Meanwhile in Delaware...

Moments ago I submitted a friend request on FB to the husband of the Big One, the girl who sent me spinning, the one I never really got over. I genuinely liked the guy when I knew him. I admire him for being able to be married to her. I often say that I hope they're happily cheating on one another as they had on various others in the time that I knew them both, but I don't think I mean that. I feel more comfortable hoping that they're happy. I don't know why, maybe it's the baby slung to his back in his profile shot.

A week or two ago I watched American Splendor for the first time. I'd wondered about the guy in the obits., friends had the movie and insisted that I'd love it. They were right--frighteningly so. So much of it was so familiar--the irascibility, the gloominess, the hopelessness, the desperation, the cat. I take hope and pride in the fact that I'm not as messy as Pekar in his film portrayal, nor (I like to think) quite so judgmental or quite so irascible.
--I recall listening to a Studio 360 interview in which Anderson and the author he was interviewing used the word irascible with such specificity and frequency that it became euphemistic. By irascible did they mean that the author's father was abusive?--
Of the many familiar moments and qualities in the film the one that struck most keenly was one of deepest despair, as Pekar looks out over the freeway wondering at the value of his persistence, wondering why he isn't hit by a bus. It's not a suicidal moment, there's no motivation to act. It's more of an existential fatigue touched with an illogical will to set the teeth and go in for another round, dodging the angel's touch that brings that magnificent defeat. I know that scene intimately.
In the film the scene cuts to the words "Meanwhile in Delaware" and the story turns toward one of its more hopeful twists as Pekar finds love--or something akin to it. This is not causal. For all the times I've stared at subway tracks and oncoming buses and cataracts, and longed for rest Meanwhile in Delaware has not followed. Yet, the scene--the whole movie, in fact--left me feeling as hopeful as I have in some time--as predicted by the friend who lent it.

I feel like I've lost the ability to feel romantic love, to find women attractive in more than just the abstract and objectified way of seeing the pretty or the beautiful, but rather in the electric intimacy of possibility. Then I remember that I live in Sunhole, an alien place where I doubt there are any attractive women nor any unmarried of any appearance over the age of 25.
I believe that location is not the entire problem. I believe that changing my behavior can alter my experience, but I prefer to use my money to advance my career and prepare to return home, rather than put myself in places where I might encounter people. In the town of Sunhole this seems like a solid investment, a smart bet.

Facing the uncertainty that dominates the long view of life--and even the momentary, as with the woman in Pittsburgh who happened to be walking across a grate when the transformer beneath it exploded in a fireball--we latch on to plans and strategies to provide leverage for our hopes. I suspect that most of these strategies serve nothing more than to help us sustain hope between fecundities. I don't know that focusing on what I want, rather than what I don't want or what I've lost will change anything. I don't know that changing my location or going to events will revive my ability to connect with another person, to conflate our concerns and dreams. It's even possible that doing nothing is a viable option.

I wonder if reconnecting with the Big One, even through her husband, will change anything for me. I guess I'd like to love them as a couple in hopes that I'll feel no more aggrieved than I do at watching my friends marry the wonderful women they've met--where was I when they met? How have I not met these women--or how did I let them slip past me and into others' arms?
I know that forgiving the Big One is a one way street--at least I think it is. I don't think she needs to participate for it to ease my heart, but I prefer to have a connection rather than hermetic peace.

I've taken to railing against marriage, taking Benedic's defense--if there'll be no women in my life then I'll decry marriage and deny that love has sufficient pleasure. But it's hollow, another strategy to make persistence tolerable, to cope with unfulfilled hope, an alternate form of patience. Who knows; my bachelor days may be numbered. I'd do well to take advantage of them now.