Missed Connections

Fourth of July, 2013, Silverlake Coffee, Los Angeles, early afternoon. I was writing at a small table near the wall stress eating a bagel while frantically trying to meet a deadline. My hair was wet and I was wearing camo-green. I imagine I looked a bit like The Swamp Thing. You were in workout clothes… I think. I don’t know as I never made direct visual contact with you, but I seem to remember the peripheral outline of a tennis shoe. You disturbed the air when you walked in. It caused me to raise my head. I think I must have looked right through you, because it wasn’t until you gave your order to the cashier and I heard your voice that I knew it was you. I glanced over, your back to me now. You seemed smaller and no offence, hairier, then I remember. It’s been several years. And I was oddly comforted by the fact that you had aged with me, like you had done me a favor. You ordered your drink (I didn’t hear what) and took a seat at the table beside me. I was staring intently at my computer screen. Just beyond it, your distinct profile branded its shape into my aura. I’m pretty sure you saw me. You must have. You were close enough to touch, leaning on a crossed knee, tapping away at your phone. Perhaps you were waiting for me to speak first, too look up, to acknowledge you. Or maybe you didn’t see me at all. Either way, I stayed silent and raised the psychic shields. What other choice did I have? You have been my unwitting muse for just over nine years now, and over that time, (since we met and you rejected me, all within the space of about ten hours -- or five years depending on how you look at it) I have been crafting and tending to your fictional golem. You are doing fine by the way, the “you” that I created, so why would I need to force awkward, terrible small talk in a shitty coffee shop on a national holiday? I have instilled “my you” with so much poetry, why force a trite, vaguely pleasant, slightly dismissive conversation about nothing? Why open the door for regret? It was bad enough that you had to see me like that. Fifteen pounds over weight, yet gaunt. The bags under my eyes packed and ready to go, poppy seeds in my teeth. The you I care for is judgmental and the women you admire are rare, ethereal beauties with far more to offer then myself. I would never presume. I don’t even touch you in my dreams. I keep a sane, safe distance, lest my imaginary you think less of me. I understand how crazy that must sound. On the surface I concede that it totally is. “Love” is insane in any form. Upon deeper inspection though I suppose it’s horribly sad. A woman, childbearing years approaching their end, unable (or unwilling) to find/catch/reel in/club a man of substance, of flesh and blood, obsessed with perfection, mired in fiction, in childish infatuation and daydreams… She doesn’t know what it means to really love, with its sacrifices, and its compromises, and its passive aggressive tolerations, its disappointments, its entitlements, and its false, false pride. Sad, miserable, lonely, no better then a death row groupie (who also, admirably, takes a kind of Mad-libs approach to love, the like I have perfected with you). So pity me or mock me, for like a death row darling, a fanatical fan, a tragic lover, or a suburban cannibal, I am cursed with a connoisseurs tongue. I don’t seek you out though, not anymore; I am content with the morsels handed to me by fate. A concerto here, a capriccioso there… There was a time when seeing you in a coffee shop would have been cause for much upheaval in my house of broken mirrors, but breathing the same air as you made me realize that who you are, who you really are, is irrelevant. A few weeks ago, you wished me a happy birthday on everyone’s favorite social networking site. A few weeks after that you invited me to a reading of a play you wrote. Well, I don’t want your salutations and I don’t want to see your play. I know that it’s sublime and surprising and well penned. I know that it's probably pulsing just beneath the surface with something that is unquantifiably beautiful. And if it isn’t -- if it’s shit -- it wouldn’t matter. I’d probably love it more if it were flawed. But I don’t engage in the emotional acrobatics of my youth, not anymore. Masochism is hard work, and the real you cuts me. I’m too tired to keep punishing myself, to keep destroying actual people in favor of ones I’ve made up. My only indulgence was to wonder if you wondered why I ignored you. I asked the golem version of you, but you stayed silent. Sick to death of my offerings. All the words, words I shove in your mouth, down your throat, for days, months, years. A play, two novels, three screenplays, hundreds of thousands of words for you, for aspects of you, for elements of you, imposed upon you, and dragged from you. I have versions of you sculpted in clay on every surface, in every nook of my mind. So how, I ask, how do I go about speaking to you in a fucking coffee shop on the fourth of fucking July? You are the only being, fictional though you may be, who has ever exceeded my expectations. How could I look at you? And would I not be a fool to disturb that placid perfection by saying the most common of common, “hello”'s? So anyway, that’s why I ignored you. Eventually your drink was ready and you left without looking back. Hope you had a nice holiday.