In the beginning I was in the car with my ex girlfriend, Shannon, and we were heading to a destination in Las Vegas.  I recall there being an option to go one of two different routes with the highways, neither of which were perfectly direct, so both would require some combination of vertical and horizontal movement– the only question was to go sideways before up, or up before sideways.  There was some snow on the side of the road, as if the primary surface was clear and dry from having been plowed and heavily trafficked.  It was a sunny day.

We arrived, and the agenda seemed to be to meet up with a specific Hollywood type of guy, like a director/producer etc. That was to be a preliminary meeting which could lead to a subsequent meeting if successful.  One step at a time.  We stepped out of the car, and things began to go pear-shaped.  I made some shitty comment to Shannon about the likelihood of her continuing with a project the moment she discovered it would become difficult or unexpectedly challenging.  I phrased it as something like I’d bet you’d drop it as soon as…; in essence I was saying I judged her to be a quitter, which is obviously uncool, especially when on a trip together.  Rather than get into any retaliation, she decided to make space by wandering off.  We were in a public place like a beer garden, an outdoor enclosed area where people were hanging out, sitting at tables, socializing, etc.  I interpreted her sudden disappearance as a statement from her about us not needing to be ‘together’, that she was with me voluntarily and was free to change her mind, especially if I was going to be disrespectful and/or take her for granted.

Then there was some interaction between myself and an Asian guy, and he seemed to piece together from what I described about the situation that it was likely that I knew the Thomas twins, who were a year or two behind me in college and joined the fraternity I was in.  He was excited because one of the twins happened to be there at the moment, so he pointed me toward him, seated just a few steps away.  I went over and crouched down next to him for a moment to say hi.

I was also paying attention to the situation with Shannon, trying to keep an eye on her just to see if she was still present.  She apparently had made friends with one of the waitresses.  I spoke with the waitress for a moment and could feel the sourness in her mood, even though the conversation was civil on the surface, she had obviously ‘sided’ with Shannon.  Shannon passed by; I guess she had blown off enough steam to see if some reconciliation was possible.  I gave her a hug.  For some reason, I didn’t seem to know what to say in that moment.  Certainly an apology would have been appropriate, along with asking for forgiveness.  It must have been ego preventing this; I hadn’t changed my mind about my judgement of her lack of commitment and follow-through — so I was feeling reluctant to lie and say I was wrong or mistaken, then make up another lie about how I actually thought she was full of perseverance, dedication and courage, etc, because that would have been inauthentic.  So my desire was to just move past the rift and go back to enjoying time together.  I wanted to forget the little spat and just appreciate how cute and charming she was when in a good mood.  But that was not to be.  

Because I didn’t take the opportunity to acknowledge how I had wounded her emotionally, she was no longer wanting to just go-along, carry on like it was ‘all good.’  We got into some conversation and the gist of it was that she tried to assert that she was ‘just a monkey,’ which was implying that she was unsophisticated, couldn’t control her urges, and was prone to excessive chaos and unnecessary drama due to not having focus and drive for fulfilling her inner aspirations and higher ambitions– all stuff that I would contend were preferable objects of focus, especially when experiencing volatility in life.  So by including herself in the ‘monkey’ category, about which she believed I would hold definitively negative judgement, she was implying that I couldn’t actually like her, so there was no chance for a relationship.  I noticed off to the side she was studying some Arabic text on a tablet– so obviously having a desire to learn a foreign language and putting in real effort to learn would automatically disqualify her from the ‘just a monkey’ category.  Rather than bring that up as evidence contrary to her assertion, I decided that she had already made up her mind about this as a way to effectively terminate the relationship, by claiming it would only survive under a half-baked conditional argument, and she could just negate the whole thing by negating the condition.  So my attitude was that she could believe in whatever truth she wanted, and it wasn’t my job to hold or assert any monopoly on truth; it wasn’t my job to convince her of anything, so I was willing to walk away from it if she actually wanted ‘out.’  So I turned to leave, just saying “Ok, bye monkey.” If that’s the way you want it, you can have it.

I felt disappointment that it was dissolving non-amicably.  I suppose in the end it was ‘working out’ for the best if I was essentially asserting that I didn’t actually respect her, and once she realized that she presented the condition: if you don’t respect me, then there is no relationship. To that I said “You’re right” and walked away.

So I left in through a gate on the left side of the area, made my way out, with the sense that our break-up had become somewhat ‘public’ in that our drama was on unavoidable display for others, and that wasn’t too cool in my estimation.  Next to me walking was a group of friends, amongst whom was a guy who couldn’t resist making a coded comment to his pals designed to sound like nonsense and joking around, but actually expressed a negative judgement which characterized our tension-causing break-up as having been overly selfish behavior, disrespectful of the crowd.

While I was contemplating his words I looked up from the walkway to see a snowy mountain in the background. There was a huge blast high up on the hill.  It was silent at first, which was strange because the energy required to make such a huge displacement of snow and rock suddenly fly like that would have to have made a serious boom.  I noticed a skier who was going down the mountain just ahead of the blast radius, then the ‘boom’ hit us down below.  The extended time for the sound to reach us indicated the distance to the mountain was at least several miles.

Then the whole thing turned into a type of zombie movie.  It was like for one minute ‘on’ then one minute ‘off’, people were either in zombie form (if they had been bitten/infected), then back to ‘normal’ in the next minute.  So that was peculiar.  For me it was like a wrestling match at first.  When it was in the ‘on’ mode, I had to throw attacking zombies off of the high ground that I had found.  Then when it switched to ‘off’ mode it was like a race to get away from the more crowded area by going across the street and generally to the ‘right’ direction.  There was somewhat of a competition amongst the guys with the similar strategy of getting further away from the mayhem, so that by the time I was basically the furthest one away, along with the last one or two other guys, we all felt safe, even with each other being there.  The recognition of like-mindedness amongst all the insanity was calming.

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