Poke You, Buddy!

A few weeks ago, I was working as a sub backstage on a show at the Mercury. One of the actors in the show is a guy I worked with in the summer of ’01 in California. I hadn’t seen him since 2001, and we had a nice time catching up and laughing about all the people with whom we had worked and where they are now. A jolly good time... until he said something that got me thinking.

“Aaron says, ‘Hi!’ by the way.”

You see, Aaron and I dated or had a fling or whatever you want to call it. It was not serious--in fact in my serially monogamous life, it stands out because of this fact. We were not supposed to continue seeing each other after the summer ended -- it was a summer romance, nothing more. But in hindsight, I think that perhaps this was not properly explained to Aaron. Because we kept hanging out and going to plays and museums and movies after the summer came to an end. We didn’t live that far apart, and it was a fairly easy commute to Orange Country for me, Riverside for him. And I kept thinking that I should end it because--whether or not I liked him enough to consider the awful possibility that I could love him--I knew that it could never work. I was only 19 at the time, young, willful, highly opinionated, but very lacking in self-esteem. He was a college graduate, in grad school, had lived all over the country, and was 27. At that time in my life, I was still dealing with some weird personal things; my parents’ divorce and subsequent remarriage to each other, a shit ton of betrayal. I was on the rebound as well--a painful breakup earlier that same summer that left me feeling like I’d been ripped in two. It was not a good situation for me. I went on a lot of first dates that summer with a variety of co-workers. Friends who know me well know that I jokingly refer to this particular summer as the “Summer of Slut.” I chronicled these dates in my journal so that I could keep track of details from one date to the next (which might explain a bit about the sickly organized parts of my life and the possibility that I might be mentally ill).

I was all set to break up with Aaron. And then the world changed. I am not a war monger, and I am not into propaganda in the least, but I don’t think that anyone can deny the effects of that one single day, that video looping over and over and over again, unedited and unbleeped, as we all tried to make sense of what had happened to our country. I will not go so far as to say that our innocence was lost on that day (and you know that one of which I write). I believe this county lost its innocence long ago, right here, in places like Manassas, Shiloh, and Gettysburg.

You see, Aaron had spent many of his formative years in New York City. Whereas for me, the experience was distant, a series of horrific images in a box, detached from my own personal reality, Aaron’s was much more personal and traumatic. We stayed together and comforted each other in the aftermath of that day, trying, like so many of our fellow countrymen, to make order of chaos. In that endeavor, I believe that we all failed.

Within a month, we broke up. It was inevitable. And beyond the fact that some of my friends who had met him thought that Aaron was a bit of an ass, not much more time was spent dissecting or discussing that relationship. It was simply another in a string of failed relationships, nothing too extraordinary.

Well, damned if Aaron didn’t pop into my dreams the other night. I cannot profess to remember whether it was a sexy dream or not, I can hardly remember if it was good or not, only that he was there, not even a starring role, but simply a player on a much grander stage. It got me thinking about breakups and what happens after. I’ve never been one for the “just friends” scenario--it doesn’t work. As a favorite radio host of mine elucidates, “You know you’re in trouble when the word ‘just’ appears in front of the word ‘friends.’ I mean it’s almost hard to think of a context where those two words are used together, a sentence constructed--unless you’re using the word ‘just’ in some radically different way, like ‘I think the verdict was just. Friends may disagree.’” So, like Ira, I’ve never been good with the “just friends” thing. After intense breakups, I was too raw, too weak to contemplate being near my former flame, and after milder ones, I was always too indifferent. Thinking about all of this got me thinking about the movie High Fidelity. You know the one where John Cusack details and contacts his five worst breakups of all time? I am suddenly tempted to do just that. But I have not recently been through any such gut-wrenching breakup. I’ve been happily married for nearly a year and a half. I have not broken up with or been dumped by anyone in over 5 years. Still, I started considering my worst breakups of all time:

#5: Surprisingly, in hindsight, Aaron. I think I might have kicked him while he was low. And I look back and feel guilty about this. I thought at the time that because he was 8 years older than me, he would be as thick-skinned as I had become. I think that may not have been the case. I’d been through a rough few years at this point and was callous in the ways that I dealt with other people.

#4: Ron. This just over a year prior to #5, and in this situation, I was the sensitive, naive romantic, and he the callous, experienced cad.

#3: Marty, part one. This one was the breakup that started off the “Summer of Slut.”

#2: Kelly. He was my long-time high school sweetheart. I went to college, he stayed behind in high school. I think really, that Kelly was the first person I ever truly loved. He was warm and safe in a time that was anything but in my life. This breakup cut me to the core.

#1: Marty, part two. Let’s just say that this was certainly the most volatile relationship and explosive breakup I’ve ever heard of, and leave it at that.

I have not talked to any of these fellows in well over a year and a half. And that was a bizarre conversation with Marty at 3 am on a Sunday. (In fairness, it was 3am in Boston, 12am in San Francisco where he was.) I received a mass e-mail from Aaron on my very outdated e-mail address (I check it once a month to make sure nothing has been accidentally sent there) letting everyone know about his new website and myspace blog. I have no idea what happened to Ron, but I suspect that he’s still working at Sizzler.

And then there’s Kelly. I have always wondered what happened to Kelly. I figure he probably went to UCLA because that was what he wanted to do and he was a stellar student. Beyond that, I don’t know.

So in the interest of research for this article, I started doing some digging. After digging through literally hundreds of Kellys (female) on myspace, and cross referencing this with people who went to my high school, I found literally nothing. Damn. So I dug some more. As the new myspace is facebook, with its organized layout, and college-y feel, I figured that perhaps I would find something there... I mean, everyone who’s not on myspace is totally on facebook, even Ira Glass. I dug around a bit, and BINGO! There he was, a graduate of UCLA, and still very blonde.

So, I now have a conundrum on my hands: do I “poke” him and say, “Hey, what’s up? Long time, no see. What ever happened to you? Where has life taken you? Do we really have anything in common at all anymore beyond a shared romantic past and a shared hometown?” Or do I let sleeping dogs lie (and perhaps, even play dead)? In the end, I wonder what I really want out of this. Do I want to prove that I am not the person I once was? Or do I want to prove that I am, and that someone else loves me for it? Because at the root of all of this curiosity, I worry--fear--that there might be some insecurity, some questioning about who I was all those years ago, and perhaps, who I am now as a result.

Someone (I don’t know who) once said that to truly understand oneself, one must love himself before he loves anyone else. I agree, but I’d like to take this ideology one step further: to truly understand myself, I believe that I must not simply love myself in the here and now, but also love my past. Our pasts are what shape us fundamentally into what we are today. Whether we rebel against those forces, or follow the current into the proverbial ocean, we are a reaction to the past; simply put, the past is who we are.

So, at the end of the day, after a couple of drinks, some quiet contemplation, a little online backgammon and a couple more shots of liquid courage, I poked him. I poked him good and hard. And now it’s entirely up to him; he can poke back, we could strike up a conversation, or--and this is probably more likely--he could ignore it. And that’ll be the end of all this. I think I’m secretly hoping that this is what happens, because while I have grown accepting of my past, I am not sure I want to reawaken it.

That is all.