I pull out the clear push pin of a random postcard stuck into the bathroom wall, carry it to bed and look at it. Sigh. Can you hear that? How embarrassing.There is nothing written on this postcard, it's one of those leftovers from a trip abroad, but really there's nothing to be said.
I don't hate Scotland, but I don't think I'll ever go back there. There's too many other places to explore for one thing, and going there would require so much work. In my mind.
I was there twice, two years in a row. The first time was joyous and giddy, so much newness, so much excitement, so much waiting ahead on the road. I was with Steven. The next year, it was Steven and Roger. Roger who doesn't really even think of me anymore.
First, Steven and I went to play a festival in the Shetland Islands. We had just met Roger and were no doubt quite in love with him. We walked across one of the larger islands, a ferry took us across the brackish water and deposited us there. Farmlands, ponies, sheep. We called Roger long distance from a red telephone booth. We got back to the States anxious and ready for what was sure to be the best time of our life. And it was good in many ways.
He went back to Scotland with us for a month the following year, after I had decided to break us up. The plans had been already been made, we had to follow through with a few concert commitments, the Edinburgh Festival being one of them.
We came together, ran away from each other. We avoided each other. Avoided the conversations that might have made a difference.
But it wasn't meant to be. I'm here now, Steven's here too, and although we're not lovers we are close, closer than we ever were. Roger is somewhere else. Somewhere entirely different.
So I simply can't go back to Scotland, can't look at the streets we walked on, this rock we climbed, the bad Mexican food restaurant we foolishly visited, the overpriced resale shops.
I think I'd rather go to Italy or Spain, somewhere brand new. (There is more of the world out there to see, so much that Roger is not a part of.) Not so that I can forget him, because I never will, but so that I can find new memories, new experiences to draw on when I come across a blank postcard tacked to my wall.
