The saga continues. I guess. I would tell you to enjoy it, but really, you know what you’re in for by now.

One time, drunk, in the summer of 2006, I told a girl every secret I thought I was keeping at the time. There was no romance about the evening, especially after we started making out. Nor was there really any chemistry, beyond anything normal. We didn’t think it was otherwise, and the following day, as she was dropping me off back home, there was a sober moment in her car. No words were exchanged, as each of us wondered whether we should kiss, sober this time. Eventually I smiled and thanked her for the ride, and went inside. Sometimes I still wonder what that summer could have been. There would have been no regrets, when it started or ended, just as there were no regrets when it failed to start and so, ultimately, failed to end. There was a story in it either way.

Then, a few months later in the autumn of the same year, I left and went to Seattle, where I pursued another unremarkable relationship that failed to go anywhere and ultimately fizzled. The only distress I felt was that it was somewhat irritating. No drama, no angst. Just a vague sense of annoyance. And so I never bothered to write about it, because there was no story there. I never mentioned  it. By that time I was a storyteller first and foremost. I was so wrapped up in it, in irony, in telling a good story, and I knew, of course. I thought I wanted someone where I’d drop all the pretenses and just be myself. This was a predictably foolish notion. Another girl taught me that, one from the fringes of my life who  is far away now.

I don’t remember if it was 2008 or 2009 now, when I met her. It must have been 2008, and it still seems like two weeks ago. We were both on the fringes of a group, sitting opposite each other because the rest of the table was tight-knit and we weren’t. Which isn’t to say either of us were ignored. We were just enigmas together, stealing the show occasionally, watching the rest of the time. Then I realized I was having fun. I realized that my self was the storytelling and the acting and the repartee and the irony. And I realized that somehow she made me completely comfortable with that, just by being there. It was okay to be me.

As with most things, this, too, ended in a departure, but it was a footnote at best. We never left the fringes until she left town. As nice as it would be to imagine, her plane was headed south, so it probably didn’t even fly over the house.