Snowbound and Irate

First, a disclaimer about the last: I'm not diving out a third story window, or planning on finding a convenient rafter to hang myself by my belt from, or going to shove ice down the back of Dot's shirt, or any of the dozens of other methods of suicide I can conceive of. So stop fretting about the title, and let me write this in the right order.

I've been simply thinking for days, ever since Vinny left. For those who didn't know, my ex-girlfriend came to visit for Christmas. Actually, she came to scope out Icaria, and tormenting me was just a handy side benefit. Seems The Powers That Be have their long fingers and watchful eyes on her as well, and sent her the usual lure of a scholarship. I'm not sure she could have picked worse timing for when to actually find me, or a worse convocation of circumstances to get tangled up in the middle...

Actually, scratch that. I've a wild enough imagination that I can picture it, and with my luck, it'll come to pass when she decides to drop in again now that she's pinpointed me on her radar. Let's pray that never happens.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. Thinking. Vinny was here in a whirlwind -- found me staggering between a blow to the nose and an apology on Christmas, Lunch onward on Boxing Day, and then gone before I'd even woken up the day after. I imagine there's a section of the audience laughing their asses off now. After all, that's two girls lost inside a month, and one of them was stalking me. I must be some catch, huh?

Except the second left a letter, at least, along with some cold clarity that I've spent the last few days processing. Which is why Miss Scarlett, the Round Table, and Lust are now carefully pinned up over my desk, as a reminder. (Thanks, guys, again.) Vinny's letter is pinned up as well, closed so the lipstick shows, just beneath them.

Because I've been loved. Screwed up, messed up, mixed up mess, but still love...and from what I've seen, I'm not sure love is ever anything but. And I nearly loved, was starting to love, a girl who didn't love me back. Or maybe she was afraid to love me back, afraid to even consider the possibility. It amounts to the same thing now, as there's no chance to break down the walls and see where possibilities will take us. There's too much ocean in the way, for one thing, and she didn't brand me as hers clearly enough before she left. My heart broken, but with no formal bill of sale before she fled the store.

So my heart's broken. Congratulations, Billy Boy, you join the ranks of a million, billion other people who've come before you, poets and artists and writers and mailmen and accountants and meter maids and farmers and all the rest. Doesn't make you special...or does it? It's not a very exclusive club, and it doesn't give me right to run off and be a self-absorbed ass (at least, not for any longer than anyone's got that right for a bit at points in their lives), but it's still...a step. A test. Every day's a test, sure, but sometimes you pay attention to certain tests more than others.

It boils down to a question: how do I want to pass this test?

I've loved, and lost, and went rampaging in a brief but colorful dance along the edge of the dark. I find myself glad at times that my vices are wine, women and song...though I'm sure my neighbors are sick of my musical tastes. I am, I think, a courteous drunkard; no public displays of unfortunate affection, no flirtations I regret in the morning, no drunk dialing, no attempting to hit on my best friend just because I'm sauced. (Because, of course, I like to remember when I hit on my best friend.) So while it could all be a whole hell of a lot worse? I'd like to be a little bit better.

I must, therefor, reneg on giving up women, and giving up on the human race. Because I've had reminders the last few days of why I feel the way I do about both, and coupled with that aforementioend introspective haze I've been in I feel like...well. It hurts, it still hurts, but it's not a hurt I regret. I try not to regret even the mistakes.

But this is still the end...the end of the year, and the start of a new one. I don't know that I want to make resolutions, exactly; someone once said that promises were just made to be broken. But...well, let's just say I have bullet points:

• I'm grateful, and thankful, and all that mess, for the friends I've made in the three short months I've been up here in wintry exile. Dot, Emi, Anne, and Mikhail get top billing, but they're not the entire roster.
• Dot? Special recognition for going above and beyond the call of duty, more than once. I can't make it up, but you know I'd do the same for you without hesitation. Or I hope you know. I even have spots ready to help you hide the bodies.
• Thank you, Tanne. Because there were good times.
• Yes, I did give Byron the clap and the pox, and I'm fucking PROUD. So there. OMG, ourloveissopure.
• I'm not giving up on girls, but I am...well, let's say I'm giving up lust for lent. Yes, even if the closest I come to being Catholic are a few similarities between Krishna and Christ.
• Watch this space for geekery of the highest degree, to be announced formally before the semester starts. I'm still reading the books, but...ideas are forming.
• The past is the past, and can stay right the fuck there, thanks.

That last one, in particular, I know is harder put into practice than simply said, but...it's a sort of goal to aim for, I think. There are too many ghosts.

Oh, and as a final closing note: I hear there's a party tonight, to celebrate the new year. While I'm not doing my best hermit impression anymore, I'm not quite recovered enough to feel like I'd manage in a crowd. So instead, I'll be hosting a tiny little celebration in MacArthur. If anyone wants to drop in and give a toast, either before or after the main event over at Geoffrey's, feel free. That goes double for you, Dot and Hemi, if you guys make it back in time.

Whatever your choice of venue, whoever you choose to spend it with: have a lovely New Year's Eve, kiss the person you want to kiss at midnight, and may the year to come be fucking spectacular.

PS -- Because I can't help but play DJ for a moment or two, I leave you with appropriate tunes from some boys from Seattle I'm a little fond of.

Death Cab for Cutie, "The New Year"

Someone said that Hell is other people. I'm pretty sure it was Sartre. But he was French, so you can't trust a thing that bastard ever said. Hell, like heaven, is all in your head. Don't believe those cheerleaders when they try to tell you salvation can be found in the nearest closet for seven minutes.

Though let me tell you, those seven minutes do come close if you're in the right frame of mind.

One would think then that Hell was easy to avoid: keep a positive attitude, don't let The Man get you down, remind yourself that other people don't have control over what you feel. One who thinks that should then be laughed out of polite society for being dangerously naive. Anyone who is that in control of their own feelings is either dangerously solipsistic, and thus certain that only their feelings matter because they're the only person that is, or the Buddha. I'm neither, which is both a blessing and a curse. Instead, I am simply a man who realizes that he is not quite at the mercy of his surroundings, while still paying attention to them. In other words, Hell is in my own head, but other people get to help pick out the decor.

I'm writing this on the train, currently heading north out of Atlanta on our way to the Not-So-Great White Northeast. I'd try to sell you on it being terribly romantic, or at least exciting like the rides at the beginning of a Harry Potter book is, but I won't; Amtrak hasn't been romantic in decades, and I'm just not a good enough liar to pass off this feeling in the pit of my stomach as excitement instead of the dread it truly is. Honestly, my biggest thought at the moment is wondering why the hell my parents decided to send me off this way instead of by plane? Personally, I think they wanted to give me more time to contemplate my fate.

After spending the last decade and a half growing up in beautiful, sundrenched, bikini-babe-covered Miami, I find myself an exile now to climates that may as well be frozen-over Hell. This isn't even the twentieth century, must less the nineteeth; who sends their children off to boarding school anymore anyway? They can try to excuse it all they want -- tell me that Euphame is an honor to be accepted to, point out that with their jobs pulling both of them overseas it would be more trouble to get me into a proper school over there anyway, note that someone needs to stay close to poor Neela...but I know the truth. The moment they got back from seeing me to the train station? It was back to the house for a good ol' round of making the beast with two backs. Maybe I'll get a little brother out of the deal!

For as much as they're right about Neela, there are truly only two reasons to be glad for leaving Miami behind for the frosty aloofness of a Puritanical winter. First of all, it means I am away from my parents finally, and let's be honest: any mother who decides to give you the first and middle names of "William Makepeace", after her favorite author, needs some help. I should simply be glad I wasn't a girl, or I just know I'd be Rebecca Sharp Pendennis. It wouldn't be too bad for now, but the moment I hit college? Every professor and every hot guy majoring in Lit wouldn't have been able to stop laughing. And really, there's nothing sadder than a cute college girl who can't get a date except with idiots who don't read.

The second reason is, as most second reasons are, more complex. It's much easier to escape that ex you never want to see again at school if you're going to school in an entirely different state. It's even easier to dodge them -after- school that way, when you're not even bound by the dictates of class schedules. Now I can hear you all saying, 'It can't be that bad, Bill! It's just your ex, all sorts of people have to deal with seeing their ex-lovers frequently!' I'd like for you all to hear me saying, in answer to that? "Bite me." Let me tell you, it takes work to find a girl in high school that's actually worthy of a restraining order. You haven't filtered most of the sane ones out yet, or piled ten thousand students in one place like at a good-sized university, oh no. Instead, working with a limited pool, I manage to date the one girl who seems to think that high school romances last forever, who thinks spending more time with my parents than I do is a good way to endear herself, and who thinks that writing "Mrs. Bill Pendennis" all over the inside of her notebook is the best use ever invented for the ink in that Bic pen she's always chewing the end of.

Let's simply say that the breakup talk? Was not a fun one.

But two good things do not counterbalance being forcibly thrown out of the only place I've ever known, being separated from the friends I've had all my life, and forced to cope with life in a new school, a new town, a new state. Don't give me any excuses about 'everyone must leave the nest at some point'. I was planning on doing that without any help at all as soon as it was time for college. Doing it now? It's just plain cruel! But then, when has human nature ever shied away from cruelty? Just look at what our own government did in the name of "security", voting that it's just fine for us to condone torture as long as we can feel all right about it. I swear, everyone in Washington should have bamboo shoved under their nails before they get to vote on tossing out the Geneva Conventions. Of course, as they're mostly a bunch of pansy bastards, I'm sure they'd all squeal.

So now I am an unwilling expatriate, alone in one good way (may she never get permission to take a vacation in Massachusetts), and a great number of bad ones. I have very little idea what to expect, to be totally honest. Official pamplets being what they traditionally are, I don't much trust the document that was shoved into my hand just a few days before the date on my tickets. Thrust into the great unknown, and exiled from my tropical heaven to a decidedly frigid hell, I'm trying very hard to consider this an adventure and not a sentence. I suppose I should be glad I'm not like Neela, at the very least. She'd be disappointed in me if I gave up this easily, before I'd even gotten to this sun-forgotten place.

Besides, snowbunnies need love too, right?