hell, i won't be found

there's no better music on earth to tell stories to than this.

my stories, though, i suppose, are all the same. the names and places change, not much more. where are all these girls i knew? paris is in vienna (hah... yeah, i'm jealous). there was someone i met last week in golf class. abby, yes. we were doing a drill based on keeping your wrist angled during your downswing wherein the partner would grab the club and keep it upright, letting it slide through their hands as you pulled downwards. she inadvertently made a comment (we had just met!) about going first while she tugged on my club. we both sort of paused and i said i wouldn't even make a joke about that. we laughed about it. i partnered up with her again yesterday... remembered her name because of that joke. she said she was pretty embarrassed about it and had told the story to a couple people over the last week. she's a friendly girl, pretty and tall and blonde and thin. sorority type. knows a few people i do. from canada, although her family lives in singapore. we're both seniors and her father was in the same class as mine at wake in the 70's. we laughed and joked the whole time.

then came the end of the class, to which i'll apply patented over-analysis techniques known only to the most paranoid of us all. we watched videos in a classroom. we were both texting different people... i was one seat ahead of her and to the side. optimism when she used my chair as a footrest followed by pessimism when she left the room without saying anything. i remember glancing back at her when they spoke of swinging inside-out (dorky golfspeak, i suppose) and thinking in that quick instant or two that she was even prettier than before. the class only meets once a week. there's nothing more to say about it.

danielle is a different story. she rises with the sun and breaks my heart every day. i wrote her before christmas but never heard back. oh well... might as well start that awful process of moving on. not so easy, apparently. i was walking on the phone, all sunglasses and sweatpants, in front of the pit and towards the gym wednesday morning. i never saw her coming...

she came up behind me and grabbed my elbow and we hugged fantastically for a second before walking again. she was going to the gym anyway. pretty in that way that you wouldn't have realized until you were used to it. smiles and such. she didn't have to seek me out. especially not now. if it had been me, i'd have pretended not to see her... but that's the difference between us. i got off the phone before we split ways and she lowered the axe. asked me if i was ok. with everything. threw me in the fire. what could i do? i pretended i was. that everything was fine. that i didn't think about her all the time and that it didn't sit like a parasitic grape nut deep inside me... the knowledge that she was here but not with me. that question meant so much. said so much. it says she's still with rob. it says she entertains no daydreams about me but that she cares.

what's the worst thing that could happen? this? the beautiful girl loves someone else but is sweet enough to give the hero no reason on earth not to feel the way he does. the perfect crime. so concerned with my happiness but so unwilling to do anything about it.

ali is dating a marine. she's such a tough nut to crack... i can't get used to it either. saw alli a couple times yesterday... resident polo hottie. (... well, to me anyway) reminiscent of danielle a day before. came up from behind me (this time she was on the phone, though) kicked me on the hip to say hello. i kicked her back. (playground flirting, anyone?) she was talking to her mother... mention that she'd kicked me but said i probably deserve it. (no shit, we're 7... and i don't mind at all) she told her mom it wasn't too hard and i said i thought a butterfly had landed on my hip but i don't think she heard me. we split ways at the back of reynolda but both ended up at the post office, back to back. she was still on the phone. i rolled up a flier and smacked her in the head with it before pretending to be standing there reading it. she smiled at me as she walked out.

who the hell knows? i'll be lonely forever. mark it down. karma or otherwise. i'll be the tallest man on earth. secretive, making lonely music forever. honey, won't you let me in?