A cold rain hits the ground, it's a busy town layout. It doesn't matter where, from my experience every city is the same after a while. Shuffled feet kick the rain on the ground, everybody rushing to get out of the rain that's already done it's worst. But there's those fragile few, those undeniably insane few that walk slowly, drinking in the atmosphere and feeling replenished. There could be many names for them but I know only one: Lovers. But not in the average sense. These are the souls that float free from the chains life would have them bear. Even though they try they never quite grasp the reality of college and work that others might. So each attempt to flesh out a piece of this American pie has resulted in undue stress and unnecessary disappointment. Simply put, it's because that's not what they were meant for. They were meant to be the support crew for all of those less fortunate and more. These are the martyrs you've always meant to thank but never had the time, the good guys you hoped wouldn't finish last (but always knew would). Those that would have you sit up the watch the sunrise for no other reason than you hadn't before. These are the lovers. And as they walk through the rain they think not of a cold running down their spine, or that annoying squeak your shoes make when water finally breaches their canvas hull. They focus on the upper, the clouds in the sky pouring their own hearts on the ground. Because it was never thinking about themselves that made them so happy: it was the focus on others. Which is, you may have been asking (or may knot), why they found it so easy to sacrifice. It was a month in 2007 when I found out that, wanting forever to be simply he who would tell their tale, I was to find out that I was a lover. I guess I'd always known in the same way we always knew our parents were our parents, or that the sky was blue. We came upon it once and never questioned it again. I had recently been exploring what was possible the best executed year of my life, having the excellence of the semester five way to the flurried passion of the summer. And it was at a party that I ran into old friends and new. And the girl who might help me learn to be this man of warmth. That night there were more men than women in the room (mathematically speaking it shouldn't be, yet is always, the case) and each group of vultures with their white polo feathers had marked an idea. An inkling. And as much as I loved them I couldn't help but sneer at my two best friends as they locked eyes with me, all three thinking of the same girl. But that night, of course, could only go to one. And that wasn't me. But this girl chose my friend Aaron, with whom she shared a three hour conversation, great by any standards, a two dates and one awkward kiss. It would turn out, though, that as the new school semester began that our social circles were more than brushing: they had lapsed into one. It was at this point that she began changing as a person, for better, and her attention was turned to another of my friends whom she was infatuated with and who had also been in the battle arena since that first night, Evan. But it was no matter because her and I had started to bond. As friends, or maybe a little more, we were definitely connecting. As her changes progressed there was a warm breeze blowing across the shell I'd erected years prior, but all the while just backdraft from the gale forced attention she'd been giving Evan. Still, by some stroke of fate he was one of the few people I knew that would not bend to her affection. Not because of lack of interest but because of a different point of reference in essentially all of life. I know, that's a pretty big gap to leap and she tried, she feel, and then she rose on her own two feet. She swore off love for sometimes, becoming plagued by the thought of possibly never finding the one true love she's always wanted. Would she be alone forever? No, I told her, everyone has someone (I of course giving her answers to the same questions I was beginning to ponder). So for months there was this mutual affection, the Harry and Sally greatness that I'm convinced doesn't come along for no reason at all. And then something horrible started happening: I began to want to kiss her. Not since that first night, with the liquid courage in hand, had I wanted so terribly to kiss her. To make a move. And this began my third era. The era in which her change leads to mine. After weeks of discussing the most personal levels of our connections, and really getting those meaty questions out of the way, we ended up where the whole of this began: a party. And after some drinks, her and Evan kissed. And words were exchanged, I've been told, that resulted in her and my arguing in front of my house. So I invited her in and we chatted, her curfew elapsed she elected to stay the night. And that night, my good reader, was my bravest moment ever: I had shattered the shell like so many baby birds, and finally without hesitation reached out for what I wanted most right then and took, without shame or fear. I kissed her. And she kissed me back. And she confessed that she'd wanted to kiss me a time before, on New Years, but it never happened ( I having perceived her affections placed on Aaron again) and I was overjoyed. And the next morning she went on her way and I smiled. I was truly, for the first time in a long time, happy. One week later we sat at the park, having laid to rest any thought of us going ahead with more than the friendship. And after we watched the sunset she stopped dead in her tracks, I turned, and she kissed me again. She's always been one for the timing. That night, I went bowling with my guys and all the while focused not on the pins but that evening and the week before it. And when I got home I got word she'd lost an earring in my car. So I waited outside for her to come get it, she walked up (both ears perfectly adorned) and expressed a desire for more. And who was I but to oblige? (who are we kidding I was ecstatic). We kissed and went to out separate houses, now sleeping under the watchful eye of whatever star keeps ones boyfriend and girlfriend intact. And after a week of this, there was another call. It's not that I hadn't noticed it: the dream was less than perfect. I went to her place, ascended the steps of her soon to be relocated bedroom and took the bullet like a man. She wanted her best friend back. I was fated to be either one or the other, and she needed the friend more. So I once again obliged. And at this point I wore the stinging sear of the martyr. I grieved for a few days, took my somber walks, then began once again to feel the clouds above me looking down, to feel a wind I had been feeling the last few months with her. I was ok again, but not only ok, I was changed. I had become a lover, not just a writer but a full fledged lover. She had thawed that which two girls years ago had unknowingly frozen over with disinterest. And now I live that life, of the one who always hopes he finds his souls recognition of it's counterpoint in another. And she helped me get there. And wish as I do that things had worked out with her, I've always had the higher cognition to believe not necessarily that everything happens for a reason, but something more: with reason, I know that anything is possible and that I can handle each outcome to the best any heart can ask for. I simply make do with the lemons I'm provided. I'll be posting this as I leave for a setting much more appropriate for my intro, dear reader, as I sit in front of both a laptop and the skyscape of a city in rain. I've got to be signing off now, for there's plenty of walking left to do tonight. And this week. And this life. Bon chance. .Steve

I've got a new persuasion in my head, a new idea. In some ways a new complex, one that the most expensive therapist would have a swell time dissecting. I've come to expect a lot from my life. Every day I wake up expecting something to be a certain way, expecting- in many ways predicting- that others would act the way that they have been proven to. I say this a lot and it comes out pretty hubristic: I know what's going to happen, almost always. I am rarely surprised. And I think that's becoming more of a handicap than I used to think it would be. Because lately I've been looking for some mores. No, not s'mores, but "mores". As in I know I've got girls but we'll never be "more" than ____. Or I've got a job but it's really got nothing more to offer. I'll be 21 soon and as I enter an era in which many people thing that more means excess and gluttony, I think I'm beginning to yearn for a world in which more means better, more means progress. So the uncaring yeti of a lover I've been over the last few years has begun to soften. I search for more now that ever before. I think I'm ready to want a girlfriend. But not just having for having's sake. I think I'm open for the right thing to come along, and with a little prudence I'm taking the blinders off so that I'll recognize it when it approaches. The blinders have been on for years, be them previous stigma I've entertained or previous dreams I've held dear. I'm beginning to realize that the reason such heights were never reached was because the trail I'd been looking to follow led somewhere else. These girls I've been wanting to view in one light don't exist on that spectrum, and it's taken me months, in some cases years, to realize and accept this. So I don't know the purpose behind this. I don't hold myself to such strict definition that this is somehow a "whole new Steve" but I've got to believe I'm changing for the better. In the end, belief has got to be enough to change it all. Or we'll all begin to get swept away. goodnight. .Steve

Dust. BOOM. Is it the streets or, as the blues would say, my love light getting snuffed. Dust. BOOM. Ba-Boom. She entered in tempest. And I haven't met one yet that wouldn't knock me off my feet and back out on these hazy messed up streets. Boom. Rainfall. Baby it's a flood coming towards. three-to-one the odds stacked against. But the kiss is the contract. I'm letting her know. I'm in. .Steve

Every first kiss it carries a weight will this be a way to step out of the shade Little miss, you've been burned before, but I want you to stay here outside of this door. Knowing words aren't the enemy you've faced before. There's a new night tonight the stars sparkle us bright there's a brand new life beginning tonight.

Jill says her diary is meant to be a chronicle, one that her kids can read to know what she did. I think mines more abstract. It's on that my kids (should I ever have any) could surf through at random and learn two things: Dad knows what he's talking about. Dad was a pretty dark, lovesick shark. Actually I think we could all benefit from learning that first one early on. This is why i'll just have one of my friends raise my kids as practice kids. .Steve

11:59 - Escape This is the start of the tale of two cities where one is the quicksand the other delayed the dreaming destination of this caste of hillbillies reached on white golden wings in the highest of ways take a drug or take vacation take the only way that you can when the city's destination doesnt matter whats the plan stuck in the rotting pull smiling away through meaningless crimes i guess the story is most like a letter to remind blind ambition to get with the times take a day and take vacation to the mecca of artists and dreamers disease the home of temptation is the center of the plan 2:46 - Satisfaction Unlikely prices of complication a message sounding from the past over the bottle is a bright new world the feeling of reeling for this one to last no reason for this feeling elation not a name on a letter or a telephone screen one sweet mix for the road to fruition serenity kissed with a little caffeine my veins burst with chemicals barreling through the sweet thirst of chemical, poison and you lovely sweet and deadly so necessary is it real or the reaper moving hearts dripping deeper as my veins burst with chemicals burning me through the sweet thirst of chemical, poison and you.

The story of my life, it's like a great open book; I write but I don't pay attention my nights seem to pass getting others off hook like a lawyer with godless intention I cant seem to take one more step on the way to the path that I plan out each day after day I cant stop obsessing on everyone else when i'm waiting to find what hell i'm about and out here it's the day after day and i'm here slowly caving away and back home throw my letters away out here theres nothing left to say.

Part 3: As The Jungle Creeps In... And like fruit from the tree, so fell the drinks. Before my arrival there was already plenty of lewd and amazing content, and afterward there was tenfold. But not to get ahead of myself, I’ll start where the party is formed. Weeks beforehand, Scott's parents had decided to take a trip to California, just the two of them, as an anniversary of sorts. And from the most classic of wombs was the idea of a blow-out-party born. Word began to spread as the idea of a guest list was thrown out of the window. One list was created though and that was the drink list. This is where requests were made and orders filled out and money allotted. This list began to be the running advertisement for the party, changing hands dozens of times and taking on many additions until the text on the top stating where and when it be returned to Scott was noticed and adhered to. If any readers are wondering where the alcohol was obtained, I say this: never underestimate the power of a 21-year-old sister with a rebel streak running down her back. The guest list, had it ever existed, would have been a who's who of our school. The girl who got way too drunk, who today has become a smart and reserved girl. The guy that did drugs that, today, still does drugs. Ok so it wasn’t a glamorous crowd but like a prize among cracker jacks, Ashley was there. And on her hand was a bracelet, a bottle of Dos Equis, and a boy. I couldn’t tell you his name, and I’m sure that when Lucifer was already taken he just wasn’t given one. This boy, not man, was now and forever my nemesis. The classic boy from Vermont if there ever was one, he had his polo and his khaki shorts and even the leather sandals. In fact, he was so deliciously prep that he was almost before his time. He could have single handedly sparked the Abercrombie migration we saw so apparent on the west coast in '03. In between the drinks and the shots and the nonsensical chants and roars we heard rock this tiny hamlet in Scottsdale, I’d sneak glances at her. I know it wasn’t necessary; I could have just as easily gone and talked to her with little sacrifice. I often think she would have been happy to see me, to talk once more to the boy she once shared so freely and honestly with. But then he'd slip his snake-like arm around her hip, his form like a python squeezing the life out of my fantasy. The end result of my night was frustration and drunkenness, and to this day I’m not sure which of those two would inspire my next actions. As the starts ferverently fought for their dominion against the impending morning sun, I turned the corner of the house to find her there: very much alone. Now was my chance. Snake free and in a haze, I stumbled my steps and then my words to re-initiate the long lost love. And she smiled, wiped away a tear, and said hello back. I'd ran over so many times in my head what I was going to say to her when I had the chance. I'd tell her I missed her, I missed talking to her and I missed walking with her every day. I'd tell her how over the summer I'd done other things, met new people and all the while the dull buzzing in the back of my head was saying her name, wondering who she was meeting. And how I’d found out exactly who she met on that first week of school, through the grapevine that became my noose. But in the moment all I could concern myself with was why she was crying. What in the world kind of devotee would I be if I’d asked anything else? How could I allow something to cause her pain? Turns out, I’d called it way in advance: it was Lucifer. His name was David and back in Vermont he was a senior who had wooed her in a very unoriginal way (bias is allowed, deal with it). He'd kissed another girl, she said. They'd fought for hours outside in the cold, she said. He'd decided to walk back to his friend’s house where he'd arranged to stay while he visited her. They were over for good, and she was a fool for liking him she said. And while I wish I was genuinely concerned for her, at that moment I had to subdue my joy at hearing her say what I’d wanted to scream for months. And that's when the stupor hit the peak. Be it the booze, the frustration or the completely inconceivable way she was looking back at me, my comforting hug was shifted and we were then face to face. And though I’d seen her take many shots, I hoped sadness and uproaring had sobered us both up enough to kiss...

the morning brings an empty tale of a loved one moving a new home above not old enough to know the truth i find it moving she knew so much love in the months before and the days after as i'm trying to muster up one single tear i just hope that her life in the new everafter is better than the one she was punished through here

I'm not gonna be just another vulture with my white polo feathers circling the meat I'm not gonna let myself fall into torture with my syllabic heart never skipping a beat how many masks will I put on today which friends will I call to keep heartbreak at bay is there any reason I'm failing to notice for my mind to be splitting a breaking away I check on the balance the old and mature with no-one to hold with the youthful talents with skin-to-skin loves no way to let go is there any real questioning this real estate? guess I'm fated to sleep where I'm not long to stay in another attempt at a normal new love my mind starts to splinter and then break away Anything more and I'll ruin the moment. Any thing less and I'll break free and fall So cue the figure riding the edge, cause another few lines and I'm fooling them all.

so for now i'll sit in the back of the shadows raising toasts to the conquests of others and the chances of mine that ran out of time that were then handed down to my brothers Life as a martyr isn't nearly as bad as my need for love to be fleeting and few It's isnt by choice or a will to repeat it it's just slowly becoming that thing that I do but I needed to go where there's more they can offer I needed a break from the strain of the world so my ticket is bought and i'm ready to jetset and i'll see if theres more than my love for a girl and the risk that I took wasnt worth all the trouble but I needed to take it if only for me and now once again the safety is fleeting for a new band of players are charging the scene i'm trying to make this a poem but I cant rhyme it very well. . Try as I might, i'm not meant to be happy with what(read 'who') i've found just yet but others are. I get it. I can take the hint. I'll never be happy about it but i'll stop trying to expect more to come from the situations I often find myself in that, in a perfect world or a normal life might lead to something but for me lead only to a word document.

I tell everyone that encounters a situation like this the same story: It's just some good old heartbreak. It's not a bad thing, no. People are too hard on the break up. Treat it like its a cancer or something. It's liberation. The single life, the hunt, is not glorious at all. It's a deep, slow, lonely hell that nobody wants to be in. But given the choice between it and a stagnant relationship, the only smart choice is to be single. "All I look for in a relationship is to remain utterly alone" - Alan Shore .Steve

I want to find reality in a world that i've been viewing through rose colored periscope from deep down under my defenses. Before we delve too deep i've got to ask: can you find the next host? The next girl to bear the weight of all of my hopes and dreams, can you find her? Cause I can't promise it won't be you and I can't promise that it will last, but all I can promise is that she's not one that I know now. I wish, and god I dont know why, that it was the one everyone thinks I want. Because i'll be damned if i've ever felt as strongly toward a girl as I do for this one. But It's like the perverted bizarro of the relationship I have with my best friend (the girl). One feels like a sister, the other could be the world to me if I only knew for sure that she wasnt just a canvas i'm painting. I've dipped my brush in every love movie i've ever seen and what i've started is a color-by-numbers of Breakfast at Tiffany's, Love Actually, Moulin Rouge, Rent, Garden State and any other indie-love fest i feel like sourcing from at the time. Someone do this: tell me if it is better to wait and let this so-far-four-year-long heart thing eventually pass (somewhere around the time we fix the national debt) or to take it into my own hands and open up three subsequent options: Success, happily ever after; Success, regret; utter failure. Which do I do.

Part 2: Work N' Progress Junior year brought its fair share of ups and downs, most of which completely unrealted to the girl i'd pensively referred to as "the one". Looking back its almost absurd how a span of mere months became the anchor for most of my actions and mannerisms during that time. I made some of my closest friends that year, and none of them had any idea what my main focus was during that time. Those notebooks i'd made in her honor were hidden deep in my bag and nobody dared go that deep. The persona I developed became one of advice, understanding and compassion. I became a rock for all others to stand upon as they looked out upon the wary and open sea of their own relationships, all the while hiding under the surface that I was facing the same problems they were. It seems that the world is a lot easier to judge when the consequences were not mine to bear. And so i faced the world as the man undaunted and untouched by the problems of love. The exact and utter opposite of how I felt inside had became my outward definition. One thing junior year did bring was the parties. And at one of these parties began the meat of the story, the reason i've sat down with a pen and decided to tell you everything up to now. This party developed over a wonderful, beautiful week in october consisting of clear skies, fair weather and the additional perk of being a week off of school. My best friend, Scott, was to celebrate the first official vacation his parents had ever taken that he was exempt from. The apple, as they say, was ripe to be picked. The apple being the house, and forty or fifty of our closes friends being the starving orchard workers ready to do some picking.

A cold wind passes through the room as he sits down to begin a tale of wonder and intrigue. He resists the urge to start with the same cliche he used in the last one, and the one before that. This time is different for a very basic reason; everything he is telling is true, happened to him and is in no way a fabrication. Thus begins the tale... It all began my first year of high school and, as these things tend to, involved a girl. I was walking home from what proved to be a normal day and there she was, in the parking lot waiting on her ride. She passed me a glance, and I stared back and soon it was like the heavens had opened up. The wind blew, the sound of my portable cd player faded and I was none the wiser. God, I could have lived inside that stare. It followed me the whole way home, and how I got there is a mystery unto itself. I should have wound up in an alley somewhere like a drunken transient with no sense of north or south, and yet when I sat down at my table and the buzz died down only one thought remained: who the hell was that? It took weeks of waiting outside of the school and badgering all of the friends I had made to eventually learn her name. But this would not be the last time she kept inadvertent secrets. Time went on, as it tends to when you're 14, and soon I was 15 and it was sophomore year and I still had no idea what to do about this girl. Her name, by the way, was Ashley. Funny, until then i'd thought nothing of it and every day since I have counted it among my top 4 favorite words in the english language, second only to "Her", "Name" and "Is". Those four words found themselves grouped together in every notebook and every moment of free thought I had. It was near an obsession, and had this been any other period in my life I would have been seen as the worst kind of stalker and devotee, but here in this short span of four years I was just another lovesick adolescent with too much time and not enough guts. It was the end of sophomore year when something amazing happened: she moved. No, not in the bad "i'll never see her again and now i'll have nothing to live for" move but the "oh my god the girl of my dreams just moved in right on my street" moved. Thats right, for the first time in my life since i'd won the spelling bee in 7th grade I was sure there was a god. Ashley and I would even beging to walk the same route to our school, two blocks away and every morning I wished it was longer. It began with the eyes again, and then a hello. Soon conversation began. She was a leo, and I an aries. Astrologers reading this would be quick to tell you what that means, but all I cared about was that she knew I was an aries. She knew that there was a kid named Steve and he was an Aries. And that validated every torn and crumpled ball of notebook paper that had suffered at my hand for the last two years. We grew to have jokes, have stories and even the occasional moment of advice and genuine care. But the greatest of times began when she saw me at school and didnt walk by me. These were the glory days, the days that I knew should have lasted forever were I to become a god. But my not being a diety meant that the end of sophomore year soon approached. Such fast work made in so little time and I was sure that my summer would be my unending hell. And it was, if made so by the simple fact that her father insisted upon a summer home. Summer homes, by the way, have plagued mankind since the dawn of the first schoolboy crush and this summer made no exception at my expense. Many notebooks perished that summer. Until the time came to buy more, back to school shopping and such, and thus the return of school. Junior year came and to my loathe and contempt there was no glory. This summer home in Vermont had taken in the object of my affection and in three short months returned to me another boys girlfriend, one with that same weak-at-the-knees stare but much less time for her would be escort to school... To Be Continued...

I see love and I want it but not to forge my own to recreate the love i've seen while staring at a movie screen I wrote that on the back of a piece of paper at work yesterday while I was in between customers. It would seem that the Muse likes to follow me wherever I go.

Sitting down after work so much easier with you talking not of the day but of the night and how it seems to be new and tends to be ours back and forth I go on emotions and back and forth you follow me wish I could thank you for all that you've done my heart you have won all of these thoughts that i keep hidden the ones of you i let fly free i'm never sure they work to potential i'm never sure they came from me stop rhyme, stop love, stop everything this poem is different because it isnt a song just an oddly timed letter that i never send one i'm constantly writing but you've never read.

I think you guys should know that he doesnt write much anymore. In fact, if he ever knew I was typing this he'd probably go crazy. But he claims he's lost something...that spark, i think he calls it, that ignites good writing. Sure he can put words together well and still have the occasional brain zap, but theres nothing epic. I keep telling him that he doesnt need to be epic at 19. We live in friggen modern middle class, you cant be epic with equal doses of Starbucks and TiVo. But i'll give him one thing he has come extremely close. Sometimes during the night, I can hear his head exploding with raw emotion. You know how sometimes they have radiation leaks at those big power plants? Its like that, there is just this energy radiating from his temples and his heart, pulsing and wishing it could be turned into words. In years and time he'll learn, not in a classroom, how to better harness that energy and make it more efficient. Until then he promises to keep trying to jot down some syllabic slop from time to time just so he doesnt rust over (he doesnt have a Dorothy to carry around an oil can just yet). .Josh

I havent kissed her yet, it's been years and I havent kissed her yet. You see, I was raised on the not so easy kind of love. The kind where the only thing greater than being away from that person is spending every last minute with them. The love where she challenges me, every minute, every hour, every day and i'm a better man for it. I want to be a better man for it. And with this one, it isnt challenging. She's not a challenge. She doesnt argue, she's complacent, and its wonderful sure but it gets daunting. I dont want to live in a world where I feel like I get the prize simply because nobody else competed. It's like when you're buying a cool new laptop computer. There's the really expensive one with numerous gadgets that you know will break soon or be tough to use, and there is the safe one with rubber corners and the most basic software. Thats the kind of guy i've always been, I guess. I look for the challenge. I need to always have a goal, even if I never meet it it must be there. And with her, its the drive home from the race and I dont know how I won but I just found myself in that car with the ribbon. Be is masochism, be it a wonderous form of emotional evolution, be it whatever the answer is clear: I havent kissed her because I dont feel like i've earned it. And if I havent had to struggle, to fight to earn it and prove myself then I feel that i'm misleading her. She doesnt know what she has, how can she want it? .Steve

Before I went to bed I wanted to let anyone who still reads this know that I appreciate it. I dont write as much as I used to, thats for sure, and I appreciate the time you take to refresh here for my sake. I'm a click away. :) But for now, sleeptime. I could work on HW some more or sleep. And, well, even diligent day takes relief every day from its work making light from the night. .Steve