I'm getting into crushes all the time, but I read a lot.

(I think it's a Philip Roth book): Letting Go.  At the Peanut Barrel.  I had been passing through.  It lay dormant and off-blue on one of those wobbly tables, sticky with spilled beer, blanketed with random discarded peanut shells.  I should have picked it up.

I didn't, though.  I just smiled, absolutely smitten. 

And so Hawaii pops out of the ocean, one island at a time, delicately glides about a foot over the ocean, jumps up before smashing into the lights of California, and plummets, like a tropical metorite, into my head:

The horizon blue, sparkling, severe. 

The Beach!  Sand crusting up on wet feet and inbetween toes!  Surfboards and gigantic waves gigantically roaring!  Bikinis and sweat! 

Freckled faces and arms, polished out on the ball of the shoulder, the tip of the nose.  Oh the girls from my English class: the light in their eyes stealing sparkle from the far hard edge of the sea, where rocky, green islets poke out and Brian, inert on the board, a dazed and grazing cow, bobs over another wave, his hands in the water. 

Angela, Kristen, Maegan, Rachel, Sarah, Jesse.  Colors in a palette, descending notes on the scale. Shadows, floating.

Michigan, spring, 2005: flowers working out of the trees, the hum of lawnmowers and the smell of cut grass sifting in through screen doors.  Sunlight glittering in the vodka.  A new, blooming interest -- you can tell it's more than a crush when thoughts of her taste like sugar and vinegar--your stomach and throat grate and squirm.  And it's good.  And your hands shake. 

Actual conversation:

"Love? How could you not believe in love, Sean?"

I burp.  And then I say: "Because there's pictures of me on this girl's mirror right now.  Pictures of lots of guys.  She's like a headhunter, there's these trophies for her to show off..."

"I like it that you don't pursue me, Sean." she starts to whisper:  "Maybe they aren't trophies.  Maybe she misses you and misses all of them.  Maybe she's confused, more confused than when she was a little girl." 

"Ehh.  I breathed her in a couple of times."

"What?"

"I breathed her in.  That was the last time in my life I was ever in love with anyone.  But she was just having fun, I guess.  I think I was just another guy to hang on her mirror."

"Maybe you can change that... I guess you'll have to see."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"So I guess I just have fun now, too.  I mean I can.  And it is fun.  I'm not as idealistic as I used to be." 

"Sean."

"Let's have fun right now."

"Sounds good to me."  She giggles.

                                                        ***

Here's to skateboarding everyday and great weather and tons of shows and snowball fights and girls and love not existing and having fun, because there are two types of people: those who hold on to old memories and then those who try to make new ones.  Happy V-day, suckers.

The damage:

On almost dying:

Bright eyes in Ann arbor. 

The way back to lansing:  Dan was driving my car because he was going to drop some dude off in Mason that we picked up.  Snow covered our vision and this semitruck pulls out in front of us, limiting our options: Crash into the semi or hit the medians on the shoulder.  We slop and slip out of control spinning around a couple of times, hit the median, spin some more and pray the car doesn't go out into the road to get hit, hit the median again, and spin around some more, to a stop.  I was in the back seat, and Kristy was sleeping with her head on my lap. I was calm as the snowy landscape twirled around and around and I kind of thought we were going to bite it, because cars were buzzing by inches from us and we kept spinning and hitting the median.  But for some reason I don't remember having any emotion, I was just looking out the window with this blank look on my face thinking I was going to die.  Weird.  And even weirder, the only thing in my mind during all this spinning snow and crunching metal was Rachel's pictures from when she was a kid.   

So we finally stopped, and everybody was really dazed.  Dan was like "What happened?" And the random dude didn't say anything and Kristy pulls her head up and asks the same thing that Dan did. 

No one got a scratch. Thank God. 

Dan and I get out of the car.  It's totalled.  The Cops show up and automatically think all of us drank, one cop even pulled out this little Jack Daniels bottle and said: "Where did this come from?"  It was a plant, obviously.  So they gave us all breathalyzer tests and of course no one had any alcohol in their system.  They didn't even ask if we were ok, just if we drank.  I got the car towed back to lansing by Jeremy the tow-truck driver, who put things into perspective for me by talking about this 14 year old kid that died in the arms of this fireman who's his friend at that 200-car pile up in lansing last week.

Everything turned out alright and no one was hurt. 

But my car is done for and I only had PLPD insurance covering the car, which basically means that I'm out of luck, so I'm taking donations for a new one!!!

NO ONE WAS HURT.  That was scary, but only after it was all over, oddly enough. 

I have really awesome friends. 

Last night:

-Show at espresso.  Got to talk more to John Crone, who will probably be my roommate next year and met a bunch of his friends.  The sea defeats guys showed up and Keith invited me to play bass for his new project, which sounds kind of cool: synth and a cello.  It's been done, sure, but not much in Mich...

-Went with Kate and Lauren to Temple: American Cosmos and Flatfoot... OK I guess. 

-Went to Macs... The constantines are amazing live, and seemingly nice guys to boot.

-Paul invited us to his party.  Showed up.  More of a get together, really.  Which is cool when you're good friends with everyone, but we were more acquaintances. Knew a lot of the Farewell drive guys, but that was about it, and then Kate and I were like: "That's the Ettison Clio van pulling up." It was.  Talked to JP for a minute, who's actually a really cool guy, then split. 

-Theio's.  Long conversation.

-Bed. 

Great night, all in all.