Audi!!

Every day when I come to work, my destination is a college campus. *My* college campus. A place where I spent considerably more years than I ought've and wasted far too much of my parents hard-earned income than they, or frankly I, ever should have allowed. A place where, in spite of my entirely non-illustrious academic career and the passage of more than ten years since I last set foot in a classroom for official academic-pursuit-related purposes, its near impossible for me gaze upon any single building, tree, squirrel or other landmark of either the flora or fauna variety and not immediately be transported to a time and place just as vivid now it was so many years ago. Memories are funny that way.

Because of where my office is located, I don't get out much. More often than not, in fact, it takes a meeting in someone else's building for me to get up off my lazy ass and stroll to the heart of campus. Yet every time I do, I'm reminded precisely why the work I do here is so important, so meaningful, so impactful. And how lucky I am to have had the opportunity.

Today was one of those days. Now, to be factually accurate, instead of a meeting it was really lunch at the school's art museum and instead of walking, I actually drove to the parking lot behind the building where they filmed that scene in Animal House with the horse in the President's office...

...but emotions flooded me all the same.

For about 93% of the past eight months (with the exception of three weeks in April and a few sketchy days back there in January) I've been one half of what probably could be considered one of the better relationships of the modern online dating era. Almost in spite of the distance between us, we've managed to make this thing work. Well.

And in about three weeks, we'll be neighbors.

No, I don't have a job.
And no, I don't technically even have an apartment.
And no, I'm not living with him.

As I got out of my car this afternoon, en route to my lunch date, I was struck with an intensity of a sentiment that I haven't felt since one particular day in 1996 when I jubilantly strode across a makeshift stage erected on the covered tennis courts, shook hands with some old dude I'd never met, and claimed my blank diploma.

I felt an overwhelming affection for my surroundings, tempered by a peculiar twinge of regret...not because I lack even the slightest degree of confidence in my decision, or because my unflinching certainty that this is the right choice happened to be wavering...but because I simply don't want to leave this place.

On the precipice of a bit of a breakdown but attempting valiantly to keep it together, I noticed a figure approaching from the right. It was an elderly man, and as he passed me, his determined stride belied his dour expression. In his left hand he carried two roses. Two artificial-orange-sorbet-colored, grocery store specimens wrapped in clear cellophane. The kind with the faux white piping across the top. As if that makes it look fancier or something.

Then the tears came.

In just a few weeks, M3 and I are going to give this relationship thing a go.

For reals.

We'll have lunch together. Like, whenever we want.
I'll learn what he's like after a trying and frustrating day.
He'll discover that sometimes, for dinner, I'll eat eight pieces of fruit, a string cheese, and four popsicles. And then two more. You know, for dessert.
And how, when I'm sick, I only consume food out of teeny tiny ceramic ramekins.
And occasionally he'll turn on my TV and realize that five minutes before he came over, I was watching a Real World marathon or the Three's Company True Hollywood Story. Again.
And I'll see him on Tuesdays.
And he'll see me on Thursdays.
And every other day of the week, too. If we want. But if we don't want, that's okay, too.
Time simply won't matter anymore. Because we'll finally have enough of it.
Sundays will transcend their current status as the most suck-ass day of the week and reclaim their prior standing as just another weekend day.
He'll meet more of my friends. And likewise.
And sharing him with the world will become, after an extended and draining and seemingly interminable delay, nothing but joyful. No longer something I'm afraid to admit I more than occasionally resent because our hours together seem always to be in such short supply.

There's no moral to this story, no witty punchline or amusing note on which to end this admittedly rather unimpressive missive. And there's certainly still no promise of happily ever after.

Call me crazy, but given the myriad reasons (real or imagined) why we probably shouldn't even have made it this far, and how frequently over the past week I've found myself stumbling to find just the right words to express how excited I am for whatever comes next...

I think I'm pretty okay with happily for now.

Backpacking and the large-sized Canadian national park

I haven't the slightest idea why its taken me so long to get back to the business of blogging. Probably because I've been posting so sporadically in recent months that each time I do attempt to pen my latest missive, I feel like it needs to be worthy of the lengthy break I've taken since my last entry. Unfortunately, since my already-debatable creative writing skills seem to have deteriorated in the months that my blog has been essentially dormant, I can't make any promises that the following will be even remotely amusing or insightful.*

It seems fitting, nevertheless, that after a long absence, I've returned to my online diary on this, the seven month anniversary of the chilly January afternoon on which M3 and I met in person for the very first time...twenty-some-odd minutes into the rendezvous being informed that he had a girlfriend...and another five-odd hours later, finding ourselves in a fleeting, regretfully platonic embrace that lingered just long enough to leave little doubt as to what we both wished we were doing in that frigid and dark parking lot, both of us entirely incapable of conceiving what might happen in the coming weeks or months...if anything at all. To think M3'd still be a topic on my blog this many moons later is truly mind-boggling. Truly.

Quite possibly the only thing more flabbergasting than the aforementioned is that my adoration of and affection for said blog topic is so significant that I willingly spent eight dirt-caked days and seven Deet-infused nights backpacking with him throughout a very large national park in the Canadian province of Alberta (you know, the kind with really big mountains and lakes and wild animals and stuff).

We slumbered in a tent, on the ground.
It was hot. And it was cold.
I broke every nail on my right hand.
And procured 11 mosquito bites on my face alone.
We saw an eagle. And bear tracks. And four marmots.
And there were cocktails.
And fires every night.
And lots and lots of bugs.
We laughed. Tons.
And walked 60 miles in seven days.
And looked at stars.
And clouds.
And wildflowers.

And I didn't crap for four days in a row.

It was fucking awesome.

Since our backpacking foursome -- consisting of M3, his sister (A), his friend (D) and I -- begrudgingly returned to civilization a few weeks back, I've made probably half a dozen attempts to recap my trip. But how do I convey the myriad levels of profound magnitude of my adventure? In a self-effacing and entertaining fashion, could I possibly articulate the significance of the experience not only as it pertains to my relationship with M3, but to the relationship I have with myself and the world around me?

Its not possible, I concede, at least not without making all three of my remaining readers sick to your respective stomachs while you concurrently pray to god that M3 shoves his head up his ass again like he did in the spring and suggests we take a break again or something so I'm left with no material and, thus, cease blogging altogether. Therefore, with your interests at heart -- rather than waxing philosophical about the importance of this trip -- I'm defaulting to sharing a collection of assorted and sundry and altogether lame-ass anecdotes conveying inane shit like how an innocent glance last week at the titanium spork now resting without purpose on the floor of my second bedroom caused me to well up with tears.

Or, how at the most unexpected times, due to a surprise Canadian breeze for example, I took immense amounts of joy in actually being able to smell myself.

Or, how I secretly liked consuming both solids and liquids at just about every meal that began in either powdered and/or freeze-dried form. Especially the taste bud delight that is washing down a cardboard pouch of vegetarian chili mac with a filthy Nalgene full of Countrytime Lemonade. Or better yet, Tang.

Or, how positively tickled I was to discover that M3 -- in addition to being a grown man who functions more than adequately in the real world -- also happens to be a full-size Boy Scout (okay, at 5'8" maybe he's more like medium sized...) who knows how to make a fire that burns for hours, catch and clean fish, and adeptly cross raging rapids carrying not one but two backpacks on behalf of his weak-ass girlfriend and considerably-more-hardcore-but-definitely-opportunistic-in-this-particular-scenario sister.

Or how, in being relegated to employing the cleansing properties of countless cucumber wipes that M3 would have kicked my ass for bringing had he known just how much they weighed, I somehow managed to believe that I'd attained a (false) state of freshness throughout the trip when, in fact, I was positively rank.

Or, how I got mosquito bites on my ass. (Like I said, I was only constipated *half* of the time.)

Or, how giddy I felt when M3 wrapped his arms around me (thus enveloping me in his mounting odiferous stank) and said I was "doing such a good job." And he meant it. Because I was.

Or, how I only cried once per day for the first three days after our tents and sleeping bags and Ziplocs full of Gatorade and powdered milk and dirty toilet paper had long since been shoved into the bowels of M3's vehicle because my 16 days in a row with him would soon be coming to an end and after over two glorious weeks of unbroken togetherness, I'd very soon be reminded yet again what it feels like to have an acute awareness of just what day it is...just what time it is...and exactly how it feels to miss him.

Yeah...so...you know what?

I've had a change of heart.

Camping fucking sucks.


*If you desire a chuckle and, as predicted, I end up proving myself unable to deliver, I suggest that you kindly refer to the recently-posted comment by "Anonymous" that's attached to my December 3 entry titled "No Flow". Totally awesome.