This week I’ve watched the second season of The Office because it was just in the house for some reason and then of course I got the Christmas specials via Netflix. That’s what I did last night: went to the yarn store and watched The Office. I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, green apple, and rice pudding for dinner. I know some of you read this journal for the sheet glamour factor, but I feel I have to gently disabuse you of the notion that my life is one long round of booty-smacking, hot tubs, and bling. DVDs and cookies in bed at 9:30 is more like it, I’m afraid.
So anyway I have this weird and totally embarrassing crush on Tim, like a lot of people do. I watched the end of the second part of the special something like four times and I lay down on the bed and cried into my purple flannel pillowcase the last time. I won’t spoil for those of you who would also like to lay down on your bed and cry into your purple flannel pillowcase, but the whole Dawn/Tim thing just kills me. What is so attractive about that kind of relationship, where someone’s sort of unavailable to you in the real world but in your heart you know that person is your person, if only everything were different? And you kind of know that part of the reason that person is your person is because you can’t have that person but you still think that it would be really great to have that person anyway. When he takes the microphone off and asks her, and she says no, and hugs him, and he just sits at his desk totally destroyed…it’s just perfect in its horrid, devastating way.
And I admit that I’ve been delving into the fantasy that Tim is actually my admirer and that every day when I go into work he’ll be there and be glancing at me with longing and his eyes will light up when he sees me and I’ll have that little underlying knowledge all day that he likes me. That can totally perk up your workday, not to mention your life in general. I don’t remember the last time anyone even gave me the eye, let alone had a full-on crush on me. People have been asking me lately if I want to date again, and I always go “’Dating?’ What is this ‘dating’ of which you speak?” and sometimes I say something about if I ever go out with anyone ever again that person is going to have to hire a brass band (with a drum major) and parade up and down my street holding a handmade banner that says I LIKE CHIARA, YO before I will be convinced to come out of the skin of hurt and distrust and longing that has grown up over my heart like ivy over the past couple of months. That’s what’s so awesome about Tim: he does have a banner saying I LIKE DAWN, YO floating above his head every day like a halo. Everything he does and everything he says…yes, even during the Rachel thing…is about his love for Dawn and damn if that’s not overwhelmingly attractive, even in a man who has Fisher-Price hair.
And so you know I had a dream about Tim last night. (Um, Martin Freeman, if you are reading this, rest assured that you’re invited to my house for booty-smacking, hot tubs and bling any time you like except Mondays which is bellydance, but mostly I just like you as a friend. It’s Tim I really dig.) In the dream, Tim gets out of my bed and goes back to Dawn, and in the dream I just sort of lay there thinking, No, that’s totally appropriate. I knew he wasn’t ever going to stay with me, I knew he’d go back to her where he belongs. In the dream it made sense and I sort of sadly accepted it as inevitable (HE LOVES DAWN, YO) but will you think I’m totally stupid when I tell you that when I woke up I looked around for him and was so so so sad not to find him, like it actually felt like a real loss?
I guess it’s a pretty obvious dream.