if it all falls apart...

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15 july 1997

6:09 p.m.

Dear diary, Derek and I met up at Wisteria, talking over our particularly rough day at work over a pile of vegetable tempura. Rejuvenated somewhat by the green tea and the green tea-flavored ice cream for dessert, we headed into Waikiki, parking along the Ala Wai at Lewers and walking whichever way our toes pointed. We sat on the beach, ignoring the wet sand soaking through our clothes, and watched the dinner cruises and sailboats returning slowly to port. Every few seconds, the flash of a tourists' camera could be seen coming from one vessel or another, acting as makeshift stars dotting a horizon otherwise washed out with the murky orange glow of the city. Then someone got the bright idea to race back to my apartment, and -- before I even had a chance to empty my pockets of sand -- we were off. Aching and out of breath, we both collapsed against my door while I fumbled to find my keys. Eventually we stumbled in, and I put both my obnoxious steel box fans on high. We were sticky, but happy. Nothing smirk-worthy, save the Monkees, was on the tube, so I put on some Led Zeppelin and we just sat and laughed at ourselves. Derek announced he was going to take a shower. I, practically suffocating under my exhaustion, asked if I could join him. As the uncontrollable giggling subsided, I turned to look at him. He said yes. So I did. That night, no one scurried home at two in the morning. Finally. We whispered until near daybreak, he giving his blessing to tell you what we'd shared, and we headed out before sunrise to rescue my car -- accidentally forgotten five blocks away -- before it was towed during the daily 7 a.m. sweep. Coming into work, I distinctly remember actually being physically incapable of wiping The Smile off my face. I doubt there was a soul in the office, or even the ward, that couldn't guess what happened. And I didn't care. It figured. I had been worrying, dreaming, thinking about the moment, it seemed, forever. And right when I'd become so happy and content that I stopped second-guessing, planning and plotting, everything fell into place... More beautifully and perfectly than I imagined. And I imagined a lot. That was June 18. It was a Wednesday. I remember the date well, because the next day, Mary miscarried. She was only twelve weeks along. It's amazing to think how quickly and deeply someone -- and her friends, to be sure -- can get attached to something that isn't, or wouldn't have been, real for another six months. Derek called me at work. When I heard it was him on the phone, I was overflowing with joy, just short of religious rapture. The pet name I called him when I picked up the phone is too painfully embarassing to recall. I couldn't even begin to describe what the next six seconds felt like. That phone call, those words, and the chilling, nightmarish trip to the hospital that followed were to mark the beginning of the most harrowing, tumultuous, dizzying few weeks of my life. I know I say that a lot, but I really mean it this time. At first, Mary was playing it strong, but she wasn't doing it very well, and she couldn't keep it up for long. Sean, deeply heartbroken on his own, often found himself helpless when it came to trying to comfort her. Derek and I continued to spend every free moment together, but now for a different reason. We were on breakdown alert, afraid to hang around them for fear of intruding on their space, yet afraid to be out of reach, to be more than a page away from a hug or a calming, meandering drive up and down the hills of Pearl City. While the turmoil has subsided considerably since then, with Sean and Mary talking of another, carefully-planned and physician-guided try at parenthood, it was a bumpy month. And within a matter of days, it seemed like a thousand crises popped up from the most remote, long peaceful corners of my life. The next week, I got into a screaming match with a coworker who also happened to be a superior (by technicality, rather than seniority), the fallout from which included a series of memos and meetings with admin that ultimately ended in a "quit or you're fired" standoff. My resignation is effective this Friday, and I've been looking for a job since the first of July. Seemingly before the echoes of my fateful "don't tell me how to do my job" rant had even faded, my phone rang at four in the morning. It was Jen, dialing from Florida, and she wasted no time getting to the main points of her call. First, she was coming back to get back together with her boyfriend. Second, she was pregnant. Presumably the former was due in part to the latter. Since then I've gotten sporadic, crisis-specific calls tracking the progress of the one friend who's life just may be more colorful than mine. Just a month prior, there was no telling what was in Jen's future. Suddenly she and her boyfriend were struggling with whether or not to keep the baby, whether or not to get married, whether or not to leave college, or Hawai`i altogether. And, of course, I was sworn to suffer in secrecy while they struggled with when they'd tell their parents. Only yesterday did they finish breaking the news to all the future grandparents (and great grandparents), and gave Greg and I (and the select few other friends who apparently knew all along) to go public. Over the next few weeks I'm committed to bridal and maternity shopping trips that'll no doubt strengthen my resolve to never have kids. And speaking of Greg, the bastard cut himself off from every living soul here at home for what had to be a month at least. Right when I started firing off e-mail after e-mail about how all hell had broken loose in my life, he -- so infuriated over the swiftness with which his ex-boyfriend found a new beau -- had set up his internet account so that it flat-out deleted anything from a Hawai`i domain. In fact, only thing I'd heard for weeks was a forty second message left on my machine, apparently composed under the influence of alcohol, only barely explaining the filter ("because I don't even want to read anyone else mentioning his name, let alone hear from him"). Of course he didn't leave a phone number, ensuring my helplessness in sorting the whole mess out. The net effect, of couse, was that on top of the chaos on this rock, I began to worry if everything was okay with him in Austin. All I knew was he was drinking, seething... and was that a southern drawl I detected? In his interminable style, the long-overdue explanation came in the form of an entry in his online diary (which, like mine, betrayed the madcap maelstrom of the last few weeks with its silence). He finally called a week ago, and judging by the glee with which he slammed his ex (and the choice specimens the boy's hooked up with) and the hints of a budding romance in the Lone Star State, he's going to be just fine. Good old sassy, cranky Greg. And through all this, I admit, I neglected you. Part of it was plain logistics. Although Derek and I were trying to split the honors of hosting the other, its looking like his apartment is the preferred place for after-hours hanging. It's a lot cooler... and besides, he's hooked up his dusty Super Nintendo so I can play "Super Mario 2." You're not the easiest thing in the world to pick up and plug in halfway across town. The other part was the Eternal Paradox of the Diary. When things finally get colorful enough to warrant writing volumes, there's no time to actually do the writing. And, of course, your... open nature prevented me from sharing a lot of these things until I could determine how much of other peoples' lives I was entitled to record. No offense. Honestly, I was almost drowning there for a while. The curious, often concerned e-mail I got meant a lot. And convinced me that sharing my trials and tribulations with you, despite the growing gaps between entries, is still important... though moreso for me, I think, than for you. Hope you don't mind. I hope I'll be able to get back to sharing my life with you more often. And you sure as hell are going to hear from me before August 16. As the balance of this entry makes clear, it looks like the exciting stuff has only just begun.