A Week of Lists: Sunday

Things I cannot forget:

1. Arriving at yet another one of your “LA Phase” apartments, listening to you explain that your boyfriend had painted all of the furniture himself and then following you into the bedroom… ashtray, smoldering cigarette and black and white 12-inch screen television set on and all in close proximity to the edge of your bed… realizing first that you had been watching static on the TV and then that you were still doing heroin.

2. Listening to you tell me that he was such the jealous type that he had once stolen his ex-girlfriend’s father’s Ferrari and hid it in his garage to “get back” at her… and then, later that evening, walking the three blocks over to “his” house… wondering how he had been able to steal her father’s car and deciding that it would probably be a bad scene if I asked him about it.

3. Suggesting that we get married in Reno while driving to Lake Tahoe… listening to you chuckle and answer, "No." ...calmly, lacking any hurt feelings or anger, telling you that I would never ask you again and that you had missed your chance… Sitting in your car while you told me that you would always regret saying no when I suggested that we marry… feeling heartsick because I had grown so relieved that you had.

4. Having a panic attack while water skiing… and wishing I was having a panic attack because I was terrified to water ski instead of being terrified that I was going crazy because I was having a panic attack while water skiing.

5. The way your skin felt dry and cool like paper... thinking that you must be terribly dehydrated... instead of concentrating on the fact that you were telling me how your mother had been institutionalized and your father was a drunk... or was it the other way around?

6. Driving your beat up Saab home from Smalls in the pounding rain... driver's side window completely down... hair, face, neck and left arm sopping wet... positioned with my head entirely outside the car in order to see the road ahead because your windshield wipers were broken... which you had neglected to tell me before passing the fuck out in the backseat with Dave.

7. Cringing each time you kicked a beer bottle over causing it to roll loudly toward and then clatter to a stop at the front of the theater... but being more conscious of the fact that we were such small-time loadies because we purchased bottles instead of cans in the first place.

8. Sitting in your car watching the sun set while we listened to the Beastie Boys/Check Your Head and some random Frank Zappa mix tape... wondering, at the same time, if the cops would stop us when you drove me back to Long Beach for being out past the post riot curfew.

9. You telling me that you were not at all mad that I had crashed your car into some pizza delivery girl's car because, after all, I had been doing you a favor in the first place... driving you to and dropping you off at the airport... So, you know, don't even worry about it... but, um, what happened to the stereo?

10. The obvious desire to bitch slap and toss you overboard flash across a grown woman’s face after you told her that she “looked much better without all that crap on her face” …when what you had actually meant to say was, “You look beautiful… even without make-up… you wrinkled old hag.”