Born Free

It's been an interesting sort of week; albeit, not interesting enough, necessarily, to spark any sort of inspiration for me in terms of tending to this blog. Occasionally, I feel a weird pang of guilt that I have let my writing fall, once again, into a spectacular state of neglect. More and more, though, guilt affects me much less than it once did. This last Tuesday evening, for example, definitely proved this to me. 

After not having seen him for nearly twenty years, I had the pleasure to reconnect with a former school chum from my elementary and high school days. Always and ever the studious brainiac who inhabited the dim Apple II computer lab through most of our elementary school days, the gentlemen in question has grown up to tear the academic world a new one. 

Currently holding several post-secondary degree titles and lecturing at a prominent university in a large American city, my friend has proved himself in every way the sagacious, studious and overachieving adult I always knew he would be. Through the conduit of facebook, we have talked and flirted on and off over the years, and while he is currently here, visiting his parents for a week, he asked me to join him at the local pub in our childhood neighborhood, for libations and reminiscing.

Even as far back as the first grade, his formidable intelligence always made me weak in the knees. What can I say? Does anything else matter, save for grey matter? Now, it seems, the gentlemen also happens to have grown up tall, strapping and decidedly gorgeous, with eyes as beautiful and blue as a shipwreck.

I'm sure you can tell where this is going.

Although initially feeling a little awkward and taken aback by seeing him with facial hair, I quickly relaxed into our conversation, which veered merrily and effervescently around our favourite topics: mood stabilizing pharmaceuticals; WWII Germany; serial killers. We even spent a majority of time picking out bar staff and patrons that we would consider killing and eating. Let's face it: Does it get more magical than that?

  At some point in the interaction, he flashed his pretty blues eyes at me and apologized for not having told me, through the course of our extended facebook flirtation, that he actually has a pretty serious girlfriend. Old Me would have probably been pretty heartbroken, since she would have assumed that this man was destined to be her One True Love. New Me, however, instantly realized that I don't live in an Elizabeth Barrett Browning sonnet, and that, no matter how initially magical a connection seems to be, it's all simply smoke, mirrors and a bit of alcohol for good measure. I simply smiled and said, "Well, that's nice." Besides, there was no actual formality to our proposed hangout, other than simply seeing one another after such a long time.

My friend then confided in me that he had felt "inspired" by a recent facebook status I had posted, in which I gloated that living single and alone meant that I could do whatever I wished at any moment in the day. So many of his friends, he said, were living traditional lives, with wives, children, real estate and other heavy responsibilities, that he often felt as though he needed to do the same. He conceded that it was nice to see someone like me, content at having chosen 'a different life path', and that I was in some ways a positive model of this situation for him. 

I was confused and asked him why, with all his superior intelligence, wit and genetic perfection, he cared at all about models of behaviour. Why couldn't he, as all of us should, simply decide what it is he most wanted, and how he most desired to live his life, and just do it? Although he mumbled something about "pack mentality" and "inherent need to be accepted among our peer groups", I could see the conflict flashing behind his devastating eyes.

Seeing as I felt it vitally important to teach him that we all should live free, the way we want, I later, after six beer for each of us, put my enlightened social theory into practice in his parents' guest bedroom, from which, in an amusing throwback to grade 9, I crept on stealth, breathless tiptoe at 2 a.m., and disappeared into the night.