And I’m thinking all this stuff and he hasn’t looked at me yet and I know that when he does, I’m gone, I’m just gone, and it’s gonna be so sad.  I didn’t come to the party tonight ready to have my heart and self esteem stomped on one more time.  I just wanted to come and watch other people’s self esteem get stomped on.  I’m not ready to be proven a loser once again.  I’m not ready to be snubbed, I wasn’t putting myself out there to be snubbed.  I’m not ready, I don’t want, please don’t…  And he looks at me.  And he smiles.  And I’m gone.

His name is Ethan and he says he’s a temp.  Just a temp, not a writer, not an actor.  Not an aspiring anything really.  He’s here in L.A. because he thinks that once he figures out what he wants to do, L.A. is as good of a place as any to do it in.  Grandmother died, left him money, and he’s just…around.  How absolutely poetic.  I wish I could be just…around, instead of seating attitude riddled idiots at the restaurant six days a week.  Just…around.  Why is it only guys that can make the dreamy drifter thing work?

You can tell the end of every relationship in its beginning.  It’s always been that way with me.  Every guy I’ve ever taken up with, there’s something he does that slightly annoys me, but I’m happily overlooking it if it means I can kiss this dude.  And yet that one tiny thing eventually mushrooms into something enormous that sinks the whole ship, whether it’s two days or two years from now.  And I’m looking at Ethan, what is it?  What’s the end?  And I don’t see anything.  He’s quiet, but that’s nothing to hang a man with.  Where’s the end?  Is there a beginning behind those dark dark eyes?  “You wanna get out of here?” he says with a smile, “It’s kinda noisy.”  A huge scissor-zag of lightning lights up his eyes.  You have got to be kidding me.