Waiting to Collide

The first time I met Robbie, I scared him into silence.

My friends Jasmin and Janet, Jan’s husband Robbie, and I were carpooling to a work picnic (we three ladies worked together at a vet clinic) at the farm of one of the vets.  Jan is a stereotypical, flighty soprano.  She takes a while to get things together, and gets other ideas in the process of leaving her house.  She’s something like a squirrel.  In fact, we took to calling her “Squirrely” towards the end of our friendship.

When Jasmin and I arrived, Jan was gathering miscellaneous things:  jackets and blankets into bags, food into ziplocs, soda cans into coolers, and so on.  She was not bringing beer, or wine (she was a white wine drinker), as “Robbie doesn’t like me to drink.”  Red flags were flying immediately after she said this.  Robbie appeared and shook the hands of his wife’s friends.  Quiet, and maybe a bit shy.  Jan began looking around for the music that she (vocalist) and Robbie (classical guitarist) would be performing at the picnic.  There was some difficulty in this, as the area around Jan’s piano was stacked waist-high in loose papers, junk mail, music books, text books, and possibly a few, small animals living in the heap.  Robbie began chastizing Jan for not keeping a cleaner house.

Janet worked full time with the two of us and went to school three-quarters time, in addition to taking care of three dogs and a cat on her own.  I was displeased by Robbie’s comment.

Finally, after waiting a little over half an hour as Jan gathered the picnic materials, we loaded everything into the car.  We stopped off for gas, and ran into the conveinience store for snacks and sodas to consume on the way to the farm.  As Jasmin and I picked our ways through the nuts, chips, cookies, meaty chews, and candy bars, Jan lingered over some very tame-looking chocolate bars at the the front of the store.  She turned, and selected a bag of plain M&Ms, and a bottle of water.  Robbie, who had just finished filling his Big Gulp saw this, sauntered up to her and began to speak in a low tone.  A few isles over, I only heard “…you know you shouldn’t be eating that…”

Janet was 5’7″ and at the time, she tipped the scales at a mere 110ish pounds.  She had issues getting food at stay down, and had grown self conscious about her waifish frame (she had an average build — 110 was far too thin for her, and she looked very unhealthy).  Jasmin and I had an idea of what made her throw up and what didn’t.  Jan loved chocolate, and it didn’t make her sick.  My suspicion was that Robbie had a tendency to tell her what to eat (both vegetarians).  This displeased me.

We purchased our food and went back out to the car.  Some things had fallen over in the back, or needed to be rearranged, so Robbie popped the fifth door with one hand, holding the Big Gulp in the other.

He turned to me, extended his hand holding the soda and said, “Hold this, hun.”

I took the drink and moved a step closer, “You will never speak to me that way again.”

Robbie blinked up at me — without the heels I was wearing, I still had a couple inches on him — paused, “OK.”

From that point on, I did not speak to him.  In a matter of one hour, he had insulted me, and made every effort to control one of my best friends.  The bridling of Jan stunk of abuse, and I knew that his behavior in front of Jasmin and I was not as overt as it would be when we were gone.

Jan says Robbie “is taking care of me”.  “He loves me and wants the best for me, is all.”

Jan moved away to Alabama with Robbie, far away from her friends and family.  She moved to a small town in the deep south where she knew no one.  If he has not hit her yet, he will soon.

I found out last night that Janet is pregnant.  She thinks Robbie will make a good father.

Jan, if you read this, please know that I still love you.  If things get bad, I have a futon in the study with your name on it — baby or no.

I’m staring at a pile of chemistry texts that I ought to be reviewing before the spring semester starts, thinking about the one and only New Year’s resolution I made this year.

I, obviously, didn’t resolve to stop procrastinating.

I didn’t tell myself I would lose weight — a much needed, yet neglected, change.  I didn’t swear off the drink — if anything, I drink less than I ought to.

Dr. McAwesome played me some of his electronic music last night, and I was very impressed.  Not Girlfriend or Mother Impressed, but sincerely impressed.  I enjoyed listening to what he had created, and thought it sounded a whole hell of a lot like something I would purchase.  Which led to me suggesting the corner (currently occupied by the Christmas tree of two, verified atheists) be used for his grandmother’s old table stacked with music equipment.

This was promptly followed by the suggestion that this should be our joint resolution:  to spend joint time daily on our respective hobbies.  He needs to make music, and I need to write (something, anything).

Alas, this will mean fewer horror flicks in the evenings.

I lose friends every year.  I lose them when I move, when they move, when they start dating someone new, or when schedules change.  We all keep getting farther apart, physically.  JC asks how many friends I have here “Not counting the ones who’ve seen you naked!” and the number is low.  Boston is a lonely town, and I haven’t tried to meet people.

I lost Jen this year.  I never wrote about it, hoping it was temporary, but she still hasn’t said so much as “hi.”

I started seeing Dr. McAwesome in the middle of December 2007, a couple of months after I moved to Worcester from Austin.  I was still in bad shape after leaving a city, I have learned, that I consider home.  I got too attached to Mike.  I had too much fun with kickball, Chris, and Fantastic Fest.  I went to the greenbelt, played with my dog, browned in the sunshine, hiked.  Coming North to the cold, a low-paying job, and an empty bed was hard.  I met History Dude, and we hung out a couple of times pretty soon after I got to Worcester.  I told Jen a bit about him.  I was excited — I’m always excited to meet new friends.

Then I met Dr. McA.  I was very excited, and I chattered on and on like a caffeinated squirrel.  If Jen took issue with this, I didn’t know until it was too late.  I brought him back to my place in Worcester for the first time to meet her.  She was in the process of moving some boxes out of the house, so there was only a brief hello said.

After that, she ignored me for the next few months.  Finally, I sent her one last email begging her to contact Tufts — they were in the process of transitioning me from temp to full time, and she was a reference — because I desperately needed health insurance.  She finally told me that she refused to take my calls for months, and ignored Tufts HR’s calls for weeks, because I hadn’t helped her move boxes out of the house that fateful night.  She went on and said that she was bitter about my excitement over men, and that I was not accepting of the girl she had made kissy-face with (cheating on her girlfriend/my friend in the process).  Basically, she was calling me a hypocritical whore.

I guess that moment marked the end of the friendship, because I never regained my trust in her after she put me in such a bad professional and personal spot for the sake of a few boxes.  Had she simply asked for help, maybe things would’ve been different.  I’m still baffled and suspect that something else had happened in her mind that she never shared with me.

I miss her.  Until she went off the rails, she had been my emotional dumpster.

I rode the train home from my job for the last time today.  I felt nostalgic for approximately 32 seconds, and then the depressing nature of the T set in.

I accidentally touched a man’s hand on the railing as I was descending into the depths of the station.  He jerked it back as if withdrawing from a viper.  I apologized, and he glared at me.

I hobbled onto a car, and a woman firmly stomped on the foot attached to my sprained ankle.  She turned to look at me in annoyance when I noticeably flinched and inhaled sharply.

Later…

My phone died a painful death last night.  I drove to the CambridgeSide Galleria to have Apple replace their defective product.  A nice enough employee explained that I had to make an appointment online to check in, and walked me through it.  He went over to help someone else.  There looked like there might be a line, so I consulted with the dour gentleman in front of me:

“Excuse me, are you in line?”
“No, you have to, like, make an appointment, or something.”
“Well, actually, you can do it from that computer in the corner.  Just click the link, and follow the directions on screen.  It’s pretty simple.”
“Do you work here?”
“Um, no.”
“Because you’re acting like you work here.”
“Uh, no, I just thought you needed a hand.”
“Yeah, you’re acting like you work here.”
“Um, OK…”

The woman who gave me my new phone (I have lost all of my contact numbers, please call me!) was quite nice, and told me she liked it in Boston.

And then told me about multiple friends who have been mugged here.

Two more years.  Education better be worth it.

Something has been worming its way around my brain for the past few weeks.  I had spoken to one of my bosses a while back concerning what I want to do with my life, don’t know, half way done with my BS, maybe grad school?, blah blah…

She, mentioned animal law.

And now I am ordering the LSAT study guide to check it out, reading up on curiculums, and doing general research.  I stumbled upon Wikipedia’s description of law school pedagogy:
“Professors generally lead in-class debates over the issues in selected court cases, compiled into “casebooks” for each course. Traditionally, law professors chose not to lecture extensively, and instead used the Socratic method to force students to teach each other based on their individual understanding of legal theory and the facts of the case at hand. Many law schools continue to use the Socratic method–consisting of calling on a student at random, asking him or her about an argument made in an assigned case, asking the student whether he or she agrees with the argument, and then using a series of questions designed to expose logical flaws in the student’s argument. Examinations usually entail interpreting the facts of a hypothetical case, determining how legal theories apply to the case, and then writing an essay. This process is intended to train students in the reasoning methods necessary to interpret theories, statutes, and precedents correctly, and argue their validity, both orally and in writing.”

I am totally stoked.  I think spending day and night reading cases, then going in to debate them and master the concepts of logic and precedent is HOT.  Like applied philosophy!  Holy crap, I wanna go to law school and defend researchers from the onslaught of animal rightists!

Oh, crap.  I wanna go to law school…?

Four AM is the magic time.  Drunks have gone to bed, early risers are still asleep.  The one hour when you can be the only waking person within earshot.  Quiet, solitude, peace.  Then, it starts all over again.  The least vicious symptom of daily rote — daybreak.

In that one hour, the yearning for someone to share the peace with is greatest.  All of the background noise is gone, and you wish for just one person to be still with.  To exist with.