This man is what my mother would call a "hot nerd" --- he spends a lot of time engaged in geek-worthy pursuits such as playing WOW, memorizing black hat hacker lingo on Urban Dictionary, and covering the little lasers on the bottom of everyone's optical mice with white paper. I know this because I met him at the office of my former employer, where I worked for almost 2 years. I met him in July 2010.
I was returning to work after a long absence due to a 3rd surgery on the ankle I compound fractured as a result of the collision of this employer's refusal to salt their icy sidewalks and my refusal to wear something than worn out Crocs in winter. I was limping terribly and wearing what's known in the injured community as a DARTH, a hard black plastic boot used to pad and stabilize an injured leg. I wasn't able to take calls on my own because my login IDs for the dozen or so systems we used were all inactivated. I was told to "sidejack" with Mr. November while the issue sorted itself --- we'd hook our headsets together and I'd listen to his calls. When I first saw him, I was really put off by his wild hair style, dark and shorn on the sides with a mini-mohawk down the middle dyed, not blonde, but yellow. He was wearing a Hollister T-shirt and I remember thinking, "He looks young. I hate sidejacking." He was 21 at the time.
We sat together like this, day in, day out, for 8 weeks. We didn't talk at all for at least 2. He slowly opened up to me about his time living in England and Germany, his views on the right to bear arms, and his love of mai tais and techno, preferably mixed. I gave him tips on how to shorten the length of his calls and increase his quality scores. He didn't mind me being bossy. I didn't mind him being ornery and a bit aloof. At some point I dared him to use his British accent exclusively at work the entire day just to see people's reactions, and he did it. Later he dared me to yell out the word cock in the parking lot, and I did that. (He did it first.) We always had a good time talking and a hard time stopping once we got started.
At home, my husband (who we'll call Dark Chocolate) and I soldiered on. The injury recovery process had been long and rough on us both. I had spent more than half of the last year in bed, unable to walk. I had a walker, a wheelchair, crutches... I never did well with them. At 360 pounds, every hopping step to the bathroom was like a hell in itself. I had been in passable shape for my size before the accident --- I could navigate steps, go on walks occasionally, and wasn't held back from my social life, flying, or finding okay clothes. I was extremely fat, but I was somehow living my life. The injury ripped all this apart, stirred up a lot of my mental health symptoms, muddied the waters of my life so much that I felt quite blind inside and broken out.
Mr. November never lied to me. One of our first conversations we had outside of work, he admitted as a schoolboy in England he had made fun of overweight people and been a bit of a bully in general. He had definitely changed a lot since that time but still felt some aversion to obesity and had never considered someone like me a friend. That might sound cruel, but it wasn't for me because I know this is what most people think about the morbidly obese, and just aren't willing to say it out loud. They end up being much crueler through their actions, avoiding looking at me, talking to me, getting too close. Whispering about me when I'm close enough to hear (for some reason, a lot of folks operate as if when someone has one physical disadvantage, they must be deaf too. Silly.) Mr. November was different, because he told me the real way he felt and he stuck around anyway. That conversation was the milestone that marked the beginning of our friendship.
We slowly came closer over the course of the 9 months I remained with the company after we met. He told me about the death of his father and I told him about the death of my best friend and then my college roommate, 2 years apart. We shared a darkly humorous perspective on things. He convinced me to give Eminem a chance. I talked him into a wearing a little American Eagle instead of just all that Hollister (he admitted it made him look more grown up.) My ankle healed and I learned to walk the right way again, slowly, and he kept his pace with mine on the stairs leading down to the cafeteria even though his legs were twice as long. He died his hair all black and got a better cut. We constantly shot South Park lines and Sasha Baron Cohen quotes at each other. We spent hours loitering in Red Robin while we handed his Android phone back and forth in search of viral videos. Time passed.
One of the best things about Dark Chocolate for me has always been his reasonable, logical mind. I so often get stuck in the dark corners of my own thought processes, and he is the one who is always there to set me right. It hasn't been a glamorous courtship; I've put him through more emotional pain than most men could deal with, and I never forget for long that he won't be able to deal with my symptoms forever, should they continue. No non-professional truly can, which is what makes casual friendships so much easier to hide in than real love, where one is expected to grow, share, and change much more.
One morning the 3 of us randomly ran into each other walking into Village Inn at the exact same time and shared breakfast. The two of them were not quite thick as thieves, but they got along. I felt electrified sitting between them --- one a pillar of my strength and the other my court jester.
Conditions deteriorated at work. Our pay and hours were significantly cut, which added to the already negative environment disorganized management creates. I tried to hang on, not wanting to leave the friendship I had made or being at all fond of change, but we just couldn't have afforded to stay. Dark Chocolate was still in school and it was my job to bring home the bacon. I hunted carefully, angled and caught (with luck) the first position I had applied for since Mr. November and I met. On my last day at my former job, Mr. November and I went out for drinks, tried and true. We stayed from 4 in the afternoon until it got dark. We talked about everything. I told him the sad tale of my former best friend, The Emperor, who I'd known for 12 years. Our relationship took a great blow when he moved to Japan to become an ESL teacher, at a pretty tense time due to a dark period of illness for me and a bit of a standoff between The Emperor and Dark Chocolate. The rift was my fault, as one of my twisted brain's mistakes was its compulsion to manipulate others by playing the victim to Dark Chocolate's totally imagined and non-existent villain. It remains to be seen whether we'll make it through this.
I told Mr. November more about the details of my illness, but not too much. I took his hand and asked him flat out about a suspicious looking scar I had seen on the inside of one of his wrists. Sometimes he would joke about suicide and sometimes I would worry about him, having been there, done that, with myself and others. He told me it was a "normal cut." I decided to believe him for now, even though he always told me, "Rule #1, Zell --- Don't trust anyone." We had a lot of Rule #1s. I told him he was my best friend. He laughed and said, "You might want me as a friend, but a best friend? I'm an ass." When the time came, he walked me to my car. He hugged me. I held him tight as speculative imaginings ran through my head, ultimately giving way to the present moment. I drove home.
For 9 months I saw him every day, and it's been a week now without much talking at all. I've begun to realize it's quite possible I may never see Mr. November again. He is the type who very much subscribes to the old mantra, "out of sight, out of mind." I just hoped it wouldn't be so soon.
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