I.  Halloween night, possibly 2008.

A. Consistent with my states of Being In College and Having Little Money, and as it was a night typically reserved for drinking too much while in costume, it was fitting for me to rip up old clothes, smear fake blood all over my face, and go as a Zombie to a party in an abandoned apartment building in Pilsen.

1. The party would be busted by the Chicago Police Department approximately thirty minutes after arrival.
2.  The building was, in no uncertain terms, probably abandoned. I mean, there was a board that someone had to move out of the way to allow entry into the building.

B.  Since I lived on the far north side, and all of my friends who were also attending this party lived in the dorms of UIC, we—that is, my live-in girlfriend and I—rode two train lines in order to get ready and pregame with the rest of the Future Party Attendees (FPAs).  In our friend George’s dorm room, we drank Southern Comfort and Sprite, waiting for the appropriate time to head to the party.

1.  My live-in girlfriend would go on to date the guy who threw this party
2.  after we had dated for four years (give or take), gotten engaged and
3.  broke up after my fear of commitment manifested itself into an undying
4.  longing for a college freshman.

C.   Carol came by the room to hangout and pregame with our group of FPAs.  Carol has eyes that squint no matter what, but in a way that makes you want to see them fully opened.  Her thin brown hair framed her makeup-pale skin, fake blood pouring from around her mouth. She’s short, coming up to my sternum.  When she walked in, all of the other FPAs seemed to disappear from the room and she and I struggled for conversation topics. Who did your makeup? She asked.  I did, I said, Who did yours?  My friend. She said. Cool, I responded. We smiled.

1. It was awkward.
2. It was beautiful.

II. On acid, spring of 2009.

A.   After waiting for a First Time Dealer to figure out his game in order to get two hits of blotter acid each, several of the former FPAs and I, this time without my live-in girlfriend, who was not invited, waited once again in George’s dorm room.  Carol was, this time, a member of the Acid Tripping Party (ATP) and would be around for the whole night.  After the acid had kicked in, I felt the need to change my shirt, which was in my backpack, which we had thrown in Carol’s dorm room to keep Out Of The Way.

1. While changing, I noticed that the shirt I put on and the shirt Carol was wearing were both white t-shirts with green graphics. Both were printed by us in high school and both had the same cigarette burns in the same places near the collars.

2.  Carol did not leave the room as I was changing.

i. I felt weird and left the room and changed in the bathroom.
ii. The lights were never turned on.

3.  When I was finished, we stood very close to one another and felt our electrons being exchanged.  Things started to feel at the same time comfortable and uncomfortable.  We moved slightly closer. Then, the other ATPers knocked on the door, wondering where we were.

B. The rest of the night, we would sneak outside and smoke cigarettes, just Carol and I, standing close still to keep warm in the cool night.  We would run and hide from drunk people, also alone.

1. It was here that I realized, wholeheartedly, that I loved her.
2. But I had a girlfriend.

III. Her new apartment, summer of 2009 or 2010, I am not sure.

A. First, her housewarming.  In the back of my mind, my live-in girlfriend was there.  I am fairly certain this is accurate, as well as the former members of the ATP. This new conglomerate was the Awkward Party Drinking In The Kitchen During A Social Gathering (APDITKDASG).  George brought along the ingredients required to make a Caribou Lou, which is a drink made famous by the rapper Tech N9ne, which breaks down to the following recipe:

1. 1.5 part 151 proof rum
2. 1 part Malibou® Coconut Rum
3. 5 parts pineapple juice.

B. But George couldn’t find pineapple juice, so he bought crushed pineapple instead.  And he (or whoever was in charge of mixing ingredients) had been drinking before hand and when he mixed the pineapple, 151, and Malibu, created some awful mash mixture which we all ate more than drank. The night was uncomfortable, my live-in girlfriend possibly sensing some sort of tension between Carol and I (though we didn’t really speak at this particular party.)

C.  Another time, at Carol’s house for a “party,” no one showed up, so we decided to go back to my house.  ‘We’, in this case, was my live-in girlfriend, Carol, Karate, and a self-proclaimed anarchist friend of hers.  As we were walking to my house, Anarchist went on at lengths about how proud he was of throwing a brick through a Starbucks window, running his hand through his long, greasy black hair.  When we got to the corner of two main streets in Wrigleyville, Anarchist found a rock and a bank window.  Following his natural tendencies towards destruction in order to Stick It To The Man, Anarchist smashed the vestibule door.  After a brief stint of Running In Panic, Anarchist suggested that we stop off at Taco Bell.  All efforts to tell him that Taco Bell was part of a mega-corporation fell on deaf ears.

1. Later this night, Karate would follow Carol and Anarchist back to her apartment.  He would tell me later about sleeping with her.
2. The moment your heart breaks isn’t a shattering.  It’s a slow, controlled crack that extends from your stomach to your throat, taking your heart in the process.

i. Pretending that your heart isn’t broken while lying in bed with your live-in girlfriend is an easy task.
ii. Realizing you’ll never love your live-in girlfriend the way you love another girl, one who you are not and won’t be with, is not an easy task.

D. Carol asked if I had a drill so she could hang some framed records in her room.   I brought her the drill, hung the records for her, and she gave me cookies in a Tupperware as payment.  The whole thing took less than 20 minutes.

1. Upon hearing about this, my live-in girlfriend asked me never to be alone with Carol ever again.  She wouldn’t say why, just that she didn’t want me to.
2. I argued with this idea, saying the things that men say when they are in such a predicament, things like:

i. You’re being unreasonable.
ii. You’re worrying about nothing.
iii. We’re just friends.
iv. Why do you think you can tell me what to do?

3. Until I finally gave up and agreed.

F.  I was twenty-one and Carol was twenty and it was a month after my live-in girlfriend asked me not to be alone with Carol ever again.  Carol called to see if I wanted to hang out with her, which, as it would come to pass, also involved her wanting me to buy her a bottle of wine from Whole Foods. We hung out for a while before hand, walked the short distance to Whole Foods, managed to get through the always awkward I Will Purchase This Alcohol That You Picked Out With This Money That You Clearly Just Handed Me Before You Went Outside, and I left to go back to my apartment. This was the last time I hung out with Carol alone while In A Relationship (IAR).

IV. My apartment, fall of the same year, whichever year it was. I assume 2009.

A. My live-in girlfriend’s birthday party, which was themed, though the theme was convoluted and not important.
B. I was wearing hot pink short shorts and a bright green tank top that said “Break dance, not hearts.” The irony of which would be lost on me until this moment, right now. My live-in girlfriend had lots of fake tattoos that I had drawn on her with a permanent marker. There were approximately 25 people in our two bedroom apartment. We were all drunk. Carol came in an hour or so into the party, clearly stoned.  Everyone noticed.

1. She cut lines of Xanax on my glass table, which, since we got it second hand, had probably served a similar purpose in the ‘80s.
2. Carol walked over to where I was, at the makeshift Bar we had constructed, behind which was the Keg and plastic storage container of Jungle Juice, which is an alcoholic beverage with over two gallons of liquor and five gallons of Hawaiian Punch and various sodas, with marshmallows swimming in it that one eats if one is trying to get drunk in a bad way. I was currently acting as Bartender, more or less hiding from her.  My live-in girlfriend was standing next to me.

C. Thanks again for coming over and buying that wine for me, Carol said in this voice that came from somewhere else.  It’s the voice people who have been snorting lines of Xanax use to convey the fact that they won’t remember this exchange in the morning. My live-in girlfriend looked at me, hurt, and left the apartment in tears.  Carol seemed confused.  I left to patch things up.  I apologized.  I said it would never happen again.  It wouldn’t.

V. A couple weeks after that, my apartment, drunk.

A. My live-in girlfriend and I got engaged.
B. It would last for a year and two months, almost.

VI. About two years since the last time we saw each other, winter 2011.

A. I don’t remember why Carol and I decided to go get drinks together. I think we had maybe spoken a handful of times since the last time we saw each other.  We agreed to meet in Grant Park and walk over to some bar downtown.  We fell into conversation naturally, but that might be because as soon as I saw her I was giddy.  We walked in the cold, side by side, until we got to the dive bar.  There were business people singing karaoke. We drank PBR.

1. We also stole martinis off of someone’s table when they went to sing karaoke.
2. We told each other about secrets we had, medications we took.  We talked about politics.

B. Outside, after that One More Beer that happens after the last few One More Beers, we shared a cigarette and she invited me over to her house to drink whiskey and listen to vinyl records.

C. We kissed a few times, and both fell asleep in her bed with our clothes and the lights still on. We had listened to Gram Parsons and danced the night before.  We smiled.  It was awkward.  It was beautiful.

D. We texted back and forth about the movie Melancholia.  I hinted at asking her to go see it again with me in a theater.  As a date.  It never happened.

***

And that was that.  I never saw her again.  This supports the theory that we were supposed to be together in the past, but certainly not currently, though I am not quite sure where the evidence actually is.  Perhaps, one could say, it is not the empirical evidence that would suggest that such an event should have occurred.  Perhaps, one might suggest, there is a bigger force at work, some sort of Gut Feeling.

***

One theory that has yet to be tested, one that could put the whole question to rest, would be finding out her perspective.  Perhaps researchers of the future might go back and do this experiment. To those researchers I say, Godspeed. And tell Carol, Hi, for me.