Breaking an Alcohol "Fast"

Well, it's New Year's Eve in the western hemisphere. I have been invited to a party up the street, which is set to start in 18 minutes. It will be my first New Year's Eve party in years. I have been invited to New Year's Eve parties almost every year in the past several years, but I was never in the mood to go, probably because I wasn't excited about sitting around with the same group of married people, and also because I just wasn't interested in celebrating the passage of time (whoever thought that would be a fun thing to celebrate, anyway?). Tonight, the party is in a different town and with a different group of people. Most of them are married, too, but I really like the people hosting the party, so I'm going to go.

One of the requirements, according to the woman of the house (who has been a close friend of mine for years) is that I must drink alcoholic beverages. Having been a bartender for several years in earlier times, I would normally have no problem with that; however, it has been fourteen months since I last drank any alcohol, and I am starting to enjoy life without it (not enough to actually quit forever, though).

Don't misunderstand me: I didn't stop drinking last year because I have a problem. I've never had a problem. I just quit because it was becoming too easy to rely on it while I was living the life of a single hermit on a desolate ranch in desolate Wyoming last year. There was absolutely nothing to do there but write on my computer (no internet), watch two pitiful (sickeningly pitiful) TV channels, and drink. To make matters worse, the alcohol was no longer having much of an effect on me because I had built up an immunity to it (but the headaches still arrived on time). That meant I was wasting my money.

So I stopped.

I promised myself that I would start drinking again after the passage of one year, or after a certain situation had been concluded, whichever came first. Well, I moved off of the ranch two months after I quit drinking, but the "situation" didn't conclude itself until this month -- eight f*****g months late! Being a somewhat stubborn person when it comes to keeping promises to myself, I continued to avoid alcohol after the original deadline had passed. I continued to wait for a year to go by. When the one-year anniversary finally arrived in early November, I was ready to open a bottle of cheap champagne that I had been saving for a year.

But I couldn't do it! Regrettably (no pun intended), I had started to enjoy life without alcohol. Drinking for me used to be like arriving home during a raging blizzard: It was a wonderfully warm and cozy escape from a miserable world. But one day I came home during another raging blizzard and found the place abandoned, with the electricity and heat turned off, with the windows busted out, and no one living there anymore.

That is what drinking had finally become for me. It no longer gave me sufficient shelter from the raging blizzard of life, no matter how many ounces I might drink (which is usually a lot less than the average social drinker's intake, but not always). It was very sad to think that I must endure this miserable blizzard for the rest of my life without being able to escape from it occasionally.

Some of you might be thinking that an abandoned house is still better than the blizzard itself. That may be true, but the rent still costs the same. Then, I rediscovered again what I had known before: The blizzard becomes tolerable when you don't have anything better to compare it to. 

But not every day...

On some especially bad days I still wanted to run into that abandoned house, even though I knew it wouldn't afford me very much protection. I just had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't worth the effort anymore.

Well, now I am going to celebrate the end of that "situation." I now know that I can stop for any length of time that I set for myself. If I drink tonight, it's not a disaster. In fact, I am starting to look forward to it. I used to do some of my very best writing when I was inebriated. In fact, I will write a "drunken" entry when I come home this evening just to see if the "magic" is still there. :-)

As I end this entry (fifteen minutes after the start of the party), I will leave you with something I wrote on a solitary New Year's Eve ten years ago:

-----

"December 31, 1994, 11:55 PM: I am sitting here, doing my utmost not to give a crap that another meaningless click of the human clock has ticked in the universe of infinite time and space. I remember that midnight October 10, felt no different, nor, for that matter, did noon time, July 18. Why do people get carried away over a totally arbitrary invention that has no connection to reality whatsoever? If each of my years had been better than the previous year, then I might still play along with the game, as I used to (hoping to make it all better by wishing). But nothing has ever changed. Each year that I pretended to look forward to better things, nothing changed;even when I made an effort (I think the New Year came while I was in the middle of that last sentence, as my computer clock now says 12:01 a.m., January 1).

"P.S. When all seems as bad as stated above, then it is a good thing to have Beavis and Butt-Head to fall back on, thank garsh." :-) Sincerely yours, YouNameIt

Christmas Spirit: Why Temporary?

Time: Christmas 1914, ninety years ago today.
Place: The Front Lines in France and Belgium.
The Situation: A general Christmas truce that temporarily halts the carnage of World War I.
Analogous To: Modern western society, peacetime (not counting Iraq)
Fact or Fiction: Fact

By the time Christmas Day arrived in 1914, British and German soldiers had been battling for several months. Hundreds of thousands had already been lost on both sides. In order to celebrate Christmas, leaders on both sides agreed to a temporary truce. British soldiers hoped (at the very most) to spend a much-needed quiet day in their trenches. Large numbers of German soldiers all along the front lines had a different idea.

At various locations that day, British soldiers could hear the German soldiers singing Christmas carols. On Christmas morning, the British peeked out of their trenches and were stunned to see small groups of unarmed German soldiers standing on top of their own trenches just staring in the direction of the British trenches. At any other time, this would have meant certain death for those German soldiers. The British thought it must be some sort of trick, but they didn't fire their weapons. The Germans began shouting at the British soldiers to come out of their trenches and celebrate Christmas with them.

They shouted, "We don't want to kill you, and you don't want to kill us. Is this not true?"

The British replied that they did, indeed, have no desire to kill the Germans either. As such, a few unarmed British soldiers went out to meet the Germans (while their compatriots who were still in the trenches covered them, just in case). As the British approached, they were amazed to see Christmas trees and other decorations in the German trenches. After general introductions, the Germans offered whatever they had as gifts to the British. The British returned the favor. In one location, the Germans even offered a large keg of beer to the British, saying that they had plenty more where that came from. The British gladly accepted the gift.

At another point on the front lines, a British officer was returning from headquarters and was surprised to find none of his soldiers in the trenches. Everywhere he went, he found no one. The place was abandoned. After a while, he could hear people singing Christmas carols, some in English, others in German. He eventually found all of his men in the "no-man's land" between the opposing trenches, singing and sharing food, etc., with all of the German soldiers. At another point along the line, the Germans and British even played a soccer (football) match, which the Germans won 3-2.

If not for selfish, arrogant leaders on both sides, peace could have broken out permanently that day in a large part of Europe due to this wonderful display of Christmas spirit. The men on both sides had proven that there was no need for fighting such a terrible war.

But there were selfish, arrogant leaders, and so the men on both sides knew that the peace must come to an end at a specified time. Therefore, at midnight on the night of December 25, or 8:30 AM on December 26 (depending on where you were on the battle line), officers on both sides, shook hands and saluted to one another. They then returned to their own trenches and fired two or three signal shots into the air, thus signifying that the magical peace had come to an end.

Makes You Wonder
These German and British soldiers were convinced that they had no choice but to follow orders and return to the act of killing one another (for reasons that none of them really understood). If left to their own devices, they would gladly have signed an armistice on the spot that day allowing them to celebrate a permanent peace with one another. Instead, millions more men on both sides were yet to be killed (probably some of them by the very men with whom they had just celebrated) before the actual armistice was signed almost four years later, on November 11, 1918.

What About "Us"?
What is our excuse in this day and age? None of us is required to return to our cold, unfriendly ways as soon as Christmas ends. So why do we? Or, asked in reverse, why do we choose to let ourselves feel a certain warmth and generosity toward our fellow man (excepting a few psychotic Arab terrorists) for just a few weeks every year? Then, the rest of the year, we don't give a second thought to snubbing any and all passers-by, or even those people who appear to be going out of their way to be nice to us? I have spent my life trying to be nice every day of the year, but I'm not perfect, and I'm definitely outnumbered.

A "Successful" Immunity

I have been struggling for some time now to express myself in this online journal, but I am filled with a certain degree of emotional emptiness, a condition that is very counterproductive when one is trying to bare ones soul via the written word. As I thought about my predicament, I remembered something I had written on August 21, 1994. It was only half true at that time. Now it is entirely true:

"In the continual evolution of the human soul, one does not fully realize — until it hits — just how wrong life can actually go. I have realized for some months now that I can sweep all past miseries and pains away as if they never existed. That bothers me because they were at least the miseries and pains of a living person, who thought of them as permanent, yet poetic, obstacles, to be battled with creative enthusiasm. This thing, however, this nothingness that I am now experiencing is so horrible that I can barely treat it with enough interest to write plainly about it.

"Much of the horror lies in the fact that I have fallen out of youth (relatively speaking). The rest lies with my belief that I can do nothing to overcome such an obstacle.

"...Probably the saddest thing, though, is that there is no magic left in the world that moves me. Even if I see it with my own eyes, it fails to move me."

Lately, I find myself almost wishing to become involved in another unpleasant relationship, simply so that I can feel alive again on the inside.

Eight Hundred Eighty-Five Years Ago

I'm cheating a little with this entry. While trying to replenish my own writing reserves (in other words, my mind is a blank right now), I am sending you a quote that has been on my all-time favorites list for many years. I think it describes many of us online diarists perfectly.

"What cannot letters inspire? They have souls; they can speak; they have in them all that force which expresses the transports of the heart; they have all the fire of our passions. They can raise them as much as if the persons themselves were present. They have all the tenderness and the delicacy of speech, and sometimes even a boldness of expression beyond it. Letters were first invented for consoling such solitary wretches as myself! ...Having lost the substantial pleasures of seeing you and possessing you, I shall in some measure compensate this loss by the satisfaction I shall find in your writing. There I shall read your most sacred thoughts." — (From a letter written in the year 1119, by Heloise to Peter Abelard)

Blog in a Bottle

I do believe a castaway on a deserted island would reach more people by putting a message in a bottle than he would by posting a blog on the internet.

Part 6: Becoming Cold Hearted

Not long after I wrote "Unpopular," I met a young woman who was stepping out on her fiancé. She decided to have a fling with me, but she didn't tell me that I was only fling material (or that she had a fiancé) until after I had started to like her. I was quite unhappy with her. As a result, I wrote:

January 21, 1989, Sioux Falls, SD: "Discovering who I am as a social being in this world seems sometimes naturally to tie in with the universal/spiritual aspects of existence. The struggle for love, loving, and being loved does not always lead to the betterment of the persons involved. More than enough bad experiences can cloud a person's view of the limited good in this world, and consequently cause him to become as bad himself. When he survives lost love, or the discovered absence of love in an intimate partner, without suffering too much pain and, on top of that, moves straight into vengeful contentment as a result of his cold treatment of that partner, that may be socially and personally beneficial to him, but what does it do to him spiritually? I have justified my actions along these lines by saying that I am teaching her a benevolent lesson for having played around with my feelings simply for her own happiness. In my heart that is the truth.

"But a more worrisome result of my successful reaction toward her (successful because I am out of pain) is the fact that I am now able, at will, to prevent the universal flow of love from moving through me. I realize, to my sorrow, that I can give it too easily to the wrong person, and, at other times, take it away again from everyone now, without much difficulty. What happens if I ever find the "right person"? Will I have as little difficulty treating her in the same rude manner, and then be unable to retrieve the love I have compromised?"

Part 5: Unpopular

Two years after my soul mate left, I was living far away from the place we had met, working as a bartender.

One day (Saturday, August 20, 1988), after acting a little more "light-hearted" than of one of my coworkers could tolerate, I wrote:

"Sometimes it's a relief to realize that you are not well-liked by certain people. The sinking feeling that results is almost like being punched in the face: It hurts at first, but then numbness sets in. You can feel good about being alone after making such a discovery.

"She sent me into exile; but the more I feel rejected by all others the more the exile hurts. I had the one person who loved me for simply being me, and now I have to hate her if I wish to survive with what little is left of my sanity. I also hate myself, but it manifests itself in my lack of interest in my unpopularity -- or, rather, in the unpopularity of some of my actions (I just don't know how to be serious around anyone anymore). She left me to my own devices, and I am sinking under their weight. Oh well. Many, many lives have been lived meaninglessly, so I won't feel too unique in my failure to harmonize with anyone else. In the meantime I am alone, and suddenly it hurts again."

Part 4: The End

May 21, 1986: I woke up in great pain. She called this morning and requested that I meet her in the parking lot of a nearby grocery store (since her parents were in town helping her to move away). My roommate drove me to the store to meet her. He and I each gave her a note. She gave me a note too. The exchange lasted only a few minutes. She tried to ignore my pain.

Her note read: "Dummy, I want you to forget me. just give up. I knew it wouldn't work. I am not brave enough to talk to them and they are not also brave enough to talk about it or to face the truth. Please try to forget me in a good way and go on with you life. I will always going to think about you and you will be the only love in my whole life.

"I love you [signed in Farsi] "I am so truely sorry it ended this way."

My roommate visited with her later in the day at her house (where I couldn't go). He told me that she had been crying constantly in front of her family and had lost between five and ten pounds in just a few days, but they pretended not to notice her condition.

May 22, 1986: In spite of her note of two days ago, I was determined to keep a months' long promise to her that I would speak to her father to show him my sincerity. I approached him in the grocery store, scared out of my mind. He was alone. He couldn't speak English, and I could speak only five or ten words of Farsi (silly words that she had taught me and which did me absolutely no good in that situation). But it worked. The next day he and one of her brothers met me in the city park (why there, I don't know). The brother, whom I had met months earlier in happier times, was there to act as translator. I spent an hour pouring my heart out to them, but I was severely handicapped by her requirement that I not admit to having been in her company since last fall (she had promised them). They were very polite, but they had already made up their minds. They also told me that she had promised them, prior to their coming to the park, that she would honor their wishes and end the relationship (and to move away forever, as had been planned since before she moved to town). She has asked them to pass that message on to me.

I had wasted my breath. I had been courageous in a lost cause. I had been abandoned by my ally during the heat of battle.

I can almost remember not feeling my body as I stood there and watched them drive away.

May 24, 1986: I awoke at 5:20 A.M. and went to my post in the alley behind my house (by sheer coincidence, she lived in a house that was only 100 yards away). I watched them pack their possessions into two cars. She saw me and looked my way on a few occasions, but only when she was certain no one would see her doing so. Shortly before they were to leave forever, I passed a very angry note to her through her back-yard fence. That in itself was quite a dangerous undertaking. In order to get it to her, I gestured with my arm that I was going to meet her at the corner of the fence in her back yard. I had to go the long way around, so no one in her large family would see me. The house next to hers had a large wooden fence bordering the alley, which kept me hidden. Just as I approached the end of that fence and was peeking around the corner of it into her yard, a very large dog began barking from the other side of the wooden fence, scaring the hell out of me. I was already scared to death that someone in her family would see me... I was quite surprised to find her waiting there to grab the note through the wire. I said a single angry sentence to her, and her only words were to warn me to leave before I got caught. This I did. I can no longer remember how I learned her reaction to my note, but it seems that she may have called me (for just a few seconds) to tell me how mean I was in the note (a first for me). I certainly did not apologize.

At 7:50 AM, not long after I gave her the note, they left in two different cars.

Just like someone who has been smashed head on by a speeding truck -- but is still conscious -- I was in complete shock. I knew very well what I would be feeling soon. Until that time arrived, though, I knew I would just have to suffer with the knowledge and dwell on tasks of the moment.

As I remember that day, I can still see her family as they drove out of town. I watched helplessly from the sidewalk. Her father just happened to see me from the car he was riding in. I wanted to see him dead. As she looked at me from the back seat of her car, I had absolutely no ability to do or to think anything. I just stared.

Then she was gone.

I was left standing at the entrance to the alley by my apartment.

The rest of the day is a strange combination of vivid clarity and vague confusion. I remember storming up the walk, through the gate and into the house. As I headed down the stairs into my very cold and empty dungeon apartment, I immediately decided to shave off my mustache. In a happier time she had jokingly told me she would leave me if ever I shaved it off. In the end it was I who would shave it off because she had left me. It was a completely empty gesture on my part, but I must have thought it was the only way to make as much of an instant identity change as possible. If I could see myself in even the slightest way as a different person, then I might actually fool my self-destruct mechanism for a while longer.

I stared into the mirror, as I had done so many times before when considering making this move (before I had met her); however, this time I debated only for a moment. I quickly set to the task before I could stop myself. After three years of uninterrupted claim to my upper lip, the mustache did not come off easily. I worked very hard and very angrily. The anger was an extremely vain and intentional attempt to prevent the onset of the pain that I knew was going to come no matter what.

Finally, I was free of it. I was naked, as I had not remembered seeing myself in three years. It was as if I had taken myself back to a time long before I knew her. In this way my mind had a memory upon which it could attempt to concentrate, thereby extending my shock and numbness a little further. I wondered how people would look at me now. It seemed that the rest of my face had sagged in the past three years, and my upper lip stayed too young and puffy under its time capsule. What would she think if she came back suddenly, unable to leave me after all? What would she say when she saw it gone? She would know she had better say nothing.

But I knew she would not return.

I continued in my effort to erase her from my life. I went immediately into my bedroom and began deliberately to remove from my sight every bit of her memorabilia, the stuff she had given me: the Valentine heart; the ring; a hand-woven shawl; a crystal bird; a seashell from the Gulf of Mexico, plus numerous other trinkets of affection. I stuffed them all into a small drawer where they could not taunt me, and where I could violate their meaning by pretending I had never had them. I hated what they stood for even as I put them away. During this time I labored to think ahead in terms of physical tasks, specifically those that would purge her from my memory. I had to work quickly. If I could build just enough protection to hinder temporarily the major onslaught of pain which I felt coming, I might... No, I had no idea what might happen. I was just reacting much the same as a chicken does which has just had its head cut off. I was running around completely lost, with the ultimate end already past.

I looked around at this room of mine which had held so many exquisite memories, and I decided to move everything to my roommate's room. He had graduated from college and had moved out of the apartment only two days earlier to return home. He had given me more support and assistance than anyone else who actually knew about her and me. Now he was gone, at a time when I needed company most of all.

So I worked.

And I worked to exhaustion for the rest of the morning and afternoon, the whole time wondering why I was feeling compelled to move out of my room, a room that I really liked. In the end, it was a meaningless gesture, just as meaningless as shaving off my mustache (it may even have been harmful).

I didn't move far enough away.

But at that time I couldn't leave town. I demanded of heaven that her phone call should come at any time, because I knew she couldn't continue this total farce in the face of all the pain she had to be feeling. If her pain was anything remotely similar to the pain which I was denying (so far), then she couldn't go far without calling me. It had caused her to do so many times before.

During the transfer of items from one room to the other and at various other times that day (all day, actually), I talked to myself, and to any good spirits who might have been anywhere near, in the harshest, most hateful manner. Keep in mind that I swore very little in those days (still don't) and never for public consumption.

"Life! F*** life! F*** love! What a joke we all are! This is it. This is what's meant for me. I had better accept it. Yep. Yep. Yep... Oh, my God! No! I won't think it! No! I am alone now. She betrayed me. She broke her promise. No! I won't even think about it! Oh, no. Now, if I move that stand over here... F*** it all! I had better not think for the rest of my life."

And that was how the task-filled day went. Nighttime was what I feared most.

When it came - and it did come - I couldn't breathe. Plain and simple. I doubled up in bed and couldn't breathe. I was being asphyxiated. I couldn't breathe, and there was no one who could help me. I had never been so conscious before in my entire life. I was the focal point of pain and existence. I existed. The pain existed, and there was no separation of the two. The entire sum of humanity, the spirits of those who had suffered excruciatingly slow, merciless deaths, who had prayed desperately for deliverance and received none, descended upon my room that night to paint a tapestry of reality as I had only distantly imagined it before. And I doubled up even further, gasping for air, but not wanting the life it would continue to bring to me. God, bring temporary sleep at least, permanent sleep at most.

Part 3: One of Her Notes to Me

It didn't take long for us to admit that we were desperately, painfully in love with one another. The painfully part was a result of the knowledge that we would not be able to have a life together. She told me that her family would most likely not approve of her relationship with me -- for reasons that I won't go into here, but also for reasons known only to the unfathomable Iranian mindset and culture. They were socially liberal compared to other Iranians, but they weren't socially liberal compared to Americans. She was practically a feminist in her approach to politics and career, but she was almost primitive in her beliefs when it came to respecting the wishes of her parents, even when it was contrary to her own well being and happiness. They told her that she had responsibilities and obligations that outweighed her own needs and desires in life. In spite of the terrible effects this had on her (and even more so on me because my fate rested in her hands), she told me she would most likely follow their wishes, even if it killed her -- and even if it killed me.

February 12, 1986:
Every weekday afternoon since October, without fail, we had a ninety-minute conversation on the phone. Today, however, I had to stay in the library to study for much longer than usual, so we couldn't have our usual daily visit. Eventually, I couldn't stand it any longer, so I called her from a pay phone at the college. She was just ridiculously happy to hear from me. This evening in the library, as we sat at separate tables, she thanked me in a note. I have left her own spelling in the note because it adds to her personality (by the time she had arrived in the U.S., she already had a master's degree in two subject areas -- she is a bit older than I -- but she voluntarily enrolled in high school here in order to learn English).

Her note: "I love you. I love you. I love you for calling today. Now I know that you were going through the same pain as I was in. I realy don't know if I'll be able to live without you. You surrounded me with yourself, with your love, with your thoughts, and even with your notes (writings). There is no way that I be able to come out of this prison [of love], and I am not sure if I want it to. I am sitting here looking in my book and thinking about you, and I can feel that how much I need you. And then I look at you (sitting in the other table) to be sure that you exist and you are not only in my head. I look at you carefuly to realize if he is the one that my heart beating for. Or he is the one that occupying all my heart and brain. That small tiny young boy with a big smile always in his face for me!

"When my sister was telling me that how different we two are, and I will see these differences on time, I almost accepted her. That time I thought maybe I am really fulling [fooling] myself with being in love with you. But the things is like from the beginning which I didn't had any control on my feeling. I still don't have any control to see any differences or any false [faults] about you. And even if I see them I still don't have any control on not loving you because of them. I love you the way you are with you strengths and with your weaknesses, with your beuties and with you false. You are going to be mine and only mine one day.

"I love you forever."

Part 4: The End

Part 2: First Meeting

In those days, I was incredibly afraid to be rejected, especially by someone with whom I was in love. We spent nearly a month falling in love with one another from a distance several days and nights every week in the library. I knew it couldn't go on this way for much longer, or I would lose her

October 8, 1985:

I went to the library around 10:30 AM to wait for her. After a month of ever increasing paralysis, which had been growing in direct proportion to my love for her, I was in terrible shape. I felt I had to speak to her before she began to think I was a complete loser. But how? What could I say to the only girl (woman?) I had ever really been in love with, especially when she seemed to be just as much in love with me? You would think the answer would be obvious, but it wasn't.

Then again, what if I had been wrong all along, and she really felt nothing for me? That would be unpleasant.

But I knew that wasn't true.

I sat on a couch on in the very center of the library's second floor, surrounded by twenty empty tables, and tried to read the assigned novel for my World Literature class. It was impossible to concentrate because I knew she would be showing up at any time. I would read one paragraph at a time, closing my eyes in between each one in an effort to build up some courage for her inevitable arrival. Suddenly, much too soon, I looked up, and there she was! Sitting at a table right beside my couch! closer than she had ever been before! With a library full of empty tables, she chose to sit down right next to me. It appeared she had thrown down the gauntlet and was waiting for my response.

I cannot remember what I did upon seeing her. I might have smiled a hello and looked quickly down at my book in panic, or I might simply have looked down at my book in panic without smiling hello to her, or I might have pretended I just didn't see her (actually, I don't remember if she was even looking at me when I first saw her), or maybe I partially fainted, since all but the minutest amounts of life-sustaining blood remained above knee level. She was so close! Far too close! Now I really had to talk to her. I hadn't expected her to get this close. If she had sat farther away, I might have escaped with some feeble excuse for not talking. But not now. It was zero hour. The conditions may never be so good again, especially if she gets frustrated enough with me after this "invitation" never to give me another chance. For at least an eternity (or ten minutes of it anyway) I sat there studying my novel harder than I had ever studied any novel before, contemplating each thought, giving almost all of my attention to that difficult assignment. No one ever worked harder without seeing a word of what he was reading.

Occasionally, I leaned my head back on the couch, faking apparent frustration over the difficulty of my assignment. In reality I was completely miserable over my inability to speak to her. My words to her (whatever they were about) were tumbling around in my stomach, trying to decide in what order they should come out. My throat tried in vain to pull them up, regardless of any order, regardless of what message they would convey. My brain hid in a corner of my head and tried, also in vain, to think of something relevant to say. I was an uncoordinated mass of idiocy.

She sat there the whole time just reading her book. Occasionally she would laugh silently at something she read.

"Maybe that's it! Maybe I should think of some tactful way to ask her what's so funny without appearing to be too nosy, or, worse, without her thinking that I had been watching her long enough to notice her laughing."

I looked at her once again, probably for the fourth or fifth time, but this time our stares collided. Before panic had time to paralyze me again, she asked, "Do you think it is cold in here?" in the most unbelievably beautiful accent I have ever heard. My goose bumps almost bring tears to my eyes as I recall her voice.

Composure! Composure! I made a valiant effort to maintain my composure. The words came out quickly.

"No, it seems pretty hot to me," I said.

I wasn't exaggerating, and I wasn't trying to be funny. My heart was racing so fast that I thought I looked uncontrollably spastic. Then before the moment was gone forever, and I died a geriatric bachelor, I asked, "What are you reading that's so funny?"

"My computer textbook."

"A computer book that's funny?" I asked in all honesty.

She read to me the part she thought was funny. I couldn't understand her, so I jumped up and practically ran to her table to read it for myself. I knew I was being ridiculously obvious, since I had used such a feeble excuse (she later confirmed this for me), but I didn't care. I had made it!!!

She explained that the author knew how boring it was to read about computers, so he tried to be humorous on occasion. I read the passage she had laughed at. It wasn't funny to me, but I smiled as best I could. I did wonder about the significance of that passage though. It was describing the computer language PASCAL, and the example text ended with the words, "I love you." Coincidence, of course, but I still liked the odds of such a coincidence.

In all, we talked for about 45 minutes. It was as if we had always been the best friends in the world, and the past month had never happened. We talked as if we had just met (by mutual silent agreement, I suppose), yet we were completely comfortable with one another. We laughed and joked and were never at a loss for words. I never even said anything stupid because of nerves, a fact which was very surprising considering how I felt about her.

Early on, I had asked her where she came from.

"Eee-rohn," she had replied. Iran.

So much for my intuition. I was probably in love with a fanatic.

She told me that she and her family had left her country, because they had lived according to a more western, liberal outlook on life. Such a lifestyle isn't popular in Iran.

Thank you! Thank you! She wasn't a fanatic! [I was stupidly naive about Iranians at that time. Most of them are wonderful people.]

Her voice and accent were incredibly beautiful. I remained completely amazed by them throughout our conversation. She was about 65 percent fluent in English, by my estimates, which added just the perfect amount of mystery to her words, without making them too confusing.

Finally, it was time for her to go to lunch.

The evening of that same day, we both came back to the library and found one another again. We spent the whole evening visiting with one another. It was as if we were two halves of the same whole (so very trite, but so very true), so alike were we in so many ways, best friends from birth -- even from before birth. It was impossible to believe that we had just met and were products of nearly incompatible cultures. Just being near her was cure enough for the pain and the emptiness that had afflicted me for so many years.

Part 3: One of Her Notes to Me

Part 1: My Soul Mate: First Encounter

Intro: The problem with trying to describe events that are outside of normal human experience is the fact that human language cannot describe them accurately. The following "autobiographical sketch" is an attempt to describe such an event. It is entirely true. It contains no exaggerations. In fact, it is severely understated.

The original draft of this section of my diary (old-fashioned off-line diary) contains many chapters. I have included small parts of only four chapters here.

Setting: I was in college at the time. The story takes place in the college's library, where I studied on a daily basis. I was 24 years old and just beginning my second year at this particular institution, after having transferred from another college (and after skipping a couple of years). My best friend (who was also my roommate) and I were trying to study and visit at the same time (never an easy task). We had long since given up on hoping to meet any attractive women in the library. Very few of them ever set foot in there.

One day, though, a woman did set foot in the library...

September 10, 1985:

I first saw her out of the corner of my eye and looked up just as she was approaching our table. The transition from mundane to mystical was immediate. The instant my eyes focused on her, my heart pounded a single giant beat. Not two giant beats, not ten, nor twenty, but just one giant beat. It was such a strange physical reaction that I immediately knew it signified that something incredibly important had just happened. My recognition of her was instantaneous and intense. It was as if I was seeing someone again that I thought I had lost for all eternity, only I didn’t remember her until I saw her again. Never before or since has a woman caused such a reaction in me.

Nothing would ever be the same again.

I stared at her. I very plainly and blatantly stared at her as she approached, and I wanted her to see me staring. Not three seconds had passed since I first saw her, yet I was caught by an emotion unlike any I had ever felt before.

She was with another girl. They passed within inches of our table, directly in front of me, and sat down facing me at a table about twelve feet to my right. For every second that I stared at her, the intensity of my feelings increased. I was so completely happy to see her “again” (for it truly did feel like “again”) that I had the wildest urge to run over and hug her. I was convinced that she would feel the same way about me, too, if only she would look at me.

Both girls appeared to be foreigners. I theorized that they might be from India; although with my luck (I have always given due deference to my bad luck), they could just as easily be from Iran, the land of religious fanatics. That might prove to be a cultural obstacle. When I explained this theory to my roommate later, I added that I didn't care where she came from nor how fanatical she might be. She could have been carrying a grenade launcher on her shoulder, and I would still have been in love with her. My feelings were completely out of my hands in this matter.

Shortly after she arrived, my roommate left to read a magazine. I do not remember his leaving, nor do I remember having said anything to him about her (although my not saying something would have been completely out of character). He simply disappeared from my consciousness like smoke in the wind.

I unconsciously examined "my foreign lover" from head to toe, as she approached and walked past. She was just slightly overweight (mostly around her bottom side), maybe twelve pounds or so. This fact would have been a significant negative in my usual shallow calculations of what constituted beauty. But this time, for the first time in my young life, I did not care. She was beautiful. Her flaws, if she had any, were beautiful too. A very soft face, a beautiful face, but not spectacularly so. This abandonment of my usual shallow standards was another fact that convinced me I was feeling that one and only legitimate emotion that heaven calls love.

She was wearing a very simple, yet attractive, cotton, one-piece summer dress. She was very skilled at converting simplicity into elegance. Her jet black, nearly shoulder-length hair was combed straight, and she appeared to be wearing no makeup. She definitely did not need any.

Her companion was quite a bit younger than she, but was just as pretty. She was either a sister or a daughter. I didn't have time to care which one she was. If she happened to be a daughter, then it only made me love her mother more. I don't know why it did, but it did. The potentially negative consequences of her being a daughter -- that she might have a father out there somewhere -- really didn't bother me at first, because my brain didn't have time to grasp such a possibility, and, second, because I soon noticed that her mother, my soul mate, was not wearing a wedding ring. This was too good to be true, yet it appeared that it was, indeed, true. My lifelong journey through the parched desert was about to come to an end. I saw paradise ahead.

I continued to give my full attention to her. Whatever work I had been doing (or trying to do) was completely forgotten. I smiled happily at her every time she looked up (which was not often). I knew that my incessant staring must eventually have become obvious to her, but I could not make myself stop, nor did I want to. In fact, I desperately wanted her to see me staring so that she would become "infected" by the same emotions I felt. I was sure that she would be, once she had "recognized" me the way I had "recognized" her.

Such "forward" behavior normally went completely against my personality. In fact, until she walked into my life, I had seldom ever had the courage to try to get an attractive girl’s attention, unless there was a legitimate reason to do so. I could not have stood the rejection. Yet, now, it didn’t even enter my mind that she might not feel the same way about me as I felt about her.

The constant and overt displays of affection that passed between these two beautiful women throughout the evening only served to make me fall even more in love than I already was (I had never seen such unabashed love exhibited by anyone else in my entire life). The younger girl did much less studying. Instead, she was more interested in hugging the one that I wanted to hug. The younger one often stood behind her companion and put her arms around her neck in the most loving manner. The one who was being hugged smiled beautifully, happily and reciprocated as best she could. At other times the "hugged one" eagerly helped the hugger with her school work. I was deeply moved by the beautiful displays of love I saw that evening.

How I longed to be a part of their lives.

It was for this reason that I finally started staring beyond the limits of propriety. It took a while, but she finally noticed my excessive attention, and she unexpectedly broke out in a humored, flattered, confused laugh and actually shaded her eyes in embarrassment and lowered her head back toward the book she was reading. I smiled with absolute abandon and happiness. I was not at all embarrassed by my actions, even though I should have been. For the rest of the evening, I was unable and unwilling to wipe that smile off of my face. But my reactions didn't stop at a smile.

As soon as she realized that I was interested in her, my body began shaking and wouldn't stop. It wasn’t a nervous shaking. Instead, it was something completely different, as if my body were suddenly producing five times more adrenaline than usual, and I was overdosing. I had no control over it. My roommate returned to the table a minute or two after she had caught me staring, and I showed him, with what little control I had, what my condition was. I held one of my hands in front of me, and it was shaking visibly. I told him why it was happening. Even as I talked, I couldn't quit smiling. I would have exploded if I could have.

As I continued to watch her, I soon realized that my efforts had not been entirely in vain, for an interest of some sort seemed to take hold of her. After she caught me staring at her, she began watching me too, whenever she thought she could get away with it.

Try as I might, I cannot now recall how long she remained in the library. The events have blurred. It seems that it all happened in less than fifteen minutes, but it must have been at least an hour or two. I cannot even remember going home. I'm sure my roommate didn't hear the end of it until I passed out from exhaustion that night.

As I drifted off to sleep that night, I could not get one thought out of my head:

"That heartbeat... That one giant heartbeat... Wow."

Part 2: First Meeting

The Other Side of the Fence

A young, married diarist wrote an interesting entry the other day. In it, she admits that she is occasionally curious about the color of the grass on the single side of the fence. She's not the first married person to be afflicted with that same curiosity. In fact, I think the majority of them experience that curiosity. I've met and debated the issue with quite a few married people. For what it's worth, here is my two-cent opinion about the grass on this, the single side of the fence. Are you ready?

It stinks. It's miserable. It's a lot of show and no substance -- and sometimes there's not even any "show" (the young diarist described grass on the single side perfectly as astroturf).

Single life is lonely. [I would type that sentence in size billion typeface, if I could, but then you'd be scrolling to China to reach the rest of this story.]

Really, really lonely.

Really.

You could have fifty friends with whom you get together at least once or twice a month to visit and have parties (that was the case with me until I moved recently), but, since most of those friends are married, the visits frequently tend merely to accentuate your loneliness in the end. All societies are centered on the institution of marriage. The longer some people remain unmarried, the lower their self-esteem goes. It cannot be helped. You eventually begin to imagine that people (even other single people) are looking at you as if there is something wrong with you, because you cannot find someone to marry. In order to avoid their seemingly judgmental gaze, you start to avoid them, thus increasing your sense of loneliness even further.

[For the record, I'm not some homely misfit who never stood a chance with people in general, or women in particular. I have been (was?) quite the opposite for most of my adult life.]

Some of you may be convinced that you would never suffer from loneliness if you were single. While it may be true that some college-age singles (or those a year or three beyond college) are generally not lonely, it becomes more and more unavoidable as you get older. Why? Because it takes more than just you to tango.

It goes something like this:

As a single person, you might as well accept the fact that your friends, one by one, are going to get married as the years pass (usually within only two or three years of one another). As married people, they will give you fewer and fewer opportunities to get together with them. Their spouses and children will come first (as it should be), and TV (also known as mindless relaxation after an exhausting day of work and family) will come second. Once or twice a month, their consciences may get the better of them, and they will invite you to their houses for supper or drinks. However, sixty percent of their activities during your visit will be devoted to domestic issues (arguments, crying children, meal preparation, phone calls, etc.). You will soon feel as if you are really nothing more than a court-appointed charity case who is being given a free meal and a cursory visit in order to ease your friends' guilty consciences.

I can hear some of you now, saying that this won't happen to you. You'll just be sure to meet new, single friends. That sounds good in theory; but it is difficult in practice. You will soon realize that most adults your age, even the billions of adults that you don't know, are either blissfully engaged or stoically married. And, worst of all -- EASILY THE VERY WORST OF ALL -- when you reach the age of 30 (at nearly the speed of light when viewed in hindsight), the "younger" crowd, the crowd you most closely identify with, the crowd that proudly called you one of their own just a few years earlier, will look at you as if you are out of your mind for even thinking of trying to associate with them. Since you don't feel 30 (every single 30-year-old feels as if he or she is still 21), this unfair banishment will hurt like hell. You will eventually find yourself sitting on a barstool in your favorite young-adult bar, visiting with the extremely busy 22-year-old bartender (who is only humoring you because he or she is paid to do that). Soon you won't have the heart to return to that scene anymore, unless you are a glutton for punishment, or are considering the benefits of becoming a lonely old alcoholic (I am neither a glutton for punishment, nor a lonely old alcoholic, although I sometimes weigh the pros and cons of becoming the latter).

A few of you may be lucky enough to meet another single adult (someone just like yourself) with whom you can kill time (for time killing is what it really boils down to); however, single adults are extremely rare. Don't hold your breath while waiting to run into such a person. Also, don't think that they are magically going to make your single life worth living just because they are single too. You'll just end up being unhappy together.

You could continue to date single adults your own age; however, they are even more rare than single friends (this odd fact seems to be an unusual variation of Murphy's Law). On those few occasions that you are lucky enough to date someone, you may wake up one day to the realization that you are "recklessly" tap dancing on that slippery slope that leads to the vertical precipice overhanging marriage, which would defeat the purpose of living that single life that you are admiring from afar. Wouldn't it? :-)

Finally, there is a fourth choice: You could hang out with people who are still single because they are the most pitifully hopeless social misfits on earth. They are more common in our society than "normal" single people. And don't be too sure that you are skillful enough to avoid them. They don't always look like pitifully hopeless social misfits at first. Many of them put on a good show just long enough for you to show a passing interest in them. Once you've done that, you're trapped -- unless you heartlessly tell them to leave you alone (which I cannot do; so, therefore, I have finally decided to live the life of a virtual recluse).

As you may have concluded by now, everyone basically has two choices in life, both of which lose a lot of their luster with time: remaining single or getting married. Based on my years of observations of married couples, as well as on my personal experience with single life, I believe that married life is the vastly preferable choice, even with its large list of drawbacks.

Before concluding this commentary, I must make one clarification: Remaining single, even with all of its drawbacks, is vastly preferable to one particular type of marriage. That type is the one in which someone gets married just for the sake of being married. I would rather live a terribly lonely single life than one in which I "just settled" for the next available woman (I trust that it is unnecessary to explain why this is so). Since graduating from high school (and college, too, for that matter), I have had more opportunities to "just settle" than I care to remember (and a few opportunities in which I would have been ecstatic to be with certain women, but I was too stupefyingly chicken to approach them). I was always too kind hearted to hurt a woman's feelings by breaking up with her (if the attraction wasn't mutual), so I very foolishly passed up on a lot of dating opportunities. I was always worried that I would remain too kind hearted to one of these women all the way up to the point where the preacher says, "And you may now kiss the bride."