Transformative

Tonight I'm tackling a subject I don't usually breach on this blog: love. I suppose it's only fitting that I should be so moved to finally tackle the L word (no, Scott Pilgrim nerds, not "lesbians") because of something that I witnessed, not something that happened to me. It helps me keep my gruff and curmudgeonly exterior.

This particular tale is about a friend of ours that my roommate works with, who for the sake of this blog and his anonymity we'll call Bento. He's a good guy, but for the few years that I've known him, he's always been kind of a lovable drunk. Granted, the times I'd usually run into him was after he was leaving the bars and coming to hang out with our crew, but without fail, he was more or less stumbling drunk. That didn't make him any less a fun person, or a nice guy, quite to the contrary; he was always fun to hang out with and nothing but friendly -- the type of guy anyone would say has a heart of gold.

Another mutual friend noticed, as I did one of the last times I hung out with him: for as fun and lighthearted he is when he's at the bottom of the bottle, he's actually a really fascinating and charismatic guy when he's sober. We'd just never known because we'd never really seen him dry until recent times that we hung out.

Now that I've got that background out of the way, let me jump to last night. My roommate had told me over the weekend that Bento's woman of his dreams was in town for a few days, and that his current girlfriend of the last year or so was none too pleased about it. When I was invited to go out with my roommate, Bento, the girl of his dreams, and the girl's sister, I just couldn't pass it up. My roommate had gone on and on about how much different Bento was around her; he hardly drank, he had nothing but her best interest in mind in everything he did, and he just comported himself much differently, so I had to see it for myself.

We met up at the local bar, where Bento was nursing a beer, which I discovered later was the only one he had all night. We decided that rather than going to another bar, we'd grab some beers and go hang out on the roof deck of the hotel where the sisters were staying. It ended up being a fantastic night; we sat out on the deck, watched the stars, listened to music, and had great conversation until sometime after two in the morning. Bento indeed seemed like a changed man - he was practically beaming from ear to ear, re-living old times with a woman with whom he once shared an intimate bond. My roommate and I gave them their privacy as goodbyes were said, but after that, I drove the three of us back to our house, and that's when I got the full story: he had met this girl years ago, fell for her immediately, they dated until she had to move to Chicago for business. He followed her there, only to be absolutely miserable (with the city, not her -- he just couldn't hang with the winters), so he ended up coming back to San Francisco, and they kept up a long-distance relationship for some time, until finally resigning themselves to just be friends.

Up until a few days ago, it had been almost two years since they'd been in touch, but as he described it, when she sidled up next to him at work on Friday, it was if she'd just gone down to the store and come back - every bit of the intimacy, affection, and love was still there. The problem with this, of course, is that Bento has had a girlfriend for nearly one of those years. Much to his credit, he did hands-down the most respectable thing he could have: he came completely clean with his current girlfriend, saying it would be cheating them both if he kept going out with her, knowing full and well that he was in love with another woman, even if she does currently live on the East Coast.

But what struck me most about this whole story, now that I've gotten through it all, was the cliche idea of the "transformative power of love". I've heard a lot of people give it lip service, but to see it in a situation like that, I was almost at a loss. It was incredible; here was this guy I have known for years, but he was like a completely different person, and it didn't have to do with the alcohol in his system, it had entirely to do with the love in his life. I could say he was literally glowing, which is overstepping and misusing literally, I realize, but it isn't far off. I've never seen anything like it, at least not in a long time. Bento kept saying, and I noticed, that when he's around her, he feels like he's about ten feet tall. It was like seeing someone finally realize and live up to their potential. I know it sounds like I'm gushing or being flowery with my language, but that's how intense the response was.

Granted, waking up at our house today, he was kind of in the opposite shape, knowing that as we sat there on the couch, the woman of his dreams was on a plane back to the East Coast, only to hope that it wouldn't be another two years before he saw her again, but I guess that's the necessary evil you have to experience with affairs of the heart. Either way, it was an absolutely fascinating and heartwarming experience to witness from a third-person point of view, and I only hope that I and everyone who reads this will experience love like that at least once in their lives, and kudos to those of you who already have.