October 12, 2001
Cat Killers, Homecoming, Jewish Boys and Sorrow
What a night.
After much deliberation, I decided to attend the Taylor homecoming game tonight. I had no desperate desire to see the game, or see two and a half hours of anyone there, but I had a really cute outfit and nowhere else to wear it to.
Bejesus, I'm a shallow bitch.
I dressed, paraded about my room for a bit, ate some chocolate ice cream, and then Mallory came to pick me up.
And there we are, driving down my road in the dark, listening to some fat beats (as she would say), when a white cat darts out in front of the car. She slams her breaks, but it's wet, and they've been grabbing all day, and we hit the cat. Two thumps.
She killed the fucking cat.
Mallory killed the cat. Someone's pet.
At any rate, we got out of the car and went to two houses to apologize before we were told that it belonged to the lady across the street, and she was not home. And just recently another one of her cats had been killed.
Mal felt awful, even though she kept making cat killer jokes about herself, and she has vowed to stop in at the lady's house tomorrow before she goes to work.
She claims it was a catacide, and she's going to hell.
Amazingly enough, we did make it to the game, more fashionably late than we had fashionably intentioned. Mal immediately pounces on our resident poet Jew, Adam.
Now I have a bit of a history with Adam. I had a horrendous obvious crush on him about this time last year, and still liked him when Ryan and I started to go out. He apparently never knew I liked him, and Mal said something about it earlier this month and they have apparently been talking about me. And Adam was pretty nasty about my going out with Ryan, he pretty much stopped talking to me. So I figured he hated me. But no. He told Mal that he is too attracted to me to be my friend.
Well, fuck me.
So she mauls him, and he in turn mauls the both of us. It was weird seeing him again, just like it was weird seeing Bill and Skank and Katie and Cory and Lizbeth and Katie #2 and Brittany and Dystal and Rebecca and Fruit Boots. Or Froot Bootz, as he prefers to be called.
I don't know, I just have the hardest time being with people that Ryan and I used to hang out with. It's like, I'm half of a person or something. And I'm not being hokey, like, he completes me, just that I feel like I'm going through the motions without him; that time has sort of stopped and I'm just pretending to be normal Jill. Normal Jill is long gone. If ever she existed.
The game was boring as hell and I felt awkward the whole time. Most especially when Adam left the group of us at the end, but then kept coming back. And had to kiss us on the cheeks goodbye everytime. I was kissed three times.
And I reach out for attention. I realize I'm being unfair to everyone by trying to recapture some semblance of the attention I was once shown, something to remind me that my skin can still be touched; yes, can still be kissed.
I miss him like hell.
And I talked to Rebecca, his sister, at the game. She says she misses me, and I realize I miss his family. His little sister Bethany. The comfort I knew there in his arms and the always welcoming smile his mother and father wore. They really liked me. Still do, I'd imagine.
It sucks that my parents hate him.
Back to the story (was there even much of one to begin with?), Jen and Mal and my brother and I went to leave. And Jen apparently has a 'slow leak' on one of the tires of her car, and during the game it had gone completely flat.
So we pull over and Justin begins to change the tire. But as he is working some jackass came and began to turn off the stadium lights, the only light Justin had to work by. And Mal and Jen and I all begin shouting, asking him to leave them on just a second longer, but we figured he couldn't hear us. So Mal ran around the field where he was and yelled for him, and then he turned around and said something that went a little like this:
"I already locked them up, I can't help you, I'm not going to do anything about it."
Fuck me, what is with people? I mean, we're trying to change the damn tire. We only needed them for a few more minutes. He had heard us yelling for him. He had ignored us.
Bastard Clevite.
Justin got the bicycle tire on (which was about what it looked like) and Jen took us home.
So now I'm here, and I don't know but I feel like shit. Ryan's letter is not warm enough for me tonight. I miss his body, the shelter it provided. There were so many couples at the game, their arms about eachother in the autumn chill. And I could picture nothing but us, in the same situation but a month ago. A month is so long.
Jenny said he can't give me what I need right now, that he can't expect me to suffer and wait. But I need him. What he gives me is his presence, his jokes, his hands and his smile. I don't want what anybody else has to offer. In the end, I would only have cheated both myself and that other person. Because I would always love Ryan, and would always be seeking something in them that would remind me of him, would serve somehow as him while he is gone.
I cannot wish this away. I can only hope that in the end, years from now, it will have been worth it.
astera at nearly midnight