damonjustisntfunny.com

It’s not that I’m unattractive.

It’s not that I’m cruel, strange, apathetic, unusual, ugly, sterile, pusillanimous, pessimistic, hateful, angry, upset, or even unfortunately endowed. It is none of these things and yet is is certainly something. I have always known this, Ben has always known this, and you have always know this. It has nothing to do with #6. It has nothing to do with Ben or bicycling or dispersed camping; with The Bob or Big Red or Little Green or Sharkies or post-prandial naps. But it does has something to do with all the moments in-between. Something I cannot put my finger on quite yet and maybe I never will; I can merely roll it around in the back of my mouth like a healthy chunk of frozen spinach and say, as the indomitable Popeye might, “I am what I am.”

What I am is not particularly patient.

On Wednesday, July 20th, I gave Ben a final wave farewell and watched him drive off in the back of an airport shuttle — his bike was packed carefully in a box beside him. I did not cry. In fact: I did not think of or speak to him again for three weeks. Instead, I went back to the apartment and sat on the edge of the bed and began dissecting the moments between then and when it was I would see #6 again. I divided the rest of my trip into three logical segments (San Francisco, Los Angeles, and then Issaquah) and then divided those segments into days and those days into hours and the hours into minutes. I sought ways to fill the time. To fill the time before I would see her again. I am is often concerned with my time.

I took a Yoga class that night — walking the thirty minute route there and back again by myself. It was if Ben had never been with me at all. As if I was always alone and always in San Francisco and always waiting to leave. After the class was finished the instructor approached me, handed me his card, and told me to keep in touch. He said I was very talented and wondered if I had ever thought of becoming a teacher and that, if I hadn’t, I certainly should. I smiled and thanked him and then threw his business card in the trash as I was leaving. I am not a Yoga teacher.

The next morning I woke up, packed up, and got on the underground train to take me to Oakland so that I might take a plane to Los Angeles. I sat down on the train and it did not move. Fifteen minutes passed. Thirty. I looked at my watch. An announcement came over the loudspeaker defining the startlingly predicament we were all now in: another train had caused an accident further up the track and the voice didn’t know when we would move again. I looked at my watch. I got off the train, ran up into the fresh air to look for a taxi, saw none, reconsidered, jumped over the gate and headed back down to the station to wait out the underground accident. I arrived at the airport terminal gate ten minutes prior to departure. I was sweating. The unreasonable fear that if I missed this one flight to Los Angeles I would never see #6 again had consumed my thoughts. I inhaled deeply. I was a wreck. I am not suited for travel.

Forty minutes later and I was in Los Angeles and suddenly #6 was so close to being a reality again that I could hardly catch my breath. I felt the weight of anticipation pushing me into the earth and each step had to be drawn with considerable effort. Time reversed itself and sweat rolled up my body. I was in a smoldering vacuum. I was a terrible guest. My eyes had glazed over and could only see one image; my ears had grown thickets of hair and could only hear one word. Everything and everyone else was filtered out by the power of 6. I am slightly obsessive.

After I had pulled the weight of the sun on my back for four days and three nights I sat down in an airplane seat and took drastic measures to avoid hyperventilation: I bought a newspaper. The Sunday New York Times featured an article chronicling Lance Armstrong’s recent victory in the Tour de France; half-way through my throat seized and a tear threatened to escape from behind a strained eye. I was going to see her again. I was like Lance Armstrong coming to the finish line at the top of the Alps, face set, grip locked, breath poised for victory. I had survived. I had made it. My race was almost run. I am not, at times, untouched by greatness.

When I stepped off the plane I accepted into my heart the cruel twist of fate that had landed me in SeaTac, WA four hours before #6 would return. I walked to a diner and smiled at the waitress; afterward, I lay on my back in the park and listened to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. I watched the moments tick by, one by one. And one by one they did. One by one these moments combined to manifest themselves into what I had been waiting for since I had first pedaled away from her driveway four weeks earlier. And suddenly the moment had returned. With the cold metal of a airport bleacher beneath me, I opened my eyes to find them resting once again where my heart belonged. I am not impervious to love.

If I have said that parts of this trip remain vague or unclear in my memory, it is an understatement compared to how little I recall of my four full days in Issaquah, WA. I was there; we were together; and I did leave her behind. But I don’t remember what happened in-between. And that’s because, unlike the bicycle trip, which had a beginning and an end, the memories with #6 are still in progress. Our trip together was just beginning.

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