that certain someone…
i met him in french class, my senior year of high school. i had just returned to houston after two and a half years in kenya. i didn’t like being back, with all these white-washed kids, in this white-washed public high school. i had changed.
so there he was, in my first class of the day. we both spoke far better french than the teacher. i thought he was amusing, if strange. his black hair was all over the place, curly and untamed with fading blond streaks. he wore tee shirts from punk bands i’d never even heard of, and skater shoes. all my “normal” girl friends, some of whom were in the class, thought he was strange. so, at first, did i.
he started bringing me an extra kudos bar in the morning. he sat behind me, and i could always feel his presence there, leaning over his notebook to doodle something [later, i learned, he always chews on the edge of his tongue when he's concentrating]. i realized that i had more fun talking to him than anyone else in the class. he was funny, with this heaving laugh [probably from too many cigarettes and late nights]. there was something contradictory about him – so sweet and yet so nonconformist. i thought he was different. i liked different.
the notes started later – we’d identified each other’s cars in the school parking lot, and one day he left me a note, with a simple 3D cube drawn on it, and his messy signature. how cute, i thought. so i left a note on his beat-up old volvo [may she rest in peace]. the back of the volvo was covered in black-and-white punk stickers. how cute, i thought.
i think the turning point was when he actually, honest to goodness, came into the gap where i worked. there he was, looking completely out of place. he bought socks. he told me that he was “hanging out” at the starbucks around the corner, and that i should drop by. several hours later, when i got off work, he was still there.
the story is common. we dated. we broke up. later, we dated again and broke up again, and so forth and so on. so it goes.
the point isn’t that he’s my ex boyfriend [although he proudly holds the title for the only ex-boyfriend that i still talk to...]. the point is, he’s still around. he’s changed, i’ve changed. somehow, over the course of four years of college, we’ve never lost touch. there was a late night my freshman year, an all nighter, when he drew me a picture of some flowers and emailed them to me, since he was still up. there was a winter when he made sure to send me baby-blue connected-with-a-string mittens for the first day of snow. there was the time he said, ‘you’ll be recieving a letter from me’, and instead, i got the most beautiful painting of two llamas, that now hangs in my living room. there were nights, when we hung out in houston, where we just sat around all night, smoking cigarettes and watching bad television, that were some of the happiest nights of my life. there’s the knowledge that no matter how much water is under the bridge with us [and there's plenty], we’ll always be friends.
because after all those memories, matt’s still around. he’s funny, he’s honest, he’s kind as hell, he’s smart and talented and still humble, he’s wonderful at just listening, and then he’ll just dispel my bad moods just by laughing. this is my little birthday gift to him – because i don’t think he really understands just how important he is to me. if you’d told me, four years ago, that he would still be one of my best friends … well, i wouldn’t have believed you. i was going away to new york, how the hell would we stay friends? i underestimated him. i don’t do that anymore – i think the world of him. he’s one of the few people i trust completely, because after all we’ve been through, i know he’d never do anything [else] to hurt me.
so, happiest twenty-second** birthday, matthieu. i love you.
[and get to the goddamned post office and mail my painting, you lazy prat. or i'll call you and wake your ass up.]
** duh. i’m an idiot. it’s his twenty third, as he so kindly called to remind me. and he’s mailing the painting. good boy!