(Untitled): Part II

(cont.) Part I

At the end of the next tune — Fields of Athenry, I knew that one — the bartender put down his flute and made his way back to draw some rounds. The guitarist paused and took a long, relaxed swig from his pint before continuing on to the next song, hardly missing a beat. Like I said, there are never a lot of people in here. I live in a young, hip neighborhood — you know, the kind of place where legions of twentysomethings move to take their first real job after graduation. I’m not one of those hipsters, though. I wish I was. I like to say I was here before it was the cool thing to do. Really, though, I suppose I live here in spite of myself. But those people generally have no patience for a place like this. I hate to stereotype, really, but they seem to be looking for somewhere pulsating with new beats, somewhere dripping in sexuality and fancy martinis — the kind that you really would never know how order without the help of your girlfriend or cool bartender (but only after he looks it up), but the kind that when people see you holding it, it says you’ve got the secret to a good life. Not that there’s anything wrong with those places, looking good, or anything like that, but it’s just not my scene, you know? God knows there’s enough of those kind of places out there. Fortunately for me, they keep pubs like this relatively empty. Or even on the rare night when there’s a bigger crowd, everybody generally stays under control and never gets loud enough to disturb anyone looking for that quiet drink. It boils down to respect. That’s all. Respect, people.

And you know what is one of the best things about her? I respect her, and I don’t respect a lot of girls. Well, I mean, I do, really, but it makes it a lot easier to respect someone when they respect themselves. That way, you don’t have to spend all your energy in a relationship just trying to convince the other person to think with their head on straight and stand up for their feelings; instead you can focus on other things, like talking about how you feel about family, what we should do in Iraq, the best dance song of the 80s — you know, the important stuff. We can do all this so much more naturally because she already respects herself. God, I love her.

It hasn’t always been easy, though, I’ll tell you that much. The relationship, I mean. But that’s okay, I don’t know one relationship that’s roses all the time. In fact, there was a long time when I wasn’t even sure if we’d make it here. We broke up for awhile and I started seeing some other girls. And I had a nice enough time with these girls, and even lucked into dates with some tres attractive ones (God, I make it sound like there were a lot of them — untrue! I fundamentally lack game.), but at the end of any night with them, the only thing I really wanted to do was ring Mary and tell her about how she ate her pizza with a fork, or something silly like that. I knew Mary would find moments like these funny, but I saw this whole inclination as being slightly problematic for the health of any new relationship. And this feeling wasn’t a one time thing, either. Sigh.

So, a lot of life happened, blah blah. Mary dated some other guys, I think, but I don’t really want to talk about that. It was hard enough just thinking about it. We managed to stay friends through the whole breaking up fiasco, which so often can mean loads of grief and work, and for what? For me, though the process along with it was hard as hell, the ‘for what’ was easy enough. I just couldn’t imagine anything but. We all have people who we want to see stick around in our lives, no matter what. Mary is that person for me. Broaching friend territory was in many ways wonderful practice in self-flagellation — for instance: while I may have periodically wanted to, say, take her in my arms and hold her til morning, I knew that would somehow break the friend protocol — but all in all, I felt it was worth it. Or so I hoped. I didn’t want those bruises for nothing.

I’ll spare you most of the dirty details of how it all went down, but one day down the road, we started talking — you know, really talking, in the way we had before — over a bottle of wine, and, well, one topic led to another, until she looked me in the eye, let the gaze sit there in a silence for what felt like 20 minutes, and finally asked why we aren’t together. Wow, hands down, way the hell out of the park, No. 1 question on my all-time top 10 questions asked list. To OR from. I knew how to take it from there (Though I never expected the day to come, I’d been practicing the answer for over three years), and here we are today, diamond ring dying to jump out of my pocket.

Except, I’m not sure where she is. She’s usually not late for anything. I hope she’s okay.

…