A Human Moment in The Secret Writings of Eros: Book 3- Fallout, Pain, Acceptance, and Perseverance

I assume this happens to everybody. This has to be a universal human thing.

I was in the kitchen, just working on some stuff, when I saw my Personal Ritual Date Book. Consider it a calendar for private use.
Suddenly, my breath caught.
My heart stopped.
My eyes got big.
My mind raced around the question What day is it? Did I miss December 17th?

Now that reaction is a little extreme for such a meaningless ritual… but as this is the same ritual I do for other days… and this is one of the happier occasions for it, I don’t like missing it. And I figured I’d share it because it’s one of the happier days for it. So, allow me briefly to take you through.... a few stories.. to set it up.

First, I want to tell you about the ritual. The ritual itself is fairly new, new-ish, but I’ve expanded it’s use in ways that are… well… I’d say some are appropriate, others are not.

THE RITUAL

It came to me for the first time during my first anniversary after the split. It was one of the days that I had most meticulously planned. Before COVID destroyed everyone’s plans for anything of value. It was July 2nd, 2020. I was going to either be in Japan with my best friend… or if that trip was in August, I’d be in Colorado with one of my oldest friends… of if that trip clashed with her family’s 4th of July plans; I’d go home and see my oldest friends, my parents, and just… be somewhere with other people who loved me and knew me so I wouldn’t be spending that evening all alone at home. FUCKING. COVID. Because COVID… nope. No good. This was before Victoria (in most ways) even, so no COVID bubble. And my parents made no moves to contact me, of course. Hell, they couldn’t even be arsed to visit me when they said they would… something that has happened quite a few times in my life. So, there I am. At home. Alone. COVID lockdowns. I can hear children setting fireworks off at the Stadium down the street. And I realized that I needed to do something. Not… play video games, or read, or even masturbate. I’m sure I did do all of those things that night; but I needed to do something… different. Something to mark the occasion so that it didn’t pass by as yet another night of remaining alone in my home drowning in the abundant nothingness left by what the divorce took and what COVID took.

At this moment, I can’t remember if I had these ingredients or ventured a trip out to buy them Contactless and all that. But I found myself in possession of a bottle of Midori and a bottle of Tequila Rose. And I poured two shots (I started with shots; I’ve since moved to tumblers).
In one, I saw a bright electric green. A drink I’d used many times in my effort to create an “Easy At Home Cocktail” that would be suitable for the name SMILEX. Midori just makes sense with the color to be used in a cocktail dedicated to the Joker’s Green Killing Gas. I’d used it many times to various degrees of success. Often requiring my ex-wife’s pallet and getting into creative conversations of what could be tried. But the biggest thing I can tell you about my experiences with Midori? As much as I like it, too much is too much. It has this sickly sweet flavor to it that I like but… FUCK, if I try to drink that like I drink rum or whiskey, I get sick of the taste before I ever feel drunk!
In the other, I saw a swirling pink cloud. A drink I hadn’t used often for many things. Honestly, the few times I’d tried it, I liked it. Felt like a far more socially acceptable and palatable way of drinking tequila… at least for a WASP white stick in his ass like me. The drink itself had no particular history or deep connection to anything in my past that I could figure. Just a pretty color that looked a bit like a cloud of a drink in the glass.

And what came to me has been the center of this ritual since its inception. Borne from my assessment of each drink in front of me.
The Midori is the Past. It’s sweet. It’s nice. But too much is never a good thing. You don’t want to spend so much of your time and energy focused on the past that you forget to live, or plan, or do anything. A lesson that, if you’ll remember, is kind of important to me. Appreciate your past. Learn from your past. Grow from it. But don’t obsess over it. Don’t spend all of your time there. Midori: The Past: It’s sweet, but too much of it ruins it.
The Tequila Rose is the Future. It’s cloudy. It looks nice. It isn’t bad to the taste. But you can’t see through it. And any time you’re talking tequila? Even if you know what’s coming when you have too much; you know it isn’t a good thing! Tequila Rose: The Future: It’s cloudy, but it can be nice.

Thus came the ritual. On certain days of important significance to my past and my future… I pour a tumbler of each. And as I drink the Midori (order matters!). I give myself permission to spend a moment thinking about that past. Contemplating what the day means to me from a historical perspective. Remembering the good, the bad. Sitting with it. But only for a moment. Only until the glass is empty and the taste is gone. And then I drink the Tequila Rose. I give myself permission to spend a moment thinking about the future. Contemplating what this day could mean in future years. Imagining the good, the bad. Accepting that I need to plan to make things happen; while acknowledging that some things are out of my control. Sitting with it. But only for a moment. Only until the glass is empty and the taste is gone. And then I sit, with the two empty glasses. My life no better nor worse for the time I took doing this intentional action. And I take another intentional action. A mindfulness exercise. To remind myself that while I have given proper respect to the past, and proper thought to the future, I must now live in the moment. Or do as best as I can.

SO that’s the ritual. Now I do it on certain days that are especially meaningful to my past. The Wedding Anniversary. The date of the Divorce. My Birthday. There are a few marking certain things about the “relationships” with Victoria and Essen, as well. But then you have December 17th. December 17th and my birthday are the only two ritual dates that predate even meeting my now-ex-wife. Everything else comes from after that moment. Which is noteworthy for a few reasons; but none more so then this: I was marking (and remarking) on December 17th since decades before I’d envisioned The Ritual. Whether it was a Facebook Post, or something in a journal… I would always mark December 17th. It’s just now… or at least since July 2nd, 2020… I’ve had a more proper way of marking the day.

December 17th, 1999 was the day I asked out a girl for the first time and got a yes. NOW, it’s me so that statement comes with specific caveats. Because, tragically, it appears that far too many moments of my life were originally done through manipulation, coercion, or force. Strap in

WHY THE PREVIOUS DOESN’T COUNT

I will attempt to spare you the entire saga of the story as it is best told. There’s a really lovely coming of age bit that takes place over the summer months that rather thoroughly proves that stages of my sexual awakening predated some rather important stages of my mental and emotional maturity… but for this retelling I’ll skip all that. Suffice to say, I had my first “big boy crush” in the summer of 1995. Now, I’d had crushes before. I even remember the name of the longest lived crush I had… and yes, I think that specific girl set my “This is who you’re looking for” default. For years I had wanted (name withheld for her privacy) in the way of “I think she’s super pretty and smart and nice and funny and when she smiles I feel better about life, and her hair makes me think of Roma and she’s pretty.” So, I’d had crushes before. But this? THIS was “I don’t know why but I constantly find myself fantasizing about her in her swimsuit” kind of crush! When school started back up in the fall of 1995, I knew I wanted to do something about it! But I wasn’t sure exactly what. This was sixth grade in an elementary school system where 6th was the highest grade of elementary school… not part of a Middle School System at all. So there were no dances or anything like that at the school. So I didn’t know what to do. My friends were getting girlfriends. I… didn’t know much other than that I wanted THIS girl to be MY girlfriend… but I didn’t know how! So, I confided in a close female friend of mine. A mutual friend, actually. Hoping that someone who was friends with both of us would want was best for both of us and help US out by helping ME out. Now, at the time? I was one of those kids that had a small comb in my back pocket constantly. Religiously. And yes, I was a big fan of Grease. This Mutual Friend had told me that the girl I really liked? Was eternally annoyed by the comb. If I could ditch the comb; and prove that I could ditch the comb… then maybe, maybe, she’d help me out. So I had to go 31 days without the comb. And when I got home from school, this mutual friend would call me to verify that I’d gone all day without the comb. And would then irritate me by going on and on about her own day and stupid shit I didn’t care about… but I was raised that it was RUDE to say, “I don’t care. I’m done with this conversation. Bye.” So… every day for 31 days, I left the comb at home and endured these asinine phone calls. But I wanted my shot at this Girl. I have ALWAYS been dedicated and committed and when I make my mind up to go after something, I do it, damn it. SO… 31 days in. I reported in person. I’ve left the comb at home. For 31 days. That’s all done and over with. So, what are my chances? Which is when the mutual friend said the chances with my intended were zero, nil, never, not possible, would never happen. BUT… SHE had started to really enjoy our conversations and, now that I didn’t do that annoying comb thing, she wanted to go out with me… and wasn’t that better than nothing at all?

Well, my friends, I exhibited two logical breakdowns here.
(1) Sunk Cost Fallacy. I had gone through… 31 days… of behavior modification in order to get a girlfriend. Yeah, it wasn’t who I wanted… apparently, I didn’t stand a chance with who I actually wanted anyway, but maybe something was better than nothing.
(2) There has to be some kind of word, fallacy, or bias for this but I can’t find it. Group Think? Implied Peer Typing? I don’t know. I just thought, “I am literally the last one in my group of friends to not have a girlfriend.”

So… I agreed. I escorted her to her Campfire Girls dance which, ironically, was Sock Hop themed. And she said that now we were boyfriend and girlfriend and gave me an honest-to-god Glamour Shots photo for my wallet.

So, as much as that ENTIRE first experience SAYS SO MUCH about who I am, how things have gone in my life, and… is probably very bloody revealing. You’ll appreciate why I don’t “count it”.

THEREFORE

December 17, 1999 is the day I mark as The First Time I Asked Out a Girl and She Said Yes. And, if you read my other space or know me very well at all… you may have deduced that, yes, this girl from December 17th does have the same first name as the girl from the previous story. Which, just as a “fun with words” thing… is why Number 2 counts as my Number 1. I shan’t go into the details of that experience. It would be far too long with far too little pay off. As is the story of most moments of my life… it involved months of overthinking, determining that the person I really wanted to ask out was the more shy, aloof, intellectual who wasn’t as socially well-connected until she announced that she was moving out of State, so I decided to ask out the other girl I was considering asking to the dance. Now, when I say that, I mean very much NO disrespect to the person I did ask out! I had known her for years; found her exceptionally attractive… the truth is that she intimidated me a little bit. So, for the readers here, take that to the bank. YES, sometimes you aren’t being asked out because you’re exceptional.

Now, the long and the short of that actual experience is.... yes. I asked out a girl and she said yes. I had a date to a dance and enjoyed it immensely. I had a girlfriend for around three months. And we kissed. The pert, unexperienced, unexploring kiss of a child who’d never done it… but a kiss. BEcause I’m here might as well throw in the inner commentary: (The kind of kiss that would be the exclusively allowed kiss in my marriage many years later.) But… yeah. Obviously, the relationship ended. And not well. Made ever so much worse by MY actions and outlook… by her decisions regarding a joint business/performance gig… and our awkward situation of both being musicians in a Chamber Orchestra touring Austria not less than 4 months after our breakup. BUT December 17th is the first day I asked out a woman and she said yes. So I’ve marked it in some way ever since.

And this year, as years past, I shall mark it with The Ritual. I just… didn’t want to miss it this year because I was too busy.