This is how I start my nightly reports, the shift notes I send to the owner and the other managers. It's not a terribly creative title, and to even call it creative would be a misleading advertisement; but, as a title, it gets the job done.
Last week I did something that is uncharacteristic, but not entirely without precedent: I kissed another woman. I can't describe why it happened, and I don't have to do much justice to how it happened. It wasn't a deep or passionate kiss so much as it was hesitant, unsteady, and, of course, belligerent. The other party is a kindred soul that I've worked with since I started downtown; a writer and career waitress who probably could have made better decisions in life, but seems instead merely exhausted by the decisions which have made her. We both have significant others who are important to our lives, so there's no immediate fear of exhumation, nor any reason to pursue this matter we've shared any further. And, the coworkers who were barhopping with us not only missed the little scandal in its progress--the two of us sitting quietly close together at the end of the bar--but would have so many more adventures fill the rest of their night that nobody could remember the Kiss if her or she even wanted to.
I'm her manager, which makes the circumstances awkward in a tiered sort of way--I push this particular element of our relationship out of the way of a greater philosophical curiosity, but I'm not sure if she does. What I spent an entire weekend trying to unravel was what the gesture meant to me, and what it meant to her. She's much older than I am, has lived longer, and yet makes a half-drunken pass at me in a bar that I stupidly reciprocate--what damage am I looking to do, either to myself or to her? The Kiss took me back to a different time, a wide, small-town river on a hazy Southern afternoon, two pairs of legs splashing for the bank and then step after sucking step through knee-deep mud to an abandoned factory on the hill above; and, wary that people get stuck and even die for stupidity like this, but too young and daring and oblivious to care about it; and, her boyfriend is at work or out of town, I don't remember, and my girlfriend lives out of state, because I'm on summer break from school; but none of the greater details stop us, or me at least, from etching the lesser details onto a space of memory that will never fade away...
It is a lot that I'm not prepared to admit I rewound back to, but big surprise: I did, briefly. It's weakness. I'm upset with myself now, and I feel a little silly about the aftermath, letting myself get caught up in a flurry of emotions that I thought had withered long ago, or that I had at least gotten control over.
Instead, I'm aware of a bigger problem, which is that I'm not ashamed of what's happened. I don't know if it's affected my relationship with Verano or not--subconsciously, I mean. I'm afraid to go back out with coworkers, but Verano is not a parole officer, either. I am going to have to check myself in the future, of course, but if I can't behave for somebody who is not worth losing over such a personally interpreted experience, then I probably shouldn't be living with her, either.
I sent my play to two different people who have offered to read it, and one of them works at a great big theater company only two blocks away from the restaurant that I manage.
I'm tired.
I guess, I shouldn't have told her, the Other, about a deep feeling I've embraced on and off lately, because of an old pain in my heart that flairs up every now and then, like the one in my arm that moans when it's under stress. That, Verano is not the Love of My Life so much as she is the One, the One who is everything I need in a business partner, intimate contact, and best friend. These two are very different legacies. After watching the Notebook and other love stories, I feel sadly empowered by my convictions because I see my ideologies resonating in different, timely[?] places. I probably shouldn't have alluded to a reservation I have that Verano may not be the Love of My Life, just as I probably shouldn't have cheated on my [best] friends with their girlfriends in scenarios of various intensities. And, at the same time, while I sometimes feel rotten, I secretly don't mind it at all. I'm always open to anything once, and even three times. I'm full of surprises.
No comments:
Post a Comment