It’s been an awful long while now since I last promised to tell you everything that has been happening. I’m not sure what took me so long, but I’m going to do my best to make things right. See, ladies and gents, I’ve fallen in love. Well, more precisely, I’ve rediscovered a love I knew to be long ago but could not seem to capture it back when it first came to me.

Nigh on two years past I met someone. From the first moment I laid eyes on her I knew something, nothing definite, but something kept drawing my eyes back to her across the hazy, smoke-filled dim of a bar. Pure chance put us together then, as she neither lived nor worked in that town but had merely accompanied friends there that night. My first half-suspected notions were confirmed when we got a chance to speak, though I do not remember precisely how that came to be. I was certainly much too frightened to say anything to her directly. But, it wasn’t until she held me down and kissed me at an afterparty that I finally figured it out.

Despite that thrilling first meeting, it simply wasn’t in the cards that we should be together at the time. Having recently accepted a new job in another state, she was leaving within the next two months or so. It didn’t help matters at all that one of her friends, the closest to an arch-nemesis as I’ve ever had, did not approve of me in the slightest for one reason or another never fully explained logically. So she left, and then I left, and eventually we came to live some 400-odd miles apart.

Which is when things finally came together, even though we were as far apart as ever before.

Time passed, relationships were forged and broken. Hearts were callously mended. Bitterness and cynicism loomed overhead. A correspondence was maintained, strictly in a platonic sense for the most part. And then, towards the end of 2004 she made a realization.

In the aftermath of my most recent relationship implosion I, still fairly sullen, was speaking to a fellow lab rat about finally getting on with my life and the subject of fate and/or destiny came up (in the “love something set it free” sort of variety”). I sighed softly, and said “Well, if there’s anyone out there destined for me, that’d be Staci.” On that very night, within three hours of that statement, Staci had made the first move to reforge what we had never fully started.

(Oh, I seem to have neglected to share her name with you. It’s Staci. Sorry about the excessive “pronounery” back there.)

I’m re-reading this particular e-mail right now to remind myself. It’s not particularly evocative. In fact, it’s downright pedestrian. Just a simple invitation to spend Halloween weekend in her new hometown with no promise whatsoever of anything above friendship. Naturally, I read a good bit more into it than was actually written down.

I re-arranged my work schedule, finagled a day off, and one Friday in late October set my car upon the wide open highway for a long drive to meet my destiny. Though there’s quite a bit more to tell of this story, I think, perhaps I will save it for another day. After all, I’ve done the hard part already: getting started on being open. Knowing me, it’ll be shutting me up that’s the hard part now.

It’s been a while since last we spoke. Or should I say, since last we “spoke.” It’s an inherently one-sided communication. I rant to a presumed audience that may or may not be there and you read it, taking from it what you will.

I’ve been more than a little gun shy about posting anything here in the past few weeks because I know that what I’m thinking about does not translate into thrilling reading. I’m a brooder. I know it, my friends know it, and now you know it (if you hadn’t picked up on that annoying personality characteristic already).

What can I say? I was a geek. Hell, I still am a geek. Geeks overanalyze. That’s what we do. All but bereft of normal social skills we doubt and critique every word that we say to another human being. We (by which I mean “I”) have no concept of flirting, or small talk, or appropriate answers to such mundane questions as “How’s it going?” “Well, actually. . . “ I’ll begin while a simple “Fine, thank you, how are you?” would have sufficed.

Not long ago a coworker told me that girls probably flirted with me all the time and I didn’t even notice. I said that was probably true. She then rattled off a laundry list of positive personal characteristics and other would-be date catchers to which, mouthful of tasteless sandwich purchased from the hospital cafeteria, could only reply “Hmmmfff.”

You know, for all my recent talk I really don’t spend overly that much time out of my entire life woefully ruing my inability to meet women. It comes in spurts – no double entendre intended. A few weeks at a time, after I meet someone to whom I’m particularly attracted to or manage to make a connection and lose it again, I’ll get obsessed. Yes, obsessed: I wanted to change that to a more positive term, but that would be a lie.

So, for those two, three, four weeks I start sizing everyone up. As if holding a phantom shopping list of hits and misses in appearance and personality I start checking boxes in my mind. Then the over-analyzation kicks in. “What did that gesture mean?” “Was that a real smile or a nervous ‘stop staring at me’ smile?”

And then, it’s over, and I’m back to my old routines again. Oh, occasionally I’ll see a girl and think “Gee, she’s a cutie!” I’ll think that, but feel no particular compulsion to speak to her or bother thinking any more about her. I just don’t go out looking for these sorts of things until, for whatever reason, I find myself in one. Then, when it fails, I just need that same feeling again. I can’t remember a time in which anything has become of that period of time that is, in the vernacular, called “rebound.” I might actually be too ashamed to act on it, still afraid of what the previous person might think of it.

Given the way I think about dating and relationships it’s difficult for me to accept that they can fall apart all at once. That’s why I’ve spent nigh three weeks convinced that things can be worked through and this story didn’t end like that. But, as I’m coming to finally realize and accept, it did.

Guess it’s time to go back to my GameCube.

In the span of no more than 5 to 7 minutes I completely ruined what could have been a beautiful relationship, if you’ll pardon the term. This might also be filed as a dire premonition against the proliferation of mobile phone technology. Want to know more? Of course you do, you voyeuristic bastards.

I’ve been in those giddy early stages of a budding romance for the past two weeks. This is that span of time when awkwardness and comfort in equal portions. Throw in a pinch of doubt and a heaping dash of alcohol and you’ve a recipe for disaster.

It was this mixture that led me to, after storming out a bar minutes after my would-be ladyfriend and her friend walked off without so much as a wave goodbye, furiously dialing her phone number to (in a rather cowardly manner) let her know I was upset at her actions.

Oh hell, that puts in much too mildly. I completely laid into her, with very little reason I might add. I’m the asshole here.

See, here’s how the whole thing went down. I had made what I thought were plans to meet up after I finished work. I hoped to have a voicemail message announcing a meeting place. I didn’t get one, and that was the first little pinprick of doubt.

Of course I knew, in my rational brain, that this didn’t necessarily mean that she didn’t want to see me, or was tired of me, or whatever else it might have possibly meant. Ahh, but who among us can claim to have the green blood of the Vulcans coursing through or veins?

I took a guess, said “I’ll try going here, and maybe I’ll find her, and maybe I won’t.” At this point, still pretty darned sane. A little irked over the missing invitation, but willing to accept that sometimes everyone needs some time alone. I spent a good bit of time feeling slightly disappointed but calm, as I didn’t see her at this particular establishment for the first half-hour or so of my time there.

Ahhh, but she was there. . . somewhere (I know not where she was hiding initially). I was thrilled that my detective skills were so keen, for a moment anyway. The problem was, she had already had quite a bit to drink that night, and barely even registered my presence. All speech had to be handled by her friend, whom I do not find that trustworthy and never really acts that pleasant towards me.

Now, I’m certainly not the sort of guy who cannot understand becoming very, very drunk. And I don’t fault her for that, but coupled with the missing phone call, my own intoxication, and the feeling that her friend’s distaste was her own led me to get unreasonably angry at my now-lost girlfriend.

I’m talking Hulk angry here. I mean, scary angry. I like to think I’m a pretty calm guy, most of the time. Something just snapped, I felt like she had blown me off for no good reason, and then I thought she needed to know about it.

Oh, but would I have left my mobile in the car. . . I would have stomped around for a bit, calmed down, and found my rational self again. But my phone was right there, and I could let my drunken rage be felt.

Fellas (and ladies too), take it from me. If you think someone needs to know just how angry you are try putting it in writing first. Don’t jump to your phone. I know it’s there, right there in your pocket, waiting to be put to use. Just don’t do it.

So. . .

I managed to speak with her this afternoon. I’m pretty sure I’m toast. It’s sad to think that something so worthwhile could be destroyed in one drunken moment, but there it is.

I’m a fucking moron.