Papaki

This post has been a long time coming. I've kind of been waiting for awhile to write this, ever since I found out my ex-boyfriend, Bob, would be moving to San Francisco at the end of this month. Call it denial or call it...well, denial, there's really no other word for it. This is what happens when the most monumental force outside of your family is suddenly gone.

To be fair, we haven't hung out regularly in over two years, when our relationship ended with a fight every five minutes. At the same time, I could pick up the phone and call him anytime. We had a relatively amicable break-up...well, we had a dozen relatively amicable break-ups and a couple that weren't so friendly, but the final one, the doozy, was pretty friendly, and we've stayed on good terms ever since. As much as we'd been through in the nearly four years we were together, I kind of felt like he'd never be really too far out of my reach. I guess that shows my age well. I'm only twenty-three, and Bob is thirty-four, though he is more like a thousand and one intellectually and twenty-five socially, emotionally and physically. He's absolutely great-looking, he works out like a maniac and has ripped pecs, abs and arms to show for it. He's one of the smartest people I've ever known. He was almost the one, almost Mr. Right, almost the perfect boyfriend. He was sweet and brilliant and funny and romantic and head-over-heels in love with me.

And sometimes he was cynical, cngry over nothing, negative, and would bitch over absolutely anything. His friends used to call him "The Preacher"...need I say more? It's not that he didn't have anything smart to say, or that he hated life...quite the opposite. Bob existed in that paradoxical realm where he loved life but hated the people he had to share it woth. Fellow students, jocks, sorority girls ("sorostitutes", we'd joke), rich kids, basically anyone who wasn't foreign or anti-society. The foreigners and the punks, that's who we wanted to hang out with. People who had culture and people who desperately wanted to. And sometimes succeeded.

I was, of course, as smitten with him as he was with me. He wasn't my first love, but he was my first adult love. He showed me that relationships don't have to end just because a couple breaks up, that you really can be "just friends" even when your past leaves something to be desired. He taught me that the amount of fighting is directly proportional to the amount of making up, times three whenever possible. He was the first--and only!--man I've ever spent an entire weekend in bed with, just curled up under the covers, venturing out only for sustenance and then, rarely. He's the only person outside of my parents to give me a bath. He taught me the meaning of compromise, and he showed me how to be myself...and even though that is what drove me away in the end, I can never thank him enough for it. He taught me never to settle for less than what I expected and to push for more if that's what I really wanted. He introduced me to punk rock, Japanese hardcore and the Beatles. Also reggae, ska, surf, trip-hop and psychedelia, as well as the coolest drum & bass I've ever heard. Through him I was introduced to David Cross, George Carlin and other funny, angry comedians.

I wonder, now, after all this time, what he got out of it? I can go on listing forever the benefits and consequences-both good and bad-of being with Bob for so long. Thanks to Bob I got to go to Europe; we found a kitten there and brought her back with us and now she's my cat. I'll never look at SKataki and not think of him. Or flip thorugh my CD collection, or hear a slam on Fox News or some rude anti-Republican remark, without my brain going instantly to Bob. He is the rare sort of person who stops crowds when he opens his mouth, who thinks before he speaks, stands up for what he believes in and only backs down from fights when he's in imminent danger...and sometimes not then either. He is passionate about his beliefs and convictions and doesn't admit defeat easily. He is one of the smartest, most talented and wisest people I've ever been fortunate enough to know. Even though it pains me to see him go and I know I will miss him, I'm happy for him. Or at least, I'm trying to be. Human beings are selfish by nature and I'm no exception. I want Papaki here where I can call him up to go grab a beer anytime, or go for a hike. Or hang out and listen to records. Or watch movies. Or bitch about the general state of the world these days. Or anything. He'll read this, maybe, at some point, and think yeah, right, when's the last time we did any of that. Time is fleeting and I'm sure that once he's gone, I'll have a better sense of how much I miss him. That's how absence works...you never feel it until they're gone. For real.

Bob leaves in two days to go see his family, then I leave to go see mine, then when I'm off visiting my zillions of sibs and nieces and nephews and my dad and stepmother on the East coast, he leaves for San Fran. We're going to try to get together tomorrow night. I'd like to see him once more before he goes. It's a strange thing to think of how much you put into something, and what it is to you once it's over. I don't believe that anything in life is ever so permanent you can close the book on it and for all I know twenty years from now we'll run across each other and become close again. For now, though, it makes me sad to know he's leaving. And at the same time, I hope that his new home has more to offer than this place. Part of me doesn't want him to leave, but a greater part of me would never stop him.

Just miss him.