I'm sitting alone at my desk tonight, eating noodles and painting my nails and watching an incurably cute movie and just being a girl for the evening. The movie is Paper Heart. It's about discovering what love is scientifically, and discovering it accidentally. In the movie, Michael and Charlyne eat in diners and play pranks on one another and see cheap concerts and throw frisbees and smile, and the people around them are in love, or they're not, but they're just the background noise. The only story you want to hear - the only one that matters - is Michael and Charlyne. There's a scene where they're walking in the grocery store holding hands and he's complaining that he doesn't know what to make her because she doesn't eat meat that really made me smile. I wonder what it's like to live your life behind a camera. Will it still be real? Do those people ever feel the feelings they want us to believe they do? I think, no matter how incredible a story the movies can come up with, real life can be and is infinitely better.
I had another one of those weekends where everything just feels right. Jude took me to the movies, even though he doesn't really care for the movies, because he promised we would. It was one of those neat things he gets to go to because he just knows people. I feel like people know I don't quite fit in - I didn't go to art school, and I don't talk and dress quite right - but I get a sense of paternalistic tolerance, and I'll take that. We biked home together in the rain and it smelled like summer when I was a kid.
We woke up together in the morning, groggy and fumbling, for a big day. I don't remember what we wasted away our night on, maybe TV and maybe just hanging out, but I know I sleep better beside him. We were going camping! I met a bunch of his friends and we drove into the wilderness, holding hands and tickling across a cooler in the back seat. Karim and Becky are passing a j, and the ride feels like nothing. I mean, until we get up there, and get lost, and drive in circles for a while. Eventually we make it to the top of the mountain and pull out into this beautiful open field, and a chalet with a view down into the valley and the lake and town. Jude is already taking pictures. He has this big ridiculous antique polaroid you have to order film off eBay for that makes me smile every time I see him pick it up. And he's good at taking pictures, I want him to teach me too. Anyway, I meet all these crazy nice people, and they're all sitting around a ready-lit fire drinking as it starts to downpour. I mean, really rain, with thunder and lightning and whipping wind. We huddle together beneath the pavilion and watch our fire struggle bravely on. Somehow, I made it inside and passed out watching the storm, and woke after dark, dinner missed, tummy angry. But Jude just puts his arms around me, and it's all right. All right to suck at camping games. All right to be a little silly. All right to curl up together and sleep to the storm.
In the morning, the sun comes out. We all make breakfast, and we all clean up, like we all know each other. Jude and I play frisbee with Karim, and even though I rarely make a good pass, no one makes me feel silly for it. We're going hiking today. On the road, we pick up two wayward campers, and I try - and fail - to catch a milk snake. The place we're going is called Thousand Steps - really it's like 1,021, which is bullshit - a few of us turn back, the others struggle painfully up. Jude says we're in a happy medium between those that want to run up the mountain and those that are going to throw up, and that seems about right. It's the roughest constant climb I've done since that temple in Japan. My legs feel like butter and shake like jell-o. But at the top, the feeling of victory is a beautiful high. We climb, we play, we take pictures, and kiss. We conquered the mountain. We searched for treasures - didn't find any. And ran back down before the rain. We found a snake in the fire pit, and I tried to pick him up a few times, got bit, screwed around and eventually someone took him away. Party poopers. While I help James build a fire, the others discuss how we're going to hurt ourselves. Someone brought bb guns - it's really downhill from here. We shoot targets a little while before someone introduces a slip 'n slide, soap, and drinking into the mix. I hurt myself on the slide, so I call it slip in bleed. Everyone ends up soapy and soaked in PBR. We make burgers and kebabs and I run around in the rain a bit before it lets up. We all go out to the gazebo to smoke and look at the stars, and then thoroughly blazed, Jude and I take a blanket out to the field. I forget there's other people as we lay looking up, warm beside him, barely able to think or speak. The stars were brilliant and clear. I felt so alive.
But of course, like all good things, it had to end. We left this morning, after a hundred photographs, and drove home in fair quiet. I slept in his lap, and he with an arm around me. We sprawled out on the carpet at his house, and then I had to get up to go home. And now here I am, thinking about how much fun I had and how many people I met and being sad that it's over. We didn't kill each other. I don't know about Jude, but I didn't get tired of each other either. I have about a hundred little anecdotes of things that got said over the weekend, but to try and get them all out on paper might be impossible. It might take away their magic. Just know, they happened. It's like, we don't have to try to have fun, we just do. We just are. It's easy.
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