The Thrill Is Gone.

Had brunch with Gatsby yesterday.

He called me out of the blue on Friday, at the end of what was a very rough week, and left a classic Gatsby Message. "I thought you should know I just finished a three-hour lunch at Commander's Palace. I'm in your beautiful town. Call me."

Ugh. My little heart raced, I got excited like a school girl from the surprise and shock - he was 6 weeks early?? - and I ran through all the possible scenarios in my mind.

After the initial joy, though, there I was, back to my traditional Friday night ritual (watching back-to-back episodes of Criminal Minds). And annoyed. Could he have warned me? Returned my phone call from a couple weeks back to say he would be in town? How could he be certain my weekend had room for him?

On top of the rollercoaster that was my silly, dramatic mini-intervention, fixated week: really? Gatsby? Give me a fucking break.

In the end I had to wait two days to see him. We met for Brunch on Sunday. I, of course, obsessed about what to wear, and how much makeup and all that silly girlish nonsense. Finally settled on an adorable designer dress I rarely have excuse to wear (God bless UAL). Went to get him. Had a lovely meal with mimosas and bloody marys and debris and grits and hollandaise and...

He is the same. He is Just the Same. Existential. Living only for the moments he can "fill his vessel." They had been to Harrah's ("what would your (gambler) friend say to the $400 I won on Thursday?"), Commander's, Visions, Lafitte's for The Purple... he was the Exact Same Gatsby.

And I saw him for everything he was, possibly for the first time in our relationship. There is nothing more to him. He's going hunting next week with friends, "Scott and Bobby Khan" - who will be pleased to shoot unsuspecting antelope from the window of their rented truck. It's quite illegal, he tells me. And he is thrilled to do it.

So almost two years later: the thrill is gone. I am no longer enamored with this reckless-yet-charming, boyish-faced womanizer. I am no longer intoxicated by his long eyelashes, his unreliable attention, his rule-breaking grandeur. He is only the surface.

Even now... I still want to believe there is more to him that this. That somewhere in that snarky, fun and funny exterior is a loving, full-hearted man. And yet, if after thirty-four years on the planet your idea of a good time is still strip clubs and craps, hunting down animals from a vehicle, anxiously awaiting the sausage they will become?

Yeah. The Thrill is Way Gone, Ladies and Gentlemen.


And it makes me sad. It has been a particularly sad weekend. I know I am in the rough two weeks. I know it has Been a rough two weeks. I feel in mourning for the love I had for him once. In mourning for the thrill. And I find myself still addicted to the unreliable flicker of something Good that comes from all of them... from Gatsby, from Kenny, from... a history of them.

I wish there were rehab for this.