#663

In Another Sense

We shall not talk of feelings again.
This is our pact.

We will not talk
but we will know.

You can close your eyes if you like
but we will still know.


25 July 1989
  
 

I always felt for Gunther. The barista from Friends. We watched him suffer throughout 157 episodes and finally, finally he got up the courage in ‘The Last One’:

Gunther: Rachel?

Rachel: Yeah?

Gunther: I... I know you're leaving tonight, but I just have to tell you. I love you.

(Ross is shocked.)

Gunther: I... I don't know if that changes your plans at all, but I thought you should know.

Rachel: (touched) Gunther... Oh... I love you too. Probably not in the same way, but I do. And, and when I'm in a café, having coffee, or I see a man with hair brighter than the sun, I'll think of you. Aw.

(She kisses him on the cheek and looks over at the others.)

I don’t remember many of my conversations with B. and none in any detail but I do know that there was a subtext to most of them. I never said what I felt but I talked about it; it was in the air. And a number of the poems from that time are that way. There’s one called ‘The Bypass (#685) which I wrote after I’d driven her down a bypass in which I say (although not in so many words), “Hey, remember what we were talking about that day? Well that was me talking about you.” I don’t think she ever took the hint. Maybe later, after, when she’d had time to think but she’d probably have dismissed the thought. No, not Jimmy. We’re talking about Jimmy here. Jimmy wasn’t like that.