Commencing Count-Down, Engine's On

Lately I've been the recipient of barrelfuls of shit piled on top of me for the lack of consideration of not being a good friend to others. This is something that is important to me: being a really good friend. I realised that if I can't give 100%, if I'm not fully there emotionally and mentally, I shouldn't do it. It is unfair to all parties. After at least a month, after some time and more consideration, I finally called my good friend Dirty.

Dirty Diana.

It's not that she did anything wrong. She wasn't mean, or stupid or callous or vengeful. She didn't embarrass me or kill anyone I cared about. She did nothing out of the ordinary. She just was. I stopped calling her because I simply didn't feel like it. My focus was somewhere else. It would have taken a great deal of effort to pick up the phone and dial her number. Well, that wouldn't have been the hard part. The hard part would have been suffering the inevitable fifteen minutes of her giving me shit for not calling her in over a month.

Dirty: I'm pissed off at you! Well, first you don't call and I think I've done something horribly wrong and that's why you haven't been calling. Then I ask others, who HAVE seen you. They report you're fine. More than fine, actually, and I don't know this. I have to get this second hand! Seriously... What the fuck?!

The Comrade: Dirty, I've just come to the conclusion that if I can't give you 100% of my attention, and this goes with all my friends, I fundamentally think it's unfair to both parties. I adore you. Just know that I love you. Please make that enough.

Well, it wasn't enough. She still went on for another 13 minutes about how our relationship had grown, how she didn't have too many actual girl friends, how I now had this new "responsibility" to her, how maybe she was in a place of need. I never got the white flag phone call. I never got the distress signal. Had I, I would have dropped everything to listen to her woes, her wants, her needs. Then I would have counselled. She would have confessed. She would have received some relief.

Dirty has been single for around 2 years. She's going through what many people are going through in their sordid lives right now: What the hell am I living for? Why am I working so hard? What are my passions? What are my goals? What the hell does it all mean, anyway? Am I supposed to be with someone, or not? If I am, where the fuck is he/she?

This year, 2004, the Year of the Monkey, has been a rather tough year for many people. It's been a year of self-discovery, a year of solitude, a year of personal bests. Potentially. A year of self-deprecating personal worsts. This has been for the majority of the people I've informally interviewed who happen to be single.

Many of the single friends I have, both gay and straight, have chosen this life of solitude for much the same reason as why Dirty often doesn't leave her house. She says it's not worth it. They're not worth it. She'd rather stay at home, order some take-out and Pay-Per-View, curl up with Baby and Al, her two gorgeous and slutty cats, and call it a night. Though her bed is lush, in much the same way as I would imagine a bedchamber of royalty, decked out in velvet and silk, she still opts for another night on the couch, back soothingly cradled by the sofa's backrest. It almost simulates another person. Almost.

Getting further into conversation she complains about not having time off to go to my Robert's Christmas Sing-A-Long. This is an annual tradition hosted by Robert's family where family and friends alike go caroling around the matriarch's neighbourhood, peppering cheer, broad porous smiles made grey by way of numerous bottles of red plunk, barely memorised lines made no easier by the aid of sheet music or plain lyrics as the intoxication has reached seasonal highs. My Robert is Mensa smart and always has something interesting to say.

The problem is not everyone does.

She missed me, and this came out after 90 minutes of phone conversing, because there are very few people she can have an actual dialogue with, and not have to talk about base, uninteresting fodder. The shit that doesn't matter. The shit that makes you forget about conversations. People.

I realised just now, actually, that the reason I forget people, and this had been a source of shame for me for some time, is because so often people have nothing really memorable to say to me. People love talking, love talking about themselves. I listen. They love talking about their problems. I still listen. The sentiment gets stored in my memory banks, but the individual gets released. Forgotten.

I love talking to Dirty. She's actually one of my favourite people to talk to, though specifically on the phone. It's different when we're in public. We tend to meet at our favourite bar, one in which she introduced me to, but happens to be in my neighbourhood. It's a tiny trek for her, a hop, skip and jump for me. This bar is very much like the bar Cheers for us. Everyone knows everyone elses name, business, status. Everyone vies for our individual attention. We do not get to have an opportunity to just talk. Just us.

Occasionally Dirty creates a booty-call scenario for herself while there. Historically, it’s staved off loneliness. She'll strike up a conversation with someone who doesn't completely repulse her, bringing him back to her lovely home. She gets what she needs and he leaves in the morning. Sometimes she's there. Sometimes she asks him to leave the key with the concierge. I wouldn't in a million years do anything like this. The idea of a booty-call repulses me. And I don't have a concierge.

Home is somewhere I collect my thoughts, my Self, my socks. Very few people have been invited over. Having company disrupts my peace. I seek tranquility here. My life on the outside is inordinately social. I prefer my solitude right now. I love to come home.

After work, Matty and Kissy, my lovely work comrades, had invited me to go to the Cheers-equivalent bar for their annual Christmas party. We all took the streetcar, depositing 3 of the Christmas Vial tokens my mother gave me. I hugged both of them and wished them well on the rest of the evening’s adventures. I opted for home.

Kissy: This will be the last time we'll see each other before Christmas!

Matt: Oh, just come! Just for one!

The Comrade: No... the old girl's tired. I just want to go home.

They both looked strangely stricken.

I love these people. I love them just as I love Dirty, just as I love all of my friends. But I just wanted to engulf myself in my own surroundings, feel the calm, the peace of my space’s tranquility and just be.

I couldn't sleep last night. I hate not being able to sleep. I took advice I once heard, a remedy for sleep inducement: Write out whatever's on your mind. I did.

I wrote that maybe I fear attachment. Maybe I fear others attaching themselves to me. Maybe I fear me attaching myself to others.

When I begin to think about who the next significant person will be, if I’m not shuddering at the thought, it will have to be someone completely different than what I’d grown used to. I don't think I want to have a best friend in my next lover. I already have a best friend. I don't want to spend all of my free time with one other. I would still rather spend the bulk of my time with myself than anyone else, in addition to spending it with other people. This is the place I belong: with the People.

I realised, since being single this time, that it's unfair and truthfully impossible to place the responsibility of complete fulfilment upon just one other person. When I look around at the spattering of friends I have in my life, there is a little secret each of them knows about me, but the information is spread out. No two people are acutely aware of the same secret. I like it like that. I want to keep it like that. Everyone has a secret. A precious gem.

When I engage in one on one conversation it is rarely the stuff of mere fluff. I don't like small talk. I can do it, but I don't care for it. I like ideas. I like sharing concepts. I like discussing whatever's on my mind at the current moment. Once I figure out, often through dissecting it with others, the outcome, the end result, the answer, in essence, I move on. Some people like to discuss the same thing over and over again. They stay stuck. This frustrates me. Some people can gain answers but they aren't really satisfied with the conclusions. They continue to spin the problem over and over in their minds, never acting upon anything, just a constant woeful complaint stream. It feels like stagnant water.

Everyone is trying to find extra meaning in their lives. Whatever that means to the individual. Like Jason's post on the prison analogy of his last relationship, something that completely resonated in me and most everyone I know, history informs us to take a backtrack, to the places we've known, a place where there was once significant meaning. At one time it was just with one Other. It's what we were used to. Is this the Meaning of Life? Finding one soul mate?

Doesn't make much sense.

I actively seek connection. I seek meaning in just about every interaction I make with other people. Lately I haven't had a need to be with just one man because I've felt completely fulfilled with the relationships I cultivate on any given day.

Everyone wants to feel connection with others. I asked Dirty what she doing about it. I asked her, when she embarked in the world, if she was an active or passive object. Did she wait for others to come to her? She said engaged, but was dissatisfied with the outcome. I asked her what she presented to the world. Which facet of her personality did she most engage? As she is Croatian in descent, she learned from an early age that people were disinterested in having dire, serious conversations. She learned to keep it fluffy. Light. Safe. Small talk. She doesn’t divulge too much. She isn’t nosy.

This is how we are different. I am nosy. I ask a lot questions. People tell me things they’ve never told another living soul before. I love that about myself. I told her she is capable of creating whatever type of conversation she wanted. Most just don’t know how to do it. It’s very simple, as most complicated things are. Ask whatever comes to mind.

I don’t think it’s that I fear attachment to or of others. I think I just don’t want to feel responsibilty for other people. I still want to be their friend. I still want to help. I realise now that I don’t think I’m a constant. I appreciate that quality in other people, but it’s something that’s not inherently within myself. I am more a force than a constant.

I'm beginning to believe what Ack, the ex-husband/ best friend said about my having Super Powers. I think we all do. It's the single reason, or many reasons, why we are here on Earth. Our specific jobs. Our Real Jobs. My job is to encourage. To enable. To cheer. To love. I bust boundaries others have had around them for most of their lives. I offer a vision of freedom that historically I’ve denied myself.

This time it's slightly different, though. This time, in addition, my freedom vision is for me.

Ground Control? The Comrade is ready to come home.