Playing wrestling games with Laura.

"Oh you bitch!" she yelled at me. All I could do was laugh. I had learned so many new things about the girl I thought I knew, and this was one of them: Playing WWE vs Raw on XBOX 360. I learned she watched wrestling on TV often enough to be familiar with the Wrestlers and their moves. I learned she had favorites and knew the jargon of the ring, the heels, where the folding chairs were kept. I, by contrast, stopped watching WWF et al. wrestling in seventh grade.

We designed characters together, hers and mine which could have been reflections of how we see ourselves, or how we wish we looked--I was totally ripped and she was totally lithe. Than I selected a Diva on the character select screen and she selected the char she made of herself and told me I was dead. Bravado.

Then the match started and I Immediately ran to her and close-lined her, knocking her to the ground where I started pinning her.

"Oh you bitch!" she yelled as she mashed buttons furiously. I laughed as much from shock as pleasant surprise. Never had she called me a bitch, and she was referring to the character in the game--her competitive spirit was coming through on a game, another first. Usually she plays the games I am good at like Racing games and shooters where she prefaces before playing, "Ok, but I am really bad at these type of games..." But not this game, she is a champ at wrestling. It was probably the most fun I have had with her, in front of a TV, playing games, with my clothes on.

She went on to call me all sorts of bad things she had never before said to me, which not only made it ok, it made it fun. I learned which buttons made her mad and pressed them and she did it back to me. We tried new modes, new characters and new costumes. It really was a lot of fun. Far more fun than I expected, certainly.

What I remember most was learning about this new part of her that I didn't know existed, in fact hadn't known about it in the 13 odd years I had come to known her. I thought I knew everything about her see, and seeing this interest she had in wrestling--that she must have harbored it for years and not spoken about it--made me happy. Deliriously happy. :-DD

New years resolution

A beautiful girl came to visit me last week and the week before. She told me she loved me.

I love her. And now she is 2600 miles away in a winter wonderland.

Since she left, I stare out the window at the clouds sometimes. For hours. The clouds swirl you know. They don't move forward like in cartoons like someone moving a picture of a cloud across a table top. The clouds twist, bleed off into nothingness and are filled by the same collection of nothingness. I watched an airplane fly through the clouds on purpose. Then he banked and lined up and flew through it again. Than my mom came home and asked what I was doing.

"Nothing."

"How was your day?"

"It was alright." I lied. It wasn't alright. The day sucked. Mostly because while I was at work I knew that when I got home that girl I mentioned earlier wouldn't be there, as she had been the weeks before. And that colored the day rotten mushrooms. If I had told Mom the truth I would have to explain it and I would rather look at clouds. I think she already knew all this because she just squeezed my shoulder and walked away.

I couldn't watch the clouds anymore because it would draw attention to my miserable state. So I left to my room and listened to music, read a book and eventually tried to have fun playing Borderlands. I didn't get very far in any of those activities. They weren't fun. And they could not fill the hole her leaving had left me. So I stared out the window to the sky above. There weren't any clouds. But that is ok. I can wait.