magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

the first ever note that i left for lindsey was written on a small scrap of polka-dotted paper that had once been part of a bag i got with a postcard. it said "you know i would never say anything mean about you on my website." just a few minutes ago she handed a small piece of graph paper across my desk.

i realize 'been a while since bean's read me his daily addition to his webjournal'.

i hate to think what you've written about this. me.

on my desk, possibly within her line of site, was a typewritten page that begins: "first, there's simply the matter of how much of a bitch you are."

"i actually haven't written anything in quite a while."

"why?"

"i don't know. i feel bad about it though, if only because without writing it down i'm going to lose all of this."

so here goes.

to preface it, i have to say that some of this might be out of order. which i guess doesn't affect the story so terribly much. but as a perfectionist, it does bother me a little. anyway.

24 february was stef's birthday. i called her when i woke up. two in the morning her time, just barely her birthday, and i was the first to wish her well. she told me that it had already been bad, but wouldn't elaborate. i went to the flea market. a movie. ate lunch. it didn't feel like it was my girlfriend's birthday. lindsey and i were supposed to work on the southern tour packet in the afternoon. i was sitting in my room playing guitar. she knocked on my door.

lindsey and i kissed again.

and i called stef again. now noon her time. in the morning she had said that she didn't know which was worse, me being hit with everything that she had done all at once, or her having to watch things unfold between lindsey and me. i didn't tell her that lindsey and i had kissed again. i stopped writing on my website. i think that this is really why i've been quiet for the last two weeks. or at least why i began to be.

while i was on the phone with stef, lindsey walked by. stef had just made some disparaging comment about getting old. i laughed. "yeah, twenty-two is so old." lindsey would tell me later that she was hurt by the fact that i was laughing with stef, that after i told her i wanted to go back to our cute, harmless, friendly crush she had gone and cried.

all of which doesn't really make total sense to me in retrospect.

lindsey had also put one of the notes that i had left on her door up in her room next to the tip of a dart, the only thing she still had up that was associated with her boyfriend, adam. she took both of them down some time last week after spending most of her free time over the course of a couple of days with the cornell kids.

we had kissed once or twice more by this point. every time seemed to end with her saying something like, "i said this before, but this is the last time." by this point she had told me about crying when i said i wanted to go back to a more innocent version of what we had. about all the dreams that she was having in which we were a couple. and she had also told me, somewhat inexplicably one night, holding my hand, that she wasn't feeling anything at all towards me.

there had also been more talk about how she was still looking for something part-time, not too serious, to fill the next two months with. more talk about how she cared how that made me feel, but not enough to stop from doing it. but, that i wouldn't have to see it.

"which is just not true," i said. "i might not actually see it with my own eyes, but i'll see you going out. i'll have to listen to people talking about it."

she had kissed that italian boy she went out with. the next morning i had overheard her talking about it with sarah.b. but that seemed like a very isolated incident. she didn't really like him, she wasn't planning on going out with him again. and i didn't feel threatened.

but, about a week ago she and sarah.b decided to bake cookies for this cornell kid sean's birthday. they didn't really know him all that well at this point, but there was going to be a little party in the cornell studios and they had been invited to stop by. this marks the effective beginning of her pushing me away.

the next day she went to the chocolate festival with some cornell kids. then to one of their classes. then out to dinner with them. the chronology doesn't matter. and in retrospect i figure a lot of these instances of "cornell kids" referred more specifically to sean.

she only slightly reached out to me once during this time period. she was making phone calls on the phone in the lounge. the one outside my room. and i was doing my best to not want to listen. but cursing the other people in the lounge whose voices were drowning hers out.

i woke up at in the middle of the night. went to use the bathroom. found a note on my door when i came back to my room. she had talked to a mutual friend of hers and adam's. asked how adam was doing. turns out that he had kissed a few other people as well, but wasn't seeing anyone else. she was upset. felt like she had to tell someone. chose me.

things were back to feeling distant the next day. in the evening i was going to an art show at the university of washington's program, and later to an architecture lecture at cornell. i suspected that she'd be at the cornell lecture, but she didn't say anything about it when we were discussing the evening.

and sure enough, she was there, sitting in the back of the room with sarah.b and claire and their new cornell friends. ("but i'm not bitter.") afterwards i handed her a piece of paper. one word. "later?" it had been a number of days since we had really talked.

and later, when they were all still off, emily.s told me that i should go out for a walk. "it's warm and windy and beautiful out," she told me. so i went out. sat on the steps in front of a church near the pantheon. facing bernini's elephant. there were a few dozen styrofoam peanuts blowing around the cobblestones in the piazza. making an amazing sound. like being inside of a rainstick.

earlier, i had felt filled with animosity. "i hate stef not only for pushing me away," i had written, "but also for pushing me towards someone who can't (or won't) love me back." lindsey had asked if i hated her. i had written "i hate lindsey for not being able to/wanting to/letting herself love me."

sitting outside i wrote more about how i was feeling. walking back to the cenci a leaf spiraled down from the sky and landed in the street in front of me. i picked it up. i wanted to write "i love you" and "i hate you" on it. but i had to elaborate. "i love you (i'm not sure this is true)" and "i hate this (i meant to write '...you')".

i made a little envelope for the leaf and was about to tape it to lindsey's door. it was about midnight. she and claire and sarah.b (of course) and sean came back. she motioned me into the hall off of the lounge. "i'm sorry. i'm going out." i gave her the envelope and the piece of paper i had been writing on earlier. "do you mind if i read them later?" she asked.

claire told me before they left that they were just going out to wander around. they were trying to stay up until three to go to a fabled pastry shop that makes pastries for the pope. claire asked me if i wanted to come along. i said "thanks, but i've kind of got issues of my own."

i stayed up reading. i was just about to go to bed when i heard the door. they were having trouble finding the pastry shop and had come back to call someone in providence that had been last year. they sat in the lounge outside my door and talked quietly, so as not to wake me up. lindsey told me later that she had known i was awake.

the next night, after leaving the cock-wrassle (this must have been wednesday), a group of people were going over to the cornell apartment right near our building. claire, again, asked me if i wanted to come along, and maybe masochisticly, and maybe because she seemed to be truly interested in having me come along, i said okay.

and when there, i felt terribly out of place, and doubly so because lindsey was busy flirting with sean. and i started an internal debate about whether or not i should just leave. in the bit of confusion when everyone (except lindsey, sean, and i) got up to smoke some pot i decided to go. i was half way down the stairs when lindsey yelled down after me. "bean?"

i walked back up, and we got into a bit of an argument there in the stairwell. with people coming and going and we'd lower our voices and both try not to start yelling.

i think it would have been easier if i had gotten away without anyone noticing. but she did notice. and was concerned, but that made things worse in a way.

she said that maybe we could talk in an hour or so when she came back. i wanted to say "whatever." i might have. i walked away.

talked with emily.a about it all when i got back. i hadn't really talked to anyone else in the cenci about this. i had briefly brought it up with sarah.b, because she knew what was going on, having heard lindsey's side of it. she told me that i was really cute when i liked somebody. "thanks. i think."

"the 'i think' isn't necessary," she said.

but the cute had turned into something closer to pathetic by this point.

and lindsey and i did talk later. but resolved nothing except the mutual acknowledgement that things were bad between us.

thursday there was talk of renting movies. lindsey called the cornell kids, presumably to make sure that they weren't doing something more exciting. she came back and said that they were going bowling. (this was mostly a conversation between lindsey and sarah.b with whom i share a studio, so i was marginally included in it.) no one here expressed an interest in bowling. lindsey left to call the cornell kids again. this i figured, even at the time, was a way of testing sean. i suspect that she said something like, "no one here really wants to go bowling, but we are planning on renting a couple of movies, if any of you would like to come watch them." and reading between the lines, "do you want to ditch your friends and come hang out with me?"

and he came. just him. he said, "my friends are going bowling, but i'm really tired and not feeling up to it." whatever.

the first movie was okay. she had her hand on his arm. at one point pulled her legs up under her so that her foot was snuggled up against his hand. it was at this point not too overt, and although somewhat upsetting, still a little cute. at one point though, lindsey got up to answer the phone. sean moved into the corner of the couch and they started getting more cuddly when she came back to sit down.

i didn't stay for the second movie.

i tried to be civil towards her during the art history tour on friday morning. but it was difficult.

in the afternoon ryan came into studio and asked how i was doing. "i'm still here," i said.

"i'm sorry," he said. "i wanted to warn you about lindsey from the beginning, but i felt that it wasn't really my place, and you probably wouldn't have wanted to hear it then anyway. but, i dated her for a year and four months and i can tell you that she's incredibly selfish. you can do better."

later i talked with ryan for about an hour about lindsey. i had asked him, if it wasn't prying too much, and if he didn't mind, to tell me his side of their story. i had heard hers, but was curious about getting more of the picture. and, i knew that he had some pretty negative feelings towards her still, and hearing that was therapeutic, in a way.

saturday night, the day before i started writing this (it's been a week, and is now actually the 18th), there was a party at the nearby cornell apartment. which basically everyone in the cenci went to, with the exception of emily.a and myself. even if i had been interested i didn't really want to go hang out at lindsey's new boy's house, as i had put it.

before i went to sleep i left notes for lindsey, sarah.b, and laura about the sunday morning original language movie, moulin rouge, which i suspected they had all seen, but i figured that i should at least make them aware of it, as they have all come to previous sunday morning movies. none of them came, of course. lindsey had left a note in return when she came in letting me know that she wouldn't be going.

so i went by myself. and i liked the movie. it was a little cheesy, some of the music especially, but it was well-filmed and the story got to me. i was crying and everything.

this is of course all only half of my story. because then there's stef.