In the rough

I'm tired right now, but I'm still jacked up on all of the coffee I drank tonight.

In a way though, it's good that I'm still awake because my roommate and his boy came home drunk and loud not too long ago. It would have most certainly woken me up had I been asleep.

I have nowhere to be tomorrow, but yet it's still things like that that make me yearn for my own apartment.

Tonight I went out with my friend, Inquisitor. He came into town from the Czech Republic the other night. He hasn't been back to the States in 2 1/2 yrs. I visited him and Enigma last March.

I was looking forward to seeing him for a few reasons.

For one, he's one of the people that I associate with Raleigh. When we were in college, we spent many nights out a bar or a coffee shop drinking and talking. We used to talk for hours. Granted, things got complicated when I had a thing for Enigma and Inquisitor misconstrued the situation. But I have always liked spending time with him. He questions things at a level that makes me tired sometimes, but he also changes my perspective. I think it's important to have people in our lives that do that for us.

It makes me recall an IM conversation with E that I had about Inquisitor last year though, which I saved as an away message:

BC: he's brilliant
E: brilliant friends are a pain in the ass
E: I avoid them like the plague
E: I like spazzes myself
BC: yeah, he makes me feel inadequate
E: I say cut him off
E: brilliant people are creepy

I was also looking forward to seeing him because I haven't talked to Enigma in months. I sent him a few emails after I got my new job, but he hasn't responded. As more time passes, it's unnerving me more and more. This is probably the longest Enigma and I have gone without speaking, and it's starting to feel less like absentmindedness on his part and more like deliberate avoidance.

In a way, I feel really badly about the fact that Inquisitor always gets caught in the middle of things when it comes to Enigma and me. I wanted to find out what Enigma has been up to, and I know that he will ask the same of me when Inquisitor returns. It annoys the shit out of me that I know that everything I say or do will be relayed to Enigma. If we were both that curious about each other, you'd think that we could talk to one another rather than having to use an interlocutor.

The problem is that there's always an edge to my voice when I talk to Inquisitor about Enigma. He invariably will come up in every conversation we have, and I know that I never do a good job of disguising the fact that Enigma gets to me. He pushes my buttons, even without speaking to me.

The funny (*infuriating) thing is that Enigma and Inquisitor have been living together in a foreign country for years, being one of the few people that both speak to on a regular basis, and Inquisitor knows as little about what Enigma feels, intends, or thinks as I do.

Enigma came up within 10 minutes tonight, and it set the tone for the evening when I could scarcely disguise my annoyance with the fact that I haven't heard from him in so long.

I inquired as to why Enigma didn't come back to the States for Christmas this year, and whether or not he was planning to move back for an MFA program as he had mentioned the last time I talked to him.

Inquisitor didn't have a clue on either front.

Enigma popped up in conversation a few other times during the evening, and it just seemed to make our conversation even more strained.

Aside from that, Inquisitor and I had difficulty speaking about other things as well. I've opted for the predictable choices in life - I went to graduate school and I got a job. Inquisitor has spent almost 3yrs bouncing around Europe and is living with a Czech girl. Of the three of us, I've always been the one who was better at and more willing to "play the game." The two of them reject most choices in life that seem scripted in some way. So as we tried to find common ground for conversation, we kept hitting roadblocks. The past few months I've been so caught up in the mundanity of getting adjusted to my new life post-grad school, that I've felt like a pretty boring person. Tonight I felt that way more than ever.

As I tried to divert the attention away from me, I found that Inquisitor was reluctant to elaborate on anything from his life.

We kept changing locations, thinking perhaps that we would fall into a more natural rhythm. We started out at a restaurant. He had already eaten, so I ate uncomfortably as he watched. Then we went for coffee. We sat outside and tried to make conversation amidst the loud tables nearby as one guy launched into a diatribe about “t*ts.” Next we went to a pool hall and played one game of foosball and one of darts as we drank a beer. Next we went to iHop and drank 3 cups of coffee. Next we came to my apartment so I could show him where I lived and scour my bookshelves so he could see what I read in grad school.

The most heated discussion we had dealt with all the philosophical, social, and intellectual problems with America (as he sees it).

So yeah, I came home feeling like shit.

I was really looking forward to seeing him, but I left feeling horribly awkward and exposed.

I don't think I brought my best self with me tonight.

I think that is probably the most strained outing I've had with someone I call a friend in a long time.

And right about now I hate the fact that this is the kind of thing I'll obsess over for a while.