Chrisonomicon

Saturday, April 6, 2002

I keep playing his message on my voicemail over and over again, detailing every nuance of his voice, every inflection, bathing in the buttery buoyancy of his British accent. We met just a week ago. The way things have turned out is eerie and great at the same time, mostly because we were both really attracted to each other from the get go, although neither of us were very forthcoming and now here we are after a night of music and dancing, making out in the middle of Champa. Strangely enough, his name is Chris as well, which should provide for an ample amount of Seinfeldian comedy and confusion.

Earlier in the evening, Mason and I went to see Lucinda Williams at the Paramount. Not a regular on my playlist, she certainly earned a spot with her slightly-raspy, soulful voice and hit-the-spot guitar skills. She threw the melody out over the audience like a stone into water, her voice trailing behind like a ribbon that had been tied on, and I resisted the urge to stand up and move my body to the rhythm, to catch each stone that was skillfully juggled and precisely tossed.

A really awkward, obese woman with a brightly colored scarf wandered up towards the front a few times, twirling her hands in the air and waving them around as though she were witnessing a Southern Baptist baptism in the river. It was really a great scene. Each time, a white-shirted security guard would escort her nervously off to the side, and each time, she'd somehow wander back up again. I suppose no one's allowed to dance at these venues, and it reminded me of the "No Dancing" signs in clubs without a cabaret license in the south.

My thoughts always wander at concerts and I simply couldn't shake Chris from my head. I kept comparing our meeting and these upwelling of feelings to previous meetings with previous boyfriends and marveling at how each one felt so right in the beginning but turned out to be not so right in the end. It really kind of bothered me to think that if I feel this strongly for guys who are wrong, how would I feel about the right guy? Would I be able to handle it? I tuned out those jaded thoughts and attempted to lose myself in the music, which merely served as a pool of color in my head for Chris' face to bob around in.