Sympathy for the Devil

( November,2008)

"She had an overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women. Don't let me go, hold me tight, make me your plaything, your slave, be strong! But they were words she could not say.

The only thing she said when he released her from his embrace was, "You don't know how happy I am to be with you." That was the most her reserved nature allowed her to express."- Milan Kundera, " The Unbearable Lightness of Being"

"My point is, there are a lot of people in the world. No one ever sees everything the same way you do; it just doesn't happen. So when you find one person who gets a couple of things, especially if they're important ones... you might as well hold on to them. "



I never take anything back.And I will probably forget the things that were said, the things that were done...but I don't forget what I felt.You should never allow someone to make you so ridiculously happy just by their mere presence, and this was something I thought I had outgrown,the way you outgrow qualities in your adolescence that reveal your feelings,or sentiments.It was those feelings that surprised me when I felt them again, when I realized I was just as shy around him at 24 than when I was when I was 15.I don't think it is that I wear my heart on my sleeve, I just listen to it more than I listen to my head. With whomever is the right person to me,which doesn't happen often. If any of you have learned anything, it's how damn selective I am. And the fact of the matter is, as much as sometimes it felt right,this wasn't meant to be, not for now, who knows if or when, if at all, but when it happened...to me, it felt good,( so good). Not just the steamy, smoky kisses, but even the electricity I'd feel at just a glance from him that incinerated the butterflies that were constantly in my stomach, right up till that very last conversation.

I was stunned at first.I had allowed him, his presence, the thought of him, those little moments,to make me happy,ecstatic- something I try not to do to anyone. That's a huge responsibility to place on somebody." Hey you, guess what?! You make me happy. Don't fuck up!" So my shock was more at the fact that in 24 hours he made me very happy. Happy in such a surreal manner that one of the memories of that night that stung the most in the aftermath was not just the conversation I had with Boy,but this one moment of wobbly dancing.Hanging off his neck during the insistent thump-thump-thump of the Spanish music ,I looked over at four of my best friends, and they were beaming back at me. They were witnessing me on this plane of unapologetic,care-free emotion, and suddenly , one by one, they too, were dizzily floating along this euphoric altitude with me , wooed by Boy, disarmed by his charm, and the idea that they, too, can be as happy as I was in that one spinning moment.With one swift kick to reality I was bought back down. I was so drunk at the moment, the questions wouldn't come to my lips, and yet the answers jumbled onto my lap, wrapped in his cigarette smoke, ( mmm, that cigarette!)and apologetic eyes. The next day I tried to sleep, but every time I woke I just thought, " did it happen? really? how drunk was I?"But it did.

Sure, I had questions. But when it comes down to it,no promises were made. My feelings were not requested. In the end, those specific, starry-eyed, butterfly-incinerating feelings,mattered only to me. But I don't think he knew, at all, how happy that last day made me.That same happiness that made that conversation so damn shocking, stunning, numbing.