The Fourteen Years War - 1992 - Volume II

I was totally crazy about him from the moment I met him. I was also very young and inexperienced. He had already graduated from college and been engaged, which ended badly. He was still in mourning from his father’s sudden death. (This took some time to get out of him) I was also deep in my party phase. Most of that first year was spent going to college, working, getting toasty on the weekends, dancing to live bands in the clubs, or dancing at the bar that AZ worked at. He worked on the second floor overlooking the dance floor and often I felt his eyes on me and I would look up and he would smile and wave. If I wasn’t there, then I would leave wherever I was, drive to his apartment, and sleep in my car until he came home. All he had to do was walk up and lift the handle on my door, which made the keys “sing” in the ignition, and I would get out and follow him inside. Oddly enough, he always came home, and he never had a woman with him. He never told me to get lost. That’s not to say though that we didn’t spat. Oh Lord, did we fight! He was, and still can be, one sarcastic asshole. If he vented on me, I wouldn’t see him for a week or more. Often I would take my breaks between classes and call him from the payphone at the school, sometimes he called me there (way before cell phones ya’ll!), and then sometimes I would show up on his doorstep, unannounced, and he would open the door, bleary eyed and disheveled, and I would wince, apologize, and then he would drag me inside, undress me, and throw me in the bed. (Disclaimer: No, no sex, just everything but) I skipped many a class with AZ. Time has made some things fuzzy and the time frames involved may be a little off but not enough that I feel as though I must consult AZ, yet. Sometime in early Summer, I asked him why we didn’t progress our friendship/relationship to include sex, since we did everything but. His response at the time was, “I don’t love you and I don’t know if I will.” That stung a bit, more than a bit. Of course, it might have helped if he were a little more forthcoming about how his relationship with his fiance ended and how soon before I came to know him that it had ended. Water under the bridge now. Regardless, I loved him anyway and I remember how he groaned in frustration with me when I informed him that him not loving me didn’t stop me from loving him in the least. One thing is, I was WILD AS A BUCK. I lied to my parents about who I was with and where I was going. I especially lied about weekends. Often, okay, all the time, I would say I was staying with Kelli or Beki, and I would actually stay with AZ. I was experimenting (lightly) with drugs, drinking too much at times, and dressing like a total 80's band whore. I loved to dance and often spent more time on the dance floor than at a table. This was around the time AZ had been fired from his radio gig and, for a while, was going under in the Gulf of Depression. I’d swing by between classes or call and check on him. In no time, he had landed a gig at a competing radio station and took great glee in peeling the former radio station’s bumper stickers from my car. He declared all out war, even to the extent, he was showing up earlier at concert ticket sleep-overs and generally making the other radio station look bad. I can still see his smug grin. Amen.