matchbook

r how about this: I knew it wasn’t going to work with my boyfriend a few days after Ronnie James Dio died. I wasn’t a Dio girl then, not even a Motörhead one yet, but I was metal enough to register the loss. My friends didn't know about Dio, the small-statured singer with the voice of a god. Knowing what I was talking about was what first drew me to my boyfriend—the advantage of dating an older man. The disadvantage being that he’d built a life already. We were fighting that night, except he didn’t know it. It took me almost a year to allow myself to be angry with him without fear he’d leave. Actually expressing it? I wasn’t there yet. The fact that he didn’t want to see me on a Friday night was a teenage problem, but when one person is still in her twenties and new to adult relationships and the other has already turned forty, the old problems cycle back, charged and ripe for ignoring. Like any unacknowledged feeling, it grew into something much bigger, rolled around inside me until it snowballed, hard-packed and heavy. And instead of sitting at home with it, I ended up with my roommate and her new guy at the Sil, because a dive bar was needed if I was going to spend my evening with two people who somehow decided they liked each other the same amount and built from there, no disappearing acts or fear of not being enough or wondering why the other hadn’t called. I knew on some level easiness didn’t mean happiness, except doesn’t it, though? But hooray for Elaine and Johnny and their love. So I was waiting for my Jack and diet, the anger dissipating because you can’t be mad when the bar is playing Ratt. The general you, at least, meaning me. While the bartender was making some complex shots for some people in the wrong place, I watched this table of men in denim: denim vests, denim jackets, one guy wearing both—a Texas three-piece suit. They looked at their cups or the Kelly’s Roast Beef wrappers scattered across the table as they talked, anywhere but at each other. Flashes of their conversation: Meant so much...Critics talking now but they never cared...He made it for us, not them.  Do you remember when he was in Sabbath—And I realized this wasn’t just guys having a drink and a chat. It was a real, live Dio memorial. I lingered for a moment, almost giggling at all this feeling wrapped up in these unexpected packages, already imagining it as a ridiculous anecdote, maybe for my boyfriend. I want to love anything like these men love Ronnie James Dio. The thought of them planning it: a place to meet, a time, a volunteer to gather the orders for roast beef sandwiches and onion rings, the right tee shirt for the purpose of this discussion. Because when you love something, you plan. Then, from the one in the denim vest and jean jacket: “I just thought he would live forever.” When his voice cracked, so did I. I stumbled into a chair trying to walk away, loud enough to take their attention. They looked at me, but I didn’t, couldn’t, look back because what had been a joke I could now see as the truth. This would be, I realized, a story to keep to myself.