sometimes it seems... like it would be worthwhile to give up on love. it hasnt gotten me anywhere good in years. as for now its a silly little high school attraction with no real upside to me. an avenue to lonliness i suppose. but still, there are nights like tonight when im driving through the city while the sun is dying out, windows down, blasting bass-driven britpoprock like i had never heard it before (and i hadnt)... chasing some girl in a red jetta through the outskirts of downtown. i dont know who she was. all i know is that she was a young girl with dark hair that was put up in a red jetta, the drivers side window halfway down. im not sure if i was trying to impress her or hope that she might somehow... recognize the music and wave at me. doubtful, that. but i enjoyed it immensly just riding there, almost fast, but not, watching her drive and imagining she could hear me. its invaluable in times like that to have a recorder on you somewhere to catch all those little inbetween thoughts that occur at so many frames per second, like streaming emotive audio for the man reading the monologue in my head. i remember that i pulled up alongside her and just ahead so that our windows werent looking through to each other cause that would be akward but enough so that she could hear... whatever it was playing. she would pull ahead and i would pull in behind her in the lane, wait at a light, go a ways, follow in the left lane again... you know. its just normal. she pulled back into the center lane and it made me wonder why. maybe she didnt want to hear me anymore? turned out she just needed to be there to exit onto the beltline in another mile. i passed her out in the blossoming-tree-shaded drive through the old black neighborhood and saw, in my rear view mirror that her right headlight was out. what does that mean? does she take care of her car at all? should that matter? the parking lights on either side still worked but still... as we emptied out past the stoplight and the dogfood plant that smells like fried chicken, into the sort of delta that the road opens into without actually opening, becoming a highway, i was still in the left lane and she in the far right. i slowed to watch her exit and caught a decent look at her face. pretty.

as we go back in time we find me proud to have parallel parked and not ticketed by the science museum and back farther, in there listening/watching the strings orchestra perform their last concert of the year. i knew at least five of the performers, being seniors, and it was all-in-all quite wonderful. the more memorable part of this, to me anyway, was who i was sitting with. when i walked in, i followed an older man and woman, a couple... parents... of some kid. followed them in, thanked the guy for holding the first door for me and then made sure to catch the second door quickly so a second thank you wouldnt be necessary. walked to the back, said hallo to a buddy of mine handing out programs (got wrangled into it i presume, got there early and someone handed him the job) and eventually into the little hall. i usually sit near the door on the right-hand side in the back but this time a seat was taken back there. i scanned real quick cause i was supposed to tell a girl there to hold seats for people but she had plenty. this freshman girl, a former goalie on my sisters soccer team, was sitting back there. i was surprised to see her... i mean i know who she is and played it off like i did even though i couldnt remember her name for the life of me (i eventually asked her and she told me, i swore i knew it all along, she poked me in the leg) so i high fived her and sat down two seats down. i held that spot for maybe five seconds before i decided to move down to the single seat between her and the right wall, i liked that spot better. and anyway, it was closer to her, we were supposed to - by now - at least associate, and she is very pretty in a strange, badkid, foreign kind of way. big brown eyes, that one. and throughout the show, there was some kind of tension. we never really talked all year but recently she has been saying hello in the hallways, or getting fives in front of her friends. i thought it was cool and kind of imagined she was because she was getting attention from a senior, i never even glanced at her friends. maybe thats just me building myself up. i always worried about how i was sitting. i didnt want to seem too stand off-ish or too lazy or uptight or open to her in any inappropriate way you know. i overthink things like that. i would lean over and rest my arms on my knees, read the program, lean back and fold my arms, look over and survey the crowd. when i did that i could feel out of the corner of my eye her looking at me like i was going to look at her. i just scanned back over forward and paid attention some more. im not sure why these things happen to me. a couple times she would rest her arms on the aptly named armrests and a finger would touch my leg. slowly, like it was intentional almost. i could feel the cold through my jeans once. strange. lots of rings and bracelets and earrings and big brown eyes. thats how most of it went. i would try and make a comment every now and then, just to say something. just to make it look like i was enjoying sitting there, a senior with a freshman he had hardly never spoken to before. the comments were never very good. somehow i didnt expect them to be, not with her. when it was over i asked her how she got there. apparently her mom had driven her but she still had to find a way home. i still regret not asking her where she lived, maybe i could have helped her out. i wish i had asked.

then of course i wouldnt have seen the girl in the red jetta with the one headlight, listened to the loud britpoprock music like i did with the windows down, taken that glance to the exit, or have been quite relaxed on the way home. then again, love isnt at all about being relaxed, is it?