North Beach - love, lost

I remember walking home from the bus station one night, I cried that night. That particular evening, it was dark and all of sudden I was weeping uncontrollably.

I had not felt that way for nearly seventeen years.

That person who had caused that much pain, had moved away, finally. For the last fourteen plus years he lived in North Beach, right by the Marriott Hotel, not far from the Fisherman’s Wharf, in a flat. I google stalked him. The only person.  I knew where he worked, from which year to which year, when he had a child and everything in between, I watched his video on Youtube, I remembered thinking, I still loved him. I knew nothing about him, but I loved him.  The love that lasted seventeen years. A young girl’s love that turned into a middle age woman's obsession. He finally moved. I had suspected that he’d eventually return to his roots.

I tracked him on Tweeter, and I never spoke to anyone about him. He was the one secret that I wanted to remain in my heart. Deeply buried.  I had not written about him (up till now), I had not talked to my shrink about him, and I had not mentioned him to anyone. Those who knew about him, had all faded away in my friends’ circles. None of my girlfriends had met him. He was the ghost that would forever haunt me.

I hardly remember anything about him. I knew that he was Swedish American. He had longish hair when I met him, he spoke with an East Coast accident, and he called me, fondly, a “party girl.” He took care of me, and he wanted me. He was ambitious,  and his life evolved around building up his career and establishing connections. I was, rightfully so, an after thought, perhaps one of his many after thoughts.  He had succeeded in all the ways he wanted to succeed, and I thought, but he was still sixteen years older, which meant that he would be fifty-five at this point.  But dear god, I loved him. It was not meant to be a rational thing. It was the once-in-a-life type of love.

I had since moved on, long moved on, for years, other than the thought of “let me never bump into him in North Beach”, when I was in the area, I had not thought of him. I knew his street address, and I often wondered if he would be there, perhaps pushing a stroller, perhaps walking his dog, if I just walked on that street. I wondered if he did another Alcatraz swim, and above it all, I wondered if he ever thought of me.  For that very reason, I avoided North Beach whenever I could. It was a part of town I could do without. 

I thought perhaps he did, remember, because he accepted me in LinkedIn last year. But I said nothing.  I didn’t ask how he was doing, what he was doing, but he had since moved back east, and I had since decided that I could return to North Beach.

Those were the private thoughts. I think we all have that one person, that led us down the rabbit hole. While we might come out unscathed, we wouldn’t come out the same. I had loved and lost. I learned that there was that irrational emotion called obsession, and deep inside of every rational being, there was a side, when the right buttons were pushed, one might go insane.  He was the button. He was the only person I would google for. He was it. But he was gone. Just like that. I could now go back to North Beach, and never worried about running into him again. We had communicated over the years, until 2002. By then he had moved back to San Francisco, and set his roots in North Beach.  We talked about our lives. We promised to meet up and have a drink. I was working in the city then. But I never did follow up with that promise.

I pretended those conversations never occurred. I pretended the last communication took place in 1998. When he wrote, “I’m leaving tomorrow. And that says it all.” I never quite figured out what he meant by that. I was working in Palo Alto at a client site when I read his email, Palo Alto was when we first met. I cried until all my tears were dry. 

To this date, I remembered those exact words.

There was an English man, who was exactly one year younger than he, who was and is still a venture capitalist, did his undergraduate at the same school as he did his fellowship, and he had asked me out, for years we went out, and never once did I pay any attention to his intention. I thought that whatever he had, it was just not enough. I wanted whom I couldn’t have. It was not wealth that I was after. It was always that rare connection.

So to this date, I remembered how he smelled, how he felt, and how I never could be the same, since he was in my life.