The Cruelest Month

I will be relieved when August is over. Absolutely relieved. I dropped my phone today. In a toilet, while still half asleep from a back of the car nap at a rest stop on our way home from Tahoe. I spent the rest of the day pissed at myself for my own stupidity. Add that to the massive day after wedding hangover, the continuing up/down boy issues, the lost Ray Bans, and the car accident, and I am INCREDIBLY over August. Mercury is in retrograde, or so say the astrological omens, and apparently this doesn't bode well for me. I am hiding for the duration of the day until we are safely ensconced in September. (This seems to be a theme because I swear I wrote the same thing LAST August. Just not my month. [Oh yeah. A quick refresher reminds me that my grandmother died a year ago. There's a downer for you all...which might explain the increased crankiness I felt today.])

As August draws to a close it reminds me of the epic closing of another awful month ten years ago now: I was a sophomore in college, living with my party girl roommate, Jamie, in a delightfully tacky apartment in TigerLand. I had just ended a five minute relationship with the guy I had spent most of my freshman year not even knowing I was in love with because I considered him my best friend. A summer apart, I came back sophomore year, having passed on an all expense paid family trip to Hawaii to come back to school, and it began amazingly until it just...well...it ended in flames. It was the first time I ever understood that I could have a crush be fulfilled. And it was also the first time I think I was truly devastated by the end of a relationship. Keep in mind I was 19 years old at the time and still incredibly naive about anything heart related. (In all honesty, I probably still am, a little bit, anyway. And I occasionally still think about this particular guy and wonder what happened to him, what my life would have been like had we stayed together. [He's married with 5 kids, living in Louisiana still, from what I know.])

I moped around for about two weeks, which back then felt like a lifetime and which the aforementioned party girl roommate did not approve of at all. Finally, she drags me out of the house. We go to our local bar and she introduces me to some guys she knows. Turns out they are baseball players she knows through athletic training. But I pretty much pay no attention. I'm not having it. I just wanna be back in front of the TV watching sports and eating ice cream.

The following weekend we go to the same bar. I get reintroduced to the same group of guys. This time one of them piques my interest and I'm feeling a little more inclined to party. I don't know why I didn't notice him the week before.* But he's SO out of my league. Literally. He's playing minor league ball, I'm a dorky college sophomore. (This reminds me of Kathryn a couple weeks ago. "How can I be threatening to girls? I'm such a goofball!" Me, "That's how YOU see yourself, not how others see you!")

Bar closes and we head back to our place, me, the roommate, guy I think is cute, and another LSU baseball player. We're literally just hanging out watching late night Sportscenter. The other guy leaves. I still think nothing is going down. I am oblivious and totally unsure of myself. My roommate tells me the next day that she knew something was going to happen between the two of us when she got up to go to the bathroom and he said, "Oh! You're going to bed? Goodnight!" Jamie says, "Ummm. No. I was just gonna go to the bathroom. But, goodnight." I remember her saying that and still not getting it. I don't even think I was drunk, just super oblivious.

Him and I hang out for a bit longer. I remember going to the kitchen where we had cake and me sitting on the counter eating while he ate too. I had changed out of going out clothes and was in an SFPD shirt and barefoot. Then we were screwing around with these stupid little water guns we had in the house, playing like we were little kids. And that is when this gorgeous adonis of a former LSU baseball player grabs me and kisses me by the front door to our apartment. And I melted. And giggled. And got giddy and girlish. And the boy says, "What's so funny?" And I say, "It's just been a REALLY shitty month, and now..."

And then.

Then.

The most amazingly epic line I have ever been given:

"But: it's a new month."

And the haze of girlish giddiness lifts for a moment and I think, "Oh my god. He's right!" That night at midnight, the calendar had flipped from September to October. The no good, very bad, heartbreaking September was OVAAAAA! And ended with me making out with an LSU baseball player. Nicely done, if I do say so myself.

Thus I hope that maybe, just maybe, the end of this no good, very bad August will come to a close in a similar fashion. Even if it is ten years later. I'm looking at you Brian Wilson or Mike Fontenot, as the only guys I am aware of in the Bay Area fulfilling former LSU baseball player requirement. (Kidding. There's gotta be a few others that didn't make it to the bigs.)

*The postscript is that the reason I didn't notice him the week before is that I was introduced to him when he was WITH HIS GIRLFRIEND. A minor detail no one pointed out the following weekend. Whoops. He WAS a good kisser though...