Ouragan

"Write something about me" she said earnestly. She was an earnest type of girl, or I probably wouldn't have shown her this blog in the first place, it wasn't my fault that she liked to read poorly written stuff that try to pass as intelligent.  "It's not really as easy as that, I am not talented enough to write on demand. I am not a radio station that takes requests, and can play them within the hour." Which is only sort of true, I do take requests, but it generally takes me a lot longer than an hour to fulfill them. It takes some thought, and if you know me, you know thoughts are sometimes thin on the ground in my world.  She also decided that the request wasn't difficult enough and added the further restriction "that no one can know it's about me, but you and me." That really helped to narrow the focus, and made it a lot harder to write, which is why it's nearly a month later, and the following is the best I can do, and it will probably not be good enough, either for her or for me.

Some women swan, some trundle, and some when they walk, merely tread upon the ground. Not her, she came into my life, and my bar like a hurricane blowing through a coastal city in the height of thee stormy season. It was a stunning entrance, and myself, and the other local swill drinkers were all duly impressed enough to look up from our pints, and pause in whatever lies we were telling each other to mark her arrival. I had the advantage over my fellow wrecks, because I knew, that despite me not believing she'd show up, she was there to see my dumb ass. Which was about the only advantage I ever had in relation to her. It didn't last, the advantage, just like that coastal city beset by the hurricane, I was blown away. After all, I am not much to look at, and I am probably even less fun to talk to, and I figured that this was going to be a quick "one drink and never talk to me again" type of "date". I've had all too many of those in my career as a loser.

Writing something intentionally vague is really not that difficult, it merely requires careful consideration, and a general willingness to bend the truth a bit. Facts must be carefully inter spaced with the obfuscations that are required to not give the game away to everyone. And yet you have to be careful, you can't even say "she was tall with legs like a new born colt" without giving part of the game away, after all how many truly leggy women do you know? You have to get creative in the description, and use things that only she knows are about her, but still may open you to the charge of well it could be about "X" too couldn't it. The answer to that is the paradox that started this post to begin with, how to write something for one person, where other people don't know it is about that person, but that other people can't see themselves in the details as well. You have to get creative.


 Creativity is a very tricky thing, it is very much like the most delicate of flowers it can wither and die in an instant of inattention. It has to be nurtured, and yet still allowed room to breath if it is going to bloom. Even when carefully tended, and blooming it could still end up like the delicate corpse flower which smells of rotted meat when it blooms. It can be stifled as well, like a child that cries too often, and is smothered to death by some desperate mother than doesn't want the North Koreans to find them.  The artistic side of one's nature doesn't pay the bills, and must give way to the practical side, the side that goes to work, pays the bills, and provides the necessary steel in our collective spine. One of these days practical me is probably going to have to kill artistic me. It will be, when it happens, a mercy killing.

Hurricanes, to return to our subject, are formed in areas of extreme low pressure. Those two words in that combination would not ever be used to describe her. She was high maintenance, high strung, and high class. Nothing low about her, except maybe a few of her opinions about certain people in the world. Luckily for me, at least at the time, her opinion of me had not sunk to the current level at which it currently resides. That first date did not go as poorly as I had expected, in fact it went as well as possible. It was like my fairy godmother, that inattentive bitch, was finally paying some attention to my life, and giving me what she considered a dream match.  Perhaps, when the lazy bitch that is my fairy godmother sleeps, she has different dreams than I do.  Hurricanes operate on something called a Carnot heat engine, a complicated (too complicated for me) system that provides them their main energy source. I was never able to fully ascertain her main energy source, she was a driven, uber bitch about a lot of things, and the water around her would literally evaporate from the heat, then she would just as quickly cool down, and be an ice princess that would freeze the blood in the stoutest of men's veins. Thus, in a idealized nutshell, is a Carnot heat engine explained.

The key part to a hurricane is the eye, the center of the storm where it is relatively calm. Of course that is a relative term, and the eye still has it's dangers. Sure it's calm, but the way(s) out, if they exist at all are full of peril and storms. It behooves you, if you can, to stay as close to the eye for as long as possible. After all, no one wants to be flattened like the unsuspecting coastal city that one is beginning to feel like. Hurricanes cause damage, generally they don't discriminate they just merely flatten anything that happens to be in their path. And I had willing placed myself in her path, it was a decision that in theory I should have regretted, but in retrospect would probably make again if I had the chance. 

In the late 60's and early 70's some idiot government employee came up with the not so brilliant idea of trying to artificially dissipate hurricanes by seeding them with silver iodine. It didn't work, in fact it was a fairly spectacular failure. When her Carnot heat engine got truly going I would attempt a similar idea but with alcohol which also usually wound up in a spectacular failure. It was an idea that I quickly abandoned best not to feed the beast anymore than necessary, just batten down the hatches, hope it blows over quickly, hope you survive, and pray that the pieces left to pick up are enough to rebuild the relationship you so painstaking put together. 

Double Dip Thursdays

She swanned into my life on a Thursday. Thursday is my favorite day. I don't tell the other days that because I don't want them to be any badder than they already are, but Thursdays are my favorite. Perhaps, it is just an off shoot of my Viking lineage, it is Thor's day after all, or maybe I just like the drink or drown specials I partake of, but Thursday are the best. Sure lazy Sundays are fun, but for my money it is Thursday that is the best. Like the cute, but not too cute younger sister of the hot girl you dated in law school, Thursdays takes time to mature, but boy when it does it is worth the wait.

This particular Thursday was waning when she swanned into my local. It was closer to Friday than I had intended out staying out, but some boon companions of mine had convinced me to have 'just one more pint' before staggering off to our respective (empty) beds. That one pint was to prove a lot hard to finish that I thought.  It wasn't like I noticed her when she walked in, no great light was following her around, and she didn't walk in on moonbeams. No theme music announced her arrival, nor did time seem to stand still. She just walked in, sat herself at the bar about 5 feet away from me, and ordered a drink. The rest is hazy history, and I will struggle with some of the details in the re-telling.

My boon companions decided to abandon me about the time that I actually noticed her, if I were a wise man, which I have never been accused of being, I would have trundled my happy ass home to snore away the few waning moments of a happy Thursday. However, being a damn fool, and a little drunk to boot, I decided to engage her in what passes for conversation.  It went exceedingly well at first, it seems when I am a bit in my cups I can become quite the charmer. I don't believe this to be true, but by the time I hear these stories I have sobered up, and have reverted back to my misanthropic ways. She told me her name, which I do remember, but can not with iron clad certainty prove it was her real one, and we begin the age of dance of the 'chat up.' Charming me must have paid his dues to the gods of luck, because she decided that once the local closed, we needed to go to another bar, and continue this little dance.  Being, by this time, drunk as a lord, I agreed.  It was now deep into Friday, that day of regret that I loathe more than most, and I figured I was in for a penny why not go in for a pound? 

The details of what happened at the second bar are a mystery to me, and what I said, or did to convince this woman to come back to my house are lost to me. I remember bit and pieces, but none of them add up to the actual result that happened. I suspect it was something important, but I just simply can't remember. She did come back to my bed, and kept it from being empty that night, and part of the next day. We did the usual things men and women who are 'getting to know each other' do, and all in all Fridays suddenly didn't seem so bad.  I remember details of our talk, details now which make the end of this story more obvious, but which at the time did not stop my wretched behaviour.

It was made apparent to me that she belonged to another, and had for some time. Why she was populating my bed was and still is a bit of a mystery, but at the time I didn't ask too many questions. I never claimed that my moral compass was tuned to due North.  We did exchange phone numbers, and some vague promises of future meetings, but I figured that I had just partaken in a completely unplanned, absolutely immoral, "one night stand." Not exactly my proudest moment, but I am, for the most part, an utter bastard. Being convinced that I am nothing special helps me rationalize my actions. After all, I am not James Bond, and if a woman will come home with me, then I figure it was just something she wanted to do, and she wasn't blessed with the highest of standards. Not an insult to her or her behaviour, we all have needs, and I was there to meet hers, but I am not so vain as to think songs are written about me.

Not surprising to the cynic in me, but quite a blow to the romantic in me, I did not hear from her for about four days. I tried to start a conversation with her to no avail, and figured that I was a fellow traveler in her life, and that we had went our different ways. She was like a ship that had slipped it moorings and had drifted away from me on the morning tide as I stood there on the quay waving a silent and forlorn goodbye. Tides are funny things and do funny things to us humans, some pull us apart, and some bring us together. I am no tidal expert, and  I figured this high tide had passed, and I would be left with nothing but fond (thought slightly hazy) memories.

I was again reminded of the fickle nature of fate when, to my surprise, I received a communication from her expressing interest in talking to me more. I was a little taken aback, but not unhappy with the idea, and we did 'get to know each other' a bit more in the non-biblical sense. It seemed the other and her were not the greatest of places (shockingly enough), and perhaps things between us had room for growth.  Growth is a very tricky thing, and sometimes what is planted is not always what blooms, and things end in tears, as these things are wont to do. Tears were never really my strong suit, but endings, well endings I can do like a champ.

However, before the ending, there was the double dip. Again, to my surprise, as I was once again out celebrating the existence of Thursday, I received a message from her asking me where I was. I told her, and lo and behold, twenty minuets later she appears. It was not an exact repeat of our first meeting, but it was damn close, and it ended much like the first one, with her populating my bed, and making Friday not so bad. And then poof, she was gone. Like a haze of fog on an early summer day she just evaporated. Nothing but the memory of it to remind me it happened at all. She was something that I felt like I was holding between breathes, and when I let out that second breath she was expelled both from my bed (lungs), and my life.

The little I know about her, and the little I can remember about her may or may not be true, or it may have been some elaborate fiction of an disturbed mind, hers or mine I am not sure which. I don't think I feel any sort of loss about her disappearance, after all, she was barely there in the first place. A double dip of Thursday does make for any sort of lasting bond. Even if her leaving hurts, it doesn't hurt too much. The name she left me, may or may not have been her real one, the tale she spun may or may not have have been real, but the time she spent in my bed was certainly all too real. For that, and for making an interesting yarn out of my life so boring, I will always have a very small, soft spot for my Thursday girl.


Of course, after two months of not writing a word, a disclaimer is necessary. Writing even as poorly as I do, is a skill. Skills go bad without practice, therefore the poor construction of this post can be hopefully forgiven.  Secondly, as with a lot of my writing this is a work of about 99% fiction. The most exciting Thursday I have had in a long time involved finding a five dollar bill in some jeans while I was doing laundry.  If Thursdays can't be exciting, they should at least involve clean drawers.