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Well, I would say the honeymoon is over, or something like that. Don't get me wrong, I am still madly in love with him, a bad memory goes away for me everytime he smiles... but I'm fairly certain he's going to let me down, that I'm going to get majorly fucking hurt, and that I'm going to let him do it. He is two people, like I am. There's the hard-shell exterior, the "cooler than thou" attitude, the apathy, the sandpaper tongue. On the inside, just like me, is the sadness, the pain and the little kid whose mommy didn't hug enough. All week I've been getting to know the inner, good Geoff. Last night though, I got introduced to Mr. Hyde.... And it's all sad, it really is. Sad that things have to happen to people to make them act that way, sad that people let those things become excuses for poor behavior.

He spent the whole weekend here. It was his idea. It's not a codependant, cramping thing, we just like being together, he as much as I do. My moms tossing him some money for working on the house. I'm doing almost as much as he is though just cuz I can't stand being idle. My mom has been camping all weekend. The Florida relatives all went home, and except for a little party Rick brought home from the bar Friday night, we pretty much spent the weekend alone together. Wonderful time until last night at the bar. I'm making it seem like such a huge problem and maybe it is but I'm thinking it's not as bad as all that. Then again, I have a way of turning off feelings, of looking at problems like they're not MY problems, of stepping back, detaching myself and getting over it with a shrug of the shoulders and the tuff grrl "c'est la vie" attitude. So my mom comes home for about 10 minutes, gives me the van cuz Rick's daughter (my ex-almost step-sis from Austin, TX) is coming in today and he needs to van to pick her up at the airport. My mom stayed with her new "beau" and he took her to work and is picking her up today. She gave me $80 to give Geoff for now. I thought to hold onto it, cuz he seems to be like how I was and if I have a bill for $300 and only have $50, I'll spend the $50 on dumb shit cuz it's not enough to pay the bill.... So he maybe has $30 left. Around 8pm last night I got the idea to leave him a note of some sort, cuz things are going REALLY fucking good, and we've been having trouble with definitions and labels. I introduce him as a friend, he stutters over it when he talks about me "This is Joey, my, um, friend or ummm..." Also last week while at Aunt Shirl's we were up in the room I was staying in, Mandy's old room, and we were listening to music, door open, totally got bitched out about being up there alone with a boy... so we been making references to that with each other, school-kid jokes I guess, cuz it was such a middle-school thing to happen (her bitching), so the note I left (and yes, I did something like this with Lon a long, beautiful long time ago) I wrote a note saying "Will you be my boyfriend, circle yes or no" and I folded it up like an 8th grade cheerleader would and put it in his laundry basket of stuff he brought over for the weekend. I took a shower and when I was all prettied up I came into the room he and I were staying in. He was standing there smiling, holding the note, and he read it out loud, laughed when he read it too so I thought that was a good sign. Then his eyes got dark and that monster of self-doubt came through and said "Why would you want ME as a boyfriend?" It almost touched off a "I'm a bigger loser than you are" debate, luckily I avoided that and thought I gave him decent, rational answers to his questions. I didn't bring up the "why would you even want to be my boyfriend" fears that were going through my mind. But we talked and it seemed like the outcome was favorable, we didn't lay out any ground rules really, other than "No Drama". No drama would be a nice fucking change to things. He said he's afraid to get serious, cuz that's when the drama starts. I said "it will be just like this last week except now we'll know who to introduce each other as." and really that's all I wanted, an OK to think of him as a boyfriend, even if it's just in my own fucking head... He said that sounded nice. His friend in Olympia, WA called then, an ex-junkie NIRVANA fan like myself. (Actually, he knows quite a few ex-junkie NIRVANA fans come to think of it....) Dude is coming out for a visit, wanted to know when the Dead show was at darien lakes, wanted to know if Geoff would pick up a meeting schedule for NA/AA meetings around here. He talked to him for a while and I got the house picked up a little bit and changed clothes. When I came out he said "Are we going somewhere?" which I guess in Geoff-talk means "you look pretty". I was wearing my ankle length tulip-cut jean skirt and a nice, tight tittie-mamma blouse. He got cleaned up and wore the Sliver shirt I gave him on Friday (NIRVANA tee that's never looked good on me, even now that all my tees fit that one still doesnt look right) and some nicer jeans. He finds the scent of Tommy Girl as erotic as I do, and I dont know what he wears but it was alright smelling and we spent a few minutes sniffing and nibbling each others' necks. I asked what we were doing (I wanted to go to the waterfalls all damn week with him, but havent REALLY brought it up, was thinking it woulda been a perfect night to go out there...) he says "to the bar for a quick drink and then home to bed" allllrighty then.... A QUICK DRINK in Geoff-talk means 10 beers or so, 6 games of pool, various flirting with NASTY, crackhead looking insane girls and ok looking bitches that roll their eyes and look down their noses at him. So yeah, that pissed me off a little bit. He would nod and make kissy faces when we'd be talking with different people, and I'm pretty confident that I'd be able to resume my sluttiness in this craphole town if I was so inclined, from the amount of cute boys hitting on me and asking for my number, and the sorta cute men groping me... though this fact isn't as reassuring as it would be to most girls, because the sluttiness is all part of the tuff grrl routine, and I'm trying really fucking hard to kill that bitch, all she does is get me in trouble. Anyway, we're playing pool, I hear The Voice say "Look left!" I Turn my head and Holy Shit, my cousin Gary is staring right at me looking very confused. First off, I'm supposedly in Texas, and he's supposedly in N.C., THEN I've lost a lot of weight, he hasn't seen me that often since I got off smack, and the fact I was lookin damn good, which is hard for someone with my last name to do. So we hug and exchanged lots of "Holy shit, when did you get in towns" etc. I introed him to Geoff, his opinion through the night, just like EVERBODY who has met him "Don't fuck this one up Joe, this is the best thing you've had, you better get some hooks in him right away" as if every waking moment, which there have been many seeing I'm so fucking nervous and paranoid that I can't fucking sleep since I met this guy... every second my mind has been saying "DO NOT FUCK THIS UP! NO DRAMA!" But you know, with all this no drama talk, he sure does like to create a lot of fucking drama. We didn't even talk about being exclusive so I can't hold that against him, but don't fucking say shit like "I'm thinking of fucking that one" to me.... Then when I bring it up, after challenging him to hit on her, cuz I want to see his moves, and I offered to critique his pick up lines, and really I wanted to see him get the cold shoulder again, this guy whiffs more than a blind kid at the batting cages, aight, he got NO GAME, which is something I like about him. In the van I say to him "I am disease free and if that status changes there will be consequences" Which he took as an all-out death threat, when really it was only a half-assed death threat. He got all "Yeah, like you're really miss innocent, only fucked less than ten guys" I say "Do you want a fucking refference?" Janet gets called, and then he changes his mind and says he doesnt want to talk to her, says he believes me, (which I dont think he really does) and then we get to his house a second later and we talk in the van for a while, I'm shaking by this point by the way, and he says "you think I'm some nasty whore... yeah I been with lots of girls but they've all been decent" ummm... girls who fuck crackheads with mohawks aren't usually decent... and he sure does seem to get his heart broken by all these so-called decent girls. Before I could say any of that he says "and you're one to talk, fucking junkie... how many times did a needle go in your arm, hundreds if not thousands, right? Might as well have been dicks in your pussy...." ahh, it took a while, but the I'm a dirty junky line finally comes out. Really people, am I THAT different, so different that people don't believe me? Yes, I fucked up and used someone's spoon, and once I ran bleach through a rig before giving it to someone to use AFTER ME, and I got poked with Matt's rig... yes there were fuck ups, but that's what HIV tests are for... and douchebag motherfuckers feeling guilty about their own transgressions, projecting that guilt on me, making themselves feel not-so-disgusting by pointing out that I used to stick tiny pieces of metal into my veins are the reason why I carry around my test results papers. But I suppose it's understandable, right, and if people trusted and believed what I say would be fools to do so just because REALLY, how often do you come across someone like me who really is this nice and smart and caring and trustworthy, honest, respectful.... I couldnt say much, just more warnings not to confuse me with regular girls, that I'm barely human, that I am 100% motherfucking genuine. We got in the house at 2am and he still didnt fall asleep till 3:15. I was scared shitless waking him up this morning, my bro wakes up swinging when he's been drinking. I feel like I'm on eggshells now. Though he never returned the note I put in his laundry basket, I have a horrible feeling that I'll get it back sometime soon with the word NO circled.

But it'd probably be for the best, right? He's not as clean (off coke) as he made himself out to be, he's a 2nd place to my dad's drinking "abilities", besides the fact he's just starting a divorce, and the fact that he's gone back to her a hundred times before, the fact that he has a kid but is a not-so-great daddy.... But he really does make me happy, and I see a lot of myself in him, too much, the me from a while back, the me I'm trying to kill. He said not to give up easily on him, so I shouldn't. And like Harlan said "I'm going to end up hurting you." and I said "I'm going to end up letting you." cuz that's the way of the Sage, because bad feelings are better than no feelings, and because you get your heart trampled doesn't mean that it'll go on staying underfoot. Someone will come along and pick it up off the ground like a heads-up penny, and put you in their pocket for good luck.

Always remember to quit while you're ahead.

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