The roll of the dice

I have often wondered what it would be like to not worry. To not live under the intense scrutiny of my own gaze, to not live with the constant exhaustion that comes with obsessing about the tiniest detail. But even though I know better, I cannot help it.

I am nor sure when this started. Perhaps in high school. I would wake up in the morning and spend hours trying to fix my hair. The result was the awful permed big hair that was almost out of vogue by the late eighties, but then I was the kind of kid who was the first to hop on to the trend bandwagon and last to hop off. I still spend a lot of time (and money) on my hair – but now my efforts are focused on straightening it out and undoing the damage from the years of perming. And through the years, my obsession has also spun off into ever widening concentric circles – and I find myself trapped in its orbit.

The holidays is the season I dread the most. In the garb of an independent successful lawyer, I can hide most of my neuroses reasonably well. They somehow seem to dissolve unobtrusively into the neon lit, temperature controlled ether of the office. But as I step out into the chilly wintry night, and see the shops dressed up in holiday colors – and all the people wishing (and almost) thrusting happiness upon me, I find myself facing my inner demons. Every year, I make the annual trip to Portland with the feeling that I have a big heavy stone sitting at the base of my stomach. I can hear Mom at the kitchen table, whipping up a batter and saying, “Linda, did you know that Reese is having a baby. I just think it’s great that she and her partner have decided to do this – who needs men really?” Mom is a left coast liberal and a staunch feminist, and since bra burning no longer has the appeal it used to, she has taken up the cause of gay rights. Every year, it seemed as if one of my high school classmates or neighbor’s kids was becoming gay and/or getting pregnant. I had the strange feeling that my mother was actually encouraging me to consider lesbianism since I wasn’t having much luck with men.

As I sat at the airport, waiting for the flight – I considered all the witty charming banter I would engage in to make myself appear carefree, jolly and happy. Keith –my oldest brother was the easiest to please, and so was Dad – an incredibly sweet and uncomplicated man. Jeff – my older brother is somewhat of a tough cookie – he is more like me – but I think that being a man allows him to mask his insecurities better. Then there’s Mom – in the land of the judgmental, she is queen. Keith’s wife and kids, and Jeff’s on again off again girlfriend are props but not major characters in our family Christmas play – I can handle them with relative confidence. Relative is a key word here, because in all my adolescent and adult life, I have never enjoyed unadulterated confidence. I have struggled to find absolute faith in myself or anything that has to do with me.

“Jet Blue flight 587 to Portland, Oregon has been delayed by two hours, 20 minutes. We apologize for the inconvenience.” A collective groan escaped from the passengers waiting at the terminal gate as the announcement was made. I unzipped my back pack to pull out my laptop and work on the project that was due two days after Christmas. As the computer booted up, I noticed a tall athletic and youngish good-looking man sit down in the chair diagonally across from me.

He possessed a certain casual charm which I always envied since I didn’t have a casual bone in my body. He looked at his watch and pulled out a book from his carry on case. I strained to see the title of the book, without making it obvious that I was looking. I couldn’t read the title, but I managed to read the sub-title. It was a book about the oil and the politics of the middle-east. So clearly, Mr. mysterious stranger was intelligent and well-read. I could see him as the sort of guy who’d play soccer, and have a decent college degree. (I had a weird genius when it came to such a things – almost Sherlock Holmes like.)

He looked up. We exchanged glances and smiled. Immediately, my mind went into overdrive. I had always thought about meeting a hot guy at the airport but even though I traveled almost every two months, I hadn’t had even a remotely romantic encounter so far. This was my chance. I had already checked to see that he didn’t have a wedding ring. (It was the first thing I saw when I meet a cute young guy). We had over two hours at the airport and he had smiled in a way that suggested that he might be attracted to me. Maybe we would get talking, hit it off and have instant chemistry. Maybe we’d have friends in common in Portland. He would come back to DC and call me. We wouldn’t have an awkward dating period, but we’d just bond. There would be no uncomfortable commitment issues. We’d be the couple walking down the street joking and holding hands. We’d be the couple for whom the song “somewhere over the rainbow” plays as background score.

A soft shuffle and a thump jolted me out of my daydreaming. And then the dice rolled…the other way.

Kira dragged her bag limply across the floor. She was glad to be going home. Glad to be going home to her all-knowing mother, her never say a cross a word father, and her two brothers – one sweet, the other… not so much. She knew her mother would be disappointed – she had been expecting her to come home Christmas with a fiancée. But Kira couldn’t really be bothered.

This evening, when she had walked out of her office – she felt the snow flakes skipping and floating across the navy sky and embracing her within their swirl. Suddenly, the pain and ugliness of the last four months seemed distant and faraway. She could see glimpses of Owen and herself, the fights, the break-up, the tears but it was like she was watching the rushes of an old film.

Kira had wanted it to work out in a desperate, almost visceral way. But now that it was over, she was relieved – it felt like a weight had lifted off. The burden of expectation had been wearing her out. The expectation of being happy, the expectation of getting what she wanted, the expectation of making others happy had all crashed and burned along with what she thought was her true love. And now, it didn’t even seem to matter. She wondered why she had made such a big deal about it in the first place.

She plonked herself on the first empty chair she could see. She put on the headphones of her Ipod and took a giant swig out of her Snapple Iced Tea bottle. She felt someone shove her elbow and her drink spurted out of the bottle and on to the pants of the person who was sitting next to her. She turned around and a six year old boy was looking sheepishly at her, while his mother was admonishing her son and apologizing to her in the same breath.

“I am so sorry,” said Kira as she turned again to apologize to the person who pants she had ruined with Snapple.

“It’s ok,” replied David, “It’s not your fault,” he said as he dabbed his trousers with his book.

Kira who had some tissue with her said, “this might be better,” and made a clumsy attempt to rescue his pants by dabbing the tissue furiously on his trousers. A split second later, she realized in the awkwardness and inappropriateness of her actions. She looked at him and they both laughed.

Sharing laughter is often more powerful than sharing glances and smiles. Later that night, Kira and David went on to share a burger and fries at the Airport’s restaurant. Rumor has it that, they now live in upstate New York with two dogs, and several kinds of fish.

A soft shuffle and a thump jolted me out of my daydreaming. And then the dice rolled…my way.

A pale girl with slightly unkempt (yet straight and silky hair) plonked herself besides the guy I was eyeing. She was listening to her ipod and drinking Snapple. Soon after a squealing kid and his mother joined them. The kid’s squeals were fortuitous – ‘my guy’ moved across and sat in the chair next to mine.

I rehearsed what I was going to say, and then after a few minutes asked, “Do you think we’ll leave in the next two hours or is the wait going to be longer? The weather looks quite bad out there …”

As events unfolded, the wait was in fact longer. David and I walked up to the Airport’s restaurant to grab something to eat. I was right he did have a decent college degree – he worked as a geologist at the National Science Foundation. He didn’t play soccer, but that was ok – I could live with that.

David and I went out on a first real date two weeks after New Years. In many ways, it was just what I had imagined it would be and what I had planned for. We were the young attractive couple that had interesting conversation on a date. I forced myself not to call him every single day, and I made sure that I didn’t sleep with him at least for the first one month. Occasionally, he’d surprise me with interesting (and mostly useless) gifts like a wooden sculpture from a flea market. Occasionally, I would surprise him with an interesting book or CD - even though I actually ended up spending hours agonizing over the right ‘casual’ gift.

Three months later, the plan began to crumble. David wasn’t sure what he wanted but I was. Besides, it turned out that David wasn’t my ideal man – he wanted to laze around and read the weekend paper on a Sunday morning, while I wanted to go running and then meet up friends for brunch. His casualness began to irk me. Things that in my mind had seemed charming, in reality – were not so appealing. A week later, it was over.

Rumor has it that, David now lives in upstate New York with his wife Kira, two dogs, and several kinds of fish.