The Clue

“You loved me long before I earned it, you stopped well before I deserved it.”

I must have stared bleary eyed at those words for twenty minutes. I had been drinking the night before and fell asleep on my couch in much the same state of dress as I was when I set out, and while I was emptying the pockets of my blazer for clues to the previous night, I found those words written in what seems like my handwriting on a scrap of paper folded between my cell phone and my wallet.

I have a game that I like to play, kind of like a themed murder mystery party only it’s played solo and instead of murder, it involves missing time. To play this game I look around my bedroom, bathroom and living room on a Saturday or Sunday morning and attempt to find visual cues that will help me remember the preceding eight to twelve hours. The first period of this game is like Hercule Poirot in that I observe the evidence (fast food wrappers, dvd menus cycling on the television, web pages still open on the computer, etc.) and interview bystanders if present. Then the second part is like The Dead Zone in reverse, because sometimes all it takes is the slightest touch of a stain on my slacks to zip me to a time six hours earlier when a sloppy drunk girl at the table next to me spilled a fruity smelling cocktail on my knees. Utilizing the sum of these two periods I am able to reconstruct parts of the evening that are lost to me, thanks be to dark beer.

But I have to say that this is the first time I found a note I had written to myself that could have easily been a set of Morrisey lyrics. I am a generally positive guy so I didn’t know my melancholy went up to eleven. This being so out of character for me I decided to reexamine the slip from new angles. Maybe this is a Dan Brown thing and the message is layered; the paper itself means something or the letters are scrambled. Maybe if I chase a set of clues long enough it will lead to the basement of the local library, behind a false wall and deep within forgotten catacombs. That’s where I will find a latched chest with Nordic runes for RAGNOROK emblazoned on the sides and is –in fact- the progenitor item of Eve’s apple and Pandora’s box…the forbidden knowledge unleashed upon patriarchal society by woman’s hands.

At a more literal level I can think of at least a dozen girls that I would write that about at one time or another. The truth is that I generally can’t recognize the fact I am attracted to a particular person until they are no longer in my life. I really don’t know what particular bit of psychological jibberjabber one would brand that with, but it is a state of affairs that has proved wholly inconvenient for me and the girls that have been goodly enough to date me. Recently I was out with some friends and I made the all too common joke that only crazy women are attracted to me, almost as though I give off a pheromone that is perceptible only to the bipolar. But squinting at the paper at seven o’clock on a Saturday morning with mouth agape, I began to entertain an alternative theory; perhaps I am the one who gravitates to imbalanced codependent people. It’s not the young ladies around me that are the problem, it’s my taste in them that’s at fault. If that is the case then someone would have to be slightly damaged goods in order to get and maintain my interest. The thought made me shudder a bit, not least of which because it explained all too succinctly the lion’s share of my romantic entanglements.

And so with no questions answered and no wiser for my efforts I got up to conduct my Saturday. But as I did so I made a mental note that if I bring writing utensils to the bar with me anymore it will be only to make a sign that reads “Cool Kids Section” and hang it above my booth and most definitely not to write cryptic notes that funk up my morning.