james.
june, 1997: i had just been accepted as a shuttle driver trainee at UCSD. this meant i was hired by the UCSD department, but i still had to train and test for my class B license with air brake and passenger endorsements. i was in the shuttle office early that summer for some reason, perhaps to schedule training, and i saw him. he made some bedroom eyes or something at me, as he oft did, and made some comment to someone else in the trailer in his sweet gentle voice. then he walked off. he was wearing birkenstocks, of all things. and khaki shorts. and a dark green polo shirt. he got into a shiny black BMW convertible and drove away.
we started dating in january of the next year. we were doomed from the start.
i remember riding along with him during a thursday shift, standing as close to front as possible without crossing the white line, commenting that i had nothing to do that weekend. i'm so fucking slick. he said he had nothing to do either, so i sort of told him to hang out with me. it was my first experience with Making The First Move, and it felt good.
the next night, i met him at his apartment and we drove downtown. we ate pasta and climbed to the top of the hyatt to see the entire bay and city lights. walking back to his car, we intertwined our fingers as we walked along the trolley track path, pointing out the fabulous penthouse highrise apartments we wanted to own. it started to rain hard, so we'd duck under overhangs and doorways of abandoned buildings to wait out heavy downpours, him trying to seduce me again with those bedroom eyes.
eventually, we made it home. i remember sitting in his car with him listening to huffamoose and staring at each other, saying something devastatingly witty and First-Move-y as "if you don't hurry up and kiss me, i'm going to have to go home." so he did.
before long, it was 1am, and i had about a half hour drive ahead of me. the main freeway was closed, so i decided to reroute through the mountains. i had been awake since 5:45 that morning, and i started dozing off at the first curve heading towards del dios highway. i jerked awake, only to doze off at the next corner, letting my car tumble down the embankment. i rolled once and landed like a cat, all four tires planted firmly in the riverbed. the roof was almost entirely caved in, except over the driver seat. i am a woman of steel, apparently. i called james two days later, sort of to let him know i almost
died on the way home from our first date, sort of just to hear his sweet voice and tell him that i missed him already.
*
i know that we started treating each other like ass early on, because i vividly remember sitting with him at lunch with two black, bruised circles around my eyes from the accident feeling lousy inside for something he had said to me. those bruises faded after about two weeks.
we were together for two and a half years. i loved him so fiercely that the constant fighting and inferiority didn't phase me much. i also fell in love with his family - his sweet little sister, his protective new jersey mother, his hilarious, sarcastic, dry-witted father, and his fun little brother. i wanted to be a part of that. i remember when things got rough with james, i resisted leaving him for a while lest his family blame me for hurting their little boy. they invited me to "family weekend" at U of A for his little brother early fall one year. on the long drive home, i remember pulling over on the freeway and scimpering out of sight to make love beneath the arizona desert sky.
i don't think i ever really fell out of love with james, even when i might have insisted otherwise to him.
the first time we broke up, i remember talking to my father about it. his words of "consolation" were, "you know, i really liked james." thanks, dad. i just wanted to scream. i wanted to tell him all the bad things james had said to me and how he made me feel ugly and pointless and immature. i wanted to tell him how unhealthy our relationship had been. i just wanted someone else on my side. i was glad to be out of a relationship with james, but i hung up the phone that day and cried like a schoolgirl.
i spent the rest of the school year and that summer gloriously single. glorious for the most part - i had a few pitiful nights spent alone reciting lines along with Lloyd Dobbler and Diane Court. okay, it was more than a few. that video never left my VCR all summer.
the next time we spoke was my birthday, august 2000. he took me out to dinner. we sort of hashed out some of the bad vibes that were hanging over our break up. we had fabulous conversation and fabulous hummus. i remembered what it was like to want him. he dropped me off, hugged me, gave me those fucking bedroom eyes again and asked if he could kiss me. i let him kiss me. hello, framing device.
we got together the next day again "to talk," and one of the first things he asked was who i had slept with while we were broken up.
i left him again a month later. it was one of those moments when you realize that both of you will make fantastic significant others someday - for someone else. if we had met each other years later in life, there's probably a chance that we would have been each other's fantastic significant other, but there was no hope for us. we had broken each other in, i'd say. i didn't always like who
i was when i was with him, but he sincerely made me a better person and a better partner.
for someone else.
