*Fake names

My best friend had lost his brother less than a year ago. He started drinking a lot, but my boyfriend and I always spent time with him. We were at his house pretty much every day, making sure he didn’t kill himself or do something stupid.

One night, at a party, something happened that I didn’t see… All I saw was him, running up the stairs, and crying. My heart broke, and I chased him, and I caught him just as he took a spill onto his bed.

He’s not an affectionate person. In fact, he hates everyone, or at least, that’s how he acts. He’s smart, he’s witty, and he’s cruel. But when push comes to shove, he’ll never turn his back on anyone.

He throws his arms around me, crying. I’m holding him on his bed, and just petting his hair. His face is pressed against my chest, and I can feel his tears.

“I love you. Goddamit, Nicole, I love you.”

“I love you too. Everything’ll be find.”

“NO! I really love you! I want to be with you, I want to marry you!”

I just keep holding him. My boyfriend comes into the room at some point, and he jumps on the bed too, and puts a hand on our friend’s shoulder in a moment of purely masculine comfort. He turns to my boyfriend and blurts out, “I want to marry her. But I want you two to stay together because if you two break up, I know there’s no hope.”

I kiss the top of his head and he starts his heavy sobs again.

“I love you too, John. You’re the best person I know. Anyone else would have taken her away by now.”

“If you love her, why would I take her away from you when you need her? She loves you, too. We both do.”

I looked over at my boyfriend. Did he really just profess his love for our male friend? And on my behalf as well?

He sniffled. “Can I be with both of you? Can I be both of your boyfriend?”

We agreed, and he fell asleep on me.

We’ve never spoken about this night since. Any of us. But since then, he hasn’t been an alcoholic. The three of us spend all of our time together.

And I’m sure if my boyfriend or myself mentioned it to him, he’d deny it ever happened. But I’ve never felt closer to someone than that night. I never did find out what made him cry.

when I met the love of my life – everyone in the whole room felt it. They said it felt like two mack trucks had collided in front of them.

We looked at each other and we were one, I don’t know how else to put it. We didn’t talk about it, we didn’t need to say anything – I just sat down next to her and we held hands under the table while everyone sat down for dinner.

I chatted with the people around me, she was more quiet but talked too – it was perfect.

Later that night we decided we probably needed to figure out how this was going to work (meaning our new relationship) and I remember at one point her looking down at my pants for a second and *seeing* the thoughts go through her head and I answered “yeah – not on the first date – but soon, I want to too” and we smiled and she blushed a little but smiled really beautifully.

In the end I messed up… was too young and stupid – needed to learn too much. But years later – and I can’t think of anything more perfect than that night.

Several months ago my friend threw a party at her house and invited a bunch of people to basically just chill and whatnot. So most of the day goes by and I’m with my girlfriend chilling with people, just pretty much having a good time. After a while the party starts to die down a little, it gets somewhat late, and people have to leave for work the next day. The person who threw the party decides that the remaining people should vote on a movie to watch, and Eastern Promises won. My girlfriend was really into those kind of… violent, action sort of movies. She’s also Russian and speaks the language fluently so that didn’t hurt. Anyway, both of us were watching the movie and genuinely enjoying it (more so because we were watching it together) and sort of just poking and silently tickling each other under a blanket we took from our friend who threw the party. I think the fact that we didn’t really say anything during that movie, we just sort of made eye contact, kissed each other lightly every now and again, and poked each other, really made it a much better experience. Later that night we ended up making out like crazy for a few hours (with two other couples doing the same in the same room :3). I swear to god if we were alone that night… About a month after that I, for reasons I still can’t fucking figure out, made the biggest goddamn mistake of my life and dumped her. It was the first truly compulsive thing I have ever done and I honestly do not know why the fuck I did it. I still love her like no other, but I’ve resigned to being just friends with her. Anyway, that party was back in march or april or something and to this day I still can’t help but think of that night every single night while I’m trying to fall asleep.

UPDATES

i’ve noticed that updates have been a little hazy, so I’ve decided to dedicate one day a week to updating this. As of now,  updates will happen every Thursday, except holidays,etc

I remember making a trip up from home back to college in my old-as-dirt RX-7 (first gen) which is very prone to over-heating when sitting around idling. The drive had been going well enough until about 50 miles out from my destination when I hit stand still traffic. This was a very hot summer day so the car wasn’t too cool to begin with, but as soon as I hit that traffic, I knew I was screwed. I pull over to the side and pop the hood to let the engine cool down (it was in the red by this point) when a girl I know pulls over and finds me and offers me a lift. I take her up on it and decide I’d retrieve the car later that night when traffic would have hopefully disappeared.

I call my good friend who I have spent many a time bullshitting about about our cars to see if he will drive me down to where I had to leave my baby behind. He accepts and when we get there, we find that the traffic is still there and still barely moving. I drive my car for as long as it will take the heat before I have to pull over again and pop the hood. He of course pulls over behind me and even though his car was much newer and certainly not over-heating, pops his hood as well. We then watch the traffic feeling bonded.

A simple thing would be the connection I seem to get from other guys with long hair. Real long hair, not the shaggy stuff. Nods and eye contact on a friendly anonymous level really.

The most I’ve ever connected would be with my best friend from summer camp back when I was 8 through 16. Every year or two, he’d be there during the same week I went. Remember the toonami Gorillaz/Daft Punk music special? I taped it and gave it to him. Three years go by without us seeing each other, and the last year that I was able to go, he was there, tape in hand. We played cards with a few other guys, too. We pretty much formed a group by the time we were too old to go. I never spoke to them again. I’m an anti-social loner, but I still miss them.

A while back, I took a walk on a whim. I’m not particularly fit, but I’m no fat slob. Two and a half miles. I had started at dusk, so it was night by the time I finished. I walked from my house to the church up the road. I live in the middle of nowhere, and it turns out that there are PACKS of dogs loose. I had two confront me about a mile in, got bit on the leg and kept walking. I didn’t feel any pain, but it turned out that it had bit me hard enough to leave a scar. I hitched a ride home, and felt at peace with the world. That feeling stayed with me for days.

triage

I had just gotten shot 4 times (two in my right lung, one just above my kidney, and two in my right thigh) in Iraq, and they had evac’d me to a triage point for transfer to a real hospital. I was pretty out of it, lost a lot of blood, and was very touch and go. The painkillers had me dulled, but I was still awake, and still coherent…

I look over to the guy next to me, and although I didn’t look great, he looked like a man held together by bandages and tape, just really fucked up, missing his left leg at the knee, one side of his whole body swathed in blood and bandages.

I though he’d be knocked out, but right as I look over at him, he turns his head and smiles at me. Not a shit eating toothy grin, a weird, benevolent smile, kindof to say “Man, at least we’re alive!” He ended up dying on the operation table in Landsthule, Germany after we both got evac’d.

body language

    Three years ago back in high school there was this girl I would always look at, across from me in my math class. She would stare, then I would stare, and we’d do our own little secret language made up of facial expressions and hand gestures. Pig snorts, bird calls, fake signing that we both couldn’t understand but laughed at anyway. We’d just nod sagely at everything if neither of us was making sense.

    She sat facing me, so for almost the entire period every day we would just mouth words to one another, completely ignoring everything else in the class. I think I was half in love with her at the time, whenever she was sick I’d look at her empty desk and feel lonely, I’d feel like something was missing from my day. So we just continued our little game of translation trying to make the other laugh to get into trouble, until one day she just stopped. I tried to get her attention, clicked my tongue, practically tore my hair out but she’d just keep staring at the desk. I learned later from someone else that she had just started dating someone.

This isn’t the best one but it’s the most recent one so here goes. I was walking back to my apartment from my class and noticed a car stall at a busy fucking intersection, where the freeway on/off-ramps were. I start helping the guy push the car (dozens of students just kept walking, apathetically). I’m sweating my balls off when I see a classmate whom I never talked to, but came off as a funny guy. Class clown and all that. Anyways, he drove by, parks up ahead, gets out and helps me push the stalled van to the local gas station. These random acts of kindness, as miniscule as they may be really give me faith in humanity, or a shred of it at least.

Also, I’m bawing at this thread. Listening to Blonde Redhead isn’t helping.

just keep sweeping, just keep sweeping

I’ve worked in hospitals off and on since high school. The first year I started doing this, I was in a private hospital in southern California, doing basic janitor stuff, really. I don’t know, I guess I just find hospitals and medicine interesting. Either way, I was sweeping through some hallways, and this guy stumbles out of a bathroom wearing a gown and limps down the hallway, in the direction I was heading. I kept sweeping, minding my own business.

I passed the room he went into. There he is, sitting on his bed, looking out the window. I stopped for a second, staring passed him out into a field. Then he turned, and looked at me. For a second we locked eyes, and then he just gave me this wink. Completely out of the blue. Then a smile, and then he looks the other way, out the window again.

I kept sweeping.

The next day, I pass the room again. There he is again, this time staring into the hall. At me, I thought. Maybe he was staring at the wall. Still, we locked eyes again, and this time he gave me a nod. He wasn’t very old, mid thirties if I had to guess. I nodded back, but he had already looked away.

I kept sweeping.

The next day, same story. This happened eight days in a row. His state never really seemed to change. To this day, I don’t know why is was in hospital. I just sort of accepted it. Still, eight days in a private hospital anywhere makes you a poor man.

I just kept sweeping.

And on the ninth day he was gone. Bed filled with some dying old millionaire. Maybe it was just too rich for his blood, I don’t know. And it took about three months to figure out what happened.

The janitorial staff is out of the loop everywhere. We just get “Go here, fix this.” and “Sweep them floors.”. I just sort of assumed that he had died. But then at around five o’ clock on a Friday, I was walking out of the front doors, and I passed him. There he was, walking still with a limp.

And I’ve never felt more happy in my life. I thought he was dead. And he had such consistency. Not something you really see much of out of people.

As I’m leaving, I turn and look at him. He stops at the reception desk, throws words around, and then turns to go. He must have caught me out of the corner of his eye or something. But he just turned, nodded, and smiled.

I cried that day. Hard. It was just great to see him around.