Whatsername and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl

I had a nightmare.  Just now.  About an hour ago.  And it left me thinking about this girl that I knew in high school, and although I've not thought of her in ten years, God help me, those memories are still so powerful that here I am, twenty-something years later, and I'm still shaking.  I've been lying in bed now thinking about her and all that stuff for more than an hour, and I just can't let it go.  So I finally figured, hey, I'm gonna have to just write it all down, and maybe that'll exorcise the demons.

Almost Famous is one of my favorite
movies.  In it, Kate Hudson plays a
prototypical manic pixie dream girl.

So.  This is the story of my Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

This is the story of this girl that I knew, of the fact that I knew that she was Trouble, and of the fact that I liked her anyway.  That I liked her a lot.  Not in the sense that she was super-hot, and I wanted to sleep with her--although that was true--and not in the sense that she was this unapproachable girl that I was afraid to talk to, and I look back on it and wish that I'd done something different and just had the courage of my convictions or whatever.  That story is a whole different story about a whole different girl, and it doesn't go quite like that in any event.  No, this is different.  I knew my MPDG quite well, spent several nights up talking to her literally all night long, and the memory of those nights--of holding her in my arms and just being with her, especially the night before I left for West Point--literally kept me going in those first early weeks at the Academy.

So this is not the story of The One That Got Away.  That is someone different.  I wrote about her obliquely a couple of weeks ago, and what makes it different is that I was too stupid to realize what we could have had until it was much, much too late.  But what we could have had, that would have been a good thing.  I mean, I still don't know what she would have thought about it, I only know that I was too stupid or too chicken to be honest with myself about what I was feeling, and in retrospect, that was a bad mistake.  And a big part of the reason why I was stupid about it was because the whole time that I could have been with The One That Got Away, I was instead in this on-again, off-again thing with my MPDG.  And that was a thing, but if it had ever really been a thing, it would a train wreck in exactly the same way that my first marriage was a train wreck.

Is it normal that after twenty-something years I'm still thinking about these girls?  I mean, it's awkward, right?  I'm married--happily married--and I wouldn't trade that for anything.  I would never do anything to jeopardize my marriage.  But I do wish I felt like I could shoot my friend an email and say, "Hey.  I was thinking of you tonight at 3am, and I don't want it to be awkward, but those were some good times, and I miss you."  Like, I don't want to change my life, interrupt somebody else's marriage, explore what we could have had.  That is totally not what I'm talking about.

But.

After it was clear that MPDG and I weren't gonna be a thing, not really, after it was clear that she was trouble, and even if she wasn't, she was in Tampa, Florida, and I was at West Point, and we weren't writing anymore.  After that, when all I had from that whole time with her was my memories of lying on the floor of my parents's house the night before I had to leave, wondering how I'd let all that time slip away without saying and doing all that stuff that I'd always meant to say and do...  After all of that, I got over it.  I put somebody else's picture up on my desk.

For two fucking years, I kept a picture of Whatsername, of The One That Got Away, on my desk at West Point, and as God is my witness, just having her there kept me from loosing my mind at the Academy on more occasions than I can count.

I found that picture when I was going through my mother's effects after she died, and I almost started crying.  I showed it to my wife, and I said, "This is a picture of one of my best friends.  She probably doesn't even know this, but I kept this picture on my desk for almost the entire time I was at the Academy, and it meant a Hell of a lot to me.  We're not in touch anymore, but I sure hope she's doing okay."

How do you explain that to someone?  How do you say, "Hey!  Thinking of you gave me hope at a time when I really needed it.  And I thought of you again tonight, and I was grateful."  I have this feeling that I can't say that, that trying to would only make her feel awkward, that sometimes we grow up and move on, and for better or worse those good old days, those old friendships, they're behind us.  They're  just gone.  You get married, and they get married, and then you start thinking about all this stuff that happened a million years ago, and it's not the same.  And you want to bring it up, but it's like, I'd rather remain die--I'd rather remain silent--than have it seem like some cheap come-on twenty years too late.

Manic Pixie Dream Girl finally cut me loose for real at Christmas of my Plebe Year.  It was cool.  She was at college in Virginia, and she explained in very adult terms that she was trying to be someone different, and that it was working for her.  That no one but me knew the old her anymore, and that frankly, she wanted to leave that person that she'd used to be behind.  I was someone from her old life, and she didn't want me around to remind her of who she'd been.  It was the right call for all involved.  I've said that she was Trouble, right?  Well, as a college freshman, she started putting Trouble behind her, and I can only hope that she succeeded.  I did my part.  I never spoke to her again.  In the years since, I've tried not even to think of her.  I am for damn sure not gonna go look her up on Facebook.

Whatsername...  Well, I do know what happened to her.  Through the miracles of modern technology, I know that she's married, and that everything is going okay.  She seems happy, ludicrously so.  At this point, that's enough.  More than enough, really.

For me, well, I moved to New York right before September 11th, and although there were some dark days there right after the attacks--in addition to the horror of the event itself and its aftermath, that was also when my father got serious about drinking himself to death--but eventually I met Sally at a running club in Hoboken, and we have literally been together ever since.  We met on a Tuesday, our first date was a long run on that Saturday, and she's still here.  She never went home from that first date!


So life is good.  In fact, ludicrously so.