Bikram & the Broken Heart .7
October 6 4.30pm
Conveniently located beneath where I sleep is a sizable demon that torments me at night. By that I mean I have developed an unhealthy obsession with the cars parked in the driveway. The cars and the guests belong to the downstairs neighbor. These cars all pass under my bedroom window. They arrive late at night and every door slam, every conversation, each fucking foot fall onto the porch is audible to me. One car in particular is parked overnight a couple of times a week and I think “fuck that bitch is here”, and I am saying this about a woman I have never even met. In fact have taken great pains to never see her or allow her to see me. It’s put me on a terrible edge in my own home. I fear walking to my car and getting accosted by them and forced to be introduced to the woman who refers to herself on Facebook as his girlfriend. I imagine scenarios where I am especially rude to her or call her by the name of another woman I happen to know he has feelings for. I imagine myself being unfailingly gracious and charming, or even knowingly sympathetic, because really, I know just how frustrating it is to love him. Before you mentally lecture me on involving oneself with the neighbor, this was a recent and unfortunate coincidence. This was something altogether different and painfully more complicated. I met my current downstairs neighbor while working in the park. He was employed as a park ranger and I was set up as a vendor. This daily interaction allowed us to get to know each other slowly and purposefully. I thought he might be interested in me at first, but was hesitant to get involved with someone I had to see so often. Although, I did really enjoy the process of platonically getting to know a person I found attractive. We laughed constantly and and he told me that he had never met a girl who knew as much about the Simpsons as I did. He was very much the loner hero of a 90’s movie. Dead end job, shy, but hilarious. Good looking but short and sloppy. Smart but lacking any sort of ambition. I thought he was fun, and fell in the kind of pure love that happens when your 12 and scared to hold hands. It only ever lasts for the summer. I don’t think about having future with every man I have ever loved. I’ve only done that once, and that disastrous past relationship showed me that us making plans didn’t equal to us making a future. I collect these experiences for myself to remember later. I prefer to give into my passions as they occur, and I let life sort itself out. A and I were spending a lot of innocent time together, and he often volunteered to help me with various aspects of my business. He once said I was the closest thing to a co-worker he had. I imagine he meant it as a compliment of some kind, but our 90’s anti-hero is usually awkward with girls and feelings, so who the fuck knows what that was supposed to mean. He would make these puzzling social overtures and occasionally invite me to his house where he’d sit as far away from me as he could and ignore me while we watched Reggie Watts or Simpsons reruns. I did not completely fault him for this awkwardness, knowing as I did that he was a military brat who had such trouble making friends his mother picked him up to bring him home everyday at lunch. He said that she also taught him not attach himself to people or bother to make friends because they’d just be moving in two years. It tugged at my heart to see this lonely little self isolated person, in more ways than one. It made me love him for awhile, although it eventually would make me hate him even more.
