Beatific break-up on the post-coital precipice of youth...

I have mulled it over all weekend. It is just not healthy. I am entering high school in a couple of days. I am embarking a proverbial new chapter of my life.

I am young and unfledged.

 Somehow, even though we have not really spoken in the last two weeks, even though she initially blew me off and treated me like some post modern parasite when we hung out at the mall, even though I had a beautiful semi-naked girl's lower-hemisphere wreathed around my waist and I refused to kiss the resin off her lips because I felt I was cheating on a woman who won't shut up about her Republican speech mentor, even though things have been awkward  between us since our second date., somehow I need to let Dawn Michelle go. She is entering her senior year, she shouldn’t be encumbered with some freshman from the south side of town.

It is a momentous occasion.

 
 
It is my first official break-up.

I take my glasses up and fold them into the size of a check book. I look in the mirror. I practice what I am going to say to her. I begin my soliloquy of loss. I tell her that we are both different people. I picture her flooded in triangular tears on the opposite side of the phone.  I picture her getting down on both knees and imploring me to have mercy, telling me that we can work it, that we have something special.

 

 

I wonder if she ever talks about me or mentions my name to her friend Quinn in casual conversation. 


I dial her umber and wait. The ring-tone sounds like a funeral dirge. She picks up on the second ring.

 

                                                                             ***


I begin the demise of our union with colloquials, with mid-western niceties, with thoroughly armored euphemism guised as unassuming bullets to the heart. I ask her how it's going? I ask her if she is ready for Big Time senior year. Dawn states something about yeah, year of dubious pinings await. I take a deep breath. I prepare for the blow.

“Listen, we’ve had a good summer but its just not working out between us.”

 Dawn says okay.

“I mean I really enjoyed hanging out with you and everything but you’re a senior and I’m a freshman and I just think we’re really different people.”

I swear I can almost see the prominent contours of her British chin bob as she says the word okay again.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I really like you as a friend. Just not as a girlfriend.”

Dawn says the word okay again. I sound pathetic. It feels like I am rehashing the script from every after school break up special I have ever seen. Somehow I  am readily expecting Dawn to protest. Somehow I want her to pause and sniffle. Somehow I want her to say that she wants to try again. That she wants to work it out that meeting me and lingering in the dank wing of Peoria Players talking about life was the highlight of her summer.

 

“I mean, I don’t mean to hurt  you anything. I mean, you are a really beautiful person.”

I wait for Dawn to repeat the sentence back to me. To tell me the same.  Instead she repeats the word Okay once  again.

I want to scream.  I want to ask of her if anything that transpired between us over the discourse of the last six weeks meant anything to her. I want to ask why I felt compelled to remain so devout even though trailer-trash girl down the street was throwing her panties at me.

"It's not just that, I've really learned a lot from you, I mean, you really got me into a lot of cool music, and you have the largest vocabulary of anyone I've ever met."

Dawn says the word okay once again

"But I mean, it's just not working out, your a senior and I'm a freshman, it's just not working out, but thank you for this summer."


I end by trying to be profound.  I end by telling her that I will remember her always.

 

 

Dawn ends the first relationship I have ever been in simply by saying okay.

 

She then hangs up the phone with a terse goodbye.

After I break up with Dawn I take off running. I can’t understand why Dawn didn’t seem more distraught. I can’t understand why everything seemed to landslide out of control after the first time we kissed. I keep running only I don’t know where I am going. I never know where I am going.  First I am headed to Glen Oak Park, determined to retrace the steps that I took with Patrick and Tim less than a week ago, then I cut behind Nate Lockwoods grandparents’ house into the Nuclear woods and find myself running up Farmington Rd. Hill. Then I find myself on the upper level of Bradley.  Then I think I should take my shoes off and  dip back into West Peoria, skirting the circumference of the cross-country course and Madison gold course, the course I am determined to conquer only I change my mind and think maybe, because I have already run ten miles today, it is best if I do hill work, the I think about doing a Main Street five and running down to Manual.

 

I wonder if I would have kissed Kim Zmeskal if I would have flown or if it would happen just like with Dawn and everything would have fallen apart.Where everything would be going perfectly and then she would disappear.

I find myself sitting down beneath the shadow of the Columbus statue with no clue where to go.

 

A woman with presumably chemotherapy inducing bald haid walsk past. She is smiling. She is playing Frisbee with her dog.

 

“Hi,” She says. She is almost too vibrant. I respond back by saying hello.

 

She orchestrates her arm flings the Frisbee and the dog rushes off to retrieve it. I am sweating. I am thinking of dawn. Thinking about how everything from this past summer is dissipating.

I run through this park an avg of twice a day and I have never seen this short haired lady before in my life.

“Are you okay,” the lady says, looking at me, on the cement plinth of the Columbus statue.

 

“You look lost.”

 

I want to tell her that I am know where I am going. That I know what is happening to me. Only I refrain.

 

“I’m fine.” I tell the overtly smiley lady with no hair.

                                     

“I’m fine.”