Your heartbeat. It's been with you since before you were born, with the curious distinction of having arrived roughly two months before your sexual organs even formed. When you die, if you've done anything at all with your life, it will have beat roughly two and a half billion times. Seems like a lot, huh? Thumping away, somewhat more than one thump a second, every moment of your life. Inside you. Talk about intimate action - that's about as good as it gets. If you stick your finger over your wrist, or on your neck under the jawline, you'll feel it. Go ahead - do it now. Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-DUB. That is the rhythm of your life you're feeling. Now try and remember every time in your life you felt your heart beat.
This is what it is like trying to remember my life with Denali. Since the moment we met (see Part 1) she has always been with me in that unconscious and intimate way. But it's only the highlights and the horrors that I remember. Those times my heart was beating hard enough for me to feel it.
I remember going to a school production of hers. She played a crazy person in some sort of comedy scene. I actually liked it. I thought she was overacting, but the bottom line was that I laughed - and that's good comedy. I got there extra early and felt like a retard watching parents and high school kids collecting for the show. Someone drove me there, I think Nora.
Another time I saw her in a musical where she sang. I was shocked to hear her voice singing. She has a strong, passionate voice and she used it then with surprising effect. I was impressed. I probably shouldn't have been surprised. She has always been into performance. You name it - she's into it. Dance, music, art, drama, writing, and on and on. I didn't think she had much talent for these things, but I learned over time that I was wrong and I still feel bad about not being more supportive.
When we first started to see each other romantically, I remember it being such a unique experience. Like sitting and waiting for a meal at your favorite restaurant, the anticipation amplifies the arrival and enjoyment. I don’t think I had ever waited quite so long for something to happen, barring a four year crush on Mia back in high school, and I remember being so thrilled that the time had finally come. I frankly don’t remember much of those times, or at least they don’t come to me with voluntary recall. I was still playing things loose, and I think I was at the tail end of my Milvia street days.
There were always a number of girls I was seeing at one time or another, and my memories tend to smear along an emotional axis, so sometimes my memories of the rapture of the moment borrows from the one next to it. At any rate, I think it never got better than those times. It was simple, clear, passionate, and best of all uncluttered with the gremlins of practicality. I simply loved her, and she loved me, totally. In some ways, I guess it would be a pattern that we would follow until the end. The habit of being together with great passion, only to find some conflict that would simmer, brew, boil, and explode into bitter separation.
Did it start with the age difference conflict? Maybe it was the monogamy crisis. There was always an unbridgeable crevasse between our personal interests. The list of impediments to our being together was daunting, and our efforts to overcome them was perhaps the best testimonial to the degree of our commitment. After she graduated from CPS (College Prepatory School), she got a job at Royal Coffee, and I got a chance to see her begin her journey into the employment machine. I would listen to her complain about her managers, or a customer, and I’d relate it to my time at Tower Video and try to offer advice. I can only remember seeing her there once, and it tickled me to see her in command of a position. She managed to focus her seemingly endless supply of energy into controlling the machinations of the coffeeshop chaos – and she liked it. I related well, since I also like storming into chaos and manhandling it into a focused result.
I spoke with some acquaintances (friends?) of hers outside the shop that day, and I don’t think they liked me very much. That was always a common theme. Few of her friends liked me, and fewer respected me. I don’t think I noticed for many years that this was the case, and when I finally saw it, it came with the understanding that it was not wholly undeserved. I was viewed with a repulsed reservation, like someone who has a disease whose communicability has not yet been established. Despite this, over the years there would be only a few of her best friends that I hadn’t slept with, a guilty pleasure for both participants, typically deliberately forgotten by them under a persistent pressure of shameful regret. Like much of my life, I don’t regret doing it as much as I regret not knowing better in the first place. Ignorance may be bliss, but stupidity pays hefty dividends of pain.
When I was working at IDG Games Media there was some big party event, I think the Christmas party, and I wanted to bring Denali as my date. My boss took me out shopping for a suit, or at least something that would fit in the formal style required of the night, and I wondered what Denali would be wearing. She showed up in a loose dress and I won’t mince words, she was fucking beautiful and sexy. In the crowd of squares this dinner was supporting, she was a spyrograph pattern in rainbow colors. She was a hit that night, and I got to hear about it for the next few weeks. Denali always was increasingly flirtatious in direct proportion to the volume of alcohol she ingested, and that night there was a lot of free booze. You figure it out. I was simultaneously honored and embarrassed by her that night. Honored because of how strong and beautiful she was, and she was with me! Embarrassed by the response of my co-workers and their questions about her age and her status with me. She ended up flirting hard with one of my co-workers who ended up feeling really guilty and never really getting over it. I think his name was Brad. He apologized about a million times, and I told him she was a free girl and she can do whatever she likes. I knew she loved me, and that her actions did not reflect on our emotional bond.
He was one of many, over the years, who would apologize to me for their varying degrees of intimacy with her. I imagine she got the same, inversed. When panning through the logs, journals, and raw memories of our time together, it's harder to remember the good times than it is to remember the insane or painful times. Of the best times, they were always the best because we were "in it together." Like a random party we went to off Telegraph, where she flirted and I flirted and we both felt out of place but were having fun. The plane ride back from London and our attempts to get seats next to each other by stripping down and letting the odor of showerless Europe speak for us. Taking nude pictures of her while she was lying about or watching TV. The weird gifts she would give me, like the Hawaiian mask, the Mexican painting, or the sunrise painting she had done and how I loved them completely despite how bizarre they were.
I remember inviting her to coffee at the Drunken Boat cafe, very early on, and she showed up drunk or stoned or both with a friend, and they proceeded to giggle their way to total destruction of that table. Sugar and milk and spills everywhere. I remember sitting there and thinking, "good lord, what have I wrought?" and saying sorry to the waiter for the mess. The waiter looked at me, then the table, then back at me and said "No, I'm sorry," and I got his point. That event would be in stark contrast to her post-Royal Coffee days, where the far more controlled Denali would make things just so, and vigorously critique everything cuisine.
After one of our longer separations, we decided to go for a hike up in the hills, and I was absolutely terrified she was going to confirm the permanent end of our relationship in some kind of "tell me about the rabbits again" way. Instead, we just talked and flirted a little, and spend that time together. At one point we happened on a very large boulder that I decided I wanted to climb on the spot. I like rock climbing. It was easy enough getting on top of it, but I quickly realized it would be significantly more difficult getting down. There were two options. One was just jumping down - roughly a 15 foot drop. Not so bad, but a broken ankle in the hills is not very romantic. The other was climbing around the rear of the boulder, where the holds were much better but the drop was a good 40-50 feet. Clearly lethal. Naturally I went for the latter. While going around this boulder, my cellphone rang and I instinctively grabbed for it - which left me with three fingers and about one inch footholds on the face of this cliff. Incredibly stupid. I left the phone alone and used the incredible adrenaline rush to maneuver myself the rest of the way around the rock. It took me a good half an hour to come down from that rush, and I think it's likely the closest I've ever knowingly come to death. I did it just to show off for Denali.
Posted by Matt at July 10, 2003 12:30 PM