Collisions
There are so many collisions throughout a lifetime. Even through a day, we may bump into this or that, may clip a wall by taking a corner too tight, or bump hips with a partner, or even just smash ideas together to see what new thoughts come of them.
Or perhaps it’s the way a car, lowered to close to the ground in order to show off at some car show, scrapes over each and every speed bump as it goes. Perhaps your truck floats gently along a slick of ice and bumps against the truck beside you on an icy February night’s drive. Perhaps it’s the collision of ideas, where your future husband thinks you’re dating your friend, who thinks you’re dating your future husband, and you think your friend is dating someone else. A collision of knowledge that leads to a tangled skein of relationships that never actually existed in the first place.
And, of course, a collision may be a simple knock against a friendship that sends the entire thing toppling over. You watch as, almost in slow motion, it totters on its base and then goes crashing down, shattering into thousands of pieces that go skittering across the floor — they never shatter on carpet, right? It’s bound to be on some marble or tile. The noise is fantastic. The mess is stupendous.
It begins with a comment, it seems, though perhaps the true beginning was some time sooner. It begins with you laying together on a bed while each of your partners plays around in the other room, the both of you cozied up under the covers in your much quieter bed. It begins with a few smug words from your very own Elihu.
“I’m honestly disappointed that you would do something like that.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like what you did with Younes.”
I frowned. “What about it? I didn’t even know that it was something you’d seen.”
“Why bother hiding it? I watch those artists, too,” she said.
“It felt personal.”
“What, appropriating the experiences of very real people? Pretending to be what you aren’t just to get your kicks?”
I don’t remember what I said. Perhaps a mumbled apology? I live a sometimes apology, after all. Perhaps I simply lay silent.
I like to think that it was the latter. I like to think that we settled into an awkward silence, even while the rest of ourselves remained there in comfort, there beneath the covers while our two partners played around in the other room, in some noisier bed.
That’s what I mean by a simple knock. I don’t know if we were under the covers. I don’t know if there was noise in the other room. Perhaps Andrew was simply showering while JD was asleep — I think he was working first shift at the time, so perhaps indeed. I don’t remember when this happened, though I do remember that it was this simple conversation that bumped its elbow against our friendship, sent it rocking back and forth, and eventually left it in pieces on our imagined tile.
It was this knock that led to her blocking one of my accounts on AOL Instant Messenger (which should do well to date this story) and forgetting about it, then forgetting and accusing me of blocking her. It was this blocking episode that led to her silently dropping most all contact with me. It was my wedding to JD in the interim (which should date it further; sometime in May)