I see you shiver with antici... ...pation
by Matt Worley

I received a strange, but potentially wonderful phone call on Thursday. I can't really say much about it right now, except that I'm sitting on pins and needles for a few days as I wait for more information--and hopefully an invitation--on the whole situation. At this moment in the column, I would like to quote an old song from the Electric Company, "T-I-O-N. Shun-shun-shun-shun!" This is the kind of thing I've been having to deal with in my brain for the last few days. These strange and scary tangents that mostly go nowhere, but serve to cool everything between the synapses down for a bit.

To further explain the situation in my brain, I will relate a story that is much more common. Remember when you met a "special someone" at school or a party or somewhere, and the time together was so magic, you couldn't wait till the next time you got to see them? Unfortunately, that next time was always three or four days away. The waiting was always hell for me. Knowing that something was going to happen, and that the thing that happened would almost inevitably be good, but you had to wait until that special person was available.

Sometimes the happening was a let down. I remember having phone conversations with a girl over months of time. We'd seen pictures of each other (and were quite happy about what we'd seen) through a mutual friend. Our conversations were fun and light. She lived in Santa Fe, I lived in Albuquerque. For an entire summer I lived with the possibility of going out with her when she got back for classes in the fall. When we finally went out (Natural Born Killers, Dutch) it was anticlimactic (well, um, maybe that's actually the wrong word, but what the hell) to say the least. After pictures and phone calls and serial killer movies, I realized that I didn't really have much in common with this girl. Well, that and I'd met someone else. Maybe this was the wrong story to illustrate my point.

I think time may have been the killer in that relationship. If we'd gone out when we started talking on the phone, I think it would have been much better for both of us. Waiting an entire summer vacation for a meeting is quite a long time to hold onto the anticipation--especially since it was during a time I was meeting quite a few interesting and beautiful women. Ahh, the first year after college--actually a lot like the first year out of high school. Anyway, I've got to get this column back on track. I seem to be breaking up the thought streams here.

A good way to explain the way I feel at the moment would be this: Imagine winning the lottery, but not being able to cash in for a few days due to some glitch in a computer system (or some other malady--maybe you have chicken pox and can't leave the home). You know that very soon you will be very rich and happy (at least for a while until the boredom sets in), but the payoff pitch (oh damn, mixing metaphors again) is still spinning around the arm of a pitcher who hasn't even made it to the stadium yet.

To put a little more uncertainty into the situation above, imagine that, for some reason, the lottery numbers could change before you make it to the office. This, of course, would be an illegal lottery, but I need science fiction to make my point here. That's why they call it genre fiction. So there is chance involved (like winning the lottery doesn't involve chance anyway), but the feeling is quite good anyway.

So I sit at my desk wondering if surroundings, jobs, money, people and situations for me will change in the coming month. I wonder what will become of me, my friends, my family and everything else I hold precious. I wonder if this is real, or if it is just some cruel hallucinatory joke played on me by unseen evil. I wonder if the next phone call will ever come, and if the story on the other end of the line is the same as the one I heard on Thursday. And I really wonder if I have the right clothes for this. I mean, the only shorts I have are cut-offs.

So, as you can tell, this whole anticipation situation is wreaking havoc on my habitation of this planet. But I haven't felt this good about myself for quite a while, and that feeling is one I don't want to lose anytime soon.

Matt Worley promises he will explain the whole habitation anticipation situation very soon. Especially if things go well next week.

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