His profile picture was beautiful; a sepia tone closeup of his face. A rush came over my body as his eyes transcended my screen. His image conveyed multiple layers of feeling and expression. My senses flooded with his passion and piercing masculinity. Wandering through the foreground was a strong presence of contentment while an essence of humor and sensitivity lingered behind. All of his emotion swirled inside my mind, like a drift of snow being blown about by a gust of wind. I felt every cell in my body spiral downward. His gravitational pull eased, as each landed one by one. Then slowly they floated back to their position of origin. I couldn’t stop looking at it. His eyes were so deep and breathtaking. To my recollection, I have never been so taken by a portrait. I fell in love with that picture.
We talked on the phone the next morning and he told me he was in the mood to get out of town. I said the same. I went out on a limb and asked if he wanted to go to the city (San Francisco), for our Friday night date. He said yes. The tone of his voice gave me the impression that he may have been depressed, it was low and somewhat flat. However, it had a calming effect on me. He is a photographer and has a Bachelors of Science in graphic design. I told him that I liked the work I saw after clicking the link to his professional website. He sounded flattered and surprised.
That night I wandered the internet trying to find something for us to do. I stumbled upon a play called “Beyond Therapy”. It’s about two people in search of meaningful relationships. Following the advice of their respective therapists, they both place personal ads. Their date is a disaster, but some how they keep re-entering each others lives. As it turns out the therapists have significant problems of their own. I asked him if he’d be willing to see such a play, and he thought it would be funny and perfect too. I could tell he had an open mind and a sense of adventure.
Thursday night we text messaged, while I was baking cookies, to form a loose itinerary for our date. I told him I would make a few extra for him. He said “Id love you for that”, I thought that was pretty strong language and in hindsight, an ironic gift to bring on this date. Anyway, he struck me as a dark angel type. His portfolio pictures were very dramatic and he listed Nine Inch Nails and the Deftones (which happens to be my favorite band of all time) as some of his favorite music. I pictured him wearing eyeliner.
Friday night I left work running out the door. I am very punctual and wanted to ensure I would have enough time to get to his house, get to up to the city and maybe grab a bite to eat together before the show. When I pulled up to his place he was standing outside flagging me down, since I had a little trouble finding the exact address. I wasn’t quite sure it was him at first. That’s the man I had seen in the picture? He seemed disheveled and slightly unenthused. I got into his car and we started driving. There were moments of quiet during the car ride and he said he was perfectly comfortable with silence, and frankly so was I. He had a mix of music on his ipod that included, many of my favorite Deftones songs. He enlightened me by explaining the meaning behind my favorite song of all time. We approached the city. I saw the skyline light up in shapes of rectangles and squares. He commented on the beauty of such a sight.
Once we got a little deeper into the city, we had to stop in a line of cars going up a hill of about 45 degrees. We both clenched our teeth and squinted our eyes, as his tires squealed to make it up, and over the crest. I laughed hysterically. We were quite a pair. We found a sushi restaurant right around the corner from the theater and had dinner. In the middle of our meal he said “well I might as well tell you now...”,
“that’s a great intro, sounds exciting” I said “...what is it? He told me that he had experienced a nervous breakdown in December. He has PTSD and it all finally caught up to him. He lives with his brother in the same building as his mom, since leaving Portland as a result of his emotional state. The funny thing was, I understood. I have had many of those breakdowns. However, I knew that going back to my family was never an option. He is wounded.
We left the restaurant and walked over to the playhouse. The Shelton Theater is an old, multilevel building on Sutter Street. The musty space contained a very small stage, sat about 30 people and was in the basement of the building. We originally sat in the back, but I felt my claustrophobia begin to flare, so we moved up. We were 3 feet from the stage, close to the door. The play was well...interesting to say the least. It was a riot of dramatic yelling, screaming, severely dysfunctional therapists breaking every ethics rule in the book, and a collision of internal confusion between the two main characters, Bruce and Prudence. It came at us like a pie in the face. This play was a hot mess on stage. It was funny. I kept looking for the deeper meaning being that it seemed to focus on a a slightly kismet topic. One underlying message was, when it comes to psychological problems, it is all in the way you look at them. You can either laugh in spite of yourself or let them get you down. Second, go with what you feel. And third, stop looking for the perfect partner because they don’t exist.
That night I kept searching for the man I had seen in the picture. When he smiled, I saw him. When he laughed, I saw him. But in between those moments were periods of flat lining emotion. On the way home we talked about the play. We discussed the fact that there really wasn’t such a thing as the “perfect person”. He told me he has a pattern of falling in love with women who drink a lot. I told him I have the habit of falling in love with people who don’t love me back. I hypothesized that we all have a perfect piece. I said that one of his perfect pieces, so far as I could tell, was his art. Each person possesses many pieces of perfection, just not all the pieces at once. He also said that each person’s definition of the perfect piece was subjective. I agreed. He wondered if everybody experiences depression, at some point in their lives, or if it was just him? I said that every human being will suffer. They will feel hopeless, lost and alone. Whether it’s because of a lost love, a lost life or a lost child, nobody makes it out of here pain-free. “I wish more people could acknowledge that,” I said, “because then we would realize we are way more similar than we are different”,. He seemed impressed by my theory. He said it felt good to talk about his depression and know that I wasn’t secretly judging him.
He turned up the music really loud. We were cruising down the freeway at 70 miles per hour. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. My limbs went numb. My heart melted into the back of my seat. My world went black. I sat there witnessing my desire for control rise and fall, like waves lapping on the sand. He had control. Whether he knew it or not, he held the safe space for me to exhale and surrender. I felt the piece of me that wants to be held, surface. I let go. I let it all go. I was present in the moment, there with him. I felt lucky to be alive and breathing. I was grateful for the companionship. My breath was steady. When I opened my eyes, I looked down at his grey gloves that stopped just below the first knuckle of his fingers. I wanted so badly to reach over and hold his hand that was resting on his leg just above his knee, with my red fingerless mittens. I kinda wish I had.
I sat there pondering whether or not to act on my impulses. I considered what the crazed therapist in the play would have done. She of course, would have done it, and done it with gusto. But I wasn't sure I wanted the consequences of that action. I didn’t want him to think I was all the way in, because I wasn’t. I used to think that liking was black and white. I either liked them or I didn’t . Now I see incredible shades of grey, that allow for a great amount of detail. And I have to ask myself, what is the nature of this liking? Is it pure or is it spurred by pity and codependency? We do have the capability of bringing each other out of the depths of our own personal hells and when we do it, how can we tell if we are really practicing love and compassion? If we help, listen, and give to others, not because someone told us to, or because its our duty, but because we truly feel empathy for the other person and their unique experience, we are doing right by them. Pure love and compassion means having respect for the individual and their feelings. It has nothing to do with our own personal agenda, conscious or otherwise.
I could’t shake the feeling that I found him strangely attractive. I wondered how much of my impulses are safe to act out on when it comes to other people and how they will react? I don’t want to be looked at as a tease, or using them for my own personal pleasure. It goes back to the question I asked concerning sexual motives. Is it okay to kiss someone knowing that a committed relationship seems unlikely, and kiss them anyway just because I want to? When we reached his house, he pulled right up to my car and without putting his own gear in park, we said goodbye. When I got home I checked my phone and he had texted me to see if I made it back alright. He also said he didn't mean have me get out of out if the car so quickly. I said that’s ok.
There I was standing on the ledge again, pondering if I should jump or not. I jumped. I texted, “had you parked the car, I would have kissed you”. He responded with a light hearted “really?”, he thought he was off his game. But he said, if that was the case he might have to make a visit to Santa Cruz. I told him “I guess your game works, even if you are depressed”.
He replied, “That might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. Hmm”. I thought about that statement. Was I leading him on? No, I was revealing the connection I felt with him.
When I was 21 years old I met a guy at the bar. We left together and went back to his place, right down the street. I don’t remember a lot of the details of that night except, eventually I divulged that I had been seriously depressed and suicidal for the last year and was on medication. I shared that I felt hopeless, and there was no point to anything anymore. He told me how in the last year he was diagnosed with cancer and had surgery to remove the tumor form his brain. He was 24 years old. He told me that he understood what it felt like to be scared to live, and scared to die. We talked for hours. We didn’t sleep together. That was the first time ever in my whole life that I ever felt like I wasn’t alone. I woke up the next morning feeling like there was someone else in the world that understood what I was going through. I had a renewed sense of desire to carry on.
Saturday night I am usually finishing up my writing for that week’s date but last night I couldn't do it. I felt the story was not over yet. I wanted more, more of him. I texted him and asked him if he wanted to come over. He did and he left sometime late this morning.
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