Monte

My favorite television series, rivaled only by Seinfeld, is Frasier. I own the entire series, and tonight I finished watching the final episode. The things I love most about Frasier are the character development and the intimacy shared between each of the characters. You don’t find that quality in most of today’s television series anymore. Most are just made up of artificial relationships, cliché sarcasm, and stale plots.

It wasn’t until after we had been together for over two years that James and I discovered that we were both fans of Frasier. I came over to his apartment one day and saw it playing on his computer and was somewhat surprised. This was the same person who watched The Family Guy. From that point forward, James and I always watched Frasier together while we ate dinner at his place, just the two of us cuddled up on his couch laughing.

James has the craziest laugh. The first time I heard his laugh when we started dating, I thought to myself, “Oh, my God! What a freak!” It began as a sudden bellow and ended in a high-pitched, nasally shriek complete with knee slapping. I laughed more at him than I did the actual joke that had made us start laughing to begin with. At that time, I never could have imagined that we’d be together for over three years. We were so different. He was wild and a social butterfly. I was quiet and shy.

I remember our first kiss vividly. He had walked me back to my car in the parking lot of the California Pizza Kitchen, and we were standing there in a moment of silence not knowing what to do. James was so much taller than me that I had to stand on my toes to reach for a kiss.

To be honest, I can’t really remember why we broke up. When people ask me, I tell them it was because we were on different pages and wanted different things and had different personalities. But I don’t really know what any of that means. I guess they sounded like good reasons at the time, but now I’m just confused. I guess I was okay with the breakup at the time because I thought I wanted to be free and meet new people and get a taste of what else was out there.

Boy, did I get a taste. I’m experiencing first hand all of the selfish, immature, and dangerous people there are in the world. The more time goes on and the more disappointments I encounter, the more I long for the friendship and love and devotion that I had with James. I keep wondering if this is just sentimentality and loneliness, but I don’t think it is. What we had truly was good. Cooking dinner together, picnics in the park, going on walks, the bike rides. There was a quality in James that I haven’t found in anyone else, and I’m scared that I may never find it again.

I was speaking to my mother one night over the phone, and she asked who I was seeing these days.

“Do you still talk to Jordan?”

“No, Mom.”

“What happened? Did it just fizzle out?”

“Yeah, it fizzled.”

“And what about Ryan?”

“That fizzled, too.”

“When was the last time you spoke to James?”

“Last weekend. He’s doing well.”

And then she asked do I miss him. I was surprised by the sincerity of her question. Never before had she ever expressed such a sincere concern regarding my love life. It made me pause. I said, “Yes, I do miss him.” And she responded, “I liked James. I don’t know, Monte, but I really thought you two were good together.”