From: llama@pooh.cc.utexas.edu (sine nomine)
Newsgroups: alt.angst
Subject: waiting angst
Date: 11 Nov 92 19:17:33 GMT
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5

i'm here on time.

i think this is the time we agreed on last night.

there's not any news i want to read. i've read all my mail. there's no
one i feel like talking to logged in. 

fingering someone 10 times in 10 minutes does not cause that person to
magically log in.

i love him, i trust him, i know he loves me. i know there's a good
reason he paged me, made the connection, then logged off.

so why am i worrying? force of habit, i spose. so much of my life has
been spent waiting for men. a little more than a year ago, when my
relationship with glenn was in its death throes, i spent hours waiting
for him. as often as not, he didn't show.

there was the night when we were still living together ad he stayed
out all night. no call, nothing. i felt it viscerally. nausea,
diarrhea, an inability to concentrate... i stayed up all night,
cataloging disks, wanting to cry, wanting to scream, waiting. around 8
am i called a friend; he took me for coffee and we rationally discussed
the what-ifs.

i remember one night after i moved out he'd promised to come over for
dinner. i baked lasagne, made a salad, cut up fresh fruit, chilled the
wine. waited.  and waited. standing in my room by the windows, palms
pressed against the cool glass, angry and hurt. he was standing me up.
i wanted to break something, hurt something. i wanted to push my fists
through the window, shattering pain blood shining on glass shards anger
made visual. but i didn't. i called him. at a friend's house. "oh, i
forgot. well, it's too late now..." it was 8.30.

or, a few weeks later, spending two hours waiting outside a theatre
before i finally called his roommate. "oh, he's gone club-hopping on
sixth street with kristi and david." riding the bus home, i was an
automaton, holding back tears of humiliation and not moving a muscle (as if
absolute stillness could stop the internal crumbling).

the time richard told me to meet him at his apartment one evening
before work.  after two hours and overhearing a phone message from
"gretchen," i took off, fuming. the only message i left was "unless it
involved a national emergency or space aliens, don't return this
call." actually, bailing turned out to have been for the best; he'd
been out drinking with a buddy and had brought the friend back with
him with the idea that all three of us could have sex.

all of this traces back, though, to when i was married to a
passive-aggressive asshole who always "forgot" to call when he was
working late. i was a spineless, insecure wimp who wouldn't stand up
for herself. besides, he really was working late, so i figured i was
lucky. lucky? i kept my life on hold, waiting for him to show up so we
could have dinner together. god only knows how many nights i spent
looking out the window like a sick puppydog. or sitting on the porch,
counting cars going by, saying "if he's not in the next ten, i'll give
up." the waiting through another ten, and another. i remember a sick
anger in the pit of my stomach, jaw clenched, pain and fear and
longing all combined into nausea.

but this is different, i think. the impatience is there, but not the
fear.  annoyance, some, but trust. i'm in control, and i've decided to
hang around. i don't *need* this. i choose it.

and now that i've typed all this, i can stand back and say "hey, he's
not like them. not his fault his server's fucked. he loves me." and
right after i typed that, he paged me.

sometimes the universe is too cool.

--
sine | deb
"i love your eyes, i love your smile, let's kiss for a while
 and forget about the night before and after" -- the silos