Another drunken night, if potentially one of the last of this most recent sweep. After gnawing on a cold burrito and watching the latest insipid, TiVo'd, episode of The Real World, I passed out. It was probably 4AM.
My phone rings this morning. I wake up, my tongue Press-n-Sealed to the roof of my mouth, my head feeling like an inadequete container for pulsating tumors, and my insides from the chin down reporting in as fully pickled. I grab the phone, hoping it's her like always. A moment before I hit "Talk" and my hope is realized, I notice the time. It's 9AM.
She wants to wish me well, in response to a cell phone text message I had sent her last night. Disoriented, pleased, and harboring a creeping dread, I moaned. I asked where she was, somehow knowing it was unlike her to be up and about this early on a Saturday. She tells me she's in the city. I instantly reference all known possibilities of whom she would be staying with "in the city" and the pressure in room changes slightly.
I stumble about between mumbles, moans, and silence before I feel compelled to plow on. Who are you staying with? I asked. It's just some guy she works with. They're just talking. Y'know. Nothing more. Y'know. Because she needs time - I know. I know the exact shape those falling dominoes will form. In an instant that mimics forever, I feel my heart break.
The momentum is too much, though, and so the conversation continues. I ask about him. There's been some kissing. No big deal. Y'know. She finally gets to my fucking her friend and how that hurt her feelings. I think of 'dick in a bottle' and let it pass. I apologize and apologize. Unanticipated, she blurts out the conviction: I just want to be friends. There is no waver or qualm. I can hear the sound of the guy in the room with her.
Friends. We're going to be just friends. Just friends. We're friends. And I think of our friendship before I fell in love with her and before she stood by and watched, smiling. How close we were. How intimate. We would talk about anything, share our feelings and fears. We were comfortable with each other physically. We argued with heat but not malice. We were friends. Now, we are just friends.
She tells me that she can talk to this guy. She can talk to him like we used to talk. Like friends? I think to myself. She's going to something tonight with him, presumably like friends do. I force a laugh and make some impotent comments about how I understand what has happened and what is happening. I apologize for the pressures she had been under. I re-certify my pledge to be her friend *justfriend*, always.
There is one of those unmeasurable silences and suddenly hypersensitive I hear birds outside and the groan of the wood under my bed as I breathe. The peeling paint of the ceiling has the texture of mummified skin. The air is moist and tastes like dried wood. My room sharpens and what little color it contained bleached as I lay there.
She has to go. Take a shit. I hear the guy again. Should she call me (or do I need 'time')? I don't know. She's got to go. I don't want to say goodbye. But she's got *I don't want to* say goodbye. She's gotta go. She'll... talk to me later. Later? Bye. Bye.
Posted by Matt at February 26, 2005 01:26 PMI enjoyed reading your post. Sad actually. I am sorry to hear your pain. If I may give a piece of advice? Let her go. It will be tough but you need to do so. I will elaborate if you wish to contact me.
Once intimate partners, it's very difficult to be "just friends"