I loved a girl, and then she died.

Her name was Melissa. Such a beautiful name. Such a beautiful girl. We met a Starbucks. I know, how unoriginal, I know I’ve seen at least one movie were a guy a girl meets at a coffee shop and falls in love. I wish there was something more exotic to it, I know Melissa would have been able to think up something that sounded better than meeting in Starbucks, but that’s what happened, so I figured I’d stick with that.

I was sitting at a table, typing away on my laptop, oblivious to everything around me when she walked up and asked to share my table. I looked around to discover that the place had gotten quite busy since I sat down, so I of course agreed. I tried to clear some space on that small table and continued my typing. “What are you typing” she asked, trying to break the silence. Melissa never could stand a silent table, “Why be quiet when you can talk” she would say. I would rebut with “Silence is golden” but she never seemed to listen to that.

So we started talking, I don’t really remember about what. We were always talking it seems, somehow we always was able to find a subject. We. I should say she always was able to find a subject. We would talk of ancient philosophers, books neither one of us had read but always intended to read, what the President said last night, what that woman over there was wearing. Somehow we never got tired of it. And when I was done talking she would take over for me. It’s usually at these moments that she started dreaming.

“Mikey” she would say. My name is Michael, or Mike. I never liked being called Mikey. When kids in school made fun of me they would always start by calling me Mikey, but when she called me it, it was alright. I always complained about the nick-name, but she knew I wasn’t serious.

“Mikey, lets just go. Let’s go to Greece, or maybe Italy, or maybe just find some island somewhere and just live there forever.” When she said this she always clutched my arm as if she were pulling me to leave right then. She would then sigh and say, “Let’s just go to dinner instead, it’s closer.” God, I wish I could have taken her to some of those places, just once. We were going to go. I was going to surprise her with a trip to Greece and Italy. I bought the tickets and everything. But that’s when the headaches started.

I walked into her apartment with the tickets in my pocket, ready to tell her. She was lying on her couch, moaning in pain with a towel over her head. “I need to go to a doctor” she said, her speech slurring, and difficult to understand. We raced over to the hospital. The hospital did all kinds of tests and scans, it took hours. I should have gone to work, but I couldn’t leave her. There might be something I could do. I know, it sounds stupid, in a hospital full of doctors and medical equipment, and I thought me, an accountant, might be able to do something to help, but I wouldn’t leave. She kept insisting that I go, that she would be fine, but I didn’t budge.

The doctor walked in, his face didn’t look good. He couldn’t look either of us in the eye. When I saw that my heart stopped. “You have a brain tumor” “What can we do?” Melissa asked. She was never afraid to back down from a challenge. There was some problem she always wanted to face it right away, so she could get on with her life. The doctor said that it couldn’t be operated on and it was in the late stages on development. “You have six months to live” Those words echoed through my mind, and still do today. I know he said a lot of stuff before that, something about it being an estimation, based on the size and type of tumor it was, and the different treatments that could possibly extend her life a little, but I never can remember anything but those words. March 12^th was the day. I remember it vividly, and as soon as the doctor said those words I knew that I couldn’t be with my love after September 12^th. She smiled and said that no tumor was going to kill her.

We then went to dinner. She had made appointments for the various treatments the doctor recommended, and she insisted we go to dinner. It was 10 in the morning, but we found a Denny’s that served dinner items around the clock. She started talking as if she had not been told she was dying. I tried to keep up my end of the conversation, but I couldn’t get more than a few words out. So she started talking about Greece and Italy, and that island again. I remembered the tickets that were still in my pocket. I looked at them and just handed them to her. I couldn’t make myself say anything. I had never seen her so happy. That smile of hers, when I gave her those tickets, is ingrained in my mind. I close my eyes and see it, and everything seems alright, at least until I open my eyes again. The trip was for the middle of June, 3 months away, 3 months before she was going to die. Melissa started talking about all the things we were going to do in Greece and Italy. She wanted to shake the hand of the Pope, play hide and seek among ancient Greek ruins. I was happy, and was able to forget, for a time, those dreadful words of the doctor.

The weeks and months went by, and Melissa got more excited by the day. Every week it seems there was a new outfit she would buy for the trip. She wanted to look more European she said. She also started to learn Italian, so she could sound European too. She would shake her head when she looked at me and say, “I won’t know what we’re going to do about you; they’ll know you’re not European on the spot. I guess I’ll just tell them you’re a friend from the states.” She did buy me some new clothes though, so I could look “European” too.

It was a week before our trip. We were going to go to an Italian restaurant so we could compare their food with the “real thing”. I went into her apartment and there she was, crumpled on the floor. I tried to wake her, tried to help her, I tried anything. I called 911. The operator probably thought I was insane or something, I doubt I said one legible word, but the fire truck, and then the ambulance came in a few minutes, but it seemed hours. They hauled her off to the hospital. The entire time they worked on her I sat in the corner crying. I knew what was happening, but it wasn’t supposed to be happening, not yet. The EMT’s kept trying to talk to me, find out what happened. I tried to tell them, tried to help in anyway possible, but I don’t think I was very helpful, but it didn’t matter, it wouldn’t have mattered.

I drove to the hospital, getting there just after they unloaded Melissa. The entire drive to the hospital all I could think about was that the doctor had lied. He said 6 months. It had only been 3, she can’t die. Not yet.

But she did. The damn doctor lied. Apparently the treatments didn’t help as much as they had hoped. But it was only 3 months. I was promised 6. I lost 3 months to spend with my love. Why couldn’t God have given her just a few more weeks? At least she would have been able to see Greece and Italy. Been able to show off her new clothes, been able to speak Italian so no one would know she was from America. If only the trip had been sooner. There was a trip in April too, but I thought June would be better, better weather and all.

Goddamn it! I loved her and God took her from me.

Man of Vices

One of the problems of being a man of vices is that you tend to feel inferior to your friends, the ones that don’t share your vices. Thus, it is very helpful to find friends who not only share your vices but take those vices beyond where you take them, and thus you seem better. For example, if you enjoy 5 glasses of scotch every night, you need to find someone who drinks 10 glasses every night. Or if you smoke 5 packs a day, find someone who smokes 10. That way you can feel as if you are better than him and a true, life long friendship can form. Unless of course the bastard tries to quite one or both of the habits, in which case you have every reason to convince him to continue, and to sabotage his efforts at every turn. Only then can you have a truly happy, healthy friendship.

Something I’m noticing about myself is that I tend to take things as challenges, even when they are not meant to be. For example, if my teacher advices us to learn something a certain way, or to think about a concept a certain way so that things will be easier later in the class, I’ll automatically try as hard as possible to not learn that concept in that way. I will do whatever I have to do to learn it in another way, even though the teacher says that it will make life more difficult in the future. Another challenge I keep hearing is from those commercials with State troopers saying that if I drive while intoxicated I will be caught. When they say this I want to drink a fifth of Jack and drive around town, and then the next morning calling the state troopers and laughing at them for not catching me. I can only hope that I will be sober enough at that point not to tell them my name and address when they ask.

I think one of the problems with history, or at least the way it is taught, is that it is not taught in such a way for us to learn from our mistakes, at least not U.S. history. Rather, U.S. history is usually taught in a way that makes the U.S. look as good as possible, presenting our forefathers as great men who held and consistently acted on extremely high ideals. Not only can we learn nothing that we can apply to our current situations from this glossing over of history, but it seems, at least to me, to create a demoralization when one realizes our country isn’t anything like what was presented in our history text books and we assume our country as simply gone down hill, when in fact our country isn’t all that different than it was 100 years ago, or 150 years ago. Of course this is all coming from a humble economist who knows very little about history or any such things. Just to make the point though, allow me to quote a few excerpts from a speech by Major General Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marines, who was decorated 20 times and twice awarded the Congressional medal of honor, he served for 33 years: “I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers.” “I helped make Mexico…safe for American oil interests…I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys” “I helped in the raping of a half dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street.” He gave that speech in 1933.

I’ll end with a quote I read on a menu at a restaurant from the man himself Frank Sinatra: “I feel sorry for people who don’t drink, for that is the best they will feel all day.”

Confirmed Bachelor

I have decided to give up on the whole love and/or marriage thing, it just seems like it is all a big fraud. Today before one of my classes there was a group of people, including the professor, who was discussing their divorces, with a couple of students throwing in the stories of their parents divorces. The fact that the professor left his wife was perhaps the biggest shock of all. He just didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would do that, and in fact, he is more like me than I would like to admit. And then at work for the past couple of weeks, I always hear wives bad-mouthing their husbands, nothing too serious, but nothing I would want any wife of mine to say. So this evening, while sitting in front of a computer, punching in numbers, I decided that I would just turn my back on the whole thing. It just seemed there was too much heart break, bitter feelings, and just wasted lives. I’m sure there are couples who are happy together, who have been together since the dawn of time, I just don’t seem to run into them. Also, to top it off, those people I know who seem to have similar personality traits to me inevitably wind up divorced or in un-happy marriages. So, I figure its best just not to risk it all. I suppose dogs and cats will keep me company the rest of my life.

I’ll end with Mother Teresa: “The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.”