Intersections, Part 1: Jodine Clair Whitlock



October 23, 2002

I pace back and forth, looking out into the street and seeing my own reflection. No passing cars. No cars turning in. Certainly none of them being driven by Elciem. Given the standard hour-late window she's always gotten, she is three minutes from being officially late even by the diminished expectations I learned to give her. It's fitting, in a way. Tardiness and absenteism rank high among the reasons that things never worked out between us. Whether they were the symptoms, as I suspected, or the illness, as she suspected, it was always the cloud hanging over our head. Now, a year later, a year to the date that we parted ways, history repeats itself.

My cell phone starts lighting up, ringing, and vibrating to make sure I am aware that I'm recieving a phone call. I glance at the number. It's not Elciem, it's Polly.

"Is she there yet? Is she there yet? Huh? Huh? Is she there yet?" she asks in the voice of an impatient child.

"Cute. How many times must a comedy repeat itself before it officially becomes tragedy?"

"So she's not, then?"

"No. She's... 3... 2... 1... officially running late."


May 2003

I hate running late. Then again, it's what I've been doing most of my life, so I should be used to it. In this case, it is entirely a product of my own design. I am supposed to be at Brian's house by now, but I thought I'd take a brief detour past my ex-girlfriend Tanni's old house. She doesn't live there or anything, but I don't swing here too often so I figured I would at least pass by the porch where we first kissed, where I first told her that I loved her, and where we hugged goodbye before moving on with our lives. It was four years of my life and deserves more reflecting on than I generally give it. The only problem is that I took a wrong turn somewhere, turned back, then took another wrong turn into completely being lost.


June 2000

I'd clearly lost my mind. I was sitting there working on my sixth glass of whiskey, watching people dance. Well, not everyone, just one person in particular. Red is dancing with a dufus who is probably five years my senior. I have no right to be angry about it because I brushed her off. I told her that she was too young, that I was too far away, and just about everything except for the fact that I had a girlfriend. I don't know why I omitted that particular detail. It certainly would have taken me a lot less time to get her to move on, which I told her to do the second I realized that she was attracted to me. Well, she's moved on, dancing with Dufus, and watching me watch her. My eyes didn't leave her when I bought my seventh glass and slowly stumbled my way to my chair. Why was I upset? It's not anger. It couldn't be jealousy because I told her I didn't want anything from her. And besides, I was in a relationship. A happy relationship. Right?


July 2000

Red: Well, I guess that explains a lot of things.
RAW: Yeah. I don't know why I didn't tell you. I guess it's just that I just wanted to be single for a weekend. And when I didn't tell you at first, I guess I felt embarassed so I kept coming up with other reasons that things couldn't work out.
Red: So then I'm not too young?
RAW: I really don't know, and that's part of the point. I don't know what's going on with me right now. It doesn't really matter, though, because I'm with Tanni.
Red: Do you want to be with Tanni?
RAW: That's beside the point.
Red: ...
RAW: I can't believe I just said that. Look, it doesn't matter because I couldn't hop from one relationship to another even if things don't work out with Tanni. And besides that, they will. By this time next year, we're going to be engaged.
Red: So then why are you here, right now, and talking to me?
RAW: Because I think I might be making the biggest mistake of my life, and I don't know who else to talk to.
Red: Even if you don't talk to me, you should really talk to somebody.


Late July 2000

"I hope that it's you under there. It's been what, three months, and still no headstone. If not, sorry to bother you with the crises of someone you don't know. But I think this is the right plot. I wanted to go into the reception area and ask, but I can't say you're name yet. I can't even think you're name. As long as I think of you as 'Dark One' rather than, well, you, then I have some distance. I'm sorry, but I need that distance right now. I don't know if Tanni and I are going to make it. It's funny, the... situation... makes it easier to talk to you about this. I don't think I'd be able to tell you this face to face, cause I know you had so much faith in Tanni and I and... well I know that you always liked her. I could tell. And that in another time and place, where I wasn't here, you would have told her that. See? [laughs] You should have stuck around another year. I can't quite put my finger on the problem, but I know it runs pretty deep. I'm caught somewhere between knowing that she's the best thing that ever happened to me, and knowing that I can't give her all she needs."

I had my reasons for leaving
now I know that I was wrong
It was selfish to think you'd be better off
just cause I wanted to be further along
I had my reasons for leaving you
["Carry Me" - Tim Easton]

November 2000

"I don't know any way around it. When we met, I was trying to figure out who I was. The longer we were together, the more confident I became and the more I felt I could accomplish. The next thing I knew, I was looking in to law schools so that she could get her dream of an animal training center. There's all these things she's going to need. Financially, emotionally, and I just don't think I'm the person to give it to her," I explained, shrugging.

Elciem nodded.


May 2000

"So wait, why are you considering law school?" Tanni asked.

"It would be good for us. Don't you think? I get a college degree, work for some time in Intellectual Property law, you get to open the Whitlock Compound, and we'll be set," I answered.

"That doesn't answer my question, though. You never talked about law school before. Why are you talking about it now? Where did this idea come from?"

"It's just something I want to do," I lied.


November 2000, moments before

"I don't buy that you're this unemotional-but-contented person," Elciem explained. "You're smiling, but there's this tightness around your eyes. You shouldn't smile if you're not happy."

"Hmmm," I replied.

"If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine. Just don't lie to me."

"No, it's just that..." I began.


December 2000

Jay: I'm kind of angry that you didn't say anything to me about it.
RAW: Well, I wanted to, but I didn't think I should. I didn't intend to tell Elciem, but it just kind of happened, just like everything else kind of happened.


October 25, 2001

Tanni: So you and Elciem are really through, huh?
RAW: Without question.
Tanni: Are you okay?
RAW: Give me a few days. I mean I'm bitter at eleven months of my life wasted, I'm sad at what seemed so perfect being so wrong, and... and mostly I feel lost. Over the last day or two, I've spent so much time, effort, and money I didn't have on this. Towards the end, it was really to the exclusion of everything else. When I wake up in the morning, I don't have anything to be angry about or-
Tanni: I thought you said you were angry...
RAW: Well, on one level I feel these things. On another I know I shouldn't. I told myself all along it wasn't going to work out and that if it didn't, well I knew that all along, didn't I? The whole point of my doubt and skepticism about her and us was that when it ended -- like I knew it would -- I wouldn't feel this way.
Tanni: Argh!
RAW: What?
Tanni: Are you angry or not?!
RAW: Right now I can't help it. But I can't let myself be. So when I wake up in the morning, instead of being angry, I am convincing myself that I shouldn't be.


On a Wednesday in April, 2003

Lisa: What do you mean you don't 'let' yourself feel regret?
RAW: I mean that even if I thought ending our relationship was a mistake -- and I don't! -- I wouldn't let myself feel that it was a mistake because there's nothing I can do about it.
Lisa: If you won't let yourself feel it, how do you know it's real?
RAW: It's not real because I don't feel it. Besides, even if I did let myself feel that way I wouldn't for you because we were wrong from the start.
Lisa: But how do you know you wouldn't feel it if you let yourself? How am I supposed you know?
RAW: You should know because I'm telling you, in as clear language as I can, that leaving you was the right thing to do.
Lisa: But you wouldn't admit it even if you were wrong because there isn't anything you can do about it?
RAW: Luckily I don't have to prevent myself from admitting something because it was the right thing to do anyway.
Lisa: You are such a lost cause.
RAW: Thank you, can I go now?
Lisa: Only if you tell me honestly whether or not you think breaking up with me was a mistake.
RAW: Would you believe me if I told you the answer was no?
Lisa: No...


December 2000

"I know you think you're doing the right thing here, Alex, but you're wrong. Dead wrong. But I want you to find happiness and maybe... maybe. I just want you to promise me something. If you ever realize that walking away from this is wrong... if you ever regret it, I want you to tell me. Wherever you are or whatever I'm doing, I just want to know, okay? Even if you don't want to get back together, I want to know." -Tanni


May 2003

I'd been up and down Everglade Drive five or six times. Not only couldn't I recall how to get to Tanni's house, but I couldn't even remember the street I was looking for. It was something "berry." Not a lot of help when the streets are thematically named: Strawberry, Blueberry, Dewberry, Raspberry. I counted my blessings for being able to at least discount "Peach."

It's almost silly to think about, really. All I was doing was wanting to pass, if only for a moment, the home to so many of my memories. The last thing I would care to do is go in and talk to the family. After things ended, I became the fall guy to all of the problems Tanni and her parents were having. When she got another boyfriend shortly after our breakup, her mom reportedly thanked him for "giving them their daughter back." I suppose that I'd earned the role of villain by hurting their daughter, but from parents I'd always gotten along quite well with, it stung. Their fights about her grades, dropped classes, money, their dogs, and everything else was laid at my feet. I was the bad guy.

It wasn't the problems that I remembered, though. It still isn't. It was the way she looked at me when I was being frustrating. They way she lowered her eyebrows when she was mad. The wonderful smile that I painstakingly had to coax out of her much of the time. Her talent with animals. Mostly, that for a majority of a four year relationship, I thought there was a good chance that I'd spend the rest of my life with her. I had started to plan to propose, ironically in part to get her out of the house as I saw that as the only solution as I saw that as the only solution to a number of problems that she was having with her parents.

I was initially euphoric for about a month. When that subsided, I was overwhelmed with an onslaught of dread. Despite our four years together, I wasn't ready. She wasn't ready, either. Perhaps there was something in us that just wasn't right. Right? I'd gone the eighteen months or so after the breakup without regretting it. Of all the things I wouldn't allow myself to feel, that was near the top of the list.

When I found myself at the intersection of Everglade and Dewberry, I asked myself: "Is there a statute of limitations for regret?"

Both your initials inside a heart
on a bar napkin that's falling apart
It's never as good as it is at the start
No, I guess he was not the one

Who said goodbye?
Couldn't swallow their pride
and wishes it could all be undone
When you talked about a daughter
did you pick out her name?
Is it there with your old boyfriend's things?
["Old Boyfriend's Things" - The Groobies]