Love – Crystal, Clearly

Over My Head

I didn’t believe him. I feel like he would say something like that just to be nice. He’s so intelligent, yet so often, the guy who doesn’t get it. I was saying we have a problem, and he responded like it was a casual compliment with the equivalent of back atcha.

As much as I cared about him, I wasn’t a slave to fate. I could choose to ignore my feelings, strong as they were. It would be painful, but no more so than letting myself pine for my friend.
J.M. Richards
Tall, Dark Streak of Lightning

The Work Bestie and I became friends the night I got really drunk on hot buttered rum, and he kept all of my secrets. He became my best friend the semester we spent four days a week, often twelve or more hours a day together. Every time I turned around, it seemed like he was there.

The work required some of that, but we also enjoyed each other’s company. He was there all the time. Not just on campus but coming into the office, finding me wherever I was, summoning me to wherever he was. He’d call me out from the office to the build for what seemed like no real reason, and I’d stick around anyway. I liked being part of the group. He’d take me with him on errands that he said I was necessary for, but then I really wasn’t.

This was compounded by the fact that his pulling me out of my work, for things he didn’t really need, made it take longer to get my actual work done, so I ended up spending longer days at work than I used to. I work on deadlines, not a time clock, so no one at my work minded my extra hours. I didn’t mind either. My work was a place I often hid from my home life. Separate from the Work Bestie, I counted on that campus for sanctuary. It’s just that this is when I started staying in my safe place after hours, more often than not.

Even after I was done working for the day, I would stay. We’d all (students, Work Bestie, and I) usually have dinner together, and then I’d work on my physiology homework. That class was brutal, and I could never get much schoolwork done at home. It was late for loitering at Starbucks by the time I was done at work, so I was handling my schoolwork in the living room of the student housing most nights. Honestly, I think I would have dropped out that semester if it weren’t for the Work Bestie and our Pirate Friend (she used to live on Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior, she didn’t loot gold doubloons or anything, but I like to call her a pirate) giving me so much encouragement.

Sometimes when you spend too much time with someone, you start to get sick of each other. Sometimes the more time you spend with a person, the more time you want to spend with them. It got to where it felt like something was missing when he wasn’t there. Good things or bad things, if I had a thing that I wanted to tell someone, the Work Bestie was the first person I wanted to tell. We exchanged eye contact like passing notes in class, like “you see it too, right?” Making friends as an adult is often challenging, but this was effortless. We just fit.

After that semester’s graduation, the whole group of us, students, instructors, and admin staff, went out for a celebratory dinner. After dinner, most of the grownups went home, but the Work Bestie, one other instructor, and I joined the students for a quiet after-party. One by one, everyone else excused themselves for the night until only the Work Bestie and I remained. We sat on the couch in the living room of student housing and talked and talked and talked. We talked about our loved ones, the projects and workshops of the past, and about things we wanted to do in the future. We talked until I fell asleep.

I vaguely remember resting my eyes just a moment with my head against his shoulder, just until they were less dry. I unexpectedly woke up (unexpectedly in that I don’t remember falling asleep and in that I don’t know how we ended up like that) with my head against the Work Bestie’s chest and his arm around me. And for a moment, I felt so completely at home that I never wanted to be anywhere else again. And then the panic hit me. He was not my home. He was someone else’s boyfriend.

That night we’d become friends, I’d talked him back into his relationship. I’m a romantic at heart and hate to see years of building something lost for no good reason. Having been friends since then, I was always supportive of his relationship, as friends should be. I mean, nothing had happened, really. I’d fallen asleep, fully clothed, sitting side by side on a small couch on a cold night. It just wasn’t an appropriate way to feel. I had already arranged to stay the night in a room in the student housing and it was definitely time to say goodnight.

The Work Bestie walked me to my room, which seemed an odd gesture even at the time. It was one thing when he walked me to the building I was staying in, protecting me from coyotes, el cucuy, and whatever else goes bump in the night. It even made some sense to tuck me in when I was very drunk, but I wasn’t this night. We’d had some red wine, when The Italian was still awake and pouring, but that had been hours earlier. It made for an awkward situation, saying goodnight in the living room and then a few feet away in the hallway. I was a little flustered even just going in for the goodnight hug.

The Work Bestie gives great hugs. This was different, though. This was the moment lightning struck. Not that I could do anything about it. He was in a relationship. I said goodnight and entered the bedroom alone. I hoped that a goodnight hug was all he wanted. I hoped that he didn’t feel what I felt, that he didn’t know what I’d felt. I hoped that it would all evaporate in the light of day.

Catch flights, not feelings.

The next morning was fine. That hug had just been a glitch in an otherwise comfortable friendship. We got through the day’s work and went out as a group in the evening. I wasn’t planning to stay the night at work again. Still, once again, he and I stayed up late into the night talking about all the things, only we were on a couch on the other side of campus because apparently our late-night talking and laughing had made it hard for others to sleep when we were in student housing. December in the high desert is very cold at night, and once again, we cuddled up on the couch just to keep from shivering.

I began to feel that uncomfortable pull again. When our conversation finally ended, I confessed that I was attracted to him. He said he was attracted to me too. I didn’t believe him. I feel like he would say something like that just to be nice. He’s so intelligent, yet so often, the guy who doesn’t get it. I was saying we have a problem, and he responded like it was a casual compliment with the equivalent of back atcha.

I’d stayed too late to drive home and too late to go into student housing. Our Pirate Friend had already left the campus, and her room was separate from the regular student housing and seemed the easiest to set up for the night. The Work Bestie hooked me up with a space heater, but it kept tripping the circuit breaker. He’d tuck me in and leave, and then I’d call him on his phone a minute later, saying it’d gone out. He’d change the configuration again. Eventually he worked it out so it finally stuck. He called me from bed, his voice sleepy and deep, to ensure it was still working. The way he said my name when he said goodnight killed me. Besties are not supposed to sound that sexy.

I knew then that I wasn’t going to go back to the way it was before the lightning strike. I wanted so badly to leave my makeshift lodging and find him in his bed that night. I lay awake pondering how things might have gone differently if I’d known that drunken night that I would end up wanting him. What if I hadn’t lamented the loss of a long relationship in such a way that he chose to make things work after all? We’ll never know how that semester could have ended differently if he was single because he wasn’t single.

I needed to keep a respectful distance after that. I believe that people can be friends with people of a gender they are attracted to. Otherwise, bisexuals would be the loneliest people on the planet. I don’t believe you can be friends with people when one or both of you want to be something more. Not even if you don’t want to want more. I didn’t want to want more, but all of a sudden I wanted him in ways that weren’t appropriate. Thus began the year we weren’t friends.

You’re important to me
(You’re important to me)
Night and day and day and night
If I can, I will make things right
I… I wanna be your friend again
I’m sorry (sorry)
For the things I wish I hadn’t said
I’m sorry (sorry)
For the things I wish I hadn’t done
I’m sorry (sorry)
For the way I wish I hadn’t been
I’m sorry
(sorry)
Concrete Blonde
I Wanna Be Your Friend Again

Concrete Blonde – I Wanna be Your Friend Again

Afternoon Tea

I believed it wasn’t about the destination but the journey. Now I believe that it’s neither of those things. It’s about the connections you make and grow along the way.

There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.
Henry James
The Portrait of a Lady

Before I was married, a friend and I attempted a road trip from L.A. County to New York City (and back). She and I had met in seventh-grade homeroom, a class we shared because our last names started with the letter T. Who knew that alphabetical order could be the basis for a lifelong friendship? Our road trip plan involved mapping out couches we could sleep on along the way. We also brought enough bedding to sleep in her Jeep on the nights we didn’t make it to a free couch. It was one of those nights with the back seat almost flat, and she and I and her very leggy dog nested together that I thought we were all about to die.

We’d pulled into a parking lot for the night, and it seemed a safe enough place to sleep until the dog started growling in the middle of the night. We woke up to see the Jeep flooded with a bright light getting brighter and closer and then the unmistakable sound of a train horn. I swear I did not remember any train tracks in the parking lot earlier, but there was a train headed straight for us. Frantically, we tried to make the driver’s seat accessible so she could get us out of harm’s way, and then the train turned. I knew I would have remembered if we’d parked on the train tracks. Well, we were definitely wide awake after that.

Sometimes, things don’t work out as planned. We made it as far as the Grand Canyon before heading to Seattle for a family matter on her end. Almost nothing went according to plan, but we had an adventure and made memorable stories, and really wasn’t that the point?

I’ve spent most of my life wanting to wander footloose and fancy-free, but at the end of the day, I love to have someone going through it all with me. Misadventures are so much better with someone to turn to and be all OMG, that just happened! Someday, when her kids are older, I hope that she and I can be travel buddies again.

That said, there is something very satisfying about invading England alone. I’m the Irish-American/Chicana middle-aged mom version of James Bond that absolutely nobody ever asked for. I like to think it would make my ancestors proud, aside from the part where I had just given a lot of money to British Airways and was really only on a quest for even more tea. I have been influenced by my grandmother, who was influenced by her grandmother, who was the daughter of Irish famine immigrants. I have strong feelings about the history between England and Ireland. When we wear green on St. Patrick’s Day, it is political. Our continued existence is our protest.

All the same, my mother loves classic British literature and contemporary British TV, and we both love a good cup of tea. In my defense, I was introduced to good tea by the owner of an Irish imports store on Laurel Canyon. One afternoon a red-haired friend and I slipped in out of the rain, a couple of soaking wet, freckle-faced junior high girls. My love of tea only deepened under the influence of my mother-in-law, who was born and raised in County Roscommon, Ireland. I take it with milk, no sugar, feel free to bring me a cup any time.

With a six-hour layover in Heathrow, which didn’t seem like quite enough time to really see the sights but was too much time to loiter about the terminal satisfactorily, and it being two in the afternoon, I was determined to have afternoon tea at the Sofitel.

I got the Classic Afternoon Tea ❤
Yummy treats

Getting out of the airport was unnervingly easy with an American passport. Getting out of the Victorville Walmart may be more difficult. Honestly, I sought security when I realized I was already landside just to ensure I hadn’t skipped a step. They looked at me like I was crazy. I was trying to leave the airport. I had successfully left the airport without hassle. They failed to see why I thought this might be a problem. I don’t think I’ll be taking any job opportunities from James Bond based on my polite uncertainty at this point.

There was a part of me that felt like I should make a run for it. I was set loose in a foreign country. I could do anything! Well, aside from gaining legal employment, which would be necessary to fund any prolonged doing of things. So I stuck with my original plan of afternoon tea. Despite hours of careful planning, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to find my way there. The Sofitel is an easy walk from the international terminal. The international terminal is an overwhelming spectacle worthy of it’s own zip code, but walking from the exit to The Sofitel was easy-peasy.

I was nervous about the whole interaction with humans, part of going out for tea, but that’s normal for me. People who make their livings in hospitality are generally very nice, even to socially awkward, underslept Americans who feel like they just invaded the country. It was a little more awkward realizing that I was the only person having tea alone. There was definitely too much snacky stuff for one person (at least for one person, who had been incredibly sedentary for the last twelve or so hours on an airline that kept the food and beverages flowing). I ended up with even more food stashed in my purse. The tea (and the accompanying food) was really good, though.

In my youth, I used to have romantic imaginings of traveling alone. For whatever reason, these mostly involved me dressing like a girl reporter from the 1940s with a pencil behind my ear and a pocket-sized notebook at the ready. It never occurred to me that I would be a divorced forty-eight-year-old undergraduate or that, under those circumstances, I would deeply wish my mother and daughter were there with me. Afternoon tea at the Sofitel seems like a really perfect way for three generations of women to have a grand time together. Unfortunately, I’m not in a position to take them there with me anytime soon.

When I finally set out on my solo world-traveling adventure, It turned out that I wanted someone there with me. I wanted someone to have a taste of the yummiest things and agree with me that it was amazing. I wanted someone to make eye contact with and wordlessly communicate volumes with. I wanted someone to make up unlikely stories about strangers in the airport with. I believed it wasn’t about the destination but the journey. Now I believe that it’s neither of those things. It’s about the connections you make and grow along the way.

Loving you the way I do
I know we’re gonna make it through
And I will go
To the ends of the earth
’cause darling,
to me that’s what you’re worth
Carole King
Where You Lead (Gilmore Girls Theme Song)

Where You Lead (full theme song from “Gilmore Girls”) lyrics

The Night We Became Friends

Yeah, we’re coworkers, but most importantly, he is the person I tell everything to, especially the things I don’t want to tell anyone.

One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

I recommend against sleeping with your best friend. I’d had a friend a long time ago who seemed like the only one who could understand certain things about me. We were briefly a couple, but we were better at being friends. He’s not the sort to be single much, and I really needed to be single while I sorted my head out after my marriage ended. Thus our romantic relationship ended up being a relatively brief part of a long friendship.

I was supposed to be his best man if he ever remarried, and I was nearly as excited as he was when he got engaged. I didn’t know the bride well, but we ran in the same social circles, and she’s amazing. I was low-key excited about having the opportunity to become her friend through their marriage. The admiration is not mutual. I was not the best man. I was not even invited to the wedding, on account of the whole having been in a romantic relationship with the groom thing. It’s more normal to be like her than to be like me. I respect that.

As the best man, it would have been my job to stand up for this couple. I don’t know why I always picture swords, but I totally picture swords when I think of being the best man as a solemn oath to defend the marriage and its participants. Maybe this is why no one ever lets me be their best man; I can’t tell a wedding party from the three musketeers. I still think I would totally rock a tux. Even though I didn’t officially get the job, I still think it’s my responsibility as his friend to do what’s best for his marriage. Friends should support each other’s relationships and, in this case, the best way to do that was to minimize my place in the groom’s life.

The day of their wedding was incredibly lonely for me. The people I would generally lean on during a bad day were either getting married or invited to the wedding. I arranged to stay at work for the weekend, so I wouldn’t wallow. My work has student/instructor housing that was available at the time. Also, the Work Bestie had just been kicked out by his girlfriend in a fairly dramatic breakup and was staying at work that weekend, too. I made hot buttered rum that night, and we hung out while I got very, very, very drunk.

He wasn’t really the Work Bestie yet. I mean, he was entirely himself, but we weren’t particularly close. I hardly knew him. We met on my second day there. He was breathtakingly beautiful, but that’s not what I’m into. I don’t have any use for a pretty picture to hang on my wall. Give me a mind that makes me want to wrap my legs around it. That’ll be my downfall every time.

I respected him as a colleague and was definitely learning a lot from him, but we were coworkers, not friends. Well, then the rum happened. I could not shut up. I told him everything. My deepest darkest secrets came running from my mouth like puppies eager to jump into his lap. He greeted them with warmth and kindness. Eventually, I managed to sedate myself into something close to silence. He made sure I got tucked in safely and then excused himself politely.

I was mortified; my every shameful confession given to some guy I hardly knew was bad enough, but to tell that stuff to a coworker? Ugh. It had been a nice job while it lasted, I guess. I waited for him to be weird to me. I waited for him to tell my secrets to our other coworkers. It didn’t happen. He knew me, and he didn’t run away or betray me or anything, and it just so happened that a bestie position was being vacated in my life right then. So that is how he became my Work Bestie.

Months, maybe years later, I realized that it’s not so much that he is nonjudgmental as it is that he has no short-term memory. I can tell him anything I want to today because he’ll forget it by tomorrow. Okay, maybe it’s not that bad, and since, eventually, things transfer over to his perfectly functional long-term memory, I still depend on his discretion. More than that, I depend on his friendship. Yeah, we’re coworkers, but most importantly, he is the person I tell everything to, especially the things I don’t want to tell anyone. I set out to be best friends forever.

And I don’t want the world to see me
‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand
When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am
Goo Goo Dolls
Iris

Goo Goo Dolls – Iris (Official Music Video)

Drought, Deluge, and Desire

There are different levels of separation. Sometimes it feels like only miles between us, but by the end of his busy summers, it feels like we’re standing on different planets. I begin to wonder if I’d made him up entirely.

The most confused you will ever get is when you try to convince your heart and spirit of something your mind knows is a lie.
Shannon L. Alder

The rain comes to the Mojave Desert all at once. It lands on earth so dry that it has forgotten how to drink. The entire desert is like a dried-out sponge, so thirsty that water beads and rolls off of it instead of soaking in. The soil can only drink in water if it’s already damp. I think my heart is a desert. It is so desperate for love that it has forgotten how to let any in. He appears the same way the sky breaks open in monsoon rain, and then, just as suddenly, he is gone.

The Work Bestie and I have worked together for many years now. He lives far from our work, about a hundred miles. I lived close, about four hundred feet. So he would frequently travel to where I was. Which is to say, commute. Then I moved far from our work, about four hundred miles in the opposite direction. So he seemed relatively close to work, at only one hundred miles. So I would travel to where he was, which is to say, commute. Instead of seeing each other every month, we only saw each other a couple of times a year because most of my job became remote when I moved away for school.

When I first moved to the Mojave Desert, you could still see the milky way most nights, and the monsoons came every summer. Neither of those things is true now. The nonprofit where the Work Bestie and I work together is still small and underfunded, though. We all have side hustles. To be honest, we all have main hustles except for the executive director. The Work Bestie has an important STEM job doing his part to save the planet. Smart boys are sexy. It also makes him disappear at the beginning of every summer, almost exactly when my school slows down enough that I’m more available to him.

The summer before my summer abroad, I was really frustrated by his inaccessibility. There are different levels of separation. Sometimes it feels like only miles between us, but by the end of his busy summers, it feels like we’re standing on different planets. I begin to wonder if I’d made him up entirely. I don’t know that there is anyone else I would wait for so long or so often, but he has a way of making things up to me. So I was really looking forward to working together in September. I needed our weekend together that September.

I had bought my round-trip plane tickets to where he lives, one hundred miles further than our shared work. He was going to pick me up at the airport, and we would have the long commute together to talk while keeping our hands mostly to ourselves. I need that after the cold disconnect of our summers. We would have the long drive, both ways, and two nights, for him to remind me that he’s real, that I didn’t just imagine him.

He flaked on me. He canceled at the last minute, screwing me over personally and professionally. He had a family obligation in another state. It was right for him to be there instead of with me, but that doesn’t make it suck any less on my end. I had to change my flights, pay for a shuttle and spend the weekend sleeping alone, in the friggin’ Mojave Desert, not to mention moving the whole workshop schedule around so that we had qualified instructors for all the modules. I’m not convinced that even the Work Bestie was worth all this.

I was lowkey done, but how do you break up with a ghost? A ghost who I wasn’t even officially a thing with. Whatevs. Besides, he was supposed to be my plus-one for my cousin’s wedding in October. I don’t like going to weddings alone since my own marriage failed. It’s one of the rare occasions on which being single depresses me. Besides, he’s a good dancer, and I wanted someone to dance with. So I wasn’t going to make waves until after he stood me up for that too. To my surprise, he did not.

Don't go. I'll eat you up. I love you so. (Where the Wild Things Are) — I’ll eat you up I love you so

This is the problem with the Work Bestie. When he shows up, he is perfect. It’s impossible to stay angry with him. We had the long BART ride from SFO to the East Bay to reconnect. He wasn’t imaginary. He was very real. He’s my favorite. Favorite what? I don’t know, but he’s my favorite. That weekend was the first time I ever believed he might love me. I mean, we were friends for years before we ever fooled around; of course, we love each other as friends.

There was a moment when we were alone in my room, and he bit my arm. We weren’t fooling around right then. It wasn’t a sex thing. It was more like when a toddler’s emotions are so much bigger than their vocabulary, and they don’t know how to express themselves other than to bite someone. It was like when my kids were little; I’d look at them and feel like I could just eat them up because I loved them so much.

That was the first time I felt he could love me beyond friendship. I have trouble trusting what people say. Words are slippery. This was something that made sense to me. Days later, I was still rubbing the bruise (I bruise ridiculously easily) and smiling, thinking, “he likes me; he really likes me.” I had proof that he was real, and maybe he even loved me.

He never told me he loved me
He never told me he cared for me
He never told me he didn’t
So I believed
Sofia Talvik
Beautiful Naked

Never Say Never

I took one class a semester for eight years to get my associate’s degree. It was painfully slow, but in the end, it actually worked. I was ready to transfer to a university when my youngest turned eighteen.

So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.
Christopher Reeve

I was a terrible student growing up. I ditched much of middle school. I had a bus pass, an annual membership to the L.A. Zoo, one to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and a library card. I learned so much ditching school. I love learning; I’m just bad at being a student.

By high school, I was already determined to be a housewife someday. Two different career paths offered themselves when I was on the cusp of adulthood. One was an apprenticeship to an auto mechanic (though I would have to get some official education at the community college level to make a career out of it), and the other was working with developmentally disabled adults in a day program. They both appealed to me, but I picked the latter because it would do more to prepare me for motherhood.

In the end, I am quite good with kids and in the kitchen. Unfortunately, the job market for housewives doesn’t allow for much career mobility. If I live the rest of my life on my own, I need to get my ish together because no one else will take care of my business for me. If I’m going to live the rest of my life with a partner, I still need to get my ish together because anyone worth being in a relationship with deserves the best version of me I can be.

I went back to school in my 30s. It wasn’t easy. Thank goodness for Google and Starbucks. One answered my questions like, “how do people study?” and the other gave me a place to follow that advice without the man who was becoming my ex-husband being able to sabotage me. I took one class a semester for eight years to get my associate’s degree. It was painfully slow, but in the end, it actually worked. I was ready to transfer to a university when my youngest turned eighteen. Of the eight universities I applied to, only the CSU and UC in San Diego turned me down. That would be the two schools in the city where my Work Bestie lives.

When we were both completely single, I would write him long, rambling emails, explicitly telling him how I wanted him and why and telling him to “just take the compliment” and move on. I don’t date younger, or colleagues, and I wasn’t ready for anything serious with so much trauma to process from my marriage, and I don’t want anything superficial either. I’m all or nothing; in this case, it would be best to stick to nothing. I told him we were never going to be a thing, and I told him why I never ever wanted to be a thing. I also told him to visit me and go on adventures with me. After all, he was my Work Bestie; visits and adventures are what besties do.

After years of being the first person I told any news to, he was the last person I told when I accepted the admission offer from my dream school. There really was no choice even close to the benefits of going to Berkeley for me. It was the right thing to do if I was going to stick to my guns about becoming the best version of myself. It also meant moving 400 miles further away from my Work Bestie when the 100 miles between us was already almost too much to bear. I knew that if I moved away, we would meet other people and drift apart, but I was just as sure that if I didn’t, I would never be the partner I wanted to be someday, let alone the independent woman I needed to be.

Berkeley had been the last school to give me an answer. I was sure that they had rejected me so hard that they weren’t even going to be bothered with telling me so. I was never getting into my dream school. The night before they accepted me, I had gotten drunk and depressed and sent something despairing to the Work Bestie. He called me, and I cried and cried and cried, but he talked me off the ledge. He soothes me as no one else can. Not even he knows it, but I cried just as hard when I realized I was going to Berkeley. I wasn’t ready to move away from him.

There’s the way we may appear
But that will change from day to night
Would you ever see within?
Underneath the skin?
Could I believe you had that sight?
And so you go
No girl could say no
To you
Suzanne Vega
I’ll Never Be Your Maggie May

Suzanne Vega Montreux 2004 06 I’ll Never Be Your Maggie May