[aphelion]

There she was.

I spotted her across the floor early in the evening; beautiful, positively so. She had a little bit of awkwardness about her character at times, but not in her dancing. Her motions were graceful, the tension in her arms just so.

I ignored her for the moment. She was all the way over there, and I was here.

She'd stay all night, at least until they kicked us out of here. This I knew as surely as the sun set in the west every day. She was a dancer, in the honeymoon phase of her dancing where it's all you want to do.

That's why I dumped her. She, 23, beautiful. Didn't want kids. Fun. I dumped her. We got along well, she usually got my sense of humor and had one of her own to match. We kissed well. I dumped her. I liked her a lot. She liked me. We'd been seeing each other for a few months. I dumped her.

Busy, busy, she was, as most attractive young women are these days. We'd not seen each other out for nearly two weeks, and the last time was an event with her friends. Always this, or that. Busy with multiple jobs, or whatever else. Facebook being the devil, of course, she couldn't help but post about how she was looking forward to dancing that evening. Two weeks. I really liked her.

I had to dump her. Leave time in your life for me, or don't. But one of those options doesn't work for me.

I hated doing it. She was nearly the prettiest girl I'd ever dated, and seemingly one of the most compatible girls I'd ever taken out to boot. Our conversation was a seamless flow of humor, teasing and intellectual talk. I liked her mind.

Two weeks. I was unhappy.

I fucked another girl that night. Drove three hours to go see her in the shitty April weather. over a mountain pass with rear wheel drive in the snow. Got a hotel room. Pinned her down by her wrists. A wild one, she. She liked the forcible stuff, the type that makes you wish you had a signed and notarized consent form. She brought a toy. She forgot it - left it right there in the hotel room. "Buenos dias, senorita. Did you clean room 328?" "Si, senor," the cleaning lady would say, muttering an oath under her breath to Mother Mary and all of the saints.

But I drove home the next morning empty. I missed her. Not my fuck kitten from the night before. The girl. THAT girl. You always want what you can't have. I knew this, knew my reactions and feelings on the matter were universally bullshit. My brain, my hind brain that evolved fifty million years ago or whenever pussy became valuable to mankind, was trying to deceive me into its own self-ruin. A traitorous bastard, your brain can be. "More alcohol", it demands while your liver is dissolving into a charred lump of flesh. Your brain is a lying deceiving beast of an organ, and should be ignored at all costs.

I missed my ex, but what could I do?

Fast forward some months. Wroclaw came and went, as I wrote of earlier. And with the sensation of being unshackled from the strong desire to pursue American women came a sense of ennui. The girl still held a place in my heart, a little ember kindled when I would see her at dance. And we would dance. God willing, we danced well together.

I had racked up a few more notches, a few I wasn't proud of. The juice still wasn't worth the squeeze. Or was it? Obviously someone is getting laid here in my city. It just really wasn't me, at least well. I was doing something wrong, I knew. But I still haven't quite nailed it down yet.

Then the news hit. I was getting laid off.

The timing was as good for that as could be. I'd recently put my condo on the market and found a buyer within days, for a scandalous profit. It helped me recover from my enormous credit card debt facilitated by Wroclaw and a number of other situations besides.

Now I could pursue my dream.

Two months have passed. I've been heads down on my own work, on writing and music and a number of other personal projects. The time has passed productively; I'm inches away from releasing my first novel, after five years of work (and learning how to write) - just waiting on the cover artist to finish her work. Our third album is nearly complete as well, after a month of marathon writing sessions that often stretched late into the night. And I have nearly complete freedom.

But complete freedom wasn't realized until today. I'd been in contact with dontuan for this whole time I've been back. He's already headed back to Wroclaw, on a student visa for the 2014 school year. I've always wanted to go back to Wroclaw, and talking about our times together there and his experiences kept the fire burning brighter than it ought to, at least by anyone else's imagination. After all, America is the promised land, the house on the hill. The emblem of human achievement and unparalled personal freedom. The great and shining ark of civilization.

Except when it's not.

Today was absolute freedom. I decided, at long last, to make the jump. Writing, music, I hoped to a God I didn't believe in that that was where I was meant to be. Poland gave me time. Lots of time, opportunity. And now, absolute freedom.

There she was, an American woman, mercurial, pretty. Untameable? Marriage material? Who knew. Certainly it took a better man than me, anyway. She worked the door for a shift that night. I ignored her then. She walked by me a few times without making eye contact. I let her go.

At long last we locked eyes, and she hustled over to me. "Could I ask you for a dance?" she asked, with utter sincerity in her voice. My malaise melted, and I opened my arm to let her take me at the elbow.

The song was fast, bouncy, and we had a fun and unserious dance to a tune unsuitable for closeness and sexuality. I drew her in nonetheless, our noses touching once or twice, before pushing her back out to open dance range. She smiled and laughed, her eyes flashing that same intense look she had when we kissed, months ago.

At the close of the dance I drew her in again, and kissed her on the side of the forehead. "I'm moving to Poland in December," I said.