So the news about DLM pretty much destroyed my day.
Not that the day really had much going for it in the first place, but even so, it was just another piece of unnecessary cruelty on the part of the Universe.
I learned long ago that, while I’m not exactly Job or anything, the Universe does like to mess with me, and sometimes it’s just downright mean about it.
The best example of the Universe’s perverse and cruel sense of humor when it comes to Jon happened around two years ago in Tucson, in the days immediately prior to my move to Northern VA.
As most of the people who read these entries know, in those days I worked in a call center providing technical support for the same company that I still work for, albeit in an entirely different capacity.
(Again, most people reading this know which company that is, but I don’t think that company policy allows me to mention it by name under these circumstances, which is why I try to be at least a litte vague.)
In keeping with the demographics of the tech support industry, most of my co-workers were, to put it charitably, ugly as shit.
Actually, that’s not really true, but the fact of the matter remains that there were a lot of morbidly obese people, for example, altogether too many men, and basically very few women who were even remotely attractive.
That, and the simple fact that she was absolutely gorgeous, made Natalie really stand out.
I remember the first time I saw her. It was as if my eyes were actually drawn to her, and she seemed to have a glow around her (Seriously; read “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and “Lila” for an examination of this phenomenon.) that made everyone around her fade into the shadows.
I knew that there was absolutely zero chance that she was single, and that was confirmed by “overhearing” conversations (okay, so I actively listened to what she was saying when I had the opportunity) that she had with other people on smoke breaks in which she made frequent reference to her boyfriend.
Still, she had entered my consciousness, and the fact that she was involved did nothing to diminish my interest in her.
It did, however, in conjunction with my self-esteem issues and general social awkwardness, keep me from trying to make a move on her, or even initiate a conversation.
Besides, she was, obviously, very popular, so it would have been almost impossible for me to get any sort of access to her.
One night, however, it was just the two of us out in the smoking area, and she actually initiated a conversation with me.
I knew that it didn’t indicate any interest in me on her part, as she was simply a friendly person and would have initiated a conversation with anyone.
Still, it did prove to be the first of many conversations. We didn’t exactly become friends; for example, I doubt that she ever even knew my name throughout most of the time that we talked.
However, we did talk frequently, and there were even times when she would come out to the smoking area and actually seek me out.
Throughout most of it I was awkward, nervous, and tongue-tied, so unless she was extremely naïve (which is possible) or just generally clueless (again, this is a possibility; I have to admit that most of my interest in her was physical), she had to have known that I was interested in her.
Even so, nothing ever did, or could, develop from this casual acquaintance.
You know, unless you count my complete obsession with her as “something.”
Fortunately my overwhelming laziness has always prevented my obsessive nature from turning me into anything even remotely dangerous. At worst, I annoy my friends a little with my incessant blathering about my obsession.
So, beyond simply manipulating circumstances to whatever extent I could to allow me to have some contact with her, I really didn’t do anything in the way of stalking.
I did try, unsuccessfully, to drive her out of my mind on several occasions. One such attempt resulted in writing a poem about/for her, which I thought might help purge the obsession, and which I am not going to share here.
I had a friend who kept encouraging me to ask her out and to give her the poem, though I think he was just doing so because he wanted to see me humiliated and crushed.
I did consider it, but ultimately I was too sensible/cowardly.
Until I found out that I was leaving.
On the Friday that marked my last day at work, I sent her an e-mail telling her how I felt, how much I regretted the fact that I would never get to know her better, and containing the poem.
In true cowardly form, I sent it to her fifteen minutes before the end of her shift (Yes, I was enough of a stalker that I knew her schedule), giving her a chance, though not much of one, to respond in some fashion.
I suppose that even though I knew that the timing effectively prevented anything from coming of it I thought that it would be cathartic in some fashion.
Honestly, I think that I was also hoping for some sort of big “movie moment” during which, a half an hour later when I got off work, she would be waiting for me at the door.
Naturally, she wasn’t.
I knew from conversations that we’d had that she didn’t own a computer, so if she hadn’t checked her mail before leaving work, she wouldn’t see it until Monday (I was leaving on the Wednesday following).
Over the weekend I did various things in preparation for leaving, and throughout it all I wondered how Natalie had reacted (or would react) to my message.
On Sunday I went to a nearby Wal-Mart in order to find my friend Jeff, who, so far as I knew, worked there. Jeff was a friend from my drinking period who had moved to Tucson from Michigan, basing his decision largely on the fact that I lived there. Once he arrived he found that I was still sober, and that when we weren’t drinking together we had very little in common.
The last time I’d seen him had been months before, shortly after I’d discovered that he and his girlfriend had moved out of the apartment they’d been living in. I had neglected to get his new address or phone number.
Still, I felt that I should let him know that I was leaving Tucson, so I stopped at the Wal-Mart to see if he was there.
He was, and after I said my goodbyes I decided that I would pick up the few things I needed while I was there, grabbed them, and then got in what appeared to be the shortest line.
The population of the metropolitan Tucson area, according to some sources, is roughly 800,000.
There are six Wal-Marts in the area.
In over a year of working at the call center I had never once “bumped into” one of my fellow employees outside of work.
Considering these facts, there is no chance that Natalie would be standing in line ahead of me – with her boyfriend, no less – unless God, Allah, Brahma, Buddha, the Universe, or whatever you want to call it, had simply decided to fuck with me.
There was one person standing in line directly ahead of me, separating me from her.
And of course, there was her boyfriend, also separating me from her.
The fact that I had to see her with her boyfriend would have been bad enough under any circumstances, but in this case it made it especially intolerable, as did the fact that I had no idea if she had read my e-mail or not.
If she had read it, how had she felt about it? Had she felt anything? What would happen if she saw me? Would she ignore me, which would hurt, or would she pretend like nothing happened?
I didn’t know what to do. On the one hand, I wanted to have one last chance to see her smile, and I also wanted to know if she had read my message and at least get a feel for how she had reacted to it, but on the other, if she had reacted negatively to the message, I didn’t think I’d want to know.
The boyfriend’s presence only complicated matters further.
It was, essentially, a no-win situation.
Ultimately I decided to just try not to be noticed, keeping my head moving so as to prevent her from getting a good look at me. I figured that if she noticed me and said something, fine, but if she didn’t, it wasn’t because I was avoiding her.
Well, not exactly, anyway.
Whatever the case, whether she saw me and chose to ignore me or didn’t see me, she and her boyfriend left without her ever saying a word to me.
That was the last time I ever saw her.
She never responded to my mail.
The last I heard, though I hadn’t actually sought out the update, my friend “Zalfiro,” who worked with her for a while, had informed me that she’d had a baby.
In any case, the point of all of this is that my random encounter with her (and her boyfriend) was a clear case of the Universe cruelly messing with me.
If for no other reason than to free myself from being the butt of its jokes, I’ve often wished that the Universe, every once in a while, would choose to laugh with me, but it almost never does, and certainly it never does so in a big way that would make up for some of the practical jokes it’s played on me in the past.
And there have been plenty of opportunities for it to do so.
In particular I remember a time back when I lived in Minnesota.
There was a girl that my friends and I had seen around town a lot. She looked rather a lot like a more voluptuous Sarah Michelle Gellar, and her name was Tiff.
Like any red-blooded heterosexual male, my friend Eric found Tiff extremely attractive and would have jumped at an opportunity to get to know her better (And by “get to know her better” I mean “nail her”).
Eric may be many things, but he is not a man who will waste time in pointless pursuit of a “dream girl” when there are plenty of available real girls to choose from (And by “real” I mean “real fat”).
So one night, adhering to principles of the maxim about a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush (there’s a “dirty” version of that expression which would be more apropos, but I don’t remember how it goes), Eric went off to a particular bar in pursuit of one of the real girls he’d already made some amount of progress with.
(This was during one of his multiple splits with his then-wife Sally, by the way)
Not wanting to be a third wheel, or to go the particular bar he was headed to, I went off on my own to my regular bar.
While I was sitting at the bar, in walked Tiff and pulled up a stool right next to me.
If I had been able to hook up with Tiff while Eric was off with his latest toothless conquest, it would have been, in my opinion, the Universe’s best practical joke ever.
It was, of course, not to be.
I did at least try to engage Tiff in conversation, though. I recall that it was a very slow night at the bar, and, largely unwatched, the movie “Philadelphia” was on the TV. Tiff was looking up at it during the scene when Tom Hanks, while deathly ill, is on the stand testifying. I tried to initiate a conversation with her by commenting on the skillful use of cinematography in the scene.
Suffice to say that Tiff was not exactly a film buff, so once again the Universe opted for the path of least resistance and got a chuckle at my expense.
Of course, it’s worth noting that I do give the Universe plenty of opportunities. If I weren’t the sad, pathetic loser that I was back during the Natalie thing, the random encounter wouldn’t have been the comedic gold that it turned out to be.
Or if I were more dynamic and less of a nerd, I might have had a shot with Tiff.
And finally, if I could find more things to look forward to in life, the cancellation of DLM would have been less of a blow.
Still, there’s not all that much I can do. After all, the Universe is a bully that you can’t possibly stand up to, and once it attaches that “Kick Me” sign to your back, it’s pretty much stuck for life.
And in closing, I should note that sometimes the Universe goes for the little jab whenever I give it the opportunity, as it just did when I discovered that garlic and banana are two great tastes that don’t taste great together when I ate a banana shortly after mincing some garlic.
Oh look, you got me again. Good one.
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