An Evening with Bennett
by V.E. on October 18th, 2007
filed under personal, thoughts
Yeah, so… um… I found out why Bennett wasn’t too keen on letting me help him move into his new place. Apparently he found this (one-bedroom??) apartment in the Crowne Heights/Bed-Stuy area along the A line that’s a really great deal and has been moving his stuff from the Upper West Side, where his parents live, this past week or so. Last night (Wednesday) I finally got to hang out with him for a while (after a serious lapse of etiquette on his part over the weekend in which he said we could visit on Saturday evening and then never called to confirm or cancel and never picked up his phone when I finally ended up calling him… it’s a long-ish story and I don’t really want to get into it.)
Anyway, so I met him near Central Park last evening around 7 pm and something interesting happened. We spent a couple of hours together, and for the first time since I’ve known him, he didn’t make me feel better about myself and I didn’t have a good time. It was sort of odd, actually. I’d been looking forward to seeing him all week(end, despite his annoying self) and was sort of surprised that I didn’t really like him. I mean, I got into the car with him (his parents’, which he’d been using to take his crap to his new place) and the first thing he did was mess up my hair… As in, you know, give me a noogie or whatever. He knows I don’t like having my hair touched… it just freaks me out, I don’t know why (although, I’ve gotten better about that recently)—but he also knows that he’s one of the few people who can touch it without my completely acting weird. Except this time, he reached for me and my first instinct was to back up, not lean in, as it has been for the better part of two years.
He dropped his car off at his parents’ place and we went walking in the direction of downtown. He was hungry, so we stopped at this falafel place, which apparently makes excellent Greek food (I didn’t have any, as I’d eaten ahead of time, so I’m taking his word for it) but is in dire need of some kind of air conditioning, or at least a fan. Then, we went on down to the Barnes & Noble on 82nd (I think) and Broadway. I wouldn’t have gone in if I’d been alone, but he opened the door and I was ambivalent about the whole thing, so I went in after him.
I’ve come to loathe book stores because I love books… That sounds weird, I know, but I discovered that when I see a potentially interesting book in a book store, I feel like I need to buy it—or otherwise acquire it (which is another problem altogether that I don’t want to get into right now)—or I may not be able to find it when I want to read it in the future. I know that’s practically ridiculous, especially in this day and age; if I want something worth having, it’s likely Amazon.com has it or it’s so rare that I probably can’t afford it anyway. But it’s not a rational thought process. It’s an anxiety thing and it’s really difficult for me to overcome. So, after we’d walked around for a bit, I told him I wanted to leave so I wasn’t tempted to buy/take anything (at least no more than I already was), and he pleaded with me to stay a bit longer…He was just being his normal self, but I felt really vulnerable, so I went to sit in the store café and read the book I had brought with me.
A while later, he found me and asked if I had a book in my bag (I proudly noted that I didn’t) and joked about something or other until I asked him if he was happy. I know that’s sometimes a loaded question, but I honestly wanted to know. I’m not happy. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do with my life, and there’s no easy (or comfortable, or—in some ways—acceptable) answer. He avoided the question, which I was expecting. I would’ve been pleasantly surprised if he’d actually given me a straight answer, but that would’ve been very unlike him. Turns out, he and Elivra have moved out of their respective homes into an apartment together, which is the (obvious) reason why he wasn’t going to let me help him move. And, to top it off, she was at church while he was with me… Do you know how crappy that made me feel? I mean, I’m not really a church/religious/believer-type person, but this is getting ridiculous.
I asked him if he was/is going to marry her (he avoided the question until I pressed it a bit more) and he said he wasn’t sure, maybe… but probably not. I looked at him like he was nuts. “Well, then why did you move in with her?” I asked after a moment. Bennett said (essentially) that he needed to move out his parents’ place (which was true) and so did she, so they moved in together. I was sort of like, “That’s it? That’s why you moved in with her?” I don’t think he realises what a huge decision he made or—should they ever break up—what a pain in the ass it’s going to be to disentangle themselves from one another.
We talked more generally about quite a few things that I just wasn’t really interested in… Marvel and DC characters and crossovers like “Infinite DC” and “Ultimate Marvel” and how blah blah blah blah blaaaaah (no offense intended, Dave, it’s just not my top conversation topic, you know?)… This new rock song about date rape that he said I’d like; I said I didn’t want to hear it because no kind of rape is funny and then I was thinking, wasn’t that a Sublime song from the early ’90s? No, apparently it’s a new one… though I’ve looked for this “new one” and can’t find it, so I think it may just be a cover of the original and Bennett just doesn’t know that. In any case, I said I wasn’t interested and he said, “Just listen to it. You’ll like it.” I usually just cave when he says stuff like that, and usually, he’s right (that I do like it, whatever “it” is at that time), but last night I wasn’t in the mood. And I wasn’t just playing, either, as I have before. Sometimes I say I’m not interested but in such a way that he knows I actually am but don’t want to admit it. In this case, I really wasn’t interested. The whole evening, he just came off as more crass than charming.
I don’t think he’s changed. I think I’ve changed. Maybe I’m getting over him. It’s sad if that’s the case, because I love(d?) him, but I guess I have to move on, you know? I mean, really move on… not just talk about moving on. And something else occurred to me. I can’t be 100% sure of this, since it didn’t come up directly in conversation, but I don’t think he’s ever going to finish his bachelors degree. I don’t have a problem with people taking longer than is considered normal to finish something they start… but if they don’t finish at all and just give up? No way, that’s not acceptable to me. It’s one thing to be delayed, it’s another to just stop trying. I don’t think he’ll finish out college, and I doubt he’ll finish getting his Paramedic certification (the next step up after EMT).
Kudos to Elvira for getting him to keep a calendar, though. Seriously, that’s a huge accomplishment. I asked him a couple days back to take me to Diplocon in early November and even though he said he would, I wasn’t holding my breath. He wrote it down on a calendar somewhere, though, which is a positive step in organizing his life, so I may not have to shell out $60 for a train ticket at the last minute. Whatever she’s doing, it’s working. I hope it keeps working, ’cause I’m not really in the mood to pick up the pieces if something goes awry between them.
V,
you are soo much better than him. honestly though. i really mean it. and just think of how priceless it is to have that degree that he doesn’t.
you rock my socks off.
kapLOVEpa,
duckie