I'm less slow and sleepy today, actually getting some bugs taken care of. None of it is very exciting, and my mind keeps trying to find something more interesting to do. I spent a while hunting down teen romance novels from the early 80's via the web. That was fun, and the impact on my wallet seems minimal at $1/book. Now I'm sitting here, whacking at a piece of code occasionally, eating leftover mashed potatoes from yesterday's lunch with Rachel. They're amazingly good for Lyon's food.

I had vivid dreams last night. I dreamt of Nathan, who I was friends with during high school -- well, sometimes friends. Sometimes enemies. We had a confusing relationship, and the dream was confusing too. Now I'm tempted to try getting back in touch with him, but the email address I have isn't useful now that he's graduated. I could call mutual friends, I guess, if I care enough. I don't know if I do. What on earth would I say?

There are quite a few people like that -- people important to my memories who probably don't know it, who never think about me. I wish I could know how their lives were turning out without having to explain why I care.

This Thursday will be my 1yr anniversary with Jim. Not one year of dating, but one year of acknowledging that we desperately wanted to date. We weren't actually dating until February... but although being able to realise what I felt did change things, telling him about it and finding out he felt the same way changed a lot more. We're celebrating by going to Watercourse Way to sit in hot water, and then home to cuddle and gaze into each other's eyes a lot -- although we'll probably do that during the hot water phase too.

We're really happy together. It's ... beyond nice. Solid. Unexpected. Wonderful.

I really need to talk about Sean Moyer.

Sean Moyer was this guy I went to high school with. He was incredibly cute, although unfortunately I don't remember any more what he looked like -- it's down to darkish hair, great eyes, and this amazing light-up-the-room smile. My friend Alice said she'd scan in a picture of him for me, which would be nice.

But anyway. I met him at Model United Nations; he was on a delegation with the above-mentioned Nathan and various other keen people. We were all having lunch together, and Sean and I started talking, and I realised that to my utter shock we were flirting. I had no idea I could flirt with cute guys who were my age. He was a senior, which is why I'd been utterly unaware of him until MUN.

So we flirted at lunch, and flirted in notes throughout the sessions (and let me tell you, flirting in MUN notes is a challenging business, as the pages (pre-teen girl scouts) read the notes & if the notes are personal rather than germane they give them to the chair, who yells at your delegation), and danced together for all of the Friday night dance. Neither of us could two-step, but we spent most of the night trying, and tripping over each other, and laughing. Then he asked me out for coffee.

I said yes, and we went to some all-night restaurant and had coffee and talked. I admitted that yes, I found him very interesting and attractive. He told me ... well, he told me that he appreciated it, but that I was the wrong gender to be interesting to him. He was very, very nice about it. I was intensely hurt, but I laughed and told him I was bisexual, and I could be sympathetic to his plight, and we talked more and eventually he drove me home. On the way we talked some more, about a girl he liked (a friend of mine. I don't think she felt the same way, but I'm not sure) and why he was confused about that and how it seemed to be a fluke. All of it was surreal.

My memory gets sort of fuzzy after this. I have the sense that we saw each other semi-regularly at school for the next month or so, but when I try to pinpoint it into an actual event I fail. I'm pretty sure we had lunch at least once, at the French bakery across the street. I don't remember what we talked about -- mostly gossip about mutual friends, his confusion over the girl he liked, the fact that I still liked him but wasn't expecting him to do anything about it ... weird conversations, not the sort of thing I usually had during high school. I do remember we talked about prom a lot, because he said that he wasn't going, even though his father wanted him to. According to Sean there was going to be some sort of anti-prom party, probably given by Nathan, and he was going to go to that. He hinted that he might invite me, if I didn't have anything better to do.

My next (last) clear memory of him was some day in I think April. Claire (arguably my best friend during high school) and I were standing at our lockers between classes. Sean appeared out of nowhere, grinned that drop-dead grin, and announced, "My father told me that if I went to prom he'd pay for it! Tux, limo, dinner, _everything_."

Claire and I make appropriate "Cool!" noises at him, and Claire gives me this cheerful sideways look -- she's had to listen to me talking about how much I like him for about three months now. I grin and look all wide-eyed hopeful at Sean.

"So," he continues. "Claire! Want to go to prom with me?"

Augh.

I really don't remember what happened next, except I went to some poetry workshop I was in because of my creative writing class and wrote really hideous bitter poetry. Claire did say 'No' to him, to which I'm forever grateful, and we spent many an hour being shocked that he'd have the gall to ask my best friend to prom in front of my face, when he knew (oh, he knew) how much I liked him. Especially since Claire barely knew him. (She was not, for the record, the girl he had the long-term crush on. Had she been I would've been much more forgiving.)

Within a year or so this story quit hurting and was just funny. Claire kept in touch with more people from high school than I did (other than her and Alice and Rick I'm not in touch with anyone), so she filled me in on how Sean was doing. He was in Texas for a while, going to college in Dallas, and then ended up going back to Oklahoma and attending OU. I cherished the thought of seeing him at a high school reunion and giving him hell for not asking me to the prom -- preferably while arm-in-arm with some gorgeous person who'd make Sean regret what he'd missed. That sort of silly, satisfying thing.

His move back to Oklahoma was last I heard about him until this past February, when Rick called me to tell me that Sean had committed suicide. It was pretty much five years to the day from when I met him, which had a certain morbid charm for me. Rick didn't know why he did it -- he said they (whoever they are) thought Sean was drunk and were pretty sure it was ... well, not an accident, but brought on by localised drink-induced depression and not something he'd been planning.

So. Sean killed himself, for reasons I'm probably never going to know. And ... I don't know. He's another one of those hugely significant figures in my inner landscape, someone who I remember intensely, someone who I doubt thought much or often of me after our brief friendship. It bothers me that I miss him, and it bothers me that nobody important to him will ever know that I give a shit, and it bothers me that I'm never going to get to tell him off for not asking me to prom, and it bothers me that I still haven't really grieved for him and that I don't seem to know how to start.

That's where my head is today. Side by side with being excited and happy about my one-year anniversary with Jim, and looking forward to getting my hair trimmed tonight -- which I need to go do right now, as I was supposed to pick Rachel up at 6pm and it's a little after.

Monty Got a Raw Deal was the first R.E.M. song I ever heard. It's from the same period as Sean. I heard it again today, which is probably where a lot of this came from -- this and the dream about Nathan.