we had fun. i remember darren from high school in grade 10. his best friend dated my best friend after i moved away. as a matter of fact, everything great seemed to happen after i moved away. i came back for a party in june of grade 11 and met darren there. he was kinda short, nothing really special.
saw him again in my 2nd year when i was dating a real D-bag. we met at the bar and talked for a while, exchanged numbers. he wanted me to go to some punk rock thingee in N. Lethbridge and i was broke. there was no way i could go. i was profusely sorry about it.
from there we'd meet at the bar, always after i'd get robin to persuade him to come on the phone. from essies we'd walk to the brewery gardens and sneak down the coulees and climb the brewery gardens display roof and look over w leth and chat in the 2am stillness. it was awesome to be so rebellious back in 1992.
after we climbed that structure, he'd drive me home. i was still living with and dating someone else, but i was smitten with darren.
sometime in between climbing the roof in january and valentines day, i dumped the dbag. it was a long time coming and i shouldda never been with him. ever had one of those? christ, it seems i've had plenty. valentines day we had a date to go to dinner and a movie. we went to streetside for dinner and then we had planned to see a movie. cant remember which one and it's irrelevant.
in the meantime, darren had been planning the night for me. he had a friend come and decorate the apartment with candles and set up the bedroom with a bunch of cd's borrowed from another friend. you name it, it was there...massage oil, champagne, i even think chocolate...needless to say, it was THE nicest thing anyone has ever done for me, ever. lots of thought, lots of care put into that and to this day i'm still touched. oh darren was my feb-april guy, but it was kind of like a birthday cake sparkler: all shiny and bright at the beginning and it fizzled out and you were left with a black stick at the end. oh so true.
i'd run into him at the university in september and be puzzled as to why he wouldnt date me again. i stayed behind in lethbridge for the summer, he returned to calgary where he met jennifer. he had moved on, i didnt. and it bloody well took me a full year to freaking well move on from him and stop being pissed at him. in the meantime tho, i was an angry young woman so desperately wanting revenge. what was really going through my head was this song from the crash test dummies:
running into you like this without warning
is like catching a sniff of tequila in the morning
but i'll try, try to keep my food down
it's quite an aftertaste you left now that you're not around.
you can just pretend i'm not in the same room
all right, i'll just mosey to the bathroom
you blew by like a summer vacation
and you left me tv movies and a messy kitchen.
well i think i'll disappear now
slip out sideways
just for a while, but until then,
stay in, sleep late, excuse me.
fuck, it took me a long time to get over him. and man, i harboured a huge grudge against him for many years.
it wasnt till i was working in calgary as a sales rep that i ran into him. i was downtown and saw him in shoppers drug mart. i think we both headed down the same aisle (he from the top, me from the bottom) and there was one brief second where i contemplated spinning on my heel and going in the opposite direction, but i chose to steel my gut and my nerves. knowing it was now or never, i approached him as he walked down an aisle. he honestly didnt recognize me. I didnt recognize me. i definitely had changed since university, so the first expression was shock and then pleasant surprise. we ended up talking for a while before he had to run off to work, but not before exchanging business cards and a promise to meet up for drinks.
a few weeks later we met at the black swan and had many many pints and chatted. there was absolutely nothing there, nothing. nice enough guy, but a fucking namedropper. (why didnt i notice that in university? was he always that obnoxious? i asked my 26 year old self.) we chatted for hours after which he said "oh i wish you werent single...we could go and paint the town red tonight" and various other promises i wont get into here. and i just smiled and said "really"?
my 21 yr old self would have jumped at the chance to get even with him at that moment. i know it. i think i used to dream about revenge and have many a revenge fantasy about him. i would have loved to have taken him home, got him hooked and then dumped him...but at 26, that no longer meant anything.
it's funny how things change with time. i wanted to rip him limb from limb years ago and at that moment i realised just how much i changed and had moved on from a hurt that i figured was going to stick with me forever.
aaaaah, life.
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