The Spigot came into being because I didn't know what else to do.
I was in the midst of the second worst depression I have ever experienced, I had no job, no direction, no goals, no desires.
I had lost my way.
It was obstensibly triggered by a girl, Katie, dumping me as I rode the train from Baltimore to New York. I had just returned from the Iceland Airwaves Music Festival, and called to talk to this cool girl I had been seeing since June.
And she dumped me. Right there on the phone, on the train, with a crying baby sitting behind me, and my former best friend sitting next to me. His only response after I got off the phone was, "that sucks, dude."
She was right to break up with me. We had no business being together. We had shared a perfect 10 weeks together in the Greek Islands, and should have just left it. It was too good to last. She was too good to last. I was too good to last.
But I fell in love with her, and she didn't fall in love with me. So it continued, long distance, gradually deteriorating, the pressures of the real world and our real selves slowly eating away at it. It should have never begun, but it did. I'm not sorry it's over, I haven't been for months, and I can look back at the time in Greece fondly now.
She wasn't the reason I collapsed.
I had been on the verge of falling apart since 1999. Actually, I fell apart in 1999. I was dating Shannon, a bulimic/manic-depressive. She helped trigger the worst depression of my life. I was unhappy with my school, my major, my friends, myself, and on top of all of that, was trying to keep another very flawed human being together. I totally lost it. Somehow I made it through and made it out with a college degree and a broken persona that I never really fixed.
I went through an entire fairly serious relationship with KK, the girl who wanted to marry me, while not even knowing who I was. I started a business. I waited tables, I tended bar, I managed a CD store, I delivered furniture. At times I was happy. At times I drank so much I halucinated, drank so much I punched through windows, drank so much I wouldn't notice that I was still broken.
I was convinced that I was fine, that moving away from LA and Shannon, and beginning a serious relationship with another girl meant I had fixed myself, but I hadn't.
I threw myself into drinking, into my record label, into music things, into managing resturaunts and retail stores.
But what I failed to realize is that I didn't really want any of that.
And those things I thought I had been doing because they were what I wanted, weren't. I have to go back seven years to find a point in my life where I was really headed toward a goal that I wanted.
I became confused and consumed by other people's goals.
I'd like to think I'm better now. I think I'm getting better. I copped out and go to a therapist, something I always swore I would never do. I finally know what and how I want my life to be.
But in that spirit of getting better, I find myself in this situation. I'm dating a girl. Sort of dating a girl. She lives about 100 miles away, so she comes up here or I go down there every few weekends.
I am not in love with her. She's very cool. But I've never been one to maintain a relationship for any length of time with girls that I'm not in love with. But I am (maintaining a relationship).
It's about sex, our relationship. We get along well, have good conversations, etc., but it's really about sex. I don't want to be in a relationship that's about sex.
She also has a child. A seven year old. I have never met the child, and do not plan to. She and I have discussed our relationship a few times and have agreed that our sex based, informal arrangement is good.
Theoretically, I agree. But I'm fairly certain this is not part of who I want to be.
What are my options here?
It fizzles out, and I just had lots of good sex, but may miss out on someone really cool while being satisfied by my pseudo-relationship.
I do eventually begin to like this girl more and more, and I decide to settle down with her and her child. This destroys all my globe trotting dreams, and saddles me with a kid that's not mine, and I fucking hate kids.
Essentially, it seems fairly simple. This is not what I want.
If I really want to fix myself, then it is ultimately clear what I need to do.
Besides. I want to meet a nice mid-20s girl, sans kid, who likes the same things I do, but not exactly, is cute as shit, smart as a whip, and is as immediately and indelibly attracted to me as I am to her.
To paraphrase my 90s indie queen:
I want a girlfriend
I want a girlfriend
I want all that stupid old shit
like letters and sodas
letters and sodas