I’m pretty good at grabbing some beers with the boys. Some may say I am great at it. Actually, an argument could be made that I am a first ballot hall of famer at grabbing some beers with the boys.
Could honestly be thrown on my tombstone some day: “Here lies David Moeller, who was adept at grabbing some beers with the boys.”
I’m a fun hang! People generally enjoy being in my presence.
Let me tell you something I’m not good at.
Girls. Among other things. Taking things seriously, planning for the future, making good decisions… oh it keeps going.
Talking about my feelings. Telling people what they mean to me. Being honest.
Sometimes I’m solid at the beginning of a relationship. The part where we just get drunk together and roll around under the covers all night. Other times I just do and say nothing. Wait for some other guy to scoop her up and judge bitterly from the sidelines.
Regardless it always ends terribly because at the end of the day, it’s just easier to grab a few beers with the boys.
It’s ironic because I live an inherently risky lifestyle. I text and drive, I drink to excess, I ride Bird Scooters without a helmet, I still eat romaine lettuce. If I were at a music festival and found a bag of an unknown substance I would take it. I would take all of it. And hope for the best! Chances are it wouldn’t kill me, but who knows?
Conversely, I find it nearly impossible to tell a person how I feel about them. Telling a girl that I like her is quite unlikely to kill me, yet I find it overwhelming. Dying might be unfortunate, but it isn’t awkward.
There have been four.
Four girls that I felt that burning desire for at all times of the day. Four girls I wrote countless unpublished journals to because screaming into the void was easier than having a human conversation. Four people that caused me physical pain.
Four very different scenarios, four relationships I ruined or prematurely aborted because life is hard. If I could do it all over again, I wonder what I would change.
Four girls I thought about all week at home.
Going home inherently leads to a walk down memory lane, especially when I spend the majority of the time two of the places that were so influential on me during my formative years.
I walk into Chicago’s Bank of America Theater and instantly it’s 2010 again on a cold winter night, we can’t find a cab home…the beginning of something special, maybe.
There were four but then there were all the ones in between.
I’m sitting in Nick’s having beers with my dad after an IU/Purdue game. We just walked past my college house and now he’s asking about all the girls he used to meet in the IU tailgate fields.
That one’s married with a kid.
I don’t know what happened to her.
Ya, her dad was cool.
Ya, her dad was rich.
Married with a kid.
I agree that one was very pretty.
Married with a kid.
Divorced maybe?
Yes I probably screwed that one up.
But why did I always screw it up?
Was it because I was afraid of heartbreak? Afraid of an uncomfortable situation? Was it because I wasn’t sure?
Or is it just because it’s easier to pretend not to care about anything and throw back some pints.
Maybe this is why I find it so much fun to get wrecked all the time. Because when you’re shitfaced it’s easy to ignore your own insecurities and just focus on the pursuit of pleasure. Life is a story and buddy, I have a lot of them.
But a story is that, a work of mostly fiction. Something to laugh about on occasion, but stories don’t help you waking up feeling empty on occasion.
Black Wednesday comes around, I’m in Chicago. This holiday used to be my Christmas. Onesie bar crawl? Yes. Rush and Division until 4am? Obviously. The goal on this night was to drink until I lost all motor functions and then drink some more. Hopefully I would wake up in a bed more comfortable than mine to a person prettier than me.
It was then a matter time…of getting to the airport in time to fly to Chicago or Sacramento wherever I was going. Maybe I would have to drive home to Indy, maybe I wanted to shower before my parents picked me up in the city so they wouldn’t know the extent of what had gone down the previous 24 hours.
I went through security at LAX once with a black eye wearing a Pikachu onesie because I didn’t think I had time to change. This would be a great story at the Thanksgiving table.
But this year as I sat alone in my hotel room at the Moxy Chicago on Wednesday night I had no real desire to tie one off, to go on an epic Ulysseian journey seeking debauchery on a 25 degree night in Chicago. I bought a cheap ticket to Hamilton, had a couple glasses of wine and was in bed before 12.
Likewise, while I was in Bloomington with my parents, all I wanted to do was spend time with them, catch up on what they’ve been up to, get sentimental about old Bloomington memories. Even when I ran into a bunch of college friends at Kilroy’s, it wasn’t a race to see who could black out the quickest. I wanted to hear about their wives, their kids, what life events they were looking forward to.
I remember drafting up text messages to girls while I was home that were less along the lines of ‘U up?’ and more so, ‘Hey I’m sorry I screwed everything up, I wish we could have given it another shot before you moved away.”
“That’s never what you wanted.”
Home is no longer a place I go seeking some kind of king’s homecoming. That ship has sailed. Now it’s just a wistful stroll through my past, a nostalgic memory that used to feel real.
But circling back…if I could do it all over again. I guess the easiest way to deal with my pathetic emotional intelligence would be to write everyone a letter and have my brother send them out without my knowledge. What a zany scenario that would be!
In reality though, I would probably change nothing. That’s just who I was then, and this is me now. I was a child. Why did I self-sabotage? I guess so I could learn things about myself.
“That’s never what you wanted.”
That’s right, I wanted to be the life of the party, the coolest guy in the room, the person you wanted to be like when you grew up. Fun, confident, wild. The problem is I was never any of those. I was just a lost soul trying to figure everything out.
To all the girls I loved before, I’m sorry I wasn’t better. To the ones that I left hanging, I’m sorry I didn’t care more. To everyone else that did or didn’t give up on me, I just wasn’t ready back then. I’m still not ready. But some day I might be. At 31 it just took me a little longer to learn how to treat people and hopefully I’ll never forget again.
