Sticks and Bones

The first part of a chronicle of a crush-turned-obsession. I'm sorry, Julie.


To experience this in natural reading order go to A Bright, Ironic Hell: The Straight Read .


Also, try Satellite Dance and Crystal Delusions--Parts 2 and 3, respectively--complete.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Jullian (6/6/08 Friday)

My quandary has manifested in a couple of different ways recently. It started out as feigned indifference and ended up as a playful attention. I much prefer the latter.Frustration and grudging resignation brought on the first attitude, with depression and surlyness. It felt cruel. One day I barely acknowledged Julie her presence, and my shoulders were in a knot. I didn't treat anyone much better. (Sometimes the Fool and the Wise Man are one and the same.) But I recognized that attitude as the same one I utilized as a teenager to such spectacular non-effect--that aloof apathy that was supposed to set me apart as a cool loner and attract that discerning girl who could see through all those phonies the other girls hung all over. But I suppose at that age the phony that cared was preferred to the phony that didn't. Anyway, this time around I decided to care. I solicited advice from Julie on things about which she knew and cared: I asked her about the Hamish MacBeth TV series, because I knew she liked Robert Carlyle ("I'd marry him if I could") and because we're both Scotiaphiles. Of course, when I draw her out I get to know her better. She's never asked any like questions of me, but the Wise Man has chosen not to care, not to take it as a sign or indication of her level of affection for me. Rather, I understand--or choose to understand--that that is her nature. She's shyish and seems to keep much of herself to herself. I can't take that personally.

At lunch in the breakroom Bethany remarked how a year ago many of us working here didn't know or hardly knew one another. "Like, I didn't know for the longest time that Dion had a thing for J--" My heart took off, but my mind overtook it: How did she know? Why does she have to blurt it out with Julie right here in the room? Did Stacey tell her? Why? Why?--"Gillian Anderson." The biggest part of me wanted her to have said "Julie."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think many of us unrequited lovers secretly hope that something or someone will force our hand, force us to reveal our love so we (and the loved one) have to deal with it more directly (but without being responsible for actually declaring ourselves).