Bel Canto – A Shoulder to the Wheel
Sometimes people and situations come into your life that show you a whole new side of yourself, a side that you nor your closest friends new existed, is it right to let these people and situations fade into the past and move on with your life? Or should you keep them close as a reminded of another path you could have gone down?
Toward the end of last year I was living with my Aunt Elaine in upstate NY. I had just left my ex, and started a long distance relationship with Myk. I was really hurting after the relationship with my ex (my ex had been verbally abusive to me in the relationship and I was recovering from that), and I was inbetween jobs. I ended up applying at a temp service up in Rochester, hoping that I would be able to gain SOME income while getting some experience outside the realm of mere service type jobs (clerk, waitress). It was all quite stressful, and I was busy, and terribly lonely despite the family I had there and the relationship I had with Myk. I was finally able to get a job through the temp service at a Bookshop at RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology.. I wanted jobs there especially ’cause if I could get a temp-to-hire position I would have been able to take free classes! This was the plan before I decided to move to Philly). It was just a little 2 week job in the campus bookstore during the “rush” before classes when everyone was buying textbooks, and although I was nervous starting my job there it all turned out to be pretty nice and I did well, even stayed longer than any of the other temp workers (I did extra stuff when we were not busy, not because I’m a suckup.. I was bored and when I am busy the time passes faster!). So while I was working there I met my friend Pete.
The woman from the temp agency that matched us up with this job stopped by one morning to see how we all were doing, and brought muffins. So when my break came around I was feeling a little hungry and decided to go looking for the muffins, that’s when I found this young guy, looked to be about my age and was the stereotypical “hippie” type… his clothes were a mess of random band related shirt and scruffy pants, in fact all of him was pretty scruffy, even had long hair that was more frizzy than straight. And I guess I have a tendancy of seeing people as threatening or non-threatening to some part of me, and he immediately fell into the non-threatening catagory and I smiled, said “hi” and told him I was muffin hunting. He laughed and we went and found the muffins, started talking for a few minutes and really hit it off.
The next few days we started talking more, ended up taking breaks outside together with his older friend (gah, for the life of me I can’t remember his name! He was about 40 or so… of japanese decent) that was also working as a temp there. Apparently Pete and the other guy were working stocking books and stuff while me and other temp workers merely worked registers. Of course Pete knew I had a boyfriend in Philadelphia, and that I was due to leave in 2 weeks to move there, but Pete invited me to a party that weekend and I said sure, I’d go. We went to the keg party and before I was able to get money out to give to the people with the kegs Pete had paid for us both and we had a really fun night, Pete was friends with the band… I got pretty trashed, smoked weed for the first time, and ended up at one point running outside in the snow spilling beer all over myself. This was not me!
Prior to this I drank, sure, most kids my age did… I had gotten drunk with friends, had little parties at my house and been silly, but never with strangers like at this party, I had known Pete for only a few days, and had never seen anyone else, yet I was talking to people, smoking up with them! Prior to this I had been totally against drugs and all that, but I really didnt care at that point, I was having a lot of fun. At one time in the night I had half the room laughing with some witty remarks I had made, and later when I was completely drunk I struck up a conversation with a computer science major about programming (with ended with him asking if I was a senior, and curious to why he hadn’t seen me around… it was an RIT keg party). Anyway in the next week and a half Pete and I spent tons of time together, he invited me over to his friends houses, we went out to lunches, and drove around a bunch showing me “the lesser sights of rochester” and we smoked A LOT of weed.
So that was me when I was with Pete. Witty, smart, party-loving, bottomless pit drinker, and a casual pot smoker. Maybe it was the situation too. It was 2 weeks before I was moving here to Philadelphia, I was sorta realizing that I had every intention of having a VERY serious relationship with Myk, and I knew that this might be my last chance to try all the things I hadn’t tried. I was a totally different person then, Pete was part of my life and experiences I’ve moved on from and grown up and away from.
So the reason for this long explaination? Myk and I are going up to Rochester for Thanksgiving. Pete asked me to call him up if I was ever in the area again so we might be able to hang out. So do I get in touch with Pete? We still talk sometimes through emails, dropping each other an email every coulpe months or so just checking up on each other… but what would we do if we hung out? Myk, Pete and I? With Pete I was young and silly, collegeish… with Myk I am more grown up, we dont go to keg parties, we hang out with friends and have BBQ’s that we get drunk at… It’s just totally different, and it would be weird bringing that together I think… I mean what would I do, invite Pete over for dinner at my aunts?! Bleh I dunno, maybe I should just leave Pete in the past, he was a good friend, and I still care about him, and he definately made a mark in my life for that 2 weeks he was part of it.. I dunno.
A friend of ours made this for Myk last night, since Myk often comes into chat and merely says:
-time- o_O
hehe, he put a white variation of his up on his site clockbot.net.
Ah so getting on with it. We’re going to PLUG (philadelphia linux users group) tonight. We havent gone since June, when they did a KDE talk. I guess it wasnt because we weren’t too interested, it was just summertime, and most of the best discussion time comes AFTER the meeting when everyone crowds into a terrible little corner pizza shop near the meeting place and sits around talking about computers… and the crappy little corner pizza shop has no AC %) So even when we went in June it was VERY hot there and I was miserable. Plus just DRIVING in the city in the summer is a pain… just what we need, a pain of a drive anyway, compounded by the heat that makes us crankie %) Anyway, tonight is a talk on Gentoo, YAY!!! I’ll definately be interested in this talk %) It should be fun.
I spent most of the day putting together playlists for some cds I made today. I thought about posting the playlists here of all 7 cds I made, but then realized that if anyone remotely cares enough to read this entire entry (hell I dont even want to read this all again, hee) REALLY wont care about what songs I put on my cds! It’s cool though, I had been wanting to do this for a while, and Myk has this really awsome progy called “Easy CD Creator” … you put all the mp3 files you want into a list and then you click “make cd” and it converts them to a format viewable by cd players and burns the cd! See I do like some programs to be clicky easy and happy, I ADMIT IT! %) Yes this is a windows program, quite expensive too, so I hear ;) So now I have cds to listen to while I take walks, which is nice %) Before I had to choose from my little personal collection of cds… well it’s not exactly little, but they arent the kind of songs I’d like on my walk… I like a bit of variety you know? Not a whole cd of Everclear or some other band I loved during high school.
I should end this entry soon, it’s starting to become my *longest ever* I gotta go grab something to eat before we leave for the plug meeting anyway. *wanders off*
Thursday, Nov 7th, 2002 at 1:15
Do you think you’d regret it if you didn’t at least tell Pete you were going to be in the area? I mean, how often do you go to Rochester? I totally see where you’re coming from about two different parts of your life not meshing, but Myk would probably understand if you just wanted to meet up with Pete for a while, right?
I hardly listen to any of the same music that I did in high school. I’ve sold a lot of CDs over the past year or so…
Thursday, Nov 7th, 2002 at 2:35
That can be a very confusing issue I can understand that myself. im sure Myk would have understood though in the situation. Things in life happen for strange reasons and I’m rambling from being sleepy. I hope everything is going well =) its been busy on my end sorry I havent made time to drop by lately. Miss you guys talk to you soon =)
demonicangel