james dean. part 2

i got home later than i expected to, and my head was pounding with the necessity of running. i had left as soon as i could, reluctant to make even civil goodbyes, because i feared that if i didn't do it now i might lose my nerve and not do it at all.

i remembered that i spent one year of the recent past conducting my romantic life along those same lines. that urgency is a good basis for something unequivocally good for you, like cardiovascular exercise. i can't speak for the effects being equally salutatory when you apply it to love.

i barely felt my legs under me tonight, as i ran, and i barely heard the music in my headphones--i didn't need it to lend my pulse a rhythm. unusual. amazing. incredible. the evenness of my stride, the steadiness of my heart rate. i opened my arms and let them pump up and down balletically, as if they were wings, wishing they were wings, feeling as if they were wings. someday i will fly. someday i will run up the side of the black mountain preserve and into the green open valley that rolls between here and the coast, and my legs will carry me on the strength of my steady hummingbird heart all the way down to where the hillside drops off into the plate expanse of the pacific ocean.

climbing a hill, i thought, as i often do, of dancing to the music i was hearing. that happens when my heart needs a little help to keep its joy in motion. and, as i often do, i thought of him--he is james dean, he is marlon brando, he is elvis presley, he is all the wrong things i love so much and never hope to find again. he's the man i want to marry and know that i never will. by the time i got to the top of the hill, i was thinking gleefully of the one time i stood him up--i didn't mean to but i'm eternally glad that i did. by the time i came down from the crest of the hill, i was thinking of the one time i punched him in the jaw, and wishing to God i could do it again. i was thinking, as my legs threw the miles behind me, of how unequivocally sweet it would be to have the opportunity to press my palm into his face, my fingers into his eyes, and screw his mug away from me with a challenging twist of my wrist. blood pulsed through my biceps as i thought of throwing my fists into his hollow cheeks, his mouth and his neck, pummeling him with the abandon of an eight-year-old on the playground, until others would have to hold me back, and i thought of how i would fight against their restraint to get another punch in.

of course if it ever happened he wouldn't let me get more than one--he'd probably stop my fist in mid-air and twist my arm behind my back and hiss in my ear. odds are equally good that he'd punch me back, or just slap me to the ground...if he did that i would get back up. i'd fight him so hard, so hopelessly, that they would have to drag me off to keep me from getting hurt.

he never lied, he never cheated. he just didn't love me, and i loved him and i broke my heart on his self-absorption, and it breaks almost every day still, because i never got or gave a final word.

it was a surge of testosterone, i guess, or maybe it was the adrenaline of getting over the hill, or the qi powering my forward motion. maybe it was my real feelings enjoying an unwonted escape from the restraint i impose on them. the next song i heard had a rolling guitar strum on a descending chord progression, the musical language of a road trip, and it was very soothing until i heard the lyric "good-bye, old friend, i can't make you stay/i can't spend another ten years wishing you would, anyway.../even i'm getting tired of useless desires."

well, i am getting tired of apropos song lyrics. i've been trying not to notice them in connection with this james dean for nearly three years. i think you'll agree that that is way too much time to spend on a relationship that was only acknowledged for about three weeks.

if only he'd do something for which i could fight him. maybe then we could be friends.