Sunday, September 15, 2002

I thought this made me Benjamin Braddock, but really I think it makes me Elaine Robinson

As I was telling him about Andrew, telling Sean about him, I was already thinking that I had made the wrong choice, that the person I really wanted to be with was Sean. But it was too late, I had opened my mouth already, words were coming out of this open mouth, disjointed words trying their damnedest to say coherent sentances, complete sentances even, but instead saying um and so... and little impotent attempts to say something, anything other than what I was saying.

Prior to this, to my fumbling with words, Sean and I were talking as we normally do with sly glances being exchanged, Sean doing cute things with his eyes, raising eyebrows, giving that look. But then I talked, I capriciously took a crap shoot, for some reason the dice landed on Andrew, and then there were no longer any cute raised eyebrows, no more insinuating eye glances exchanged, and then he briskly left, said he was going to go talk to his friend. And I realized that I had made a decision, that this was the result of it, that I could no longer touch Sean's hands when I talked to him, that there would be no more fun eye contact, and this made me sad as hell. Andrew came up and talked to me later on, I fatalistically told Andrew that I liked him, told him this not so much because I meant it, but because this was what I had decided on for whatever reasons, that I had blown things with Sean, and this is what I was left with. I kissed him. Again, not because I wanted to, not because I needed to, but just because it seemed appropriate.

And then there was the Now What? feeling, the what exactly have I done thoughts. We were on the back of the bus, the bus we had just caught, barely escaping the angry wedding guests chasing us down. It was that last shot of The Graduate, we knew nothing about each other, but had decided to be together and now had nothing to talk about, were not even exactly sure what we were doing or why we had chosen to do it, wondering even if we had made the wrong decision, but we aren't allowed to think too much about that because the bus keeps moving, bumping along down the road, and we [now, no longer the actors, but the audience, watching the thing play out on televisions] watch the two sit on the back of the bus as the bus fades aways, driving away from the camera.

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