Since we'd each gotten each other two gifts, we agreed to open one this morning. I gave him the They Might Be Giants album Severe Tire Damage, and he gave me the British version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Yay, sweetie!
Tonight we'll open our other presents and go out to eat. I've pretty well narrowed down my dinner request to either the Peddler (which has good food and great atmosphere) or the Outback (which has great food and good atmosphere). I'll probably make a snap decision right before we leave the house.
I don't remember meeting Matt for the first time, which is a source of great amusement to some. It was the summer before my senior year at William and Mary, and K.T. had an apartment about a mile off-campus, in the campus housing reserved for married and/or parent students. (She'd gotten the apartment because of her ill-advised and somewhat spur-of-the-moment first marriage, and she lost it again less than a month later when the college found out her husband wasn't actually living there, but that's another story.)
At any rate, she was living in this apartment, and decided to host a Heroes game. To be honest, I don't remember much at all about the game. I vaguely remember my character - a person with a mechanized armor suit whom the media dubbed "The Vocalizer" because it recorded and used their own voices in order to disguise the character's identity. I remember K.T.'s ex boyfriend, Neil, playing a mutant with the ridiculously pissant power of light control ("It's... Light-Bulb Guy!") and that's about it. I know some other people were playing, but I have no idea who.
I don't even remember that my own boyfriend was there, though everyone tells me he was and I have no reason to doubt them. And Matt was there, as well. Apparently, he even asked P. and I for a ride back to his dorm after the game, which we gave him cheerfully.
No memory. None whatsoever. He was just this guy. I didn't start registering him as a person I should remember until later that year, after K.T. moved into the apartment I was sharing with another girl and he became one of the small hoarde of people who regularly hung out at our place. It was years later before I could even comprehend thinking of him in a romantic way, much less think of him that way myself. So I have no memory whatsoever of our first meeting.
I get a lot of shit for that. Word of the Day: mimesis - imitation, mimicry
I sometimes feel like I am only the mimesis of an adult - I live in my own house, I pay my own bills, I work at my own job... But it doesn't feel real. Like, at any moment, someone's going to yell, "Cut!" and tell me it was a nice try, but they're looking for someone taller, who actually knows what she's doing.
Every now and then, I'll be sitting in my house, and I'll suddenly look up and around in panic. What am I doing with a house? I don't know anything about houses! What if it falls apart? What if I can't pay for it? Mother of gods, it took me three months to pick out a $500 digital camera - what am I doing, thinking I can take care of a $100,000 house?
And married? Whoever said I was mature enough for that, anyway? At least I'm not screwing up the lives of any kids!
Most of the time, I'm okay. I just keep on keeping on, not really trying to think about how I got here, or where I'm going. I work my job, I pay the bills, I carry on with my life. But don't tell - shh! - I'm just faking.
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