Dancing Brave

Belated Thanksgiving Update

As we got in the car on Sunday morning and drove through the light San Francisco drizzle, I remember heaving an internal sigh of relief, glad that the weekend was over and that everything could finally start moving forward again.

It was unfair of me to feel that way, because the weekend was far from being a disaster -- in fact, I had a superb time, especially when you consider all that could have gone wrong. But something about the fact of the weekend felt firmly staked in the past, and it felt freeing to drive home without looking back.

Waiting at the airport in front of the escalator down which Doug would later descend, I was nervous. Maybe even a bit twitchy. I tried to hide it, but I'm not sure how well I did, so Lauren and I passed the time making stupid jokes about the other passengers floating down to our floor. Not very nice, but a tension-breaker. None of it was mean; mostly it was the juvenile, "Oh, there he is," and pointing to a rotund bearded man or nine-year old picking his nose, or of course the young enlisted kid in his official sailor's flares and a cap. I was pumping with jittery adrenaline and had to burn it somewhere, because I didn't want Doug to detect that -- we both were so determined that things should go well. In that sense it almost felt like those weekends of yore when we'd see each other every three months and feel the need to construct a perfect mini-break.

Once he finally did arrive, there were hugs all around and some basic small-talk, and the expected tension never really materialized. Lauren and I had coordinated a little bit beforehand, and she agreed that she'd be the one to set out the pillow and the comforter so that he could sleep on the couch -- figuring it would be too much of a statement coming from me, even though he already knew that's where he'd be.

Thanksgiving was a day of repressing instincts. Doug and I had the day to ourselves, hanging out with football on and cooking. He cleaned out the turkey, I made the cake and the potatoes and everything that needed early prep, and all that time in the kitchen or on the couch was an extended exercise in quashing impulses. Every time I'd pass him, I'd mentally prepare to reach out and touch him, hug him, smack him on the ass, or squeeze his hand, because that's what we always would do. When we sat on the couch, my legs would instinctively want to stretch out across his lap, but I had to stop them. All day, it was about reaching out and pulling back, either physically or in my head. Not because I ached to be doing those things, but because they're so ingrained in what it means to be Doug and Heather that I had to remind myself that we're redefining everything. Again.

The meal went really, really well. I was delighted. The turkey cooked to a beautiful brown on the Weber, and was juicy inside. I stuffed it with sausage stuffing that's my Dad's recipe, although that process was a little ooky. When I looked at the bird and realized I had to pull back a huge flap of cold, wrinkly neck skin and shove the stuffing up into a body cavity that frankly looked a little creepy, I turned to Doug and said, "Am I really going to have to put my hand in there?" He grinned. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure you are," he said. "Bastard," I winced. But I got it in there, and packed it tight, and sealed it up before throwing the bird on the grill. The Stove Top stuffing mercifully involved fewer carcasses. But the potatoes, the corn, the onions, the cranberry sauce, the cake, and the turkey and stuffings were really tasty -- it was a perfect day of everything coming together.

Well, except for when it became apparent that none of us knew how to carve a turkey. The buck -- in the form of a large knife and fork -- got passed around from person to person until everyone decided I should do it, as the primary chef. I glared mightily at everyone, but my fatal evil eye wasn't functioning properly, so I stabbed the thing with my carving fork and proceeded to cut. And cut. "Try cutting a leg off first," Lauren suggested. "How do I get through bone? I can't," I panicked. "Just pull it off," Doug said. So we yanked and tugged at the wing and the leg, and they weren't budging. "Maybe if we get some leverage," Carrie suggested. But no.

This is when I started to get mad at the bird. We gave it a lovely final sendoff on a toasty coal barbecue, and it repaid us by being stubborn. I was thisclose to putting my foot on the damn thing to hold it down while we yanked on the wing, but fortunately, Doug chose that moment to carry it back into the kitchen so he could attack it with some dignity-protecting privacy.

From there, it was all food and all wine, and great company. Doug was brilliant -- easygoing, friendly, fun, not awkward in the least -- and it felt as much like a family Thanksgiving as any, so next year hopefully the extended brood in LA can get together and we'll do it up in even grander style.

Just as long as I'm not carving the bird.

On Friday, we hit the road for San Francisco, and that's when things got a little less comfortable. It wasn't bad, but once we were around more people -- his sisters, his cousin, etc. -- it became easier for Doug to avoid me when he felt like it, and so sometimes he did. I don't blame him for that. There were a couple glances where I'd catch him looking a bit sadly at me, or kind of confused as to what he should do or how he should act, but for the most part he either was cool with me or just sort of slipped away into another conversation.

And I guess that's what we'll be from now on -- slipping away into other things, drifting back to chat like old friends but never staying. And that's okay. I knew that would be how this ended. It was odd to see it in action, to watch it unfold like a preview, but it felt right, too. I imagined spending the weekend under his arm, and it wouldn't have worked. There would be hugs, but with them, worry. We'd have shared a bed but nothing would've happened. It would've been empty, emptier even than the feeling that comes with knowing something's truly over and done.

All credit goes to Doug, because that couldn't have been easy. I know he's gone about his life and is getting over me, and that it'll be a much easier task than he thinks, but he could've made that a horrid visit and instead there was a lot of love there -- from his family to me, me to them, and even Doug and I to each other. It was just a different kind of love, and it felt a lot more real than what I'd been trying to force these past few months. So as hard as it was, the outcome I chose was a good one. The right one.

And yet, it seemed such a relief to have the weekend come to a close, and I think it's because there was just enough of an element of sadness and finality hanging in the air that it was good to drive away, leaving it back there, hopefully never breathing it again. We're into the next phase now, and it's got to be a happier one, and I was just anxious to be there and not waiting for it to start.

Someone got here by searching for: Woodpecker cider + Vegas Watching: The Billboard Music Awards, purely by accident, I promise. But they were awful. Reading: Lots of columns about how USC got hosed by the BCS, and I'm sick of hearing about it. Yes, they did get screwed. But no system is perfect, so I opt for the BCS -- which lets fans of 7-5 teams still see their teams play in a holiday season bowl game -- rather than a playoff system, or a system like the one of yore where the national champion was determined solely on the basis of human emotion and opinion. That is all.

Cooking + wine + ex boyfriend = Yikes.

Thanksgiving must be some kind of cosmic magnet for dysfunction.

Around this time of year, it feels like everyone cracks open the family annals and whips out a story, or three, of complete disarray due to the combustible cocktail of squabbling relatives and malfunctioning ovens. Turkeys don't defrost. Dads drop them. Dogs eat them. Mom gets distracted and leaves a giblet floating in the gravy, so baby Katie starts screaming and drooling mucus into her mashed potatoes, which she subsequently grinds into the Oriental rug. Uncle Joe gets loaded and tries to carve the turkey with Aunt Edna's false teeth -- without having removed them from her maw first. By far one of the most entertaining aspects of the holiday is hearing or reading about people's epic Thanksgiving Day disasters, because there seems to be no shortage of them.

This is going to be a jinx. I can feel it already. But so far, I'm one of the few people I know who doesn't have a holiday horror story.

Quite possibly, it's because we never had extended-family Thanksgivings, which saved us a lot of the grief associated with that kind of baggage. Nobody came to England in November just to eat a turkey with us, so it was always just me, my two sisters, and my parents, often flanked by our other family friends from the States who were living overseas. By the time we moved back to the U.S., we were out of the loop of making Thanksgiving a time for the brood to reunite, and besides, a chunk of it lived in New Zealand and everyone else was scattered across the country. And in college, I most often tagged along to my roommates' Thanksgivings, because I was the orphan whose parents lived outside driving distance. If there was weird tension, I was oblivious.

Not to mention that I was never cooking any of the meal.

This year, though, has the potential to be either awesome or a train wreck. I doubt it'll fall in between.

First, I'm cooking, which is exciting and terrifying. I always get hostess anxiety when I'm making food for people, as if they'll suddenly stop liking me the second anything comes out less than perfect. And while I wouldn't blame Carrie for storming out of the house in the face of a slightly runny Red Velvet Cake, because we take dessert very seriously in our circle of friends, I also know that it's highly unlikely Carrie would do that because she was brought up right and she's a lovely person. Also, runny Red Velvet Cake is still edible Red Velvet Cake.

I'll be grilling a turkey, with help, because I refuse to get within ten feet of the little baggie of doom that comes tucked inside the bird. In fact, until about three or four years ago, when I happened to be standing next to my father as he prepped the Christmas turkey, I had no idea that the neck and innards came with the thing. I had no idea that the way you make proper gravy is to throw said innards into a pot, partly because I don't eat gravy, but mostly because when my mother serves it, it's store-bought, because she is sane, because hello, turkey neck-and-goo juice sounds ten different kinds of sick.

Also, I'll be making all the other trappings, but for pie -- instead, I'm doing the aforementioned Red Velvet Cake, just for a different flourish. Lauren and Carrie will have just returned from gorging themselves on apple, pecan, and pumpkin pies anyway, and Doug will just have to cope with a pieless holiday.

Yes, I said Doug.

The major potential strain is that Doug will be here. He'd planned to come here back in October, when we first realized he and his sister had a bevy of tickets to the Notre Dame-Stanford game, played in Palo Alto on Saturday. Excitedly we bagged two for us and one for Lauren, and he bought his ticket so that he'd spent Thanksgiving with us and we'd all drive up to San Francisco together on Friday.

It's possible I could have waited and not let everything go down until after his last visit, but that seemed dishonest, and frankly, more problematic and destructive than just being honest right away and worrying about logistics later. After our first weekend of not talking, I gently brought up the fact that our Thanksgiving plan concerned me, given that he wasn't even emotionally stable enough to instant-message me without choking up, and we weren't able to talk comfortably. He couldn't even look at anything I'd bought him. How could he look at me?

I was worried he'd tear up when he realized he'd be sleeping on the couch. I got scared that he'd take one look at me and be like, "I can't do this," but be stuck in Los Angeles on a major holiday when he could've been with his sister. I offered to pay for whatever ticket changes he needed to make in order to be with her on Thanksgiving instead of in Los Angeles, explaining that I was not trying to push him away and disinvite him, but rather I was concerned that it wasn't a healthy idea for him to show up on my doorstep a mere two weeks after being disabused of his fancy that we'd be sleeping together until the end of time.

Doug insisted he'd be fine. He seemed to miss the point a bit, swearing rather defensively that he didn't have ulterior motives for still wanting to come, and that he just wanted to prove that we could get back on track as friends no matter what else went on between us. It seemed to me a little soon after the faux-breakup to do this, but he was adamant, and even got a bit miffed at me for levelly admitting that my reservations stemmed from the fact that, were I in his position, I'd change my holiday plans and go somewhere a little less painful.

After that torturous but mercifully brief debate, Doug won, and he's coming. He'll be here tonight, and I have no clue which Doug to expect -- the one who's sunny and delightful and just likes hanging around us, or the one I broke up with a year and a half ago who was surly and miserable and got off on silently letting me know he wished he was anywhere else. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, because I know that by and large he isn't that Doug any more. But I also know that what he's feeling is intense and hard to control, and thereby uncomfortably unpredictable.

I wish I already knew the outcome, so that I'd know how to feel right now. If I knew, for instance, that the weekend was going to be a complete success, I'd be eagerly anticipating his arrival and starting to get really excited about a road trip, a football game, and a weekend away. But I can't seem to get there yet, because also don't know if the weekend is going to be a disaster.

Whenever I get nervous, I try to remind myself that Doug's one of my best friends, and that no matter what else is going on in our lives, neither of us wants to jeopardize that. I'm sure he'll be on his best behavior because he'll be conscious of proving that we can hang out and be normal, and I won't be uncomfortable as long as he doesn't seem uncomfortable. Maybe the whole thing will work out.

Regardless, I resolve not to complain. I guess this is my version of the pressure-filled family holiday, the one with undercurrents and tensions that seem unbearable and dreadful at the time but which elicit big laughs in retrospect, once you distance yourself from the dumb stuff and just remind yourself gratefully that to surround yourself with loved ones, even those you love but don't always like, is a blessing. Being able to spend Thanksgiving with any family at all -- real or surrogate -- is a pretty special situation, and it's worth lugging the baggage.

Someone got here by searching for: Toll House cookies television commercial Working: Until 6 a.m. Yes, 6 a.m. So that's why you're writing this entry instead of doing actual work. Bingo. Not that I need an excuse to slack off, but hey, when I have one, it's a bonus.

In Recovery And Doing Okay

Big thanks to everyone who's written me in the past twenty-four hours to offer their support.

The amazing thing about online journals is that the community of people who both write them and read them is fearless, and that's what prompts them to not only read about the life of a total stranger, but to write her and let her know that she's not alone. She's not nuts. The things people have shared with me are amazing, and all of them have helped me feel better and better about my decision, even though there's still some guilt and discomfort nibbling away at me. I find myself constantly wondering how he's feeling, what he's thinking, why he's not logged onto Instant Messenger yet -- is it because he's avoiding me, or he got cripplingly drunk last night, or just because he's busy?

We're beginning a process in which I no longer have a right to any of those answers, and it's hard. Because I do care and I do want to know and I am still having a hard time letting go of someone I just got back. I'm used to having him in my life again with the regularity of a best friend and boyfriend, and that spoiled me. The weaning process starts today.

Just to complete the week, too, Hunky Cameraman made an appearance in Los Angeles to visit She Who Shall Not Be 'The One.' He's actually visiting his family up north but dashed down for a few days to see her and grab some stuff from the office. He surprised me one afternoon, and we grabbed lunch and gabbed. It was great to see him and wonderful to have it confirmed that we're still important to each other -- he was really excited about his surprise appearance -- but I still hated knowing that he's here because of another priority that isn't me. Certainly if my own lovelife weren't such a mess, I probably wouldn't dwell on this, but because it is I hate that he's found something else while I'm sitting here wondering what the hell happened to my sexual momentum. Predictably, disgustingly, he and she had a wonderful time together on a recent trip he'd been dreading a little, and so it's going well, and she's sort of his girlfriend even though he's not in love with her, and yes, even though I don't want him back, it still makes me feel bad that she was apparently worth a slightly bigger bicoastal effort than I was. But, as Bill pointed out, it's always easier to pick the explanation that's most flattering to oneself, so I have chosen to believe that he meant it when he said he loved me but he wasn't emotionally ready for what that entailed, and that now, a sequence of things have made him inch toward readiness for another relationship, so he's more willing to take his time with the girl he's got. Yes, that's right.

I have a paranoia of being delusional -- isn't that a shrink's dream? -- and so tomorrow I will turn around and remind myself that the above theory is a dung heap. But for now, I choose to believe it. At least it's not a wholly unsubstantiated theory; I've gleaned half of it through conversations with him. Basically I just want to believe it so I can stop wanting to slap her.

Add that to the fact that an ex of mine from high school -- whom I haven't seen in three years -- will be sleeping on my couch tonight, and you have a nice chunk of my dating history. I love impromptu "This Is Your Life" episodes. Really.

Luckily, I have sweet, sweet alcohol to cuddle and coddle me. Tonight, we're heading out to get royally wasted in honor of Lauren's birthday. Michael and I have already sworn to do shots with a vengeance and toast something horrifically cheesy, like new beginnings and better luck and unexpected tongue.

So right now I'm contenting myself with tiny dilemmas, the kind of stupid little quandaries I can chew on for hours like they actually matter, so as to avoid turning my thoughts to anything major. For example, we always load up on In-N-Out burgers before going on a drinking binge like tonight's, so I'm picking up the food on my way home from work. I want to leave early, as I am bored today and my ex is in town by now and sitting at the Coffee Bean waiting for me to get home from work. But if I leave now, we'll end up eating really early and we might not be hungry. What to do? It's such a non-crisis, but I've delighted myself with thinking about it so that, with the exception of the time I took to write the above, I wasn't thinking too much about Doug or camerapeople and their assorted hussies.

I also need to ponder what I'm going to clothe myself in tonight, but that's a stress-out for in front of my closet, when I try things on and none of them look right, and not at my computer.

In sum: Cheers to everyone for the good wishes and the stories and the help and the strength. Whether it's in person or over the Internet, it means just as much to me, and I'm incredibly grateful that my support system is even bigger than I imagined.

And cheers to drinking, which will be my hobby for the next two days.

Ergo, cheers to good stupid stories that will make better entries than this one.

Someone got here by searching for: twas the night before the party Playing: Cribbage online against Michael, whom I thrashed today after taking a brutal beating yesterday that cruelly came during my hour of need. Did he care? No. Victorious bastard. Pondering: What I'm going to drink tonight -- or, I should say, what I'm going to drink first.

Not Now

It's not every day that you shatter someone's heart into a million pieces. The one they lovingly handed you and begged you not to break.

We said a lot to each other. We said everything. Some of it was raw, some graceful, some fumbled, but all of it came pouring out and in the end, maybe it makes sense that the words that hurt most were the inelegant, "I guess I'll talk to you later." Because that means nothing's for sure any more.

Since Doug came back in August and asked for a second chance -- poured out his soul and promised me he'd love me better this time around -- we've been wading carefully through territory that's at once comfortably familiar and eerily different. With him, it was so easy to slip back into the hugs and the cuddles and the chats and the surges of affection and adoration that came like breathing. He's the very picture of the life I want to live. He's love, he's loyalty, he's fidelity, he's family, he's funny, he's a journey, he's foreign places and he's home.

And yet, he's not for me. Not now. And I had to tell him.

I feel a little sick. Mad that I've made him hurt. Achy that he's crying tears I can't dry. Horrified that I wrenched him.

Going through the breakup the first time was painful, but inevitable and mutual, and we both knew that even though it hurt, it was necessary. We knew we weren't walking away from each other leaving one of us in a crumpled, hurt heap. Sure, we sobbed, but we still knew it was for the best. It had to happen because neither of us had anything left to give.

This time, he had it all to give and I couldn't take it. He wanted to give me the world. He wanted to give me himself. He'd gotten over the girl I was and fallen in love with the woman I've become, or at least am trying to be. He saw me in different shades and he loved them all, and the only thing he asked of me was that I keep hope alive for him. And even though I tried -- and, God, I tried -- I couldn't do what he needed. That one little thing started killing me inside.

The real heartbreaker, what's truly gutting me, is that I can picture the two of us married and happy for the rest of our lives. We'd be brilliant companions. Since he's come back into my life, our friendship has deepened and it's reminded me of all the reasons we belong together. We just work. It's natural. It's great. His eyes warm me up. When we stand together, I slot perfectly under the arm that wraps around me, and against his waist. Puzzle pieces made to fit.

But there's something missing for me. There's a spark that's not there, and if I'm honest with myself, I know it died out long before we broke up almost two years ago. It's the thing that's keeping me from losing myself in him. The cruel reality is that we've done the hart part: The foundation is all there, the trust, the compatibility, the belief in the fairy tale. All the good things that some couples live a lifetime without finding, we've got in our corner, yet the chemistry that two random people can easily have is impossible for me to feel here, with this amazing person who deserves everything he wants in life, and what he wants is me. The one thing I don't think I can give him. Not now.

It's so hard for me to resist the urge to blame myself. To get angry at myself. Because if I could just figure out why I can't respond the way I want to, why my stupid body won't feel passion for him, why the FUCK I can't feel for the perfect guy what I could feel for other people? I turn bitter. I turn inward and I flog myself for it, and it becomes harder and harder to stop myself and remind myself that there's no one to blame here. This is such a nebulous thing, such an unfair intangible, but it's reality. It's something I've tried to fix, tried to ignore, tried to push aside, but at the end of the day the spark is the thing that keeps all of it alive, and without it, he's left being my dear best friend whom I will love -- platonically -- until I die. This doesn't have to be my fault. He's not making it my fault; I'm the one beating myself up, and if he and I keep up the long-distance non-relationship we have going now, I'm just going to self-flagellate until I bleed.

He's known about this. I've been honest. "I can't ask you to ignore the way you feel, or don't feel," he said sadly. "All I can do is express the way I feel. I had hoped that would make a difference, but it hasn't."

That a declaration of love can end up being painful feels so unfair. It's a beautiful, incredible thing, and for him to pour out his feelings took all the courage in the world. It's brutal that for me, it was either the wrong time or the wrong guy. It may be a while before I know which, but in this moment I don't. Not now.

So I ended it. I had a future in my hands, and I couldn't tell if it was mine, so I let it go. I told him, gently, lovingly, with all the tears I could cry, that I loved him. Because I do. He is a million things to me, each of them precious. I adore him so much it defies description. But he's known all along what the issue was, and finally I had to admit that it wasn't something I thought could fix. Not now. Not this way. Not with me here and him there. And it's a long way to go before the geography changes again.

We agreed to relax and be friends and see where our lives go in the next half-year. Maybe when he moves to LA, if that plan proceeds the way he dreams it will, we will both be in a place to pick up the thread again and see if living in the same city -- something we haven't done since college -- is the thing that helps this click. If living like a normal dating couple is the magic remedy for all this ache. But because I can't promise that's the difference, because I can't guarantee it's the answer or that I'll even still be free to pursue it when he gets here, we had to stop where we are.

He wanted to hang on but I couldn't give him enough rope, not to get us there. The status quo wasn't working and it was really unhealthy for both of us, a blow he was prepared to embrace for himself but which I couldn't let either of us take. It's tearing him apart to an extent I don't think he's even realized, because he's so focused on the potential reward that he won't allow himself to see how painful it's been trying to get to it.

"My hopes are my hopes," he said. "And if I am willing to harbor them, I am willing to take the risks associated with them. But I love you too much to have you tear yourself up about all this."

That's how I feel for him -- I care about him way too much to let him agonize up there in Wisconsin, wondering if he's said or done any of the right or wrong things. Somewhere this turned into a contest with himself. It got more complicated than just two people trying to figure out what they want.

Ultimately, this decision had to be a selfish one. I had to make it for me. I had to put myself first. Knowing he's sitting there right now fighting heartbreak, knowing he's feeling lost and lonely and adrift, is gutting me and carving me up, but I can't let that change my mind because I know that we're not going to get back together this way. We can't. It's not working. The trappings of a long-distance affair -- the phone calls, worrying about tone of voice, about the last thing that was said, planning visits and their inherent pressures -- just aren't making this anything but a confusing, sad journey. It should be about rediscovering joy, but it isn't. Not now.

I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know if we'll ever be together again. This was right for me today, next month, next year. But whether he'll move to Los Angeles and jog something in me that hasn't been twigged yet, I'm not sure. Part of me doesn?t believe in absolutes, and as such, I hope this doesn't have to end this way. But another part of me knows that for every end there's a beginning, and I hope this was the right path to choose. I hope losing him a second time wasn't a fresh start wasted.

"It's funny how the last time you sleep with someone, you never realize it's the last time," he said. "I wonder how things would differ if you had that knowledge."

I wonder the same thing. What would have been different? Would I have been different, felt different? Would we have wept? Would it have been a goodbye? Would it, of all cruel ironies, have lit the missing flame?

Are we finished? Have we reached "never again"? Because I feel like something irreversible just got set in motion and I'm so scared I did the wrong thing. Even though deep down I think it's right, I can't help worrying that I just let forever slip through my fingers.

"I want to be in love with you," I said, tearing up. "I feel like not being in love with you will probably end up being the biggest regret of my life. But I haven't been able to change it yet. And I don't know if you moving out here will do that. I don't know that it won't do that, either. For now I guess the answer is that I can't give you hope that in the next seven months I will wake up and have it change.

"I love you so much," he said. "All I want is for you to be happy. I just wish that could be with me."

"I wish it could be too. And I find it so unbelievably painful and hard to say that I don't know if it can be, but I don't. I want it to be. What is wrong with me?" I ranted.

"If it can't be with me, I have to accept that," he replied.

"But how do I know?"

"For now, you do," he said.

Someone got here by searching for: want to fuck in md Reading: Calming messages from my friends. If not for them, I'd be a bigger wreck right now. Missing: Him. Already. Because this is one thing I can't help him through.

Make It Stop

This is so tiring. I don't have the energy any more to deal with not understanding my own feelings.

Lately I've been thinking about the cameraman a lot. It's natural that I would be a little bit, because he was an important relationship for me between Doug and... Doug 2.0, if indeed this works out. And as I'm contemplating certain things that might not ever be right between me and Doug, it makes sense that I'd be reflecting on how sadly, just about everything was right with the cameraman.

Except for him. We've covered that: He freaked, end of story.

Even work isn't an escape. Whenever I pop in a tape, it's usually one that he shot. I see everything he sees, feel like I'm inside his head peering out through his eyes. I feel him. It's a bizarre and twisted little intimacy that's surprisingly, incredibly, wrenching.

It hurts. Still. So much that it makes me melancholy, both at work and at home because of this new connection we have. I can't tell if it's nostalgia, or the glorious, viciously addictive pain of wanting something impossible, but I know he's there in the back of my mind all the time. Because, and I hate to admit it, he's so far the great passion that got away. Slipped away. Ran away, if I'm being truthful.

We're still friends, but I hate admitting to myself how much I miss the budding "us" that we'd been becoming. How much it still stings to know he's with a girl on my coast. How someone out here is worth the trouble, and it apparently isn't me. I do know that's being slightly unfair to myself, and that in a warped way it's flattering that he broke it off because he knew we couldn't go halfway -- it was all or friendship, and he wasn't ready for anything that meant everything. But that doesn't mean I don't die a little inside when I'm reminded that she exists, and that he says stuff to her he used to say to me. Or thinks of her the way he used to think of me.

Or currently thinks of me? He got so drunk a few weekends ago that he drunk-dialed me nine times, left seven messages, and spoke to me once, telling me that he had a feeling we hadn't quite finished with each other. And that he didn't know what that meant, but that he couldn't stop thinking about me and that every time he imagined starting a new life for himself in Europe, his mind always put me there with him. "You mess me up," he said. "And I like it. None of these girls hold a candle to you."

... Thanks?

He didn't say it to be cruel or manipulative; he said it because he was drunk and disavowed of his stupid notions of selective honesty -- thinking he isn't allowed to say or feel certain things because it's not convenient to who he thinks he should be, or what he thinks he should be doing.

I confess, there's a certain amount of satisfaction that comes from being the one who won't look back later in life and think, "Wow, I blew it." Because I didn't. He's got to live with his own cowardice, and even if he ends up finding the right girl -- God, though, I can't help hoping it's not the one he's with now -- I know that part of him will be attached to me, because he knows he ended something that would've made him happy in the long-term if he'd had the guts to go for it. He's said that much to me sober.

And for someone as emotionally unfocused as he seems to be, it's good that he can be honest or overstated or what have you, even if it requires alcohol to get him there. And, yes, I did take that with a grain of salt. His pattern seems to be that he gets drunk and says stuff he won't allow himself to say when he's sober, because he's super focused (I think) on not saying anything he can't take back or that doesn't push him too close to something, gasp, serious. And of course -- and this I don't doubt; it's happened once before, and he was awfully loaded, to the point that his messages duplicated each other -- he claimed the next day that he didn't remember all those calls or what he said. "Should I be worried?" he asked. "Would I be embarrassed?" I replied, "Probably. Someday, I'll give you a full report."

I didn't want to rehash. If it's meant to come up again, it certainly will, and I'm not the one who's going to spend my time and energy curing him of his emotional ills. The girl who ends up fixing the guy inevitably loses him anyway, so that someone else can reap the benefits of her hard work.

What makes it hard is that his drunk self isn't saying the same thing his sober self says; when the two share the same deep thoughts, then it's a sign he's on the right track, but so far, since our breakup, that hasn't been the case. All that leaves me, though, is the nagging confusion about why he ended things if I'm still the one that gets to him. If I'm the one that he thinks of first. The one he calls incessantly, the one his subconscious goes to when he's ceded control of his self-censorship.

And I know that if he called me up sober and wanted me back, it would give me more than a moment of pause.

I don't know if what he said that night was real, or even if I want it to be. But I can't ignore the fleeing moment where I wanted it to be true. And I also can't ignore that the aforementioned moment is perhaps not so fleeting after all.

Where does this leave Doug?

I ask myself that constantly. And amazingly, somehow, the Doug issue most of the time exists separately in my mind and heart from this stuff with the cameraman, but there's going to come a time when I have to deal with them as a unit. My feelings about this situation don?t mean I am not willing to try and hash out my differences with Doug, or that I'm any less committed to giving that the time it needs to breathe and develop and see if it can become something. It's kind of like dating someone new while you're still putting the old guy behind you.

But I'm beating myself up about whether I'm doing Doug a disservice by having these lingering feelings. Can any progress we make be real? Will I always look over my shoulder and wonder if the call's going to come from the cameraman? Or will it slowly fade away and fix itself?

Doug and I aren't dating and haven't reconciled to the point of exclusivity. We're talking still, testing the waters, taking our time, so really I'm allowed to do and feel what I want. But I just wish this other person would settle into my heart as a wonderful memory and a close friend for life, without stirring up all the other feeling that keep him in the foreground even when I know he can't, mustn't, exist there.

It's exhausting.

Someone got here by searching for: david blaine quarter bite Watching: The Conan O'Brien special on NBC last night. Thinking: That I'm actually grateful to that network for giving him the time to hit his stride, because the wait and the hand-wringing were so worth it.

The Guy, The Job, The Birthday

Apparently, Mars has no sense of personal space, and the pushy little bastard is drifting closer to the Earth than it has in 57,000 years.

Much like when Mercury goes into retrograde, or El Nino, or the Santa Ana winds, or a straight boy drifting into Lou Pearlman's orbit, this unusual occurrence got blamed for possibly causing all kinds of unrest. So perhaps the Mars phenomenon accounts for the madness that's seeped into our personal lives of late.

Luckily, everything we've gone through in the past year has aptly prepared us emotionally for dealing with people from our pasts. We're in more stable places, and we recognize that life doesn't hinge on any one person other than ourselves. There's a lot in the world for us, and we're starting to realize that, which makes it both splendid and cruel timing that our exes are knocking on the door begging for us to answer it pantsless.

Doug left on Monday -- and I went with him. To Las Vegas, not to Wisconsin, mind. He gave me as a birthday present a one-way ticket from Vegas to Los Angeles and a night at The Mirage, meaning I'd drive there with him from my apartment and show him the town and then leave the next morning. He promised he didn't want to put pressure on me, but that he simply wanted to see Las Vegas with someone who loves it and really wanted an extra day with me. I thought about it, felt awkward about it, but ultimately realized that a big problem with our current situation is geography -- he's going to be Way The Fuck Out There again, and I'll be here, and we won't get to hang out and relax. So I seized the day as he did and agreed to take the trip.

I'm glad I did. We had a fantastic time, so much so that we stayed an extra day. One thing Doug and I do well is be in each others' presence -- at least, when we're in good places mentally, which we both currently are. We gambled, we dressed up, we ate well, we lounged by the gorgeous pool, and we chatted. It was a totally pleasant faux-weekend.

Sadly, it hasn't inched me any closer to a resolution of this situation. He's not pushing me toward an answer, but it's not healthy for me or for Doug to drag this out any longer than necessary.

We've talked seriously a few times -- Monday and Wednesday nights of last week, plus a little chatter in Vegas, though not as much. He now knows all about Hunky Cameraman and Bill -- who, to give him credit, has been amazing and was totally understanding about everything -- because I thought it only fair to fill Doug in on what I'd been up to and who I'd been seeing, and if we agreed to get back together he'd need to know this information anyway. I brought up a few of my concerns, namely that he's on the cusp of experiencing a wholly new situation with almost limitless possibilities for his personal life. He's a great-looking guy -- man, growing out the military buzz cut was the best thing he ever did -- and he's grown back into someone as fun and solid and loving as he ever was, plus he's communicative in ways he never could be before. He would have no problems hooking up and meeting someone potentially fantastic at law school, and so I couldn't imagine why he'd want to head out there with a ball and chain in California.

His answer was, "I know what I want. I wish I could explain to you how that feels, or how I know, but I just do, and as long as there's a chance with you I won't be able to look at other girls as anything but friends."

Well, that's a wonderful thing to hear, no doubt. But it's also totally scary, because I can't reciprocate it. And I feel like what I need to do is choose what lifestyle I want right now: single or attached.

Being single has been good to me. It's built my confidence almost without me realizing it, and it's almost addictive to see life stretch out in front of you in a way that's both reassuring and mysterious. Reassuring because I completely believe there's someone out there I'll marry and with whom I'll start a happy family, but mysterious because when you're single, that guy could be anybody. You never know when he'll come along or how you'll meet him, and for the most part I was never too concerned with any of that. I knew it would happen and I knew I'd know when it happened, but I didn't need to know when it was going to happen. I just wanted to have fun and take life as it came.

Such was my mindset before this. Now, I've got that in one hand, and this lovely guy in the other who wants nothing more than to say all the I Love Yous he denied me before and treat me like a queen. And that's amazing. What a blessing, right?

But for some reason I can't grab it, not yet. I don't know which I want. Doug is wonderful. In many ways, he's perfect for me. Everything he's gone through in the Navy has reminded him what's important, and erased all the crazy lack of tolerance of who I am that infected our relationship before. I think Doug and I could be happy, but I'm not sure I'm ready to cut myself off from the concept of possibilities, from the idea that the right person for me is someone I've yet to even meet.

And then I come back to: maybe I've met him.

Doug doesn't want an open relationship. He's not being harsh about it, but he claims it would be a wasted exercise as long as he knows he and I aren't over yet. He also thinks it might be now or never for us, that another year of business-as-it-was will lead to us growing apart and too far away from each other. That's why he said all this now.

I respect how he feels, even if I don't see it quite that way -- I don't think it's now or never. But I have to accept that he does, and face yet again the idea that if we don't get back together now, it's likely we never will. Knowing how he feels and how he's changed, I'm not comfortable doing that yet, but if it's this hard for me to let go of the idea of being single, is Doug really the right option? Or am I only reluctant to give up the status quo because the alternative is at least a year of long-distance?

Unfortunately I am a chronic overthinker, and this is no exception. My mind's running in circles. Sometimes I sit back and feel good knowing Doug's out there and thinking of me and loving me, and it makes me feel warm and smile a little. And then other times, I think of what a blast the last few months have been, and how much I liked the way the world stretched out in front of me, and I feel like I have to give up Doug.

At least now I'm by myself -- no Doug, no dates, just my stressed brain -- and can let all this sink in; I just wish I knew that time would give me the answer and not just more questions.

I do, however, have a job.

The producers of this show called me about my availability, and whether I was interested in working on its second season. I've worked with one of the EPs before on my first show -- in fact, he gave me my start in this industry -- but I wasn't sure I should go back to an old system when I just had a great experience working in a new one. And then I remembered that I really like my old boss, and his system, and that no two shows run the same, so what the hell was I talking about? Right.

It's nice to be wanted and remembered. This is the first time I've ever been cold-called, rather than submitting a resume and waiting for the phone to ring. I'm so special.

No, not really. They just need a lot of new people, and I think my old boss just went through his rolodex. But I'm glad I'm still in there, that's for sure. Bless him and bully for me.

My start-date is sometime in mid-September. My title? Segment Producer. I have no idea why that is, as it's the same job I've done on other shows. My guess is, it's a union issue. I don't care. On the resume it looks like I'm really diverse now, and it's all about creating that illusion.

Finally, thank you to my wonderful friends for helping me celebrate turning twenty-six. I had a wonderful and ultimately queasy night ? just the way a birthday should be -- and I was so happy to see each and every one of you. It meant a lot to me, because you're all the reasons Los Angeles has started to become a home to me and not just a city in which I pay rent and work. I love you guys.

Someone got here by searching for: chloroseptic penis Reading: The Sports Illustrated college football preview issue. Watching: How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, which sort of sucked, except that Matthew McConaughey has the knack for looking cute every time I write him off as kind of stupid and unappealing. My current verdict: I would totally tap that. Well, okay, that was always the verdict, but I'm a little more into tapping it than I was before.

What Next? A Visit From The Ghost Of Boyfriends Future?

Okay, when did I become that girl who attracts drama? Because seriously, lately, when it rains... it regurgitates my romantic life all over my unsuspecting lap.

Hunky Cameraman showed up in Los Angeles.

So right after Doug asked for me back and a vindictive, literal-minded feather floated over and knocked me to the floor, I was confronted with Hunky Cameraman wanting to see me.

Okay, let's pause to wonder: What the fuck is up lately? Is something in the water here? Is Cupid pissing in our reservoir? Because between this and Doug and Lauren's nasty surprise, we're all fairly flabbergasted at how The Summer of Excessive Drinking And Inappropriate Behavior suddenly morphed into The Summer of Excessive Drama and Reincarnated Boyfriends.

The following is an actual conversation that took place in my apartment today:

HEATHER:
Dude.

LAUREN:
Seriously.

HEATHER:
What the fuck?

LAUREN:
I know, right? Dude!

HEATHER:
I don't... huh?

LAUREN:
You said it. For real, I'm just, like, "DUDE!!!"

HEATHER:
What is WRONG with people?

LAUREN:
I know. Why is this happening all at once?

HEATHER:
Dude. It's so fucked up.

LAUREN:
No fucking kidding. Dude.

HEATHER:
It's like...

LAUREN:
Oh my God, I know.

HEATHER:
Jesus. I mean, really. Holy.

I can't imagine what gets to come next. Jessica is probably half-expecting all her exes to skydive onto her front deck bearing roses, arsenic, and a baby. Maybe someone I've yet to meet will show up and explain to me why he can't see me any more. Or maybe Mike, my first love, will call me out of the blue to tell me that, a decade later, he's having my baby.

If some cloaked and dank-smelling spirit shows up in the middle of the night with a lantern and a long lesson I'm supposed to learn about all this, I will calmly take that lesson and use it to inflict the kind of pain upon this ghost that would rock the undead right off their immortal coils.

The kicker with Hunky Cameraman is that his visit is exactly the opposite of Doug's. Painful in a completely different way.

He's with someone. In Los Angeles. Who he met on the job and who lives practically two blocks away from my old apartment -- the one in which I lived when we started seeing each other.

Basically, this meant I had to deal with laying eyes on him and all the emotions that would engender in me, plus the fact that he's criss-crossing the country for someone else. Someone who isn't me.

This fucking hurt.

He told me that the second all those details came to light, his first thought was how it would look to me. I guess that's nice. He also said they started it casually and it just sort of kept going and became a little more serious, but that it needed to end because they were fighting and their personalities didn't mesh.

"It's not... it's not this," he said, gesturing between the two of us. "It's not fun and jokes and laid-back, relaxing times, or spur-of-the-moment decisions to grab a pint together. I know it's not fair to say that, but -- it's not like this. I miss this." And his voice cracked and he looked miserable, like Atlas on a Texas summer day.

Luckily for my emotional state, that was not an entreaty for reconciliation, just a statement of the facts. And as much as I appreciated knowing that he too values our rapport, it's never easy hearing someone say that everything he's looking for is in you, except that ostensibly it's not precisely you he wants.

And honestly, I knew he'd be getting out there, so it's not unexpected to hear that he's dating. Because we're staying friends, I knew I'd be seeing him again someday, so it made sense to agree to hang out and float the test balloon just to gauge how painful this whole thing was going to be. As hard as it was at first, it felt good letting him talk about his relationship with this girl simply because it sent is firmly, probably irrevocably, down the friendship road. It'll be hard to backtrack once we start sharing with each other the details like that which friends without pasts swap effortlessly.

There were moments. Unpleasant little moments. The kind of moments that don't make me feel very mature. The moment, for instance, when I wondered why he was going to such trouble to end things nicely and carefully with a girl who he claims was a casual thing. Because what does that make me? Why didn't I get the same treatment? Was I less important somehow? I don't actually believe that's true. I tell myself that things ended weirdly because there were more emotions attached with me, and that he was scared to do it in person because he'd be unable to -- after all, he told me he didn't come see me when he was in California with his parents because "if I saw you, I'd want to be with you, and I couldn't be with you because I couldn't give you what you deserved." But is that just a line?

Who knows. It's both flattering and heartening to hear him call and say he'd much rather be hanging out with me shooting the shit than dealing with her, but at the same time, it hurts, because... well, it just hurts. I know he only means it in the sense that we, as people, as friends, click in a really spectacular and special way. But still. It brings back all the questions I had in my head.

You always want to be the one who makes the commitment-phobe change his ways, but the sad reality is, he has to change them without anyone. And you want to be the one he wants to take with him around the world, or the one who makes him want to stay right where he is, but in reality, he should want to start dreaming with you rather than choosing one predetermined destiny or another on his own.

And those are the biggest problems, I suppose, for me: He couldn't make the step to Us from Heather and Me. And that's okay. And probably for the best. I never asked him to, and wouldn't have. But it doesn't mean I don't still hurt about him and wish he'd wanted to go there. It doesn't mean that hugging him didn't pick at a really fresh wound.

I have no idea what else it means. All I know is that my head is swimming. The guy I probably wanted more is the one I can't have. Won't have. It doesn't mean I've made a decision about Doug; it just means that the lingering feelings in my heart are for someone else, and I don't know what they are or how long they'll last or even how strong they really are.

Seeing him would be hard, I knew. It was my choice to do it. I'm not sorry I did it. But, wow, I'm annoyed that it hurt as much as it did -- not because of anything he said, but just because he is who he is, and that is someone who I cared about a lot more than I care to admit, to him or to you or to myself.

I'm tired of crying. I'm just tired. I'm tired of not knowing how I feel at any given second. Fed up with being unable to articulate it. Sick of wondering what's right and what's wrong. Completely over the struggle to turn off my head and just go with my gut. Annoyed that my gut only seems to want potato chips.

If my ex-boyfriend from Calgary contacts me in the next week, I'm going to pay Lauren five dollars to jump on my head until it breaks. (Edited from the future to add: He didn't... but he did call in November. Jesus.)

I need a rest. Lately I've been taking care of these people -- Doug sounded like a kicked puppy tonight on the phone, so much so that he felt he had to call back and apologize for it while still sounding exactly the same, and the cameraman wrestled with yet more awful discussions with his woman -- and I just want one of them to take care of me for a second.

And that won't happen any time soon, so here I sit just stressing and wishing this didn't all feel so huge and heavy.

Someone got here by searching for: women porn makers Reading: A little book I like to call, What The Fuck Is With Ex-Boyfriends These Days, Anyway? Eating: A little meal I like to call, "No, really, this is too fucking much." And also, junk food.

Doug Redux

The hardest thing was looking into his eyes. Seeing everything there that I wanted to see more than a year ago. Seeing love and hope and happiness. Seeing tears.

He came up here to deal with something else, or so he said, but decided to stretch it into a visit. To hear about my trip, to hang out. Or so he said. We chatted for three hours, mindlessly, aimlessly, just casual friends catching up on each others' lives. He was so happy we'd stayed friends. It meant the world to him. So he said.

Then, half an hour before I had to leave for a party, he blurted it out.

"See, the thing is, I'm crazy about you," he said, shrugging and smiling, his gaze unable to meet mine for more than three seconds.

"I just am. I want to be with you," he continued. "And I guess there's three things you could do right now: Tell me to go fuck myself, take me back, or think about it. You can take an hour, a week, three months, I don't care. I'll wait. But I know what I want. I finally know what I want."

I thought I'd cried for him for the last time, thought I'd squeezed every drop of our relationship through my tear ducts back before we broke up. A lifetime ago. But the memory of his face, in that moment, invites a flood. every time I picture it.

For him, for six-plus years, for everything we ever were to each other, I wanted so desperately to throw my arms around him and tell him I love him, too. But out of respect for him, out of respect for our six-plus years, and for everything we ever were to each other, I couldn't tell him something that wasn't absolutely true.

It hurts. I never expected words like that, emotion like that, love like that, to hurt me. But it did. It does. And the worst pain was looking into his eyes, moist with nerves but gleaming with love, and not being able to tell him what he wanted to hear.

He's been in living in a bizarre limbo this whole time, tucked away on a ship floating around the Gulf, unsure of what he felt or why he felt it and triply uncertain about what any of it meant. He explained to me why he acted the way he did, apologized profusely for it with a touching catch in his voice, told me he's changed and gained focus and learned to communicate in ways he never could before. He swears he's a different Doug -- back to the way he used to be when we were happy, but with improvements. And he said he admires the more confident person I've become since we broke up -- someone who is slowly letting go of the crippling self-worth questions that plagued her and kept her from spreading her wings.

But he hasn't considered, or so it seems, how I got there.

He hasn't considered, at least not out loud, the fact that while his life's been on hold mine has trucked forward. I've been out and about, dating, falling for another guy, getting my heart broken, putting it back together through tears. I've looked around, and while I haven't found another relationship that's worked, I've let myself get lost in someone else and carried away by chemistry and the vast potential of our potential.

Of course he sees me when he sees the picket fence, the house, the children. Who else is he going to see? He hasn't been out there. Hasn't seen what the world has to offer him outside the Navy. And ten days before he moves to Wisconsin to do just that, he decides he wants to rekindle our relationship. He swears his feelings are real. How can he know? And how can his timing be so terrible?

"The way I see it, what's one or three years apart when you're talking about fifty years together?" he said.

"But I'm not worried about the time apart. We're good at that part," I replied. "It's the togetherness part where we failed last time. It's the day-to-day stuff we couldn't handle."

He stared at his hands. Rubbed his thumbnail. Sucked in his cheeks briefly and then looked up at me with a faint smile.

"Well," he repeated, "I know what I want. And I don't expect you to have an answer for me right now. I just couldn't go to Wisconsin without telling you how I feel."

And I met his gaze, the brown eyes I once stared into and searched for any trace of warmth. It was absent then; it was there now, as was slow-building liquid proof of how hard it was for him to say this to me, to put his heart in my hands and beg me to keep it.

I can't. But I haven't broken it, either. Because now it's completely my decision to slam the door permanently, no turning back, and no matter how sure I was -- am? -- that Doug and I are over and have necessarily moved past each other, I do feel I owe it to us, to me, to him, to talk this through with him. Pick a few scabs. Be brutally honest. Figure out how real this is.

I had felt so sure about where his place was in my life, but now I'm being asked to make absolutely certain, beyond any doubt, that those feelings are rock-solid and unchangeable and that rejecting his request would not engender any regrets.

Really, I think I know what I want. Yet I'm going to end up going through this anyway, and it has me tied up in a thousand knots. My brow is always furrowed, my heart's always in my throat, I'm constantly twittery and stressed about it. It's an emotional punch my gut didn't expect to take, and passion or no passion, it's beautiful and awful and amazing and confusing, and I have no idea how to deal with it right now beyond careful talk and consideration. I can't glibly bury this forever without being thorough and sure and respectful of him and of what we had. He deserves better. Our history deserves better.

Maybe it was his embryonic tears that gave me pause. Maybe it was the way his hands shook, squeezing and releasing the couch cushion with tense apprehension. Maybe it was the way I wanted so badly to hug him and promise that it would all be fine and perfect, even if that's not what I believed.

How do you stare at someone that once personified love and life and endless possibility, whose eyes are scared and loving all at once, and turn him away?

I couldn't tell him yes. But I couldn't say no.

Someone got here by searching for: Heather boobs Reading: The pile of Vanity Fair issues on the coffee table Flipping through: The twelve rolls of pictures from my trip. Yes, twelve. Yikes.

Welcome Back

The second I saw him, almost a year after we cried in each others' arms for the last time, I twinged.

It was an involuntary twitter, a flutter in my gut that I suppressed almost as quickly as I felt it, but I can't deny it was there: nerves tinged with delight, an overwhelming urge to hug and be hugged, gentle but gut gnawing grief, and the basic powerless confusion that probably always takes hold when the embodiment of six and a half years of your life walks through the door with a giant grin on his face.

The day was both easier and harder than I could have ever imagined.

Easy when the conversation flowed as bountifully as the drinks, but hard because of all the what-ifs and feelings of failure that inevitably surface when your ex-boyfriend shows up in rare form.

He looked fantastic. His hair's grown out of the harsh, precise military buzz cut. He's in great shape. The twinkle, the warmth, that had gone out of his eyes was back. He seemed happy.

The hug was a weird commingling of the foreign and the familiar, the same arms that held me so many times now belonging to a different guy -- someone who'd found a little more of himself since the desolation and despair that led to our breakup. Someone more confident, more bright about his future. Someone more content, with both himself and with me. Someone new inside someone old.

I'd been a little nervous about seeing Doug ever since we hung up the phone on Friday. The conversation was a little stilted: No, I couldn't go down to San Diego, for work reasons; yes, I would love to see him and he should come up here; certainly we'd be getting trashed at a local bar; definitely bring our Notre Dame friend J.T.; absolutely call tomorrow from the road. But my last memories of the boy were of him being sullen, bored, unhappy, a Doug I knew wasn't real but who'd become the dominant personality in the last five or six months of our relationship. I had no way of knowing which of his selves would show up in Los Angeles, and our phone conversation did little to allay my worries.

He and J.T. arrived at about 5 p.m. on Saturday and hung out with Lauren and I in the apartment, chatting casually and cracking jokes and enjoying ourselves so completely that my hostess anxiety vanished. And that was the first thing I noticed about the weekend: how much we laughed.

As the group started to trickle in -- first Dr. No, then Carrie, then Jessica, and finally Michael -- J.T. commented, "Man, your friends keep arriving, and they keep being so cool. This is going to be a great night."

The whole night was perfect. I never once worried about anyone's good time, in part because J.T. and Lauren seemed to hit it off, but mostly because Doug seemed thrilled to be there and delightedly shuffled through conversations with everyone present. He kept telling me what a wonderful group of friends I have, and how much he loved being with us. And, he had frenzied consultations with Michael, Jess, and Lauren about how to tell one's ex-girlfriend that she looks utterly hot without it being uncomfortable.

Did I mention that he looked amazing?

"Heather, I just have to congratulate you," my friend Aletha whispered. "Because Doug? Is HOT."

"Heather, can we just talk for a second about how HOT your ex-boyfriend is?" Dr. No slurred slightly.

Everyone said it, from Carrie to Michael, and I had to concur. The new hair, the restful aura, the blue button-down shirt he was wearing -- the whole package was a big ol' piece of eye candy, and I was pleased for him, and secretly thrilled for myself that I was getting props all around for almost seven years of, to put it gracefully, tapping that ass.

But with all the night's joys, there was lingering sadness; namely, the nagging thought that maybe Doug and I really fucked something up. The embodiment of almost 2,500 days of being in love is also a walking testament to our failure. Looking at him, watching him look at me, laughing with him, remembering the rapport we've had since that first night we talked in his dorm? I just couldn't help wondering, "How the hell did we mess this up? There's no reason on Earth this shouldn't have worked."

I'd missed him. God, I'd missed him. I've been missing him since January of 2002, at least, when the beautiful boy I dated metamorphosed into someone else. And when we hugged good night and he said, "You're amazing -- one of my favorite people in the entire world," I channeled my emotion into a tighter and tighter squeeze, because if I hadn't, it would've trickled from my tear ducts.

This is not to say I think we should try again, nor that I was awash in regret and remorse and writhing agony over the senselessness of it all. I mean, I've had my heart cradled and smashed by someone else since the day Doug and I buried our relationship last June. But a visit like this, with a guy who's finding his mental footing again, means you're both giving each other your finest. We were both the best sides of ourselves, and when that's the case and everything's clicking, it's impossible to avoid contemplating whether it could or should have been like this all the time, and where you turned in different directions, and why the guy who's perfect on paper changes when he's flesh and blood.

But maybe that's what it means to be friends. Maybe there is a reason on Earth that we didn't work, and it's because we are better for each other this way than any other. We get the very best of each other, without having to deal with the low days and the moods and the spats, and the crippling self-doubt that infected our last months together. And maybe that will come with pangs and curiosity and the occasional attack of what-ifs, but it's because we get to coexist through a filter that couples don't have. We can hang up the phone when it's bad. We can go away and come back after a week and be fine. Things blow over. It doesn't work that way when you're sleeping together, but when you're friends, you can be selective about how you experience each other, especially if that's what it takes to keep the connection alive.

It's easy to trick yourself into thinking that if it's good for one night, it would be good again forever, but that is never true. And I think that's why Saturday night was given to us: to show Doug and I that everything great about our relationship is still alive, and can live and stretch and grow, even if the rest of it may never be.

Someone got here by searching for: Georgetown beer garden central texas german Reading: Entertainment Weekly Watching: The E! True Hollywood Story on Melrose Place, which was a brilliant show. Seriously.

Can I Get A "What?... WHAT?!?!?"

Okay. Dissect this one: He doesn't pick up the phone to call, and by extension, doesn't return phone messages. He doesn't e-mail. By all indications, he doesn't think about me at all.

But he sends me a present?

On Saturday, I got a really lovely gift from him -- nothing huge; just something he saw while online and knew I would love -- that is the kind of thoughtful, no-occasion-necessary consideration that makes him so generous and special. And yet, what the hell? Not to sound ungrateful, because I'm totally not, but he can get the urge to give me something and yet he doesn't actually want to talk to me? What is going on here?

I wish you could've seen my face and Lauren's when it happened. We were standing in the middle of the living room holding the box, our faces a perfect mixture of "Oh my God, how awesome!" and "WHAAAAA??!?!?!?!" Every so often for the rest of the day, we'd gesture to it and go, "What the...? I mean, it's so nice, but I don't... it's... huh?"

I'm confused. Flattered that he did it, but totally flummoxed because it doesn't line up with the rest of his behavior. Apparently we're going to have That Conversation sooner, rather than later, because just when I'd started to give up on the idea that we'd be remaining close friends, he goes and does something that indicates we are indeed still close friends in his mind. That, or he needed to spend a little more cash at Crate & Barrel to get free shipping.

Oooh, maybe I cracked it.

But, no, I'll give credit where it's due -- he had a really sweet, thoughtful impulse, and that's awesome. And so, so, SO not befitting what our relationship -- or lack thereof -- has been the past month.

Oh well. He'll be getting another phone call tonight... that he will promptly neither answer nor return. And this strange, illogical cycle can continue unbroken.

Jessica's birthday bash was Saturday night, and it was the kind of evening where I came away wishing I'd spoken to everyone for longer, rather than running around saying little bits of stupid things to everyone.

Dr. No and I had a long and totally hilarious -- to us -- conversation about how Paula Abdul is the Ralph Wiggum of American Idol. "Your face is like sunshine, and you sang a song. Simon?" ... "Sleep! That's where I'm a Viking. Simon?"

This went on for a while, and if memory serves, we repeated it a lot to whomever would listen. But we were laughing hard enough to hurt my stomach.

And then Lauren made out with him, just because she felt like it. Poor Dr. No. Is it in his contract that he has to get tongued by one or all of us every single time we go out and drink? After Lauren smooched him I said, "Hey, I've done that! Look, I can do it too!" I kissed him for about a second and then slurred, "I didn't get to kiss you as long as Lauren did, so don't judge me. No judgment! Just Wiggum." Or something. I'm not sure. He was so calm about it, though. So accepting of these apparently fated molestations. We're all going, "Hey, look! Dr. No is adorable. Even though he doesn't like us That Way, we should probably lick some part of his body!" He is brave.

Jessica, meanwhile, is piecing together the night. She was drunk when we got there; ergo, way drunker by the time she left. But she's the opposite of most people. Usually, people who get that loaded wake up the next morning thinking, "Man, I had a fantastic time! So great." Yet through the course of the day, they realize how much they don't remember, and the horror grows as people fill in the blanks.

Not Jessica. She woke up worrying in advance about the doubtless terrifying acts of lunacy she surely committed in her drunken stupor, only to hear nice story after nice story, and compliment after compliment that she'd bestowed upon us. The drunker she got, the more she went around and told each of us that we were extremely talented and pretty, and that if she were a hot heterosexual guy, she'd want to date us. She hugged more and more people. And she's a good hostess, too -- last night she lamented that when she introduced me to her friend C., she'd meant to tell me that C. used to work in soaps for a while. "But you did tell me that," I said.

Pause.

"I did?" she squeaked.

"Sure! See, even when you're loaded, you're introducing people with meaningful details," I said.

"I guess! Apparently I'm Bridget Jones," Jessica sighed.

It was a great night. We were surrounded by friends and alcohol, so we laughed constantly, even if we did pay the price the next morning with hangovers ranging from bad headaches to What Is That Suspicious Smell Emanating From My Bedskirt?

I wish I'd talked to this one and this one more. I wish Jessica's friend C. had heard me say something even mildly intelligent. I think I frightened her. And I meant to talk to Mac and Aletha more, and also Grant and his boyfriend, but somehow my attention span was extremely poor. Hmm. I wonder why.

Happy Birthday, Jess!

Someone got here by searching for: Lauren Jessica Playboy? Nice, ladies! Reading: Still A Walk In The Woods -- I finally worked through a chunk of it last night and it's just so good. Watching: Let's see. As I spent all day on the couch yesterday going, "Ohhhhhh," I went through: The Indianapolis 500, Back to the Future, two old episodes of Melrose Place courtesy of the Style Network, part of Toy Story, part of The Rocketeer, and the last forty-five minutes of Blue Crush. That's some good couch potatoing right there. Let's not even talk about what I ate.

This entry as a poem:
Dancing Brave: For longer, rather Putting It
Away ? Okay. Dissect this material
is like us every single
time. So we were laughing hard enough to
whomever would listen. But
totally not Even if she
lamented that when she woke up worrying in his boyfriend,
but we should probably
lick some good hostess,
too last night she
left.
Hey, look! Dr. No. give up on for
the doubtless terrifying acts
of his body! He has to
hear nice
story part of
dreams.