Daniel

I think I already wrote about him. Somewhere else, another time. But I'll do it again so that I have everything collected here.

The night before I left Atlanta to move to Milwaukee, my cat died. This is a true story, though I have incorporated it into many other texts, including Tales from Loser Girl's Attic. It was awful. But it opened up something inside of me. A voraciousness that I did not expect. For the first time in my life, I wanted to fuck everything. Yes, as cliché as it is, I wanted to fuck away the pain. Fill up the hole with fingers and tongues and dicks. I felt cavernous.

I'd read an Aimee Bender story where that happened. So in one way, I wasn't surprised because it was familiar. At least I'd heard of it happening before. I just didn't expect that it would happen to me. I'm a truly vanilla person.

So later that night, I went to see my friend Paul perform at a coffee house for the last time. Opening for him was this guy. The Folk Singer.

Here's what happened: I'd seen him before. He performed one other time when I had been to Eddie's Attic to see someone or something else and he was there performing. The other person, that I was there to see (and can't remember now), was opening for his CD release party. So I was going to leave right after. But he made me stay. I have never before and never since seen anyone play live who was as talented as him. His command over his guitar was overwhelming. And it wasn't even the spell of voracious loss that he was weaving over me. Because the first time I saw him perform I was happily in some sort of lesbian dating relationship or other.

At any rate, I figured he's be a dick, so I never said anything to him or bought his CD or even tried to go to any of his other shows. Because he had that thing. He had that swarthy gypsy look about him. Scraggly black hair and thick dark eyelashes and a smudge of black stubble staining his chin and artfully crafted sideburns and sculpted facial hair where he chose for it to go. He wore vintage clothing that was some approximation of an expatriate or Parisian traveler of the earlier part of the century. Or maybe he was a vampire. Not like a cheesy one, but like a time traveler with class. Thunk. That was the sound of my heart flopping down from my chest on that coffee shop, leaving town night. I was held in awe. His voice was gorgeous, his music beautiful. And I felt as if he were singing directly to me. Or at least I really really wanted him to.

So after he was done and becuse I was leaving town, I decided to purchase his CD this time because this time there was nothing I had to lose. It was, technically, you see, already lost if you consider my cat.

When I went up to him after he was done, I made some sort of small comment that I can't remember. I had been crying all day and digging in the red Georgia clay to bury my cat in a hole and I was covered in dirt, wearing a sweaty T-shirt and horrible clothes with my hair a mess and even my glasses on over my puffy stained eyes. He did a double-take and said something else. And then magic was spun around us and we were both cast in delicious gold. I wanted to tell him to shove me in the back of his station wagon and take me back to wherever he went, kick a trail through the discarded clothes on the floor of his room and ram the back of my head into his wall until one or both of us bled.

But I didn't. Instead, I took his CD home and drove the next day with it playing the whole way from Atlanta to Milwaukee.

When I got there, I looked him up on the internet and wrote him an email thanking him for making music so gorgeous. He wrote back and that's where it started. A lengthy correspondence of escalating material for masturbation. Every day I went to work at my temp job filing insurance documents, thinking of him. My head spinning constantly over what he'd just written earlier that day. I'm surprised no one noticed the smell. Because I was consantly drenched in pure sex.

Finally, when neither one of us could take it any more, we arranged to meet in Indiana. When I got to the pre-arranged destination, he lept from his table and gave me a hug like he hadn't seen me in years because I'd been a trapped in a prison camp for war refugees. We went on a date. I got a hotel room. We sat by the pool. And finally he kissed me. I dragged him back to my room and right when the time came, because I was still a technical virgin at the time, I stopped. We didn't have sex.

The next day was horrible. He annoyed the crap out of me. All he wanted to do was go shopping and all I wanted to do was go home. I got more and more disillusioned with him as the day went on. I noticed that his sense of humor is stupid and for as brilliant of a musican and songwriter he is, he wasn't very bright. I still wish him success because I think the world deserves his talent. But other than that, he was horrible. This was a very clear moment of separating the art from the artist. The heart from the artist.

Finally, when I got back, I was kind of mad that it seemed he felt the same way. Our communication slipped and when I finally found out that he was dating someone else, I was pissed. But at the same time, kind of relieved.