Incommunicado

She came into my life like a ray of sunshine intruding a typhoon. She was bright, beautiful, funny, caring and as bubbly as Moet in bad turbulence. And as wholesome as home cooked beefstew. The sort of girl a doctor would prescribe if he could prescribe one for a jaded bastard like me. The sort of girl I could bring home to mom.

And mom would undoubtedly have given her seal of approval. I knew the moment I laid eyes on her. This quintessential girl next door in a universe increasingly starved of girl next doors. And she liked me.

For the next few days over the course of work we got to know each other a little better. Our dates felt, different. There was a purity about it I haven't felt since I was 17. I was a late bloomer. I took her for coffee on Monday, dinner on Wednesday, ice skating on Saturday. And home on Sunday.

She was 25 going on 30 and knew exactly what she wanted out of life. And a relationship. If it wasn't working out she would go cold turkey, she tells me. But that doesn't stop us from spending time together. I even got to meet her family. And I looked forward to her meeting mine.

But she stops replying my messages. I try a few more times with the same result. I think I tried calling her as well. I don't always remember the bad details. She doesn't reply when I send her a birthday greeting. I respond to her non-response by saying that she wasn't very nice.

Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. Then one day she calls me. We talk briefly. A few days later we had some work together. A guy drops her off. I presume he's her boyfriend. I can sense these things.

We have breakfast with a young friend of ours two weeks later and basically hang out the whole day. Later that night I have dinner with her parents. I message a friend that I'm nervous having dinner with her parents. But I accidently send it to her. Clever.

After dinner we head off to watch a comedy/mime duo called Gamarjobat from Japan. On the way she asks me why we stopped keeping in touch.

I tell her she never replied my SMSes. She tells me she did. I tell her I thought she'd decided I wasn't the guy for her and she'd gone cold turkey on me. She tells me she thought I'd met someone else and decided not to call her. She tells me she replied my birthday greeting. She tells me she'd been seeing someone for 4 months. I sit in dumbfounded silence.

Gamarjobat was wildly entertaining and hilarious. Without saying a word they conveyed every conceivable expression and emotion. A direct contrast from the two of us, both articulate and with every telecommunication technology at our disposal. And yet we'd miscommunicated with grave consequences. For me at least.

After I drop her off she sends me an SMS saying things happen for a reason. I can't for the life of me figure out the reason. I lay in the dark trying to make sense of it all. I want to cry but my tearducts are as a well long drawn of its last drop of water. And then it hits me like a cold drizzle, a little at first before I am drenched in the knowledge; the Girl Next Door Doesn't Exist.

In my world she belongs to someone else. In my world the women Smoke. And Drink. And Swear.

But they Stay.