Today was something of a special day: my girlfriend's 19th birthday. I
deliver pizzas for a living, so I don't exactly have copious
amounts of money to throw around, but I felt that I should at least do something
for her. Jewelry was right out and so were clothes-
too expensive. The only thing that came to mind, on short notice, was the one
thing that almost anyone can appreciate: food. And not just any food, either,
Japanese food, her favorite. There's a little hole-in-the-wall
place just a block from Cafe Coco, where we usually hang out, and their California
Rolls are pretty damn good (though, we both agreed that putting wasabi in
the rolls themselves might have been a bit much, but they did
taste damn good!). It wasn't much, but it was all I could do with such meager
means- it was both good and bad fortune that I was able to get off work so early,
so that I could share her special day with her. If I'd stayed at work longer,
I could have made more money from deliveries, but I would have had less time
to spend with her and the day would have turned out far less interesting, I
believe.
We adjourned back to Coco for a while, to read, write
and relax for a bit and collect our thoughts about what we could do with no
money and no motivation. We both wanted to do something, but what
that something proved fairly elusive. Instead, we resigned ourselves to
yet another same-ol' night of CocoNut life. She's leaving to go to college quite
some distance away soon, which is ultimately good for her, I think, but since
she's leaving, our time together grows shorter with every passing day. We've
gotten into a habit, kinda, of loaning books to each other. She's the one
who turned me on to Neal Stephenson and William Gibson and I'm trying to
turn her on to Robert Heinlein. Today, when I picked her up, she handed me
Gibson's "Neuromancer", which I've just started reading and already
find thoroughly enjoyable just three chapters into it. She's still reading Heinlein's
"To Sail Beyond the Sunset", going on the third week now (fourth?)-
college life/work has whittled her personal life down to nearly nothing these
days, so reading for pure personal enjoyment is something of a feat for her.
About an hour or so after dinner, some friends stopped at our table and one
of them, Ben, announced that his violin had finally been repaired. He invited
us into the parking lot and listen to him play it some, which we gladly did.
My girlfriend plays the flute with some degree of accomplishment and got to
talking with Ben about music when, all of a sudden, Ben suggested going to Dragon
Park and the two of them playing their instruments under the lights, in the
dark of night, which sounded like a fun way to finish her birthday out. Another
friend of ours, Bethany, joined us and we all four of us took up a small
plot of land at the park in preparation for an evening with classical music.
Mozart, Berliose, Bach... minor snippets of each of those composers and
other stuff that I couldn't place while I read the book that had been loaned
to me, reclining against one of the spines on the ceramic dragon, which Dragon
Park is known for. I burned through those chapters like I was a match and the
pages had been doused with gasoline- flip, flip, flip. The stuff is damn good.
A short while later, we tired of doing our own things and settled into conversation.
Topics ranged from sweetly romantic to absurdly vulgar,
but all of it was fun and lighthearted.
That big day, the day she finally checks out of Nashville for the last time,
still hangs over both our heads. What will we do? What will become of our
relationship? What will we decide? I know that I love her- maybe not in
love, but I do love her. I know that I really enjoy being
in her company, more so than many other people in my life. I know that I will
miss her and that even now, when I'm thinking about her, I wish she was close
by to talk with or simply share the still of night in solitude. More than a
mere friend, she's fast becoming a companion to me, which is a station that
I reserve for very special people, people I can stand for more than ten minutes.
What will tomorrow bring?