Where was I? Leaving some of you panting with curiosity, or possibly just thirsting for a strong ipecac. Ewwww! Love! He’s in love! What’s next, a save the rainforest crusade? Essays on the Free Trade coffee movement that will save mankind? Why not just an all-”Hello Kitty” Fringecast to top off the nausea?
But you know you really love the juicy stuff, especially when it has to do with yours truly. The funny thing is, even a year ago I’d have been mortified that anyone knew I had a sweetheart. It’s a mindset I somehow developed whilst still in the womb that girls were creatures to be admired and appreciated from afar, and if one had to be “in a relationship” with one, it must be conducted with the utmost secrecy. Harriet Tubman would have had fewer secrets than I, were I to be thrust into a relationship with a girl. And God forbid the news get out. In my minimal bug brain, I thought if everyone knew, it would be the beginnings of social asphyxiation for me, and you know what that would mean…I’d lose sight of the sun. Friday nights would become the purview of the dreaded woman-beast that had me willingly committed to her every whim. And of course, the endless mockery of my single friends, who would know the utter stupidity of my predicament, chittering like locusts whenever I stepped out of the room to conduct a one-on-one phone convo with the girl of my dreams.
Sigh. I was such a moron [And he says it like it was all so long ago. --Ed. Hey, how about a little support from you from time to time?].
So I’m a little reserved about my love life. And it’s made doubly painful by virtue of the fact that my love life weighs 450 lbs. and watches soap operas all day from lack of exercise. I show it off sometimes as a circus exhibit. People think I’m weird. But really, it’s just to pay the bills.
Anyway.
Without delving into the science of it all, what chemicals bonded with which protein packets to form endorphins which swirled into my brain like a swarm of attacking dingoes, I will say I’ve known Emily since my latter college days, and from the moment I first saw her, was smitten with an infantile, schoolboy crush that I naturally suppressed with a little pill I like to call Avoidance. You see, when you’re attracted to someone and you don’t know how to handle it, you make like they don’t exist. If they enter your sphere of habitation, then you make amends as soon as is socially responsible, hasten to your room, and wish you had the balls to talk to her. Oh, how you wish. But you don’t. And you probably never will, because you are a male and she is a female–an attractive one at that–and she could never see you as the kind of sensitive, non-gun toting, wannabe writer that you sort of want to be (at least in theory).
So I hid. And cried myself to sleep. Okay, so not quite that bad. But I was apparently oblivious to her interest in me, even back then, to the point of having my roommate imply to me that she had already expressed interest in me. Which played out, not like a romantic movie in which the lovable loser eventually gets the girl through a series of wacky adventures, but more like the failed romance writer’s short story of the guy who was oblivious to a cutie who came around every once in awhile, and eventually, they lost touch. The End.
There’s a reason romance movies feature exciting people with exciting lives…kissing. Boring people don’t kiss. Boring people give up after half a try. Fun people take chances, and eventually end up in bed together. Or if they are chaste, share an appropriate kiss and hold hands whilst walking down a Paris lane listening to the French maids singing about their formerly provincial lives.
Good Lord, have I written this much without saying anything at all?
Well, time flies when you don’t have a clue. But here’s where the juice gets interesting. My film career actually brought us together. Emily happened to be at the Progeny Film Festival in Blacksburg, where my film Red State (Buy the DVD!) was being screened (Winner, Best Sound, 2006), saw my name associated with that amusing mess, and remembered her schoolgirl crush on me, which led to a frenzied rush to her computer where she Google-stalked me, discovering that I have no privacy whatsoever.
No, in truth, it was a slow process of occasional contact via IM, email, and eventually phone, leading to what can only be described as a resurrection of the same feelings I’d experienced as a younger, less experienced lad. But this time backed by a bit more knowledge and understanding, I felt far more confidence in a friendship with her.
You know when you just click with someone, it just works, everything slides into place, and the result is a harmony that defies description or categorization. It’s different for different people, and everyone has their ideal. So I won’t attempt to write all the feelings I went through to arrive at the point where I realized I didn’t just like Emily as a friend. Besides, they’re none of your damn business. Why am I even telling you all this?
Because I love you so much, dear readers, I can tell you this much: Love can happen when you least expect or want it to. I’m not saying you don’t have a choice. I’m just saying when the choice comes, what are you going to do? Run up to your room? Hide away and imagine some romance of the senses?
Or do you fly to New York and try something risky?