The Man of Mixed Signals

a beginning, a prequel, the sequel

I didn't see Ted again before I left town, but a few days after I got home, I received a padded envelope from him. He'd taped a photo from a magazine to the front and written my address on it. Inside were three CDs he'd made for me and a letter. One of the artists we'd talked about at the wedding.

I'd recently picked up PJ Harvey's Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, but Ted had insisted that her earlier work was better. He sent me Dry and Rid of Me. He also included an album by Cat Power because he thought I'd like it.

His handwritten letter started, however, by saying that he was sorry we didn't get the chance to say a proper goodbye. Ted explained that he felt uncertain of how to act without the wedding reception backdrop the next day. He was afraid he'd act possessive or inappropriate in some way if we walked around campus with an audience of old friends. The letter meandered to some atmospheric moments in San Francisco, his struggle to become a professional writer, and ended with an assurance that when he'd said I was lovely, he'd meant not only in appearance, but also in spirit. Ted's writing was exquisite, and his explanation made sense to me when I read it, so I forgave him for standing me up.

I wrote back sharing some of my life's uncertainties and struggles, and our correspondence began. I suggested that he reply by email explaining that I liked the immediacy of it, but he replied that he preferred the tangibility of real letters and liked receiving them. The same things appealed to me as well, so I was easily swayed.

Every few weeks one or the other of us would fold a few pages into an envelope and mail it off. These were not love letters by any means, they were there's-something-here-between-us missives. I wanted to leave Tallahassee and hadn't decided where to move to, but San Francisco had growing appeal.

About seven months later, he wrote that he wasn't sure if it affected things at all, but felt he should tell me he'd gotten back together with his girlfriend from 6 months ago. I did the math, and I was pissed. He'd had a girlfriend when we'd hung out at the wedding and had never mentioned her though there had been many opportunities to do so. I wanted to kill Splice for encouraging me that night because she would've known that.

When I confronted Splice, she said that Ted and Liz had been together for a year but had been on and off a couple months before the wedding. She thought they were off at the time and just wanted me to have a good time. Splice's advice had been given in a haze of drunken elation, so I really couldn't stay mad at her. My anger turned back to Ted.

He began by writing that I'd never asked if he was seeing someone during the wedding weekend. No denial in that, just an attempt to make his dishonesty my fault. I wrote back explicitly asking if he'd omitted anything else I might want to know. He said no, but being called on his bullshit seemed to hurt his feelings. We stopped writing.

A few months later, I started my cross country drive in search of the perfect place to live. I ended up back in California and spent the holidays with friends in LA. Splice and her husband had moved down from San Francisco that fall. She invited me to their New Year's Eve party and forewarned me that Ted and Liz would be there amidst a bunch of other people. Liz was cool, and I liked her right off, but Ted seemed a little nervous when he saw us talking together.

Later, Ted and I had a friendly conversation. He told me several of the people at the party were planning to go to the Getty on Thursday and asked if I'd like to go. I'd been a couple of times before and enjoyed it, so I said yes. He was staying with other friends in town, so he took my phone number so we'd be able to coordinate. (The museum was still pretty new, so you needed to have parking reservations and this venture would require carpooling.)

Tuesday passed, no call. Wednesday passed, no call. Goddamnsonofabitch. I could've called Splice to see if she had the number where Ted was staying, but I was too embarrassed. I couldn't believe I'd fallen for this a second time. I was upset, angry, and felt foolish which made me even more angry. About a week later, I couldn't take it anymore and sent him a simple, immature email: You suck.

In his reply, he was pissed off beyond all measure because he had no idea why I was upset. I calmly explained and reminded him that though it might seem like a small thing, it felt very personal because he'd done this to me before (perhaps I'd not so much forgiven him for standing me up the first time, I'd certainly not forgotten it). His excuses started with losing my number and ended with an elaborate story involving an ER trip for the boyfriend of the woman he was staying with to explain why he'd forgotten. Whether they were true or not didn't really matter, all that mattered to me was that he couldn't say that he was sorry that he hadn't called. His word didn't mean anything under a variety of circumstances at a time when my word always counted.