Yesterday's Girl and the Cockfish - Christmas, part 1

Fact: I am an extremely jealous person. So, I was nervous to meet Tara Ann, who my boyfriend Bear had a thing with a few years ago. I had been making jokes with Bear for months that I’d claw her face off within minutes, and I wasn’t really sure how much I’d been joking.

Bear grew up in Sacramento. We drove up to stay with his mom for Christmas this year and I got my first real dose of the city. And more importantly, the city under the city.

In the 1860’s, after extensive flood damage to downtown Sacramento, the city decided to build a new, elevated street level twelve feet above the old one. Not just build new streets where the old ones used to be, oh no, the old streets and dilapidated bits of shops were going to stay right there – they in fact built new streets twelve feet above the old ones.

Sacramento isn’t exactly special for having an underground city. Apparently Seattle and Toronto do too, but the thing about Sacramento unlike some of the others, is they don’t have any kind of ‘Underground Sidewalk Tours’. They just have creepy ghost stories and urban legends of literal underground cultures of drugs and sex and violence.

Amazing. So here was this town, a freshly paved and painted rendition of the wild west that it once was, crisp and clean and always family oriented, but underneath that...

Which brings me back to Tara Ann, and my happy relationship. The innocence of ending our first year together, Bear and I, living together, without a break up, without even a near one, having been friends for so long beforehand that we’d already said ‘I love you’ before ever sleeping together, and long before any kind of official ‘date’. Yet underneath that, every entry of my sick sex journal that he had read and remembered, and the girls he’d slept with as well. The way the past takes a seat in my mind and heckles the present, rude and ridiculous, not just my own past but his as well.

So as far as Tara Ann went, I was honestly hoping she’d be undeniably stupid or painfully ugly, but sadly, neither were the case. In fact I could understand completely upon meeting her why she and Bear had connected. Gross.

We were scheduled to meet up with her on Christmas eve for dinner, along with her boyfriend and another guy friend of theirs who obstensibly had no idea he was about to tag along on a double date with some heavy history and a face clawer to boot. There wasn’t much open due to the holiday but eventually we landed in a Thai resturaunt within a mini mall.

Tara Ann sat across from me, all smiles. Her boyfriend talked a little about his time in the navy, Tara Ann about her effeminate brother, the friend about graduate school. We all talked about Las Vegas, corona beer, and escort services. Tara Ann’s boyfriend shared a tip about judging prostitutes based on how many dudes old rather than how many years. I considered it quietly while picturing this brow eyed brunette across the way from me straddling my beloved boyfriend. It all seemed too surreal to get upset by. The strangest part was the aquarium. Our booth was in the corner right up against a beautiful and large aquarium with some very interesting life in it.

One of the plants in it looked exactly, and I do mean exactly, like a close-up of a pussy.

There were a lot more though that looks something like this.

To be fair, this is actually a beige sea cucumber, but nevertheless, I think you get my drift.

So while none of us at the table mentioned the tryst between Tara Ann and Bear, these strange creatures swam in and out of one another, around and around.

Finally, during a little silence at the table, Tara Ann addressed one of the cock fish.

“This one… this one looks weird.”

“It sure does.” I said. It was probably one of the first outbursts of mine. Despite my two drinks, I was having a hard time becoming social.

“It looks like…” she pauses. We all wait. “…it looks like an… an exploding finger.”

There’s a feeling of relief as we all vehemently agree with her. We talk about some of the boys Tara Ann and Bear both knew growing up, we all go our separate ways. Tara Ann kept her face. I actually really liked her, despite The Past.

The past is a weird thing, I guess. It’s always available in a dangerous and dark sort of way, there are always mental doorways and emotional tunnels we can find within ourselves. Always.