Jay Elias | You can take it with you

"I have wasted Time, and now doth
Time waste me"
- Richard II

2002-09-03- 7:19 a.m.

Not As Sad As Doestoevsky, Not As Clever As Mark Twain

As I’m writing this, the film Naughty College School Girls 7: Pretty In Plaid is playing on the Spice channel, according to the TV Guide channel. I find myself wishing a little that I had cable so I could order it, because there is one thing that I find myself really wishing that I knew the answer to: is it just that the college school girls in question are naughty, or do they actually go to Naughty College? Oh, and my thanks to Gwensarah, whose help in composing my thoughts for this entry was invaluable. Because, as my previous comment so clearly illustrates, my thoughts are in desperate need of composure.
On Friday night, I lay in bed next to Rachel’s sleeping body awake until the wee small hours of Saturday morning, realizing that there isn’t any respectable way that I could break up with her for at least four weeks. I just don’t think it is quite right of me to split up with someone for no particular reason right before or right after her birthday; it strikes me as needlessly cruel. And that if that is going to be the case, I shouldn’t break up with her until the beginning of November, unless something else really interesting comes along, because in mid-October we have tickets to see Wilco together, and then comes my birthday, and it is better to have someone who you like but who drives you crazy than to have no one at all, at least on your birthday. I don’t right now have solid plans to do this whole break-up thing at all, mind you. I’m still trying to sort out the whole “like versus drives-me-crazy” debate.
The fucked up thing is that all of what Rachel is worst at is all the same stuff that Sivan was great at. Isn’t it shitty how this all works, where you end up having been with someone who had everything you don’t have now, so that it works out that you know exactly what it is you’re missing? It would be a classic case of “don’t know what you’ve got ‘til”, except of course I did know all that about Sivan and told her so. Not that that helped anything, of course. Funny thing is that telling Sivan any of this now would only make all that worse.
I’d like just for once some idea of something that I could do that would make something better.
I worry sometimes that this journal is becoming very sad sounding. Not because I care so much about whether or not it is a downer, but it because sad isn’t a very good reflection of my life. I’m not sad, at least not much. I just don’t have a lot to say about things that are going well. There’s no conflict there, y’know, in telling you I went out some night and had fun and went home and had sex and listened to a good new album that didn’t make me think about much of anything. It just doesn’t appeal to my sense of drama. Sorry.
On Saturday night, I went out with Wee and assorted associates, which included a girl named Claire whom I’d met at a party once a long time ago and wanted to bed badly. And it didn’t take long at all for me to gather that Claire was hoping to bed me as well. Which leads up to this week’s ethical dilemma: can one in good conscience sleep around on one’s girlfriend if you don’t necessarily plan on staying with her?
The setting for this was another of our new weekly dinner parties at Wee’s apartment, where each of us takes a turn preparing a savory meal for the dozen or so of us to enjoy. This is a fair piece of evidence that we are all growing older and more domestic; in our earlier days of friendship, I can easily recall Wee and I struggling to come up for enough money between us to share a take-out order of sesame noodles on a weekend evening. Of course, we are make uncomfortable by our new predilections, so we make sure to bring about a bottle of wine each to these gatherings, ensuring that we can cover up our discomfiture by being thoroughly sodden. All of this is only relevant because, of course, the aforementioned ethical dilemma isn’t really one at all. We all know that it is totally unacceptable to be unfaithful under any circumstances. At least, we all know that when we’re sober.
Of course, after a half-bottle of Louis Latour Chardonnay (only $15 for the ’99 – I’m only faking being a big shot with my Bordeaux), I’m starting to seriously consider this. It’s ironic that the night before Rachel and I watched a rerun of Chris Rock: Bigger and Blacker, and one of the jokes that made the both of us laugh hardest was when he quipped that it is nearly impossible for men to turn down sex. His point (and I think he has one) is that women are offered sex all the time since puberty, and have had a lot more practice. While men, well, we’ve had to practically beg for it all our lives. To be offered sex when you’re a guy is rarer than to be offered a raise without asking. And it is fair to say that I don’t have a great deal of experience with the situation of being offered sex when I’m in the bag and my girlfriend who I’m not all that happy with is in another time zone. I’m a guy. This isn’t the sort of thing that happens to me every day.
It doesn’t take too long though for me to remember my reasons not to. I can’t attribute this to any positive qualities on my part though. I don’t turn away from the possibilities with Claire because I care about Rachel, or because it is just wrong to be unfaithful under any circumstances. I do it because there are other people at this gathering, people whom I have introduced Rachel to and whom I am certain to allow to mix with her again in the future. And not all these people are my close friends, whom I could trust to be discreet on my behalf. Some of them are acquaintances, or friends of friends, and half are girls who I could picture befriending Rachel, and telling her things I would rather not have told. And then, to Rachel, I would become something wholly different, something ugly and worse than I would be if I decide some time in the future that I’d rather go off and look for someone else. That is what tears it; I am unwilling to even allow the possibility in my own mind that Rachel would one day end up seeing me like that.
As it turns out, other people at the gathering have noticed Claire’s flirting and told her about Rachel as the evening goes on, even though I have discreetly avoided the subject with her. This doesn’t entirely dissuade her, though she does shift her focus somewhat onto Wee, who isn’t really interested. Over the course of the night, I end up encouraging him to go for it anyways. I encourage the other unattached men in our group as well; my reasoning being that she wants someone to go home with her, and seeing as it can’t be me, it might as well be someone. Of course, as the evening wears on, and we run out of wine and head out to a bar to make sure that Tanqueray is still making gin, even my own logic begins to fail me. So I take the easy road out: I tell everyone that it is time for me to go home.
I don’t see anyone at all on Sunday; instead, I sleep late and nurse a mild headache all evening. But as Labor Day evening rolls around, I have Wee come up so that I can cook us some dinner. As it turns out, he did end up going home with Claire when the bar decided to shut its doors, but feels like he wishes he hadn’t. As I’m chopping garlic in the kitchen, he decides for the first time that he wants to talk about things with him and Twee, and all the shit he’s going through, being single again after three years.
After dinner, when we’re nursing beers and post-meal cigarettes, I tell Wee the story of the first girl I slept with after Lynn. I tell him about how strange it felt, how dirty and wrong. I tell him that I didn’t know how to make that step back, how to revert from a place where sex was something intimate and caring to that place that I started where it was all lust and attraction and just reaching out to try and feel a spark of someone else. This he understands. This, for us, is a new level of common experience.
But then, I try to explain to him what it is that happens. You learn to divorce the two things in your mind. You don’t stop wanting the something more, the intimacy and safety and all that which sex becomes once you’ve done it with someone you really love. The thing is, one thing isn’t the same as another. You learn to enjoy the lesser things all over again, a smaller but different kind of pleasure.
He tells me then that the thing is, he doesn’t want to settle for less. I tell him maybe that is true. The trouble is, you’ll end up taking the less, because sometimes, that is all there is on the table. The question then becomes, are you just going to take the less for now, or are you choosing to settle?

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Doesn't Take Much and That's Messed Up - 2004-03-15
Like Water Under Bridges - 2003-09-08
Jesus On The Dashboard - 2003-08-13
An Administrative Announcement - 2003-08-11
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