The Longest Night

Sunday, May. 02, 2004 - 2:22 p.m.

I slept in today. I was awake through most of last night.

Here's what happened yesterday and last night.

Yesterday morning, I had the privelege of being online with my songwriting partner, Todd Thalimer, as he finally relocated his music workstation. It had previously been located downstairs, but since there's somebody staying in that room now, the workstation had been displaced. So he was really glad to finally be getting his music equipment back up and running upstairs. I have been working more than ever at my own music station ever since he suggested changing it from a sitting station to a standing station. Todd even made some suggestions as to how to improve the look and navigation of this site. So if you're enjoying the changes, give the credit to him, please. :-)

Yesterday afternoon, I also did something for the first time since my weight loss; I bought smaller clothing. I mean it was just a couple of brassiers, but buying smaller things is something that's really made me understand how much has been accomplished here with this old bod.

We went to dinner at Denny's in Pacifica, and this time the waitress was competent and the cook was accurate, and my low-carb meal was in fact, low-carb.

John had purchased a couple of movies yesterday while we were out and about: "Big Fish" and "The Longest Day", the latter of which has been digitally remastered and restored. It's a very good war movie, but it's sure loud, even to me, with my hearing difficulties. It's also kind of a long movie, at just under three hours, so it's a genuine committment to sit down and really experience it. He went ahead and put it on as I logged on to do my 'rounds' last night. There was Todd Thalimer online again, so I turned on my webcam and we had a nice visit on Saturday evening. At one point, John got up, and with the movie continuing to run, he microwaved some popcorn. Todd noticed my agitation and asked what I was looking at, and I said "John's got 'The Longest Day' on, and he's nuking some Orville Redenbacher. I have popcorn in one ear and gunfire in the other!" Todd, who does enjoy giving into mischief, then wrote HELLO, BRIN, CAN YOU HEAR ME? in the IM window. :)

At last, I felt tired, so at around ten fifteen last night, I finally powered everything down, and went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and get ready for bed. The movie was still roaring merrily along, and that, coupled with the running water and the noise of the toothbrush, managed to filter out a very important telephone call.

I emerged from the bathroom, and John said "The strangest thing just happened! The phone rang, I picked it up and said hello, and all I heard was music. Nobody said hello back, so I just hung up. Can you look at the caller ID thing and see if you can see who just called?"

But I knew who it was without looking.

Dave Marron is the drummer and the singer of a band, and once every so often, he makes the attempt to telephone me from work and place the phone where I can hear him perform. He always tries to pick a song he knows I like, and this was no exception.

I had told John about this the last time it happened, but John spaced, and hung up. And felt terrible afterward. I sent Dave a text message explaining the convergence of events that led to the hangup (noisy attention-grabbing movie, John's muscle aches from Friday's chiropractor appointment and him not wanting to get out of the chair to look at the caller ID window; my rare but crucial omission of taking any telephones with me whenever I leave the living room).

When Dave went on his break about 90 minutes later, he called and said to give John a boot to the head. :-) He also told me which song he had planned to sing, and I was moved beyond words when I heard what it was going to be: "Wicked Game". (One of my faves, and Dave knows this).

Anyway, I finally finally FINALLY went to sleep at midnight. And I missed Dave Marron's call back at a quarter to one. Somehow, he had convinced the other members of the band to perform the song -again-, and it was played into the answering machine.

At shortly before four o clock earlier this morning, I woke up. I couldn't sleep. I got up and brushed my teeth, and came back to bed and tried to doze off again, but sleep would not come. I prepared to get up and log on and see if any of the usual overnighters were around -- and at a quarter after four a.m., my telephone rang.

A phone call between midnight and six a.m. had only previously meant one thing in this household: Fake Andy. "He wouldn't dare," I muttered to myself as I went out and answered the phone.

It was somebody else. It was Dan Weissman. Dan was one of my first serious boyfriends. I met him in 1978 when I was thirteen and he was sixteen. He was the fourth boy I had ever kissed, and the second one with whom I had ever made love. My parents didn't like him, mostly because he was always challenging me to defy my parents and expand my horizons and rise above my station -- all things I would otherwise never have started doing at that age. He was rebellious, he smoked the evil weed, he was as street smart a person as I had ever previously been exposed to, and I'd never known anybody else quite like him. I don't think I've ever mentioned him here before -- but then again, one does not mention breathing. So on this early spring morning, nearly twenty-six years after our first meeting at the levee on that Fourth of July, we spoke.

Dan said he'd had a feeling about me. He said he began thinking of me on my birthday, that it peaked during Easter weekend, and that ever since then, he'd been trying to get ahold of me. He is one of the few people who do have 24 / 7 phone priveleges, so the call at the unusual hour was certainly not a problem.

We spoke for three hours. He'd been through an adventure; he'd managed to break his hip a couple of months ago and was just now regaining his mobility. His brother Jim is ill with leukemia. And as for himself, Dan also believes he's ill. We talked about a person's right to die. I'm one of those people that thinks self-euthanasia should always be a viable alternative to a life of inferior quality or extreme pain; the government controls us from womb to tomb, and I think we have the right to check out when we want to.

The sun came up while we were speaking, and it sort of became an allegory for the conversation itself.

At the end of the call, he said he didn't feel like killing himself anymore.

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And so, today, I slept in.

Breakfast was good. There's a song from Dave on my answering machine.

Todd Thalimer texted me and had to postpone our music date because he was forced to deal with a nasty virus on his computer and needed to fix that instead, so as of this writing, I'm on the cell phone with Jamie now. He's weathered a storm, and come through it relatively unscathed, and we are celebrating by just spending time together.

Have a good day, folks.

Thanks for the song, Dave.

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Late breaking news: Todd fixed his computer! Hooray! He kicked a home run!

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