Haiku one time mentioned her ears were pointy, "like a devil".
I said "So?"
She was like, "'so'?..." then smiled. "oh."

...

So Haiku heads off to japan. She says she will call me, and I get her email so we can communicate a little while she's there. I also snap a few shots of her on my cellphone, so I have some pics of her to look at. (I'd upload them but sprint sucks and wants me to pay for internet access to do so. Anyone want to buy me a data plan?)

I offer to take her to the airport, but she says she hates goodbyes at the airport, and she'd rather take a cab. This is understandable, as she has a hard enough time leaving my apartment the night before she is to leave for japan.

She leaves, and the following weekend I go visit an old freind in another city and party a bit. We talk about getting together again, and he says he'll be around again for this event coming up later in the year, but tickets are to be bought sometime in January. I tell him that it sounds like a good idea, and hopefully Haiku would be able to join me so he can meet her. So when I get back home, I send off an email telling her about what i did that week and telling her about this other event and how she should join me.

A few days later, I get a reply, she says she'd be interested, depending on her class schedule, and that she'd try to call me on monday. Monday comes and goes - I don't think much of it; I've traveled internationally before and I know how weird and difficult it can be to communicate back given the time difference. Also she said she would have to use her mother's phone, and had a pretty full schedule as well.

Christmas time was coming up, and I was to go out of town and spend it with family at some cabin that my sister rented. The place was nice, but there was no internet access. Still no contact from her, again I didn't worry too much.

New Years Eve comes around. A bunch of friends decided we'd all meet up at a bar. I figugred i'd be up late, so I decided to take a nap on my couch.

I'm napping, and I hear a knock on my door; I wake up and answer it. It was Jason.

Well, I knew this was coming sooner or later, and I figured it needed to be done. I Let him in, and he asked if I knew why he was here. I said I had an idea. He said he had talked to Haiku the night before.

I was still a little dreamy from the sleep, so forgive me if the details of this are a little weird. The whole day is somewhat blurry in my head from this point on.

He asked "so are you two dating now?" I said, "Yeah, pretty much"
He sat on my couch, he cried a bit about it at first.
He said he considered them married. He mentioned common law marriage. (I looked this up later and they aren't)
I learned they had been together for about 6 years. She was his world while he was in japan.
I probably learned more about her past that day than the entire time we had been together.
But - he still considered her his girlfriend. And, they were still sleeping in the same bed together.
He mentioned past times where she had "cheated" on him, and said he had cheated on her as well.
He told me about the guy she visited in miami and slept with, and that he was meeting her in japan.
He also said she was stubborn (which she had admitted) and spoiled and painted a picture of her as a brat.
He told me she had been wanting to get her own place and been asking for space, and he thought he was giving it to her.

After a bit of this, I offered him a beer. I figured it would help smooth things out..
For a while we talked around the issue; he told me stories about them together, and I talked about relationships and such.
He mentioned he was glad he didn't get mad, and I agreed. Things were much calmer than I ever expected for such a situation.
He asked how many times we had sex (wtf?). I told him more than once, but I wasn’t answering beyond that.
I said something like that I should stay out of things for a while - at least until she moves out.
Shortly after finishing said beer, he finally decided he needed to leave - I had a friend coming over and I needed to get ready for going out for new years.

I was, obviously, very confused about the whole ordeal.

So my New Years was a bit odd. I did get indirectly hit on at the bar, which is always nice. I also got nice and drunk as well.

A few days later, I emailed her, told her what happened and that the worst part was that I had no other way to contact her to get her side of the story.

The next day, Jason calls me. He said he thought about coming by, but decided to call first and ask instead. I told him that was probably a good idea, and that I wasn't up for visitors that night. We talked roughly about the same things again; relationships & stuff and some of their history. I tried to keep the dialog abstract and tried not interject myself as to come across as somewhat neutral.
He said he had been talking to her almost every day, yet I had not heard a thing from her.
I had heard from both of them that she was bad at calling people, and I knew Jason used skype so he was probably calling her, but still that started to bother me.

This whole experience was all very weird.

As you may imagine, there's a whole lotta confusion going on in my head right now. So with 2 sides of a story, after a while, I finally felt like I was figuring out where things lined up in the two stories. She had told me she wanted out of the relationship around feb, he said she'd been wanting "space" for about 6 months. Other things seemed to make more sense, but the perspectives from the two were way off. I had a feeling maybe he was thinking they were in an open relationship, but going out with me crossed the line or something, cause it had potential to be more serious or whatever.

The Monday before she is to get back Haiku finally calls me from Japan. She had been gone for over 3 weeks at this point I believe. We talked for about 30 minutes, some about Jason and what's going on, some about what she had been doing in Japan. She tells me he found out by looking in her gmail and seeing my email to her.
I tell her I'd like to see her at the airport, but she tells me Jason will be picking her up and that it would probably be a bad idea.

The day before Haiku is to get back, I'm online, and since jason now knows my google username, found me on google chat.
Here's where you get to read some choice snippets out of the log I have. This is where you get to see the crazy that this guy is...


ottoshoes : i finally talked to her on monday
jason : call?
jason : what'd she say?
ottoshoes : we talked a bit about the whole situation w/ all of us
jason : ?
jason : so, what was said?
ottoshoes : plenty of things... i'm not very good at recapping entire conversations
jason : good answer I guess
jason : I don't mean to mine you for information. But you gotta imagine where I am
jason : I've been talking to her pretty much every day... but
jason : I'm trying to see into her heart.. where she is.. and it's hard to do over the phone, especially with Haiku
jason : I gotta tell ya , the last couple weeks have been pretty miserable
...
jason : but now... I'd die for her... really
...
jason : well... I think the reason she's saying that not boyfriend just friend thing is cause she wants space and is trying to get me to back off
jason : she knows that I'll always love her... she has nothing to worry about
...
jason : I feel like I just need to be there... and wait till she comes around
...
jason : actions speak louder than words.... we've both cheated... but still known we loved each other... despite stress
...
jason : sounds like you're trying to persuade me to let her go
...
jason : yesterday was great, today we seem to be on different pages/difficulties
jason : so just 'let it go' and 'move on'
jason : you have to be able to accept the other persons... shit... and let it go
...
jason : I expect that she just wants to have some fun... feel free and not held back by me
jason : and then she'll start thinking about what's of more fundamental importance
...
jason : I think a relationship is more than some 'official' terms... it's a deep emotional thing
...
jason : the Miami thing... I was able to let it go cause I didn't think it meant anything...
jason : he lived in Miami and she's obviously not going to have a real relationship with him... just sex a fun.
jason : still shitty, but I could understand
jason : this is something I really don't know how well I can deal with
jason : I just wanna be kind to her and let her know how much I love her.. and try my damnedest to make her happy...
jason : but anger is there... I gotta get rid of it
...
jason : still... I asked her like six times...
jason : please, please... don't sleep with ottoshoes.
jason : he's my friend... Miami is some dude I don't know... far away,.. just fun and something I can kinda deal with
jason : but shoes and I have been friends for 10 years....
jason : that'd just be too much... and really mess me up
jason : I told her this, and she promised she wouldn't
jason : last week she said at that time, she already had
...
jason : but I gotta know she still loves me
jason : Actually.. I know she does, it's just, I want her to see it
...
ottoshoes : sorry to be blunt, but you're starting to sound like a broken record


---end

He actually did most of the talking, with me trying, again, to be neutral about it. I was trying to give the dude the benefit of the doubt, or at least appear to for the time since Haiku wasn’t around to defend herself.

The next day, a Thursday, Haiku is to get back in town. Jason is meeting her at the airport. I hope to maybe hear something from her once she’s in, but I also know how international travel is very draining - you’re often traveling for 10-20 hours, along with a major time change (something like 11-13hrs) from japan. I knew she’d be exhausted. I figured she’d want to go home & sleep asap. So I wasn’t concerned when I didn’t hear anything right away.
Friday passes, no word.
Satudray comes and goes, nothing. I was hoping for at least an email or a late night call or something. I’m aware the situation at home for her is going to be strange and she won’t be comfortable calling me while he’s around, but i figure she’d find a way to at least discretely contact me.
By Sunday though, I began to be worried. I was thinking maybe she wasn’t truthful with me. Crazy thoughts raced through my mind.
Maybe she gets her kicks by pissing him off, or maybe now that she’s ‘caught’ she’ll go back to him and smooth things over and forget about me. I was very distraught about the whole lack of communication. I knew classes started on Monday, however, and she would be on campus. But I was beginning to wonder if she’d start avoiding me now and pretend it never happened. By Sunday, with no contact, I more or less wrote it off as a fling and figured it’d be best to try to forget about the whole thing.

Monday, I’m in my office, and she calls my cell phone.