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| Rants >> Columns |
 Alan |
Underwear Left on the Floor The spring before I moved in with B, before we were stealing each other's Ramen noodles, before we were drawing straws to see if it would be a Boston Legal or Daisy Does America night; we were skipping out on work together. We had a birthday party to plan for a co-worker and needed the whole day to set-up in her parent's backyard. The birthday party went off well that night; someone got pregnant in the hot tub, someone stood too close to the fire-pit and singed her pants, and two someones, B and I, got a chance to just sit and talk like never before. We had worked together for a number of years, but hadn't slowed down long enough to discuss more than the usual 'top five bands', 'top five books' type stuff. My birthday was a week later. For my twenty-first I got the pleasure of moving back in at my parent's. I crawled home after my girlfriend left me, back to curfews and daily chore lists magnetted to the fridge. I was able to keep myself from dropping out of school for a while, but that fell through and I was looking to get out before I'd have to tell my parents. About nine months later, 'hot tub' was born, and I was packing up boxes to move in with B. The first few months were an adjustment for us both, she had just lost her fiance to an accident. She had never lived with any other boy before that. I had lived with my sister growing up, but she is eight years older than I am, so while she was going through all her awkward teenage years of training bras, boyfriends and first periods, I was still outside chasing the ice cream truck. Fast-forward to me being twenty-one and single and walking into B's bathroom, a month after moving in, to find tiny silky panties on the floor, and you'll have the first of many missteps. Some cause laughter when B's belches put mine to shame, when I get to tease her about not changing the toilet paper roll, when she gets to tease me about making her kill the occasional spider while others just provoke confusion - 'What do you mean you don't know how to put in a storm window, Al?' Of course, there are moments of comfort and familiarity too: "You smell like basement." she said. I chuckle knowing she's talking to a ceramic piggy bank. Then she pulls out a few 6" rock star action figures; Janis, Jim and Garcia (all three still mint in their packaging). "I love looking through old stuff." She hands me a hemp and ball-bearing bracelet; "I don't even remember where I got that. But I love it." She scrapes the next layer from the storage bin, about ten plush Dead Head bears. We start making plans for where the Christmas tree will go. We do this while Eminem sings about never seeing "an ass like that, and she hums along, and I make StoveTop Stuffing for us. However, the most unexpected feeling has been what Ive dubbed the older brother syndrome. We've lived together now for two years and in that time we've seen each other's mistakes, each other's pains and each other's pleasures. Recently it has hurt me to sit through some of the choices she's made. It's difficult seeing your best friend bring the wrong guy home from the bar, or having one too many drinks with the neighbor who can't seem to talk about anything other than his truck and 'that chick's ass'. What's harder is knowing it's not your place to say anything and respecting that. This last winter she found an old notebook from when she was fourteen years old. It included an essay on where she saw herself ten years from then. She wrote me a letter that same night, long after I had gone to bed, and left it on the sink for me to find in the morning. The letter included sections of her essay how she told herself she'd be married and having kids by twenty-four. She went on about how life never turns out the way you plan. How she had lost her fiance, how I had mine run away. How she was no longer the person she once was. Her birthday is next month and we'll once again have the fire-pit going in the back yard. She'll be turning twenty-four. But hey, if I were moving as my middle school version of me predicted, I'd be on the fourth leg of my European tour right now... while back in Grown-Up Land my guitar hasn't left its case in a year. I may expect her to do one sink-full of dishes more than she should, and she may expect me to cut the lawn more often than not, but we've become comfortable with our routines. And while I never wrote about or imagined living with B in middle school, I don't think that over the last ten years, I could have come up with a better locale or cast of characters than those that surround me right now. Though you may try your best to keep things according to plan keeping dreams and secrets to yourself and alive sometimes what you guard the closest just ends up in a bunch on the bathroom floor. And sometimes that's okay. |
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