The Problem Is...

So I'm tooling along, minding my own business, on this lovely Gay Pride weekend, one of my favorite times of year in this City, when all of a sudden a memory pops up to ruin it all. The weather here has been gorgeous and rare, a time when windows can be left open at night and you don't need PJs to be warm in bed. The back door is open to the sun setting over the Pacific, and the sounds of the kids' latest basketball party drift up to my bedroom/office, where books and papers compete with electronic equipment, almost a telescoped war of old and new media forms, fought right here in real time.

I'm staring at a photograph of two hands, their little fingers intertwined; her middle finger is wearing a turquoise-and-silver ring; his pinky wearing a black-and-silver ring. There's no blaming the world in general for this sentimental touch, as this is my bedroom, so I put it there. Sometimes, I've put that photo away, in anger, sadness, resentment, or more vague feelings of discontent. But I always get it out again.

I snapped that photo on our last night together in New York, almost three months ago now. It was the night before we agreed to "break up," which we did the following morning back in San Francisco -- or Redwood Shores, to be specific, as she dropped me off at my office.

Later that same day, I started this blog. So it's coming up on Q-1, as we like to say in the private sector, on this breakup, and how are we doing?

Well, the overall outlook may still seem bleak, but recently there are indications the bullish trends that have dominated recent months may be weakening their stranglehold on the entities in question. The markets remain unsteady, but with the advent of warm weather, yours truly has started to host these backyard parties, inviting various guests, and delighting in them meeting each other. The other night I introduced three women writers to each other; none of them had ever before met, though I've known all three for years. Tonight I am welcoming back home an old friend, another writer, and introducing him to an editor he's worked with, but never met.

I love hosting parties like these ones, informal, the kids having fun on their own, the adults connecting through conversation. I drift in and out, as usual, since my self-diagnosed attention-deficit disorder prevents me from concentrating on any one topic for longer than a few minutes.

But I'm doing all the right things, aren't I, for a man in my position? My heart aches for her. But I am trying not to isolate, but to share (here) and in person with friends, what this feels like for me. Before tonight's party, I took my two little red-haired boys to a game store where they wanted to spend their allowances.

I was listening to my bluegrass music, admiring the outfits of returnees from the parade, especially any pretty girls who came into view, with their skimpy dresses, tank tops, shorts, tight pants, etc. Visual cues, as I call them. Then, all of a sudden, as I pulled up to the game store, it wasn't today but last November 15th. I was in this same neighborhood, but alone with her. There is the car wash where she got her Mini ready to drive across the country for the first time. There's the Chinese coffee shop where I bought her one last coffee and pastry before she hit the road.

That time, unlike her departure last month, she firmly promised she would be returning to me. But I had felt very uneasy as she pulled away, smoking a cigarette, her window down, the music loud, simply because I could see how happy her flight was making her.

Our more recent parting was far sadder and much more explicit. This time, she cried as I held her for the last time, and when she drove away, it was without any promises to me at all, except that we will always be friends, and she will always "love" me. But I'm not sure what love means to her, any more.

So, suddenly this late afternoon, the ghosts of our recent past overtook me. More images found their way into the view from my windshield as I drove the boys back from the store. Her old apartment, or at least its roof, with that little room tacked on up top. We rarely went there, but we did the first day I convinced her to let Chip go outside after a long, wet winter.

The park, where we went and she played her banjo.

A coffee house, where sat together, me feeling so proud that this lovely creature was my girlfriend, no one else's.

Gone. She's gone. I have no girlfriend.

I have memories, I have my friends, I have my children, and I have a huge hole in my heart. It's summertime. I miss my lover, now so far away. Does she ever miss me?