Listening to Second Option by Thad Cockrell and Caitlin Cary

Let it be said that courtship is a clumsy endeavor if not the clumsiest. I don’t claim to be a Lothario, a Valentino, a Cyrano, a (dare I say it?) Romeo. (Why the fuck do all of the great historical lovers’ names always end in “O?” What is up with that?) I flirt. Am flirted with. Flirt around. Flirt-a-licious. Whatever. But when it comes to someone I like I am always tongue-tied. Stumbling, stammering, sputtering my way through statements until I can’t even operate. I say something and then think about it over and over again in my head until exasperated. And that’s even if I say anything at all.
I do know a couple of things however. First off - talking about an ex the first time you meet somebody is one mistake people make. that happened to me a couple night’s ago. I had just finished an enormous amount of work and I wanted to have a little bit of a quiet night. I had driven the employee van home after a 16 hour working day that lasted until 7 am through a shitload of Los Angeles traffic and the girl riding shotgun was coked -up off of her ass. Now, if you know me, you know that I don’t do coke, never have, hopefully never will. I’m not preachy about it. But if anything, this helped solidify my decision.
Please allow me a moment to re-enact her conversations/monologue/cocaine-fueled soliloquy as an indulgence:
IsitwarminhereBencanyouputupyourwindowohwaitareyouguyscoldbackthere
BencanyouputdownyourwindowGoditisreallyhardtofindsomethinggoodontheradiorightnowcananybodythinkofanything
goodtolistentodidyouseethatbillboardIneversawitbeforeAbsolutKravitzthat’sreallydumbIhateLennyKravitz
BencanyouputyourwindowbackdownagainOhitisdownnevermind
whenarewegoingtogethomeisthisreallywhatLAtrafficislikeatthistimeofthemorning?

So I think that my decision to not do Cocaine has reached a point of solidity. Anyway, where I was going before I got caught up in that little indulgence was that by the time I got back to the hotel I did not want to talk to anybody. I know, I know, hard to believe but even I need some silence sometimes. Sometimes even I have to just turn off the lights in the house on the hill and let the crickets cricket. That night, however, I was not going to be granted that little bit of solace. I got dragged out of my room by everyone that worked that night and got plunked down on a bed next to a girl that I had been flirting with for the past couple of days. She had just recently done cocaine and she began to unload a lot of personal details about her past boyfriend, her parents, her weight, etc. It was really touching. She kept on telling me that she was sure I was bored and sure I wanted to leave and sure that she was driving me crazy. I, however, was so tired of talking and yelling that I was happy to have someone to do it for me. The irony of her being coked up and opening up so suddenly was not lost on me. She made it seem charming while my co-pilot an hour earlier made it seem repulsive. Plus, she wasn’t chewing her bottom lip off like the girl in the van.
It was strange speaking with her. It was really nice and easy and I think I probably fell in love a little bit. But that falling in love was tinged with a little bit of melancholy. She repeated things that I always say out loud about marriage, and romance, and kids and life. She lamented the fact that she felt like her first love was the strongest, She told me that she always asks herself why no one wants to date a nice, pretty, funny, caring girl. And I had no answers. These were always things that I have asked myself. But in the past few months have let go. She told me about how an on-going drama that she was having with an ex-boyfriend still drove her crazy. Well.....indirectly. She went on and on about him and I felt another kinship. Whether coked-up or nervous it is pretty inadvisable to go on and on about an ex to somebody that you are interested in. She had admitted to me a few night’s earlier that she was interested (this is a different girl than the blurt “but you wouldn’t want to go to dinner girl.”). When approached by her I found myself at an impasse. And when she started talking about her experiences in Romance I felt like I really understood where she was coming from. I tried to explain how I felt about it, that I felt that you really have to let go of the longing and the need, and that if you never find somebody that’s right for you then you will have at least held yourself to a standard that was worth something. When I told her that she remarked that she was fortunate in the fact that if she didn’t find someone by the time she was in her mid-thirties she could still have a child and that would fulfill one need she believed she had.
While we spoke I felt a little bit of sadness. Sadness for her because she felt the way that I had felt for so long. That everything might be okay if you could just fine that one right person. That everything would fall into line neatly and just “click.” Sadness for myself because I saw that a little bit of the romanticism in me had died. That somewhere along the line during these past few months of my enforced celibacy and heart-policing I lost that belief. And in a lot of ways I am okay with that. I tried to tell her that it was time she needed. That it is time that lets you heal. Time helps you to get to the point where everything hurts a little less. Where everything doesn’t seem as sharp and shiny and prickly as it once did. Time shows us that sometimes the heart needs to be quiet as well. That sometimes the heart feels like it has spoken too much, has been out of bounds, and can look around the room and see that all the other hearts are sick of hearing about it. Sometimes a heart just wants to come home from a long day of work, put on a pair of jeans, pour itself a bourbon and listen to another heart unload it’s lover’s laments. Sometimes that’s enough.
But I didn’t succeed in telling her. I don’t think she was ready to listen. And at the risk of being something that I hate - an ageist - I felt like she was maybe a little too young still. So I simply laid on the hotel bed in my jeans surrounded by a dozen people coked up at 8 am with my bourbon resting on my chest and listened to someone that was a little less weary then I speak her heart. Then I went to bed alone and she ended up making out with a guy in a hot tub.