There is truly nothing better in this world than seeing the sincere appreciation on the face of someone to whom you’ve given a gift — nothing big, nothing expensive, nothing more than the culmination of paying attention to what they like and a little effort on my part. But it’s a rare occasion when someone is thankful for such things — no matter how small or big — and it’s a very nice feeling. A gift in and of itself, in fact. I don’t think you should live to make other people happy, but there’s a genuine heartswell when something I’ve done for someone makes them smile.

There’s polite, and then there’s sincere. If more people were the latter, maybe the world would be a better place. Definitely would be for me, at least. It is tonight.

I was asked recently what the most romantic thing I’ve ever done for anyone is. It’s a tough question — I’m a romantic at heart, and I’m constantly doing things to show the person that I’m seeing / interested in / married to (wow — how many other people would add that to a list of ways to describe “significant other”?) that I’m thinking of them. I like doing that, both for the obivous reason — that would be to show them that I’m thinking of them, for the mentally incapable at home — as well as to make them smile, and hopefully feel a little better about life in general.

I used to think — as we’re all programmed to do — that it’s all about money, and buying gifts. That certainly is a valid point, but that line of thinking is dangerous, not only to your credit rating (ask my accountant if you have lingering doubt) but to your ability to be romantic. Don’t misinterpret — I love to get gifts, small or big. But sometimes, the best gifts are free.

I love things that are not generic, little things that are geared obviously to me. Flowers are nice, sure (ladies: every guy in the world except for those with tiny tiny penises would love, just once, for the woman in his life to give him flowers. For the record.) but even better are those things that show that I’m the one in your thoughts. A friend once made me — by hand — a book, a journal for me to write things like this in, made from printer paper cut in half and duct tape and some of her art (it’s much more attractive than I’m making it sound). It’s quite possibly the best and most cherished gift that I’ve ever received.

I once wrote a song for Melissa. I’ve written poetry (you can laugh and point all you want, but don’t knock it until you try it), and even an (award-winning) screenplay (Muckfuppet - coming soon to a film festival near you). One of my tattoos was an anniversary gift to Melissa*. I’ve drawn things, and hand-picked bouquets of flowers.

So, maybe you’re poor and utterly uncreative. You know what’s romantic? A random email or text message, one or two lines only, something inspired by your significant other (”Remember what I said about your smile? Well, I guess I meant it about all of you.”). If you’re in the same house as them, walk over to them and give them a hug, or a gentle kiss, suggestive of nothing. Clean their apartment while they’re out of town with the girls for the weekend.

The best thing about relationships (being in them, specifically) is the chance to show and receive romantic gestures, from the cosmically grand to the everyday and seemingly insignificant. All of it adds up, in the end.

And don’t take these things for granted — when you’re alone again, single and living it up, once all the memories are comfortable again and you’ve finally gotten used to cooking for one and stretching out across your whole bed, it’s these little things that you’ll still miss. Getting and giving.

I know I do.

* To those who wonder if I regret that tattoo: no. Melissa was a major part of my life for five years, and those five years largely dictated many things about who and where I am. I make sure that all of my ink means something to me that I want to hold on to for life, and I think that bit of ink is among my favorite, because it keeps me from forgetting a lot of important things. And it’s a cool design, too.

I am a male, raised in a western culture that glamorizes violence and demonizes the human body even while we proclaim that we were created in the image of our God. I am unapologetic about the fact that, for whatever core psychological reason, I am fascinated to the point of near-obsession with the female body — especially those parts that you can’t show on network TV without risking boycotts from the people who wouldn’t know a nice body if they paid $100 for a half hour with one.

Yeah, Britney Spears in the Toxic video? Hot. Angelina Jolie in leather? Hot. Scarlett Johansson in oxygen? You had me at “restraining order.”

Now, granted, I’ve got some occasionally odd visions of beauty - at least, this is what my guy friends tell me. I have NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER in Paris Hilton, even as a mindless, soulless object of lust (does anyone else find it odd to imagine objectifying her? Don’t you need something beneath the surface to be objectified?). Kate Moss is too thin; I want badly to take her to a buffet before even thinking of her in bed. And I’ve always included (apparently) uncommon women on my “top ten” lists — Maura Tierney, Julia Stiles, Sarah Chalke. Out of all the girls on LOST, who’s my favorite? The psychologist.

There’s this thing that I call nerdsexy, and it’s probably the hottest thing in the world to me, because it works on a physical level and a mental level as well — as opposed to the Maxim marketing department, which goes straight for the libido and not much else. It’s the librarian look — hair pulled up, wearing the glasses. Only I have no need to see her let the hair down, a la every Clairol commercial since 1978.

The nerd part has to do with personality and intelligence, sure, but there’s a sincerity that’s important to me. The current trend — at least as it appears to me, who hasn’t had a run-in with trendiness since about 1984 — is for the emo girls to carry a sort of geek chic look, but that’s so far removed from what I’m talking about. No, the nerdsexy comes from within, and it’s not so much even about being a nerd, but about being so amazingly attractive without having the first clue in the world.

It makes me sad on some levels that these girls, like my friend Kasey, don’t realize how beautiful they are. It tells me that they haven’t heard it enough, and that’s sad. It amazes me, too — how people (guys, girls, friends, family, whatever) can’t take five seconds out of their day to complement the people around them is just weird and alien to me.

But I’m really happy, too, that these girls are out there, carrying themselves meekly and unassumingly as they go about their day. They get self-conscious when they come out in public without a bra, because they don’t want to be stared at (not realizing that so many girls in the past few years have started doing so that no one notices any more). They don’t think twice, on the same hand, about dressing down, because it’s not about the physical — even though it could be, so easily. If these women were aware of how guys look at them, of how sad and pathetic and testosterone controlled we all are, they could have the world in their pocket — and yet they’re not, and so they carry on.

That’s nerdsexy. You place the attitiude of someone who has no interest in using sex as a weapon or gamepiece in the body of one of the most beautiful women you will ever meet, and you’ve got nerdsexy.

If you meet one of these girls, pay attention. Sure, the Angelinas of the world are more apt to stand out in a crowded room, but they’re a dime a dozen next to the nerdsexy. Rare, hard to spot, and impossibly elusive, the nerdsexy is a beast that should be appreciated at every opportunity.

Over lunch with Neely today, I did something that shocked the shit out of me, and that was even after trying a bite of the Cantina’s slaw based on Neely’s statement that it was spicy (mayonnaise, my mortal enemy, you may have won this battle, but the war rages on). Did I really tell Neely that, like myself, she has set her standards too high, and that what she’s looking for — and likewise, what I’m seeking — doesn’t really exist outside of movies and daydreams?Yeah, maybe so. That came from me, the same guy who has been telling everyone for as long as I can remember not to settle, to never accept anything less than everything that you want. Of course, I also think that Hudson Hawk is a great movie, so I’m not necessarily the person you should ever come to for pearls of wisdom.

I’ve grown accustomed to people around me chanting about the joys of being single. It rivals Scientology, sometimes. In fact, I think I’d rather go toe-to-toe with Tom Cruise on the merits of Zoloft than have another conversation in which I try to convince Garth that relationships are good. Granted, I’m three years out of my last divorce, and it’s been almost a year and a half since I dated anyone for more than a month; these zealots of bachelorhood are mostly awaiting their one-year chip from Bad Endings Anonymous. But even these people are only single in the barest sense: they’re all dating someone, even if they refuse to call it dating. And sorry, but just because you feel the freedom to sleep with someone else on a lark doesn’t make you single; it just makes you a Mormon.

Me, I’ve just lost… something. My sense of aggressiveness, for one. And maybe my understanding of dating — it’s not something I’ve ever really been good at. I like relationships — whether you know each other well or not, whether it’s going to work out in the long run, whether you are going to end up married or with restraining orders, at least you know where you and the interested other stand. But I’ve discovered that women these days (or maybe it’s just the women that I’m attracted to these days) are more traditional, giving someone like Wade the advantage.

I can ponder the design and placement of a tattoo for upwards of a year before I ever act on it, but I dive right into relationships. The road of my love life makes Lindsay Lohan look like a suitable candidate for Conscientious Driver of the Year, while I remain happy with all my ink years and years later. There’s a lesson in here, methinks.

But even if I were granted the gifts of a god for a day and allowed to Weird Science myself the perfect woman, I don’t know that I could. My desires are too defined in some areas, not enough in others, and there are some things that I collapse with option anxiety when I try to figure them out. For instance: when it comes to body type, I don’t really have one specific ideal. I guess I naturally lean towards thin, smaller girls, but there are more than a few Amazonian women out there who are stunning.

I know that I want someone artistic in some way — musical, maybe, or visually oriented. And yeah, the insanity that comes with creative is part of the attraction; also, though, I think I want to know that my significant other maybe understands my insanity, when it’s tied into the creative. I want someone with a good sense of humor, and someone who gets mine — you don’t have to laugh at Dumb and Dumber or The Aristocrats with me, but it helps if you laugh at my jokes (like, until your eyes bleed — my ego needs the boost). I need openmindedness — not just in a tolerance sense, but in a larger perspective, too. I want someone who respects that none of us know certain things, and accepts that. Intelligent conversation, which rules out most far-right conservatives.

But you know, all of these things are somewhat negotiable, too. Melissa hated a lot of the things I find funny (admittedly, not many people laugh at my three most offensive jokes), but we still lasted for almost five years. Openmindness is not something you stumble across in the South — not like grating accents or overemphasis on the importance of college football games — but I’ve let that slide a lot across the years. These are ideals, sure, but not deal breakers.

Honesty and openness — all relationships succeed or fail based on the measure of these two things. Passion — about what, I’m not even sure that I care, but something that makes you feel alive and capable of doing anything. A lack of narcissicism — which is to say, I hope you care about your looks, to a point. But when you’re spending more time at the gym than you are with your friends, or insisting on a makeover before a Saturday afternoon run to the grocery store, you care too much what other people think about how you look.

Oh, the kissing has got to be good, too.

And maybe this is why I think that I’m dreaming: we can all find someone who fits some or most of our qualifications, but we overlook things that should be dealbreakers — we let lies pass, or allow intolerance into our world, or convince ourselves that we’ll learn to live with the less-than-great sex or mean jokes. Worst of all, we allow ourselves to change to fit what the other person wants. And we do these things unconsciously, fearing that this is our last chance at love, that the world of the single guy or girl at whatever increasing age we’re at is a fate worse than settling. I’ve been guilty of it in the past, and who knows? Maybe I’ll still fall into that trap again.
Ideally, though — there’s that word again — not. Single is not my preference, but I’m okay with it. At least, until I meet a thin redhead who loves music and movies and learning about new things; who is eccentric and quirky; can be mature or silly, depending on the moment; and who dreams of sunsets all over Ireland and laughing as the waves roll in beside us.

Anyone? Seriously, let me know. I’ll trade you two cats, a CD shelf, and a framed poster from the 1996 World Cup if you know anyone even closely resembling that person.

The plank above the door reads “geisteskrank.”

This is not where he meant to be. That much he knows. The darkness seems to shift around him, shadows lifting and falling like waves before a storm. A hissing noise, not so much mechanical as the sound of a machine breathing, voices in the fan above him. There’s a small window in the door to his right, the door under the sign, a porthole, and he can see the dried blood smudged across it on his side, four lines that taper into nothing, left to right. The answer is just beyond that glass, but he’s too scared to see what may or may not be. And so he sits, propped against a wall of wooden crates that he somehow knows rises taller than the ceiling, shifting his hands and hips in the dark muck that may or may not be blood, may or may not be his own blood, wondering what to do next.

geisteskrank.

The scuttering to his left startles him, whipcrack of a head turning, and he thinks he hears himself ask who is there, but there’s no echo from the steel walls around him, nothing but the dry beating noises of a rundown engine from somewhere in the distance. And so he shifts again, the ashy sand sifting through his fingers, so dry, he left wondering if there is any water left anywhere in the world.

The bay window under the sign to his right, a large crack running it’s length, a river travelling north to south. Beyond the glass, a brilliant blue reflection of calm waters and a still beach. He sees her, walking alone, exactly as he will always remember her. Her shoulder-length hair bobs gently with each step, swinging alongside her cheeks and the sunglasses that cover the shadowy pools of near-black. He smiles as she moves, gliding across the white sands without a care, taking in the day and leaving a little behind for everyone else to enjoy.

He calls her name, and she doesn’t hear, or doesn’t respond. He knows that it is time for him to rise, to follow, to go after what he wants. He starts to rise, and feels the floor beneath him shift. The wall of crates is no longer behind him, but on all sides, wavering and groaning, the weight of impossibly tall wooden mountains trying to speak to him. He hesitates, breathing heavy and pupils constricting; she’s suddenly so far away, moving like a sheet of tissue caught in a light breeze, so slow but so far away. Between them, in the space where there was sand and ocean and beautiful summer day, there is a black grass that may be summer in shadow of an elm, or perhaps something else, something living and waiting for him to run across. The air shimmers, heatpulse rising to the sky. The sign above the archway is now blank, a wooden plank that says nothing but for him to remember what he knows, what he has learned, what he wants.

“Geisteskrank,” says a voice to his right. He turns, and there in the sunset light is a face that he hadn’t expected ever to see again.

“I didn’t sneeze,” he says. “I’ve got to be going, though. It’s time, right?”

“You’ll never be sure. That’s the best part. Oh, geisteskrank.”

“I didn’t -” and his denial is interrupted by a sneeze. The world turns blinding white, then fades to black, just like all good movies do.

“all of the flowers
all of the flowers i gave her
she burned them
burned them”
- Type O Negative

Birmingham is a really small town. In some ways, it’s the perfect game of ‘Six Degrees’ — sooner or later, everything in this town starts connecting, a wickedly beautiful web that draws together everyone and everything in it.

There was the lawyer and musician, some twenty or so years my senior, who I met when he was a client at TapeSouth. He later went on to do a lot of work with Daniel, and it was at Daniel’s home studio that I talked to him one day about his days in California, some of which were spent building a commune — a commune that my ex-wife’s mother was living at.

There was discovering that Melissa was originally supposed to have attended RLC with me instead of her zoned high school. And even having missed each other there, finding out that we attended the state finals of Trumbauer (a high school drama competition) together. Aside from becoming my wife for a while, she’s also easily one of the most naturally gifted actresses I’ve ever met in my life, and stars in Muckfuppet.

One of favorites, though not smacking of coincidence as much, was Maria. She lived next door to Jen, after our divorce in ‘94. I moved in down the way from both of them in the spring of ‘96 (Jen and I have always remained friends — not always close, but never, thankfully, the sort of bitter enemies so many ex-couples become), and although I can’t remember how it happened, or why, Jen decided to set us up on a date.

But wait! There’s more of Nerds in Love…

* Yes, damn it. I’m breaking down and using a pseudonym for one of my friends. It’s out of respect for her privacy, which I refuse to show for the other people in my life. That should tell you something right there.

I can’t remember the context, but I’m sitting at the bar and hear Bree call me a motormouth — tells one of the regulars that I haven’t shut up all day. I laugh, of course. For some reason, everything she says makes me smile. I think that it’s her voice, that slightly accented cashmere softness that is so often followed by the most perfect laugh anyone ever imagined. How can I not smile?

That laugh is one of my favorite things in life. You ever had a friend or maybe been really attracted to someone, but then the laugh that comes out of their throat is like an after-school special without the benefit of bourbon, that thing that you sit through wondering when the torture will end? Och, I have. But Bree — god, her laughter makes up for every nails-on-chalkboard giggle I’ve ever put up with in my life.

It puts me at ease, her laugh, her smile. Everything about her, really. And as funny as the motormouth comment is — most people that know me will say I’m withdrawn, reasonably quiet outside of controlled bursts of extroversion — it hits me that yeah, it’s true. I probably have talked her ear off this day. It certainly fits with the three hour phone call records that I’ve set with her.

There’s a lot about Bree that makes it feel okay to just relax, not think, and just be me.

Right now, she’s laughing, by the way. It was the “not thinking” comment that made her laugh. But as much as it seems against my nature to not think and just be, somehow it works out that way.

Bree is captivating. She’s physically stunning. I don’t want to mislead anyone here; she’s not a supermodel. But she’s got a look that you could never accurately capture without an artist’s touch and paints on canvas. That’s a lot of what made my jaw drop the first time I saw her: she’s very real, and very unique. She’s got curves, and imperfections and flaws, just like the rest of us. But she doesn’t hide those things, at least not with an obsessive vengeance like so many other women I’ve known; it’s as though she draws attention to all the sexy things about her by not hiding anything at all. She’s beautiful, I think, because of her flaws, not in spite of them. Her eyes are at times penetrating and intense, at others distant and dreaming, but always the color of dusk. She’s soft without being lazy or weak. She moves with purpose but always with grace and ease. And I can always come full circle to her smile…

She’s a good person, there for both friends and family with an ear or even much needed words. She has, in many, many ways, got her life together, but she’s not predictable or dull, and that’s inspiring to someone who has spent too much time wandering off course. She’s moving forward, and seems to know where she’s headed (and if not, she hides it well). And she seems totally okay with getting there whenever, no real rush.

It strikes me here and now that as much as I might know about Bree, I know very little. I look forward to learning more about her, to learning from her, and to laughing with her. In a perfect world, things would blossom and develop into a life-long love affair, one that I think would be meant for storybooks and moviescreens. But even if that perfect world never comes around, I’m an incredibly lucky person, to have her as a friend, and even luckier to have connected with her across the miles.

This is the closest I could come to a Valentine’s Day wish for someone, and I think I remember someone saying that they’ve never really had a good Valentine’s romance… I hope yours is wonderful and filled with laughs, Bree.