A man walks into a room. Do I interrogate him or allow him to speak? Does he come into my heart or arise out of it. Have I already forgotten him? And his sadness, which has no voice. Because he is a real man. It is a real room, with real walls and terrible limits; those of the world in which he and you and I live. He cannot speak of his fear, for shame, for fear of seeming self-centered, a charity case, people look to him; he must save face.
I have no voice with which to tell you these things that have happened to me. You see, I know that I have been blessed with an oddity of vision- born out of my unlikely childhood and subsequent life of lies. I really doubt that I could tell the story with enough inherent truth to get the point across. Deep down I really don’t believe there is a point. It’s just my life, which doesn’t really amount to much as lightly as I seem to tread across it. The skiff I ride upon drafts lightly in the waves, and I tend to think that way is best.
She was not the girl I had picked, I’ll start right there. And yeah sure, I know there are a lot of cute couples out there where the woman might love to tell the story of how, she just knew that he was the one and sure he thought he was the greatest thing since the electric toaster but that she just kept at it and wore that pale green summer dress of the airiest shape and material and then all of sudden they’re dancing and it’s a done deal. And I like that story believe you me, but it wasn’t like that. She didn’t pick me either. We just sort of both got lucky for a while and maybe changed each other for the better. Well, sure, I might not look like I’m doing so good right now but I really do believe that I was headed for a reckoning anyways so I am glad to have been in her hands at the time.
How did it happen? I already told one story about you know, this and that happening. Sure, we’re all grownups and sometimes its just different and you’re like a hound-dog on a scent and all that, and sure we got to that point maybe. But this was special, neither of us knew what to think of the other. We were like foreign objects to each other. And what exactly that means I couldn’t tell you, but it was like I had to circle her and her me, and we had to look at each other from all angles, and hold up a mirror so we could see both of us each other at the same time, and when I first saw her in a photograph I’d taken, she was so beautiful I wanted to cry. And I wanted to hold her all the time. All I wanted to do was hold her tight.
So we moved in together, like it was the simplest thing in the world. I felt like I was growing up, finally moving beyond the tedium of my daily friends and their repetitive and circular conversations, jokes which made no sense if you hadn’t been present the day before, and that would go unexplained as a subtle jab at your loyalties. But maybe that was part of my problem too, just thinking I was better than that, instead of bringing something real to the table myself.
We got an apartment in wooded part of the city where people lived unmolested by police and high rents, a sort of don’t ask don’t tell block where nods were the farthest any conversation really went. And we bought things, a couch, a table (oh that was a beautiful little table), some pans, and we thought, we’ll do it on the cheap and quick and we’ll make it better as we go. And we did for a while, and sure sometimes your best efforts don’t quite make it all better. Like with the carpet, and that terrible linger of cigarette smoke and pet and innumerable tenants before us, which I used a whole box of that powder stuff you dump everywhere and vaccuum up, but which didn’t quite work, but I really loved the girl still you see. I guess I still do too, but it doesn’t matter, because it just didn’t work right.
And we both saw that hole in the wall that had been patched or I did and it filtered through my consciousness to her, because one night we were lying in bed and from the belt of trees on the steep hillside we could see and hear the moving lights of cars from the freeway far below, and she turned to me and put her slender arms around me and said, this scares me sometimes, being here in this apartment. I don’t want to be scared. I don’t like to be here alone. Maybe that was when I mentioned the patched hole and what I thought it meant, and why did we both take note of this, but when we signed the lease the landlady had casually pulled out photocopies of the driver’s licenses of the previous tenants, shaking her head in fierce dissappointment as she stowed their mismatched faces away in a folder, message clear: don’t be like these bad kids who didn’t work out, as tenants or as lovers, and who failed me first and not to mention each other. So, we were scared of violence I guess from the beginning, and the mystery of each other.
So then later I find myself with my fist in the wall up to the elbow right through that goddamn patch and I feel as ordained as a saint following an angel to the fire. And god bless her for loving me still, but she didn’t call me on it really, and now I can’t calm down and tell you it was because she knew she was stuck and that it would take money to get away and there is none and besides that there’s no time when you have school and work and sleep to do, and I was still pretty grand most of the time, and besides of course I really did love her. But I why did I punch that hole in the wall, why did I screw around with other women when I was with her? That’s the same question. I can’t tell you. I can tell you she got away eventually, safe and I’m happier for that than any other thing, and that I’m in treatment now, and I can’t talk to her and if she walks into a restaurant or out of the bathroom say, while I’m taking a bite of a burrito, I gotta go without thinking, ignore the burning pounding in my chest the bile rising from my stomach the way my head pounds for hours after those seconds of involuntary asphyxiation, ignore everything that reminds me of where I held her love in my heart and body, how she felt in my arms and the sweetest way she sang to pass the time her lips pursed in thought her voice warm and roughened with desire, all that was there when I really did love her more than my shame and anger and whatever else idiocy kept me from really loving her, and not a peep and no phone calls and no emails or you’re getting picked up and everything you’ve worked for is erased, and don’t think about her too much, she’s gone you see.
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