The Open Matt Project

It's sunny outside. I managed

It's sunny outside. I managed to somehow achieve escape velocity from my house and get outside to the cafe around the corner. I fiddled around with trying to get my Boingo Wireless account to work, but I think it needed to authenticate online... and you can't get online until it authenticates. At any rate, I paid for the stupid Surfn'Sip bullshit they have here (don't ask) and so at least I'm online. Outside. Neat.

I've been wrestling with the Denali issue a lot, again, recently.

Denali Part 1

I met her about 9 years ago. That's a long time. I actually met her through a random girl meeting...

I had spent the whole day trying to find chicks with Iskandar on Telegraph Ave. Iskandar was some kind of Berkeley god who knew everyone worth knowing and who had an uncanny ability to have people (read: hot girls) know HIM. This made finding chicks easy, but didn't help me hook up at all. It didn't matter. I enjoyed the adventure back then. We had pretty much given up by late-afternoon and had headed back to Ashby House.

Ashby House gets capitalized now because it has become the legendary source of a tremendous social circle - myself included. It was a brokedown palace on Ashby and College Ave, next to an auto repair shop. 16 people lived there, give or take, and it was as close to an anarchy as you can get without police (or as apparently was later the case, Nation of Islam) intervention. We paid the rent, basically, and the bills, more or less, and tried not to fuck each other, too much, and so on. It was the 90's and even though it seems like only yesterday, to me it was a whole different era. But anyway.

On the way back to the house we noticed a couple of girls sitting at the bus stop caddycorner from our block. Hell, that's not a long way out of our way is it, Isk? Hell no! ok, let's go, I'll talk to them.

Historically speaking, I think I have always been the ice-breaker. I have this near-absolute fearlessness about meeting people that makes it easy for me to walk up to someone (read: hot girls) and just start talking. My all-time favorite line? "So what's your story?" People make fun of this line when I tell them about it, but the reality is that anybody worth talking to isn't going to fall for any line, and so you're better off looking for something that will just plain initiate conversation. Typically, just like the afterschool specials all said, if you just be yourself everything will work out in the end. At least in the beginning. But anyway.

So I go over and talk to them. This is where I meet Nora and Miriam. Nora stays in the story for a long, long time, but we say goodbye to Miriam right about - now. I say that, "we're just looking for hot chicks and we hadn't had any luck and so you're our last chance before we have to go home and drink beers all by ourselves. So would you like to join us on the porch for some beers?" It's important to note that at this point we notice that these girls are pretty young, and we probably looked pretty weird. I explain that the porch is near the street, they don't have to come in at all, and they're free to leave whenever. We're just looking for beer-sipping company for the remains of the sunny day. So after a bit of this back and forth, they decide what the hell, let's go, and we're off to the porch.

About a year later, I lost my journals on that porch. One of my housemates, a firebrand named Colleen (naturally), had decided to do some cleaning and had moved my notebooks outside onto the porch for "a while." Sadly, that while included a rainshower that soaked them into mush. Untold volumes of post-teen angst and self-conscious historical revisionism were lost. It's a pity, but I imagine one could easily reverse-extrapolate their contents by looking at the past four years of website updates. Yes, But anyway.

We had the beers and the girls toddled off to whatever teenage girls do after beers with freakish older men. Whatever it was, it resulted in their later return with some of their friends. I guess the allure of an anarchist commune sans parents was too much to resist. Or something. One of these friends was Denali. It is one of those events that is refreshed so frequently in my memory that I'll likely never forget it. That's saying something, considering my well-known lack of memory. She walked in the room looking a little like a muted goth-punk version of Sinead O'Connor. Small, shaved head, shy, and dark yet glowing. That was the first time she stopped my heart. I did the only natural thing, and popped the skylight (conveniently located in that room) and jumped right up onto the roof. I just couldn't be in that room with her for another moment. I sat up there and made comments through the skylight that I hoped she'd hear. I don't remember if I wanted her to come up with me, or was just saying such, or if I was just jibbering. I do tend to jibber at moments like that.

That roof was the same roof where I discovered that although suicide may seem like an irresistablly desirable option at times, it is simply not in the cards for me. I had stood up there after my breakup with Denise, right on the edge with my feet half-on and half-off and felt the wind push and pull me. Maybe I was letting god decide. Maybe fate. Maybe I was just too chicken to do it myself. I don't know or care. It simply became clear to me that suicide was without question not an option for me. Period.

She left, and maybe everyone else left too, I don't remember. But I managed to catch Nora before she left. I told her without question that I simply had to have Denali's phone number and that I must secure a date with her as soon as possible. Nora told me that Denali was 14, and that it just wasn't possible. I demanded her phone number. I am fairly certain she didn't give it to me, but I know that I was reluctantly invited to the movie they were all going to that Denali would be attending. It was "Clockwork Orange," and even though I knew that would be one of the least romantic movies one could possibly have a first date at, there was no way I was going to miss this opportunity to see her again.

There are a handfull of films that I burned out on as a teen. Brazil, Pink Floyd's The Wall, and A Clockwork Orange are the primaries. As a teen, I had this obsession with movies that focused on misunderstanding and featured a main character who was beset with problems whose sources were both external and internal. Dark heroes. I remember watching "The Wall" with my friends about a million times at my friend Russell's house while drinking whatever alcohol we could get our hands on. I must've cried buckets over the unfair nature of the world. Shameless really, and not at all like every other teenager.

So I went with Nora and her friends, and Denali, to the UC Theater in Berkeley to see the movie. Naturally, a movie whose primary focus is murder, rape, and violent assault made for some pretty uncomfortable moments. I couldn't have paid less attention to the movie. I was struggling to not openly stare. She was sitting to my right, and she looked like someone had stuffed her deeply into her seat. I'm not sure if it was the content of the movie, her natural shyness at the time, or my presence that caused it, but she was doing a very good job of shrinking. When we left the theater, I made some neutral comments just to fit in, even though I knew I didn't fit in at all. I don't remember what happened after that - but I did get her phone number and I learned that she only lived about 2 blocks away from Ashby House - if that.

Years later, in the 21st century, I went along with a group of girls to a "house party" at a place that was just across the street from her house. I stood outside smoking and staring at the house and thinking about how many years had gone by and how much I wanted to walk across the street, ring the doorbell, and have her answer - and find myself 8 years back in time. Instead the party animals I was with came outside and told me they were "down for Denny's" and I had to explain that I was no longer the all-nighter I used to be, and that 4AM was a pretty good time for bed. Cherry.

My memories of those early years with Denali are spotty at best. A number of my friends rapidly informed me at great length of the hazards of "statutory rape," something that I had not heard of until then. That would be the first time I felt my coat of age. I didn't feel 21 - I felt 17 and in many ways still do, but I saw the reality of the situation and resigned myself to it. So although I would see her many times again, it would be three more years before I would start dating her. For the first time.

Posted by Matt at March 24, 2003 12:30 PM