Much to my dismay, I have found myself thinking about him a lot lately. It’s the time of the year. He comes back to haunt me in June and July.

His name was Jason and while we never dated, we were sexy friends. I guess that’s the step that comes before friends with benefits, or it’s what happens when each person in the relationship is much too shy to ask for the benefit.

Of course I am thinking about him now, late on a Saturday (or is it early on a Sunday) with Damien Rice singing “Cannonball” on Austin City Limits.

It hurts, but not enough to make me cry. It’s the kind of thrilling, shooting pain you got when you were a kid wiggling a loose tooth. The kind of ache that would go away as soon as you stopped poking at the soft spot. But, it’s hard to stop poking on lonely Saturday nights.

Jason was a disappearer, one of the men in my life who leave without a trace or an explanation. The Disappearers are the ones that haunt me the most. I’d much rather know the whyness of my failures as a lover, a partner, a girlfriend. But with the Disappearers you never get the why, and that just leaves you to make up your own why. When left to your own devices it’s never him and it’s always you. Not pretty, smart, interesting, sexy, worthy enough. Too clingy, needy, ugly, boring, fucked-up.

You get the picture. That’s why the Disappearers hurt the most, take the longest to get over, because in your mind they left you because you were the very worst version of yourself.

As I sit here writing, my fingers keep finding the remote control. I poke the rewind button, and Damien Rice starts “Cannonball” over again. And again. And again.

I tell myself I will delete this show as soon as I finish this entry. I will put Jason and the memories away, and go back to whatever it was I was doing before Damien Rice made me stop everything.

But I keep rewinding, and the night Jason and I met plays on the back of my eyelids. I remember his goofy smile and how he was thrilled when I threw my sunglasses on the table of Don Pablos. They were the actual sunglasses featured at the top of I Will Dare. He acted like they were celebrity sunglasses.

That very first night he asked me if I had listened to “Cannonball” yet. I had to admit that I didn’t even remember him telling me about the song. He made me promise to download the song as soon as I got home, he was positive I would love it.

And for a very long time I did love the song. But now it’s hard to listen to. Nearly two years after Jason disappeared I still haven’t been able to reclaim this beautiful song about falling in love.