the coastergirl diaries volume forty-eight

after the adam debauchle things with coastergirl and i were coated with a quiet sort of taint. she was more physically affectionate than she had ever been, always looking for excuses tro pull me close or whisper a something in my ear. she was calling me almost as frequently as she blinked and there was little to say when she did call.

a sample:

me: hello?
her: hey.
me: what's up?
her: not much...
me: ...
her: ....
me: you know i'm working right now?
her: sorry...i'll talk to you later.
me: alright.
her: love you.
me: i love you too.

i should point out that it wasn't that i didn't want to talk to her by any means. it was more that we had just spoken ten minutes before and i had things that had to be done if i wanted to be able to enjoy my free time. of course, it's easy to say all of that now, but maybe in me, after adam, there was a kind of pulling away in me, a kind of hesitation in the way i spoke to her and interacted with her. it's so hard to tell what happened when your looking back and trying to understand your subconcious motivations.

like anything else, it was a phase. a period of emotional strain that had to be gotten through, survived. but before too long things got back to normal. we were all laughs and giggles. people started telling us that we were like an old married couple. we laughed about it. love was a flourish again.

everything good seems like it will last forever if you let it. in those days, i let it and so did she. we began socializing some, spending more time with her friends, with mine. of course, by this time, everyone had sort of become "our friends". our lives in those days were a series of excuses to laugh, a pattern on joy and lust ensued that nearly swallowed us whole. and we jumped in. we were jonah and love was the whale, except that we wanted to be in it's belly. we were in it's belly. it was beautiful in a way that can only be understood by people in love, people maddened by their own craving to know another person in deeper, kinder ways. we took long walks and made love on playground equipment. we watcvhed films and added our own commentray throughout them (mystery science theatre 3000-style). we read books and traded them back and forth. sometimes i would wake in the night just to watch her sleep. we were even playing the eye game again. life was bigger than space. we were life.

in the course of our socializing, i began to get close to yogi, a friend i met through coastergirl. i think in all of that, one of the finiest things i had gotten out of knowing her (aside from her) was the meeting of yogi. yogi, at that point was on target to be a monk and the conversations we had were mystical and ranting, long winded bits with overtones of absolute awe with anything that was. i remember often, sitting in parked cars or in restraunts both of us staring at something, awed, torn back by it's beauty. the irony was that so often, what we were awed by was two totally different things. i might be staring at bird and thinking about just how fine it was that such a creature could exist. how wonderful that a thing made of (more or less) sticks and fluff, could actually float through the air, actually move about and make decisions. meanwhile yogi would be sitting in complete silence, wondering about some aspect of our inner being. the truth is that the conversations were good. we enjoyed each other's company and more often than not, we sought it out.

i still spent nearly all of every day with coastergirl, so seeing yogi usually meant the three of us spending time together. which was nice. for all of us but in different ways, but coastergirl grew hesistant after a while of this routine. i remember laying together in her bed one night and asking her why she kept withderawing whenever the three of us were spending time together.

her: i just don't feel like i have anything to add.

you have to understand that coastergirl was an intensely spritual person at that point, but her spirituality was mostly a calm, centered place within her, a quietness. it didn't need words. it was beyond words. it was the quiet wisdom of a child, but having grown through and learned from life. in so many ways i wonder if she was right about her approach.

me: why do you feel like that?
her: i don't know. you guys sit there and talk about concepts and what this means and how to better understand the world and humanity and that's just not me. i don't do that. anyway, i don't do it like you guys do.
me: maybe it's beacuase you don't need to.
her: i don't know...sometimes when i'm with you guys, it feels like i'm a third wheel. like i'm in the way.
me: you are never in the way. not in my life.
her: i know you thinkt hat, but maybe i just shouldn't come along when you guys are spending time together. i don't want to make the evenings uncomfortible.
me: you don't.
her: i feel like i just add silence. awkward silence.
me: well, you are of course free to do as you like, but if it is up to me, i want you there. and i think that yogi does too.
her: i don't think he does. i think he thinks of me as third wheel.
me: yogi doesn't think of anyone as a third wheel.
her: ...

the next few days or weeks i tried to draw her into our conversations, and the results helped me to understand something about her i had never grasped before, for whatever reason. she didn't want to talk about what we talked about. seeing this i tried to steer the subjects tot hings she loved tlaking about: music, books, people. but she was still so withdrawn. she seemed to be forcing herself to withdraw. to be silent. to not become too deeply involved in her conversations.

for a while i thought it was because she was listening, but i began to notice her wandering eyes, her hesitations and one night i asked her about it.

me: why do you always clam up when the three of us are hanging out.
her: i don't know...
me: yes you do. you can tell me.
her: you'll be upset.
me: i have never been upset at you. i haven't always liked the things you did, but i have never been upset with you.
her: i think i have feelings for yogi.

the next day yogi pulled me aside and asked if he could talk to me privately.

2004-06-18 | 3:20 p.m.
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