Years ago I had a man say “Meet me under the Eiffel Tower,” in a lovely British accent that still resonates in fond memories. I never did see him again, although I often imagined flying to Heathrow and walking with him down rain-soaked London roads glowing by the light of streetlamps on sidewalks and in glass puddles. I think TV has tainted my perceptions of London, because I’ve never actually been there. One place I have been to, however, is Pittsburgh, and it isn’t any less romantic to me than my London fantasies, despite actually having lived in its filth and rust and crime-ridden neighborhoods. At night it twinkles with a spectrum of bridge lights over black rivers, during the day gothic spires rise high up over the city in old world grandeur. Saturyne said to me from Boston, one day in the fall, “Isn’t living out here magical?” A few months later she was digging her car out of the snow in frustrated despair, but I guess a good memory is always a good memory, or more than likely, we just choose to remember the favorable details. It is, unfortunately, these positive instances that make it so difficult to free ourselves from the past, to remember the homework, the tests, the tears after the hockey game, the desperate crafting of a futile letter from a Florida hotel room while everyone else was out on the beach. My life appears to be a repetitive series of separations from people thousands of miles away who for no good reason I can’t seem to retain.

Tomorrow, in a breach of break-up etiquette, I’m going to see one of those people, and B said to me last week, “Don’t cave in to that.” I have no willpower. Is it bad when you have to bend the truth around your friends because you are certain they will disapprove? Today she said to me, “If you think you are going to get something out of this, then I will shut up.” I said, “I can’t think of anything.” That wasn’t true either, but the truth is so painful that when I hear it in my own head, I cover my ears and sing “La la la la” as loudly as I can.

Last night when the truth and doubts made my stomach churn, I drove out at 10:30 p.m. in the 40 degree weather to buy a bottle of Mondavi Riesling. As I dug for my ATM card at the checkout counter, the cashier stood for a while scrutinizing my driver license. “You look really different here,” she finally concluded, putting the card back down on the small table in front of me. “Yeah,” I said. “It’s a really old picture.” A picture of a more innocent and less jaded 17 year old who smiled, even back then, smugly without showing any teeth. I took the bottle of wine home and put it in the fridge, unopened. I’ll take it to Pittsburgh, I thought. Warm, drunk self-pity is always better than the cold, sober kind.

In a stroke of strange luck, my favorite Sharks fan called me at work today and offered me a ticket to tonight’s game against the Predators. It’s hard to keep crying over yourself when you’ve just been given a club seat ticket to an NHL game. Shortly after that, Superstar called and told me he was going to the Pens game. Damn the skeptics — I am elated to see him tomorrow.