I am invariably a mess around Amy. She is the kind of drop dead bang stickshift rocketship amnesia fucking hot that you see in a crowd and wake up still thinking about 3 weeks later. She wears blue jeans and a t-shirt like a prom dress, and looks twice as beautiful.
We first met a long time ago over the internet. I was hanging around a chat room for an old Shoutcast station, “Tag’s Trance Trip” and met Will from Atlanta, who is to this day a sincere and true friend. He and I talked a lot online and eventually he said I needed to meet his friend Amy. Months went by of online conversations and phone calls between her and me, but I had yet to see a picture of her. I wasn’t doing much besides playing video games and running up my credit card and I was dying to meet this girl. So under guise of a party invitation, I bought plane a plane ticket and flew to meet her. Will met me and we rode the train up to his parked car the better part of an hour away, new friends alive with the promises of the coming weekend.
Many miles and conversations later, my eyes are greeted by the lush beauty of the beautiful twisting roads snaking through the forest encompassing the suburbs outside Atlanta. Greens and browns splattered with the blooms of flowers I couldn’t identify if I tried. The moisture in the air wouldn’t have been sweeter to a Bedouin than it was to my Arizona trained throat. Even his house was beautifully quaint, trees and grass decorating the only mildly aged exterior to complete the visual feast I had been consuming since my arrival. None of this prepared me for the sight I was about to be presented with.
Entering through the side door, electricity flew from my fingers, through the doorknob and into the house bringing it to life; the inside vibrant beyond the placid promise of its exterior. Music met my ears as I rounded the corner into the front room and a symphony met my eyes. I had never seen Amy before, she very purposely would never send me a picture of her; now I understand why. That first glimpse of her was priceless. I wouldn’t have traded all the pictures in the world for the way my breath caught in my throat when I saw her. She was the kind of pretty that people only talked about in story books. The face that children visualize when listening to stories of Snow White, the body I had visualized every night for months; only better. Wrapping my arms around her in greeting, I didn’t ever want to let go. As much as I would have loved to lose myself in those arms the weekend was waiting and not to be denied my presence.
That weekend was atypical even by my standards. Halfway through the weekend, we had filled his two story house and giant yard with DJ’s and just about everyone under the sun, we were broadcasting over the internet, seen more drugs than The Giants do in a decade, climbed up a tree waving glow sticks at passerby’s, drank a bunch of absinthe and varying other alcohols, etc etc ad infinitum. It was crazy. The last night we were together, we found ourselves alone downstairs in my makeshift room. Bed outfitted comfortably, surrounded by three decades of accumulated memories, packed in boxes or hung on stark walls belying the riot of life happening upstairs. One thing led to another and all rational thought simply fled the premises as we tried to create a new religion. Amy is one off the few women I have ever met who looks naturally beautiful; with no make up no primping, just wash-n-go. Fresh out of bed she is more stunning than half of Hollywood at work. Amy sans clothing… Nirvana embodied.
That whole weekend was alive with what I can only describe as magic. It lived and breathed as an entity unlike any place I had ever been before. Conversation came easily and without preface or pretension. The trees were greener, the skies lively even when overcast, it was as if the very elements themselves knew to do no wrong. If you have ever been to a city for the first time and it just felt like you belonged there, then you know what I am talking about. It’s hard to codify that sort of latent belonging.
Leaving after that weekend was a mixture of reticence and exhilaration unlike anything in recent memory. I did not want to leave and miss all the amazing friends I had made, let alone Amy. However, the faster I got back home, the sooner I could start packing. Forget Arizona, I was moving.
I spent the next couple of months on the phone and online talking with Amy as time permitted and securing employment and living quarters with a friend. I was able to keep the move and its details a secret from Amy as she was supposed to come visit me for New Years and I was surprising her with the details and flying back with her.
Christmas spirit not flagging for lack of snow in the desert, I was packing the last few things I was keeping and my remaining clothes into boxes. I heard my phone ringing and assuming it to be Amy, I grabbed it. She sounded terrible, she was really sick. So I told her to make it to the plane, come out here and let me pamper her for a week or two: Orange Juice, Chicken Soup, bedrest. She paused.
“I should probably tell you… I’m seeing somebody.”
Hell of a Christmas present.
That line hit me like an Abram. Pinned between a desire to destroy everything the entered my field of vision until somehow I had channeled this bitterness back out into the world and the desire to cry it out, I felt like I was being slowly crushed. When I try to describe this now, I have to write that even years later words I want to use fall bravely but inadequately short of describing even the memory of that awful moment. I’ll just leave it at that.
I shut down. For weeks to come, I simply didn’t know how to act. I could easily have still moved to Atlanta and gone forward with everything, but it just seemed useless then; no point to it. I promptly began the most adamant and ceaseless assault on my liver and brain I have undertaken. Drastic, you say? Maybe, but it helped.
I saw Amy again a year later and by then I had recovered in the majority from whatever hole I had thrown myself into. It was nice to see her, and we had a great time, two moments in particular stick out in my mind, because they were the closest thing I would get to revenge on her beau for some perceived wrongdoing.
Amy had made the trip to the airport with Will. It was like a 90210 reunion. Remembering the way her blue jeans hugged her curves, I get chills. On the car ride back her boyfriend called and I had her phone for some reason, so I answered it. It was classic.
‘Heeeelllooooouuuuu?’ I asked.
“Who is this?” He replied.
‘That’s rather rude of you. After all you called me. You first. Who is this?’
“This is Chris. Where’s Amy?”
‘Chris, who? I don’t know any Chris.’
“Amy’s boyfriend, CHRIS!”
‘Amy says she doesn’t know who you are. Goodbye.’ I hang up.
*RING*
‘Heeeelllloooooouuu?’
“Put Amy on the phone.”
‘She says she doesn’t want to talk to you’
“Who is …”
‘Hold on.’ I interrupted.
I then proceeded to enact what is to this day my favorite phone prank ever. I leaned back and asked Amy if she wanted the phone. She replied yes. Taking my hand off the receiver I said, “Tell me how bad you want it!” Amy rolled out a series of increasingly satisfying “I want it. I want it so bad!”s that would have made a whore blush. Laughing until I was simply incapable of carrying on, I handed the phone to Amy so she could reap what we had sown.
That was the first incident. The second was far less animated but equally impressed upon my memory. The day I was to leave, Amy came to see me off accompanied by her never far behind boyfriend. As we parted she gave me a hug and a kiss with intensity, lips alive with electricity. Had the daggers firing from Chris’ eyes been corporeal I would, no doubt, not be sitting here today, reciting this spitefully bitter story to god knows who.
Amy and I remained in touch for a couple months thereafter via email, AIM, and phone calls. Soon though, she disappeared again. Apparently, Chris didn’t approve of our communication. He felt threatened and Amy, being the diligently understanding girlfriend, obliged. The fun didn’t stop there, though. Soon she no longer spoke to anyone that she had once called friend, completely supplanting her social support structure. Not the best idea, but she was an adult and able to make her own decisions.
And that was the way it stayed. No more contact, no nothing, both of us going our separate directions to screw up our separate lives until about a week prior to my birthday last year. Out of the blue, I got a message from my friend Mike that “that chick Snow” was looking for me. Understandably confused, I wrote it off as a fluke, thinking it would blow over. Within a couple days more people were telling me the same thing. Shit. Curiosity overtaking my sense of dread, I found her online. Apparently she was going to come to Arizona for a wedding. Too bad I don’t live there anymore, I thought, you should update your records. Literally meaning she was going to Arizona, but the wedding has now been changed to Santa Barbara, CA. Nice, I said, but what has that to do with me? She wanted to see me, so we made tentative plans. I started checking hotel rates in the area and come up with $250 a night at the minimum. Sorry, Amy, I don’t need to get stepped on again that badly. So instead of some doomed trip up the coast, Dale got us tickets to The Urban Revolution Tour. The Used, Korn, Less than Jake, Linkin Park, and $10 beers were waiting. Hell, yes.
