musings on a (not so) flat chested girl -- part eleven

Much of my time in San Marcos with Dakota was actually spent alone in Dakota's second floor one bedroom apartment while she was at work during the day. Well, not alone exactly, as her two little kittens, Charles and Charge, were there to keep me company. I love cats, and they were a great comfort to me since all my friends were miles away in Austin and I was too damn broke to go bother them while they were at work. Not that they would want me hanging around bothering them at work anyway. She didn't have cable television, so I would flip through a few channels of bad daytime TV for a few minutes at a time, get bored, turn the set off, pace around the apartment, smoke her favorite brand of cigarettes which were now my favorite brand of cigarettes, flip through my book of compact discs, play one, pace around the apartment, play with the kittens, and smoke more cigarettes. Since television was a waste of time and Charles and Charge would rather tussle with each other than play with me most of the time, I would listen to more and more of my music. When I left Los Angeles, I left a fledgling band behind. The more I listened to other people play, the more I wanted to get back to it myself. I didn't give much thought to it when I flew out of LAX retreating to the comforts of my home state, but the moments of boredom and loneliness in her place made me realize how much I really enjoyed playing with my fledgling little band, and I started to actually look forward to returning home for the first time since I left. I didn't bother to call either of my band mates to tell them that I wanted to get back to playing soon though. I just sat there, convincing myself that everything would work out just because I thought it would.

I knew that Dakota was tired of me. She no longer greeted me with the same enthusiasm she once did when I picked her up from work, there was no joke funny enough to make her crack more than a faint smile, and my communication skills were not up to the task of comforting her or expressing my confusion as to what to say or do in that situation. We would get in to meaningless fights over stupid things like a New York Yankees t-shirt.

"You like the Yankees? Jesus. You're kidding me! And you're a Dallas Cowboys fan? You're from Houston? Are you sure?"

She would defend herself by stating that she had the Yankees shirt just because she loved New York City.

"In that case, what about the Mets? Why the Yankees? They're both from New York. What's the difference?"

She said the Yankees were just more New York like. I was at a loss for words. The fucking Yankees? Goddammit. I hated the fucking Yankees. And due to fact that I had never been, that I was jealous of Dakota and Jeremiah visiting, and that I spent my childhood listening to stories about my father's many catastrophic trips, I had an irrational hatred of New York. Fuck New York is all I could think. If we would talk about music, things would get even worse.

"John Mayer? You like that pansy-pretty boy-whispering-no talent-fuckstick? I hate that guy. You know what he would do in college? Smoke weed all day and listen to Dave Matthews. Fuck that douchebag."

She would attack me for being a pretentious music snob. Who cares if he listened to Dave Matthews? She liked his music. So what? I could never win the argument. She was right, she was entitled to her own opinion. I would try to make it up to her and play cutesy by putting on some good music, some that she might actually like as well. "Heavy Metal Drummer" by Wilco, which contains the line "she fell in love the drummer." I would smile, feeling oh, so charming, as she sat across from me shouting the unspoken words of I'm not in love with you. When we would go out to eat, I had next to nothing to talk about. The best I could ever come up with, no matter what was bothering her; her fragile relationship with her mother, the constant calls from her ex to come visit him, her upcoming root canal, was a statement I had no way of proving.

"Everything is gonna be okay. Trust me."

She would reply by telling another story of an ex-boyfriend and how they were such a major part of her life. I felt as if I still didn't know her well enough to be giving any advice, and aside from that, I was just plain intimidated by her. Scared of her, actually. I didn't want to end up being the guy who's every wrong move would be spit out with great vitriol towards the next guy to come along. One wrong word, anything confrontational or contradictory would make her resent me as much as she seemed to resent everyone else. So I thought. What I was missing was the fact that as frustrated she was with certain people, she still had love for them. Great love. I was so busy trying to play the nice guy, the better man, truth be told, that I forgot to be something other than a dispenser of worthless platitudes.

There were two major pains crashing into her life at that moment: her upcoming root canal and her mother. Both it seemed were going to cause her an immense amount of pain. She told me of her mother's scheduled visit, and that it would be best if I wasn't around since her mother didn't exactly approve of her lifestyle, or at least the lifestyle her mother imagined Dakota was having away from home. I agreed that I shouldn't be there when she arrived but we made the mistake of failing to plan as to when and where I would go. Naturally, the morning her mother arrived knocking on the apartment door, Dakota and I were still in bed together. She leaped out of bed to answer and I slowly rolled out trying to avoid detection the best I could. It was too late. Dakota's mother quickly took notice of me, chided Dakota for having a strange man in her bed, and while the questioning was understandable to me; "Who is this boy, what is he doing here?" it was terribly condescending and quickly became abusive.

"Do you just bring random guys home now?"

The air was hostile, Dakota was flustered, and I wanted to come out into the living room and somehow show her mother what a nice guy I was, that I wasn't some dude that was drunk at a bar, that I really did care for her daughter. That didn't happen. They left to talk outside, the tension remained. I wanted to scream out "what a bitch!" just to clear the air, but I didn't. I let my heart rate slow down, then I smoked a cigarette.

Dakota returned alone some time later. She told me that now I could understand why she felt the way she did about her mother. I did. For the very first time, I really understood what she was going through. All the same, I could only think of one thing to say.

"Everything is gonna be okay. Trust me."

We didn't dwell on the negative for very long. We had plans to attend the Austin City Limits Festival at Zilker Park on the coming Sunday, so we sat down on the living room floor next to each other, went over the schedule, and decided on what bands we wanted to see. We told each other over and over that we were going to have a great time. The best time. It was going to be just perfect.