Just a little bitter?

Dearest D.,

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve written a letter to you. I think mostly due to the fact that even I had grown tired of hearing myself blather on and on about how you hurt me. Tired of hearing about what a fake and phony I think you to be nearly each time I think of you. And as of late, I have been thinking about you often. For a couple of reasons, but the greatest being the approach of Valentine’s Day and your nearly perfect timing of irony cosmique and ditching me on that day two years ago now. Isn’t it funny how such things stick with us for so long? As that famous guy Unknown once said, “True Love burns the brightest, but the brightest flames leave the deepest scars.” But I’m not better—really!

But most of the reason that I’ve been thinking about you as of late is that fact that I’ve made the questionable decision, once again, to venture off into the deep end of the dating pool.  And without the benefit of water wings mind you—not exactly sure what I’m thinking here. However, in my own misguided way I’m committed to the crazy adventure. So I shall march forward to whatever fate may await me.

After all, have I any choice?

As I mentioned in a letter to Harry Houdini a couple of weeks ago, I recently met a gentleman who has me intrigued. We met Friday before last at the Hunan Gate over at Ballston for dinner as an initial meeting and to celebrate the recent Chinese New Year. I had quite a good time with him. Much to my surprise there were moments in the conversation that I found it rather difficult to keep up. This rarely ever happens with me, as I’m usually the one who leaves guys in the dust with my off-beat sense of humor and obscure pop culture references. But I have to admit he left me in the dust on a couple of occasions. Which I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed.

We agreed to meet at seven o’clock and he was a little late due to traffic being heavy. So when our appetizers arrived, he looked at me with all seriousness and said, “I have to ask you something.”

“Okay,” I answered.

“Knowing I was tardy. And if they had a fruit cup, might you have ordered it and enjoyed it before I arrived?”

I looked at him rather sheepishly and said, “Ummmm. I suppose I might have.”

He chuckled and said, “I’m sorry. Talk about your obscure references. High Anxiety.”

“Oh,” I chuckled, “I only saw it once, and it was a long, long time ago.”

The rest of the evening went along those lines with each of us pulling some strange pop culture reference out of our asses and making the other laugh. The most amazing thing I discovered about him is that he’s been to Burning Man several times. When he mentioned this fact it of course made me think of you.

A couple of days later he sent me an email thanking me for the fun time Friday evening and for being so forgiving of the fact that he’d been late. I sent him a return note thanking him as well and in that email complimented the photo that is in his google contact. I’d not noticed it before, and it’s a great photo of him in ‘80s style wrap around sunglasses. He sent me the funniest reply back stating that he’d not been wearing sunglasses so there must be some confusion on my part or perhaps I might be iStalking him.

I decided to play off the word stalking and replied with the subject heading, “…and About the Celery.” And in my reply I explained that I’d seen his photo in his google contact vCard. But mentioned, as you well know, that I do love a good stalking either cyber or otherwise as nothing seems to say, “I truly love you” quite as effectively. I nearly fell off the chair when I received his reply. It had the subject, “Re: Bunnicula”.

I read this and thought, WTF? So I immediately googled the word and discovered that Bunnicula is a character in a series of children’s books written by James Howe about a vampire bunny who sucks the life out the vegetables in the garden. One of books in the series is entitled, The Celery Stalks at Midnight. OMG I howled out loud as I was reading the Wikipedia entry.

Of course as I’m getting to know him, all I can think about is you. In the usual respect of why can’t he be you. Why couldn’t you have had the same kind of fun and carefree personality he has and maybe things would have turned out differently.

The other thing that I marvel about is the fact that you make such pretentious statements about working in the arts and you’re so quick to be critical about the creative efforts of others while making absolutely no effort to produce anything yourself. As well, I can’t recall even one time when you were speaking with me that you exhibited any kind of originality or creativity.

And Jonny Angel, who has a degree in computer science has shown far more creativity and originality in the month that I’ve know him than you did in the entire seven months you were speaking with me.

Why do you think that is?

I shared very briefly in an email to dear Jonny about you and joked in that email that I’m not bitter. I would love to believe it to be the truth. However, I know deep down inside I do remain bitter about what happened. And this is not due to your misguided supposition of it due to being wronged by you. It has far more to do with the fact of being lied to and hurt. Perhaps someday I shall let go of the bitterness.

I hope St. Valentine delivered much love to you today.