The Men and the Boys: Marco

It would be easy and appropriately fictional to tell you that I've wallowed over him for years. The passion that never was. My long lost love. The one that got away.

I haven't. I didn't let myself. Besides, if this was a great, true love, wouldn't at least one of us have tried that much harder to go over those obstacles? Wouldn't one of us have tried to make it possible? Put fear aside? That never happened.

In one way, it's sad. In another way, it's my solace.

Marco has had girlfriends over the years, and he almost always tells me about them. I have had boyfriends over the years, and I almost always tell him about them. It was hard in the beginning for all of five minutes, until I forced practicality back in and reminded myself that this is the way I made it, and this is the way it's supposed to be. But one thing that hasn't changed, that I hope will never change, is Marco and I are still the closest of friends. Be it on the phone or the internet, usually the internet, our cards and conversations travel the great distance that is the spine of our relationship.

His heart leaked through once. Shortly after he'd arrived back home, I received a forward from him that probably every person on the planet has seen, the one asking ten questions like, name your favourite song, three of your closest friends, yadda yadda, and you're supposed to jot down the first things that come to mind. When you're done answering, a quick scroll down reveals what your answers mean.

The first question of this forward is to name a person of the opposite sex. Without a second's thought, I typed in Marco. Scroll down, and sure enough the interpretation was, "This is the name of the person you love."

He called me a day or two after that e-mail and I avoided the subject at all costs. Unfortunately for me Marco's memory is a steel trap, and he didn't let it slide. "That forward I sent you, whose name did you put down for the first question?"

Think fast. "Raj," I said.

Pause. Long, horrible pause where my fingers were crossed and I mouthed an I'm sorry into the phone, an apology he would never hear. "Okay," was all he said. Translated, I put down your name, too.

I'm a bitch. It goes without question. A cruel, insenstive bitch-girl who's barricaded her heart with dobermans and an electric fence. A bitch who thinks of no one and nothing but herself. Well no, scratch that last part, because as much sense as it doesn't make, I did what I did for him, too.

A few days after my blowout with Jess, Marco called wanting to know if I would still be going to Jordan. I said that I was, and he wondered if I wouldn't mind a visit? Besides wanting to see me after an impossibly long absence, the doctor needs some suits tailored. Apparently, Jordan is known for this. And when I yelled, "Are you kidding?! Yes!" into the phone, I could feel him smile. Be it for a few days only, we can at least watch a soccer match and tell stupid jokes again.

Situations too, have changed. He is currently without significant other, and while Jess is still very much my heart, I am freshly single. How can I not think that after all this time, after maybe learning my lesson once, with both of us in our current circumstances, that something just might happen?

It's possible, of course. I won't deny that. There will never again be the campus house party and that one defining moment, but then, there will never again be the two students with pressure coming from every which direction, and more questions than any human being could ever answer. We are older now. Wiser in the ways of experience and years lived, and different in where the past decade has taken us.

I thought about that as I was packing my suitcase last night. This boy I made my friend is now a man with his own practice, and his own life. What will happen when we see each other, will I shriek in euphoria, or will my heart stop? Will I be thinking, This is my chance and I can finally take it, or, It goes without question that I did the right thing? How will I arm myself?

With chopsticks, of course. We both collect them. I go expecting nothing, and I leave the rest to chance.