Losing Algiers

Last night, I went out with SB Thursday to a bar that I had been to with both Shaun and Harold before. I have determined that when you take your THIRD boy to any given place that you have visited with prior boys, it ceases to become attached to them at all and becomes YOUR place. Shaun introduced me to it, I danced there with Harold, but SB Thursday helped me to make it my place. My cheap-ass burgers, my PBR, my brash and loud lady bartender with arm tattoos and a gold tooth right in front. MINE.

I've been doing pretty well with the whole Harold thing until today when I realized that, in losing this relationship, I lost my lovely memories of New Orleans. When Harold and I walked around the supernaturally quiet streets of Algiers, part of the sunlight and the flowers and the quiet embedded itself into me and became a permanent kind of benchmark. Whenever someone mentions New Orleans, I will think of Algiers and of kissing Harold on the cheek on the ferry ride back. I will think of how my T-shirt stuck to my back as I chased the sunset down Chartres St to meet Harold at the Cafe Marigny. I will remember how he reached for my hand as we walked along Dumaine Street on the morning we left, and how awkward, yet not unpleasant, it felt. We were the last two people from our group to leave, and he took me to the Clover Cafe for breakfast, which I hadn't anticipated or even wanted. I didn't think I would see him in the morning. I didn't intend for him to hold my hand and smile at me and I certainly didn't intend to smile back. We sat next to each other on the flight back and said our goodbyes before we got through security. I picked up my bag from the carousel and did my best to think of my memories of Harold in New Orleans as nothing more than souvenirs.

That's something about Harold...every time we had to part company, it felt like the last time I would see him. I have always kissed him and waved while thinking "Well, that's that. Let's move on." It was only this last time, this past weekend, that made me think otherwise. Is that the lesson I'm supposed to learn? That they only come back to you if you don't think they will?

So, if I don't want to be reminded of Harold, I can't be reminded of New Orleans at all. I am saddest about Algiers, though. The houses dripping with vines and the flowers and the fact that it seemed emptied of everyone save he and I... You only get a few perfect afternoons in your life, and that was one of mine.

If only I could reclaim it as MY place, but I don't have the strength of heart to take two more boys to Algiers.