Sympathy For The Devil

I met him three years ago at a Christmas party. We bumped into each other on the patio, smoking, me in a t-shirt and him in a leather jacket. He looked like James Dean. We were both freezing.

I was incredibly drunk so I don’t remember what we said to each other. I only remember his first questions to me.

“What do you do?” he asked.

“I’m an actress,” I said.

“Are you a good actress?”

“I guess you’ll have to wait and see.”

I bummed a cigarette from him and left.

It’s always funny, the first picture you minds eye takes, of someone who will mean something to you. For years we’d float in and out of each other’s life, sometimes happily, sometimes not. I wasn’t ready for him when we first met. To deal with how he made me feel, I’d get drunk and be reckless with his heart.

On a date where I ended up so drunk that I couldn’t see I asked him what his birthday was.

“Valentines day.”

“No!”

“What?”

“That’s mine! I’ve never met anyone with the same birthday!”

He thought it was special, too.

“Do you think we’d get along if we weren’t actors?” I asked him years later.

“I kind of think we’d be married. We have the same birthday.”

Then he shrugged.

...

On our third first date that night at a bar across the street from where he lives, he spoke about religion, life and death in sweeping ideas and I felt like I could drown in him.

When he kissed me, I thought of Leonard Cohen as every breath we drew was hallelujah.
“I really like you,” I told him.

I wasn’t lying. There was an intoxicating seriousness to him, a seriousness that would soon permeate us, one that I couldn’t ignore. He shook me to my shadow.

As we fell asleep, we watched his “Life On Mars” DVD, the original, better British version. In the pilot, the main character finds himself magically transported into 1973 after his girlfriend’s kidnap and murder. He spends the whole episode running around the 70s thinking everyone’s tricking him, asking how this could happen, wondering how his life took this turn, utterly fucked in bellbottoms.

In his arms, I could relate.

The truth is, I knew I loved him. The more time I spent with him the more I felt things changing in me.

...

Since we’ve started seeing each other I don’t eat much and I can’t sleep solidly.

One night, we were walking to one his concerts, not speaking. Early on, I wanted our silences to be comfortable, but they were not, not for me.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked him.

“That I can’t see. I only have one contact in.”

“I have extra contacts in my purse.”

“What’s your prescription?”

“-1.75 in my left eye and -3.50 in my right.”

“No way.”

“Why?”

“That’s mine.”

I took that to mean we see things the same way.