The Torn Veil

Nachenka is pregnant.

I wouldn't--I shouldnt--have known it, except she came to my book release party tonight.  Just showed up around midnight.  When I heard she was in town, some part of my mind...perhaps the part that detests losing...immediately laid out several strategies for winning her back.  Like I'm gonna even try.  So even though she had a big party or whatever I didn't go.

But she came to me.  And I was shocked at how dead I felt toward her.  It wasn't the impending child--she's not showing--it was everything.  How she talked.  Her mannerisms.  Everything.  I'm just not impressed with her, at all.  I feel nothing.  And I don't know why.  When we were young I crawled through the mud on my hands and knees with her trying to lose her drunken father in a corn field and I didn't even mind because to me it was an adventure (and also cell phones back then could get wet and it wasnt a problem).  Now...I probably would not even bother going across town for coffee with her.  Ce la vie I guess.

The weird thing is what happened after she left.  One of the cocktail waitresses looked right at me and said "don't be so proud of yourself."  I was...shocked.  That is twice now that a someone has been able to read right through me.  Unless everyone has been playing a massive joke on me my entire life I am not, or at least was not, easy to read.  Friends make fun of me for being a robot.  Girls dump me for not having enough emotional shit.  Cops and boyfriends always think I want to be their friend even though I hate them.  Trying to like, surface an emotion feels like pulling my own teeth.  But these girls...I don't know what happened.  Maybe emotions just bubble up on their own sometimes, without any effort.  It's kind of scary though.  I feel as if some armor that I didn't know I had has suddenly developed flaws, or giant holes.  And a breeze is coming in, making me aware that I am vulnerable.

Anyway.

My brother is getting tired of the city.  I love it here but he wants to move to Seattle.  I've never been there but I heard it rains a lot.  I suppose I could do it.  We don't really have any ties here, and I am kind of looking for the next adventure.  I remember organizing LAN parties in high school, and getting lost with in various cities with no money and no way home.  Where is the adventure now?  Everything has become so safe, so comfortable.

A part of me is yearning for the kind of nip and tuck adventure where I seriously regret my decisions about halfway through.  The other half wants kids.

I think the best adventure of all would be to sail a thirty two gun frigate.  Obviously being one of the hands would not be terribly great, but as a lieutenant or captain it would be amazing.  I don't know how you would set that up in the modern world, or if any of those ships even exist.  I think there is a sailing ship you can join for a few months but I don't think its a frigate.  It is almost definitely  not square rigged.  And it definitely does not have cannons, or "great guns" as they said in the royal navy.