Christmas, 2007

I'm double-parked in this shit but whatever...

I was 3 the first time I saw fireworks. I remember it cause I was on my dad's shoulders nodding off beside the noise of a couple hundred thousand people crowded around English Bay. Everybody tense and waiting for it to kick off and start. It was a warm summer night, sticky, and my parents weren't old. The sky looked like a huge fat man of blue lying beside the slim purple silhouette of the mountains. My knees were jerked suddenly and I opened my eyes and those greens and blues and yellows torched up the sky, spidering off in clusters and fountains and I could feel the ahhhhhs and ohhhhhs as much as I could hear them from all the people around me. Then one really lit up and ignited the sky like an angel on a Christmas tree and involuntarily I joined the chorus. We were all wooed by some magic finger finger-painting sky just for the fuck of it. Cause it's easy to forget how important green and blue and yellow are most of the time maybe...

Every other set of fireworks I've seen sucked. No magic, no pull, no dice.

Today I was walking around the beach with a friend and after when we were heading back for home we slipped off and passed a parking lot where I saw the hugeass car I'm pretty sure my first girl is driving these days. I've seen her in it before. A few times actually. And in that neighborhood too. But I never got a license plate or anything like that. And Cadilac Escalades aren't all that uncommon a fish. Siouxie's color was black. She loved tinted windows. Secrets in general. And big, scary things. When she drives you can hear that stereo for a good mile. And that's how she likes it. Always has. Everything about her this narcotic revolving door feeling about it. Sucked me up every motherfucking time.

I took a look around hoping I'd catch sight of her. Nothing. So we headed up the hill for home and decided to take a coffee before we made the last couple miles of the stretch. There was that same car parked directly in front of the coffee shop. I checked the meter and it had 2hrs left. I asked my friend if he thought it was her. He said he had a feeling it was. Okay, fuck it. You up for this shit? Does it make any difference, Brin? Not really. So we tracked down a book store for reading material and a notebook, stole the pen I used to sign the credit card statement and started back for the coffee shop to wait to see her. Just a glimpse of my first fireworks again.

I was gone 5 minutes to that book store but by the time I got back she was gone...

It's a weird thing to admit to anybody, even to yourself, that you'll never care as much about anyone as you did for your first. Mine was basically a psychotic maniac who specialized in stringing out a relationship for 4.5 years on a steady diet of revenge fucking. It's not the most romantic form, but it might be the most urgent. There's the cliche bullshit about what you're trying the hardest to conceal is what you're dying the most to reveal... but I was all the way there after 5 minutes and when I mentioned anything by way of confession all she said was, "what took you so long?" And that was perfect. I like violently beautiful things. Scars get chicks. I never danced with her at prom but I've never seen her drive by since without following in that direction for a while... she had the same color of green eyes that I was sure Gatsby was staring at out over the water from Daisy's dock. Gatsby Green, man. No matter what light was on them, no matter how dim, they shone. Bermuda Triangle action every time.

Even with the breast implants I heard she's got, along with baby boy, I just couldn't keep smiling to myself that maybe I'll get a crack at seeing her again. I don't even know if that was her car or not. But I felt it was. Maybe she was with the dad of that kid. Maybe the guy who encouraged the fake tits. Paid for them even. Paid for them through construction work! Good fuck, best to leave that side alone.

There's that first mainline when you see that person who stole your heart before you knew you had one---it's pretty for a second cause all you can feel is this little rejoice inside that at some point she was yours, and whoever enjoys her never knew what it was like to get that I SAW YOU FIRST feeling and risk everything on it and get lucky and wake up next to it and have it a little better than going to sleep with it.

A very small part of me gets why dragon chasers, once they're off junk, say the most depressing thing is they know they've already had their best day. Which is bullshit kinda---cause I've had others who could top or ace most of what she had. But I never can get back to what I had going in with her. And that's sorta weird. Cause you know you can get over stuff. You won't break or get undone or unraveled. You can over it. And it's funny and a bit tragic that maybe nobody in the whole world could really push you over that edge. But maybe there is.... but not Her, not like you thought she might.

But fireworks are another bunch of months off, so no reason to mope.