But I Don’t Wanna Be a Romantic!
The fence was beautiful, like starbursts in a spider web made of iron. I want to say it was baroque, but I honestly have no idea what that word means off the top of my head. If I thought about it (and fair warning: I’m not going to), I’d probably get close.
Forget I mentioned it. Beautiful fence, is the point I’m trying to make.
And the view through the spider webs and starbursts was also beautiful. An old factory, kind of desolate in form and contemplative in lighting, with the afternoon sun making it go rust-reddish gray.
I leaned a forearm against the fence, and my forehead against that. I sighed. It was very Romantic; I felt that I was just a ruffled shirt and a case of consumption away from being a poet for the ages.
I did not want to feel Romantic. So I stood straight and lit a Pall Mall and walked along the fence in my 24/7 jeans and creaky leather jacket.
I got twenty swings of my legs before I realized that I still had some Romance to me. It was whiskey cigarette music video Romance, but it still started with an R and ended with an Omance.
So I picked my nose. Fuck you, Romance.
You have to be very clever, you know, to think of these things. Yeah. Like some kind of emotional response MacGuyver.
Anyway. I had a perfectly valid reason to not want Romance in my soul. Perfectly valid. Yeah.
The reason was actually embarrassing and complicated and blatantly fucking stupid, and all of these are perfectly valid in the field of Romance, ask anyone who’s ever been involved with it.
It was a retroactive crush that had me picking my nose to spite my heart.
Yes. A retroactive crush. The back-pay of the heart, the retcon of the young man’s fancy, the stupid stupid thing that only I could have inflicted on myself with the impossible conception engine that was my brain.
…
She was a friend!
I liked her as strictly a friend! I cannot stress this shit enough!
The closest I got to feeling otherwise was that I felt like I was sort of a third wheel when another kid seemed to obviously (to me, anyway) fancy her, and I felt badly in the way of what would’ve been an okay couple and said so and offered to make myself scarce when he came around and I don’t remember how it turned out but I do remember it was tragically awkward for like, a whole day!
And then I lost touch with her after high school, and suddenly it was all “Oh. Oh fuckity balls shitsaurus. She was a great girl, wasn’t she? She was well worth risking the friendship to ask out at some point, wasn’t she?”
“I would’ve fucked it up, and I was more cunt than catch back then anyway, but she would’ve been worth the off-chance, wouldn’t she?”
(Yes, incidentally.)
But that’s it. A retroactive crush. Incredibly embarrassing, in the way that bad timing always is.
The worst of it is, I keep playing chicken with the idea of looking her up through, I dunno, Facebook or what the fuck ever. I keep losing the game of chicken with that idea because…well, who the hell chats up their retroactive crush through Facebook? Sadsville, man. Desperation Boo-lee-vard.
It’d be even worse it was under the pretense of “hey old buddy, how’s the husband and kids, haha, just kidding, you don’t have those, right? Please say no.”
I mean, good lord.
Anyway. I think you know why I’m stomping alongside a beautiful fence and furiously picking my nose around a smoldering nub of a cigarette.
I think you maybe get it.
