying to decide which of you would be my new girlfriend, but now I've made up my mind and I don't have to look any more."

"Oh really?" the blonde said. She was smiling, so she was at least slightly amused.

"Yep," I said. "You're both very pretty, but I'm thinking that you're not very nice, so I choose your friend."

"You sure know how to hold a grudge," the blonde said.

Hold on a second. That didn't make any sense.

"Huh?" I asked. 'Cause I'm all eloquent and shit.

"Don't you remember me?" the blonde asked. "Look closely. Don't you know who I am?"

She then got up and walked over to me and stuck her face right in front of mine.

(to be continued)

Today HatGirl told me that I was craftily romantic.

When I got home, I went to dictionary.com to see if craftily was a real word. Indeed it is. So everyone please note the big brain on HatGirl. Beauty and brains. No wonder I like her.

Anyway, I became a little concerned when I read the first definition given for crafty:

skillful in underhand or evil schemes; cunning; deceitful; sly.

But, since my brain absolutely refused to ingest any thought that might indicate disapproval by HatGirl, I decided to take it as a compliment. I'm pretty sure that's what was intended anyway. Kinda sorta.

Come to think of it, I probably should have tried harder to be insulted. I need some more drama in my life.

But I didn't.

Instead, I decided to write this boring no-drama-having entry about being romantic.

When I was young, I used to bring my ex-wife roses. All the fucking time. Every Tuesday. Every Thursday. The 18th of every month. The 5th of every month. Sometimes just for the fuck of it. I thought, back then, that I was being romantic. But I wasn't. What I was being was needy and clingy. Though I didn't know it at the time, I was trying to save a doomed relationship.

The context of my attempted romanticism prevented it from being real at all.

Now that I'm a lot older and a little wiser, I think that romance should be spontaneous. It should never be needed. It should never be in response to anything. It should just happen. A tiny unexpected gesture that comes out of the blue and, for a few seconds or minutes or hours, completely disarms the girl.

Almost a year ago I wrote about a time I did something romantic. I think that was when I really started to recognize the power of romance. I began to watch for opportunities.

Opportunities for spontaneity. There's an oxymoron if I ever saw one. But that's what they were.

That thing with the card, that was a pretty grand gesture. It shouldn't have worked. It should have scared her off, once the initial shock had dissipated. And I suppose that it did, a little. It was weeks before I heard from that girl again.

It was too much, too soon. I had nothing to back it up. Nothing to top it.

I've gotten a lot better over the years. When I want to, I can sweep a girl off her feet. That's not me being cocky or egotistical. It's just me being honest. The hard part for me is wanting to do it. So few girls seem worth the effort.

Shit, I even did something romantic for LaptopGirl once. It was, of course, ignored. Because it was too late. It wasn't spontaneous. It was an attempt to fix something. It was needy and clingy.

But my shining moments, my shining moments were all with MixedSignalGirl. We've talked about it a lot. She really brought out the romantic in me. She was always surprised, every single time. And she'd smile and the room would light up. She told me that she'd go for days and it would seem that her feet would never touch the ground.

But, in the end, it wasn't enough. That cake was almost all frosting. For both of us.

Fuck. Now I'm in a bad mood. I think I'll stop writing now.

I forget where I was going with this entry anyway.

Probably somewhere stupid.

There's really only one mitigating thing about this whole mess.

It's still a long way off.

Good thing, too. I'm going to need all the time I can get, if I'm going to attempt to prepare myself. If I'm going to try my hardest to set things up so that I can stage my resurrection. If a part of me is going to survive.

There's no use on steeling myself against it. There are no walls strong enough to prevent this from overwhelming me and drowning me. There are no lies I can tell myself to alleviate the pain I will feel. There isn't a single fucking thing that I can do, except wait, and perhaps silently hope that I die before it happens.

Everybody leaves.

I need to get that fact into my thick skull. I need to learn it, and I need to know it so well that it becomes a part of me. I need to anticipate it, accept it. Relish in the pain it brings.

There is something inside of me.

It's not love, but it's something.

And it's going to scream of loss and sorrow. Then it's going to die.

In less than eighteen months.

I'm fooled every time, by the pretty carrots that life dangles in front of me.

I take a step forward, my mouth watering, but life matches my movements. Pulls my prize further away. No matter how far I go or what I do, the carrots never get any closer. I never get any closer to satisfying this hunger.

But I can live with that. Sometimes it's enough to just look at the pretty carrots. Smell them. Imagine that they're mine. Sometimes it's enough to just know that they're out there. Dangling out of reach, but never out of mind. Never out of mind.

I accept it. I get used to it. I even start to like it.

That's when life tires of its game, and ends the taunting.

That's when life takes the carrots completely from my sight.

Out of reach, and suddenly out of sight, but never out of mind. Never out of mind.

First, I went down to Rich O's at a little after 3:00. They're having an art show in the special people section, and I wanted to buy one of NotHideousGirl's paintings if there were any still available. The one that I wanted was still for sale, so I snapped it up.

I had myself a Wostyntje (209) and looked at the rest of the art. It was nice to see that MisunderstoodGirl had also sold a painting.

I'd planned on heading straight over to Louisville after I left Rich O's, but like an idiot I'd left my Blackberry at home. This always cause for concern, but yesterday it was especially so because I'm on-call this weekend. So I went back home and dicked around for an hour or so, then I went over to Louisville. With my Blackberry this time.

After a quick meal, I went to The Pub. I had a couple Newcastles (3224) and talked to a couple of the bartenders. The place was pretty dead, but it was still fairly early. next I walked over to The Hard Rock. It was packed as fuck with birthday parties for screaming teenagers. That, plus the fact that CoolHairGirl wasn't working, kept me from staying there.

So I went down to The Red Star, and there were only like three customers. I told the cute bartender that it looked like they'd had a fire drill or something. I didn't stay there.

I walked through the alley to this Third Street Dive place that I'd gone to with EllaGirl last weekend. That place was dead too, but the HotLibrarian bartender assured me that it would pick up by 10:00. I had a glass of BBC Jefferson's Reserve Bourbon Barrel Stout (390) and looked at some weirdoes.

After a while, EllaGirl came in. She jokingly gave me some shit about ditching her last weekend. I explained my reasons. All was forgiven, and we moved over and sat at a little kiddie table. I had another Stout (406) and we talked and flirted and did various other things until a really loud band started playing. Then EllaGirl suddenly said that she was going to go clean her apartment, and to give her my number so I could come over after it was cleaned. I assured her that I didn't care how messy her place was, but she insisted.

So I gave her my number and she left.

I was pretty sure that she was going to flake on me, so I went back to The Pub. It was much more crowded by then. A bunch of hot girls and a bunch of yuppies trying to pick them up. I had a couple Diet Cokes, and a small sample of something new for me:

Belhaven Twisted Thistle IPA (4)

(draft) I'd never have guessed that this was an IPA. The aroma was mostly of malt and dirt, but good. Flavor was a little peaty and a little smoky. No bitterness. I liked it a lot more than I expected to.

And I don't feel guilty at all. Yet.