Ex-cetera

So, last week she calls and I don't pick up. It's Krista, my ex-girlfriend. We had a tempestuous one year relationship that lasted up until Spring.

"This song makes me laugh," she says and holds the cell phone up to the car stereo speaker.

My neck, my back, lick my pussy, and my crack!

Krista and I only had two songs. Our unofficial songs:

1) the break-up song from Beck's last album -- I don't even know the name, nor do I want to know the name of it because it's so depressing --

and;

2) My neck, my back, lick my pussy, and my crack!

(The fun, sexy, non-breakup song.)

I call her back and leave a message, a message imitating her and the time we went to a recording studio to lay down a spoof customer service track for B.M..

"All lines are busy...a customer service representative will be with you shortly in.........

[Me, imitating Krista's voice. Dry, cracking.]

"Sixty nah--INE minutes"


It's all in good fun. Spontaneous. Fun. Friendly even.

I'm at work today and I see her on the caller I.D.. No message though. I call her back anyway and she answers.

"Did you call," I say.

"Yeah," she says. "I was up there at noon getting my T.B. screening and I was just seeing if you were around."

I tell her how busy I was at noon. How impossible noon was. How I was hanging an investigational chemo at noon.

She tells me how incompetent the U.C. occupational health nurse was. How she told her she had to come back "...like four times just for one T.B. screening." How this nurse was a female. How she had tons of facial hair -- a "goatee".

"Gross," I said. "Well, good to talk to you. Good luck, etc., etc....."

And I was getting ready to say goodbye --

"Wait," she says. "I would like to get together with you to talk to you about something."

The tone. The cadence. It's familiar.

"I want to talk to you about public health school."

It sounds just like the third day after she dumped me in Bangkok. It was the last straw and I was over her. I was already onto anonymous sex with strangers and I feel a hand on my shoulder while I'm blogging near Kao San Road.

"I really need to talk to you. I feel like I'm getting sick," she said.

And we went to my tiny, damp, mosquito infested room. With the ceiling fan humming like a helicopter, she reiterated her undying love for me. How, again, she had made a mistake.

"I want you to fuck me until it hurts!" she said.





Sick?

It was nerves. And she missed me.

Grad school?

It's nerves. And she...


I've never been to any school of public health and I know very little about public health.

We've decided to meet Wednesday for a drink, after she's done HIV counseling in the Castro, to talk about public health.

I have no idea where this is going. But, it seems the more confidence I gain away from her, the less I call her, the busier I become in my life, the more she needs me.

I've fully grieved this relationship. I've announced to all that I'm over her, that I can be friends with her.

Are we friends? Does she crave closeness again? What the hell is going on?