Chapter 15

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act

Truman Capote (1924-1984)

From:

Subject:  Vicious muthuh

To:

So you find me interesting when I’m on mushrooms? When I eat those things and start zoning out on reality, it gets very scary, and I end up rambling on like a god damned lunatic. Hey, screw it. If you want to try it sometime, I’d be happy to get you some samples. Magic mushrooms are seasonal, however. They are usually on the market in the fall and the spring. In all honesty, my bud, I think a good mushroom trip would give you a whole new and exciting perspective on your life. Don’t laugh… I’m serious. Those things are like gifts from God that allow us to see the world in a way we never realized before. I can’t describe it. It’s as if there is a sudden and predictable order to what we normally think of as chaotic human interaction. Everything suddenly makes SENSE, although not to the sober reader of what we’re experiencing. To the untrained eye, chaos and unpredictability seem to reign, but if you watch really closely, you experience total order. You wanna do it, or what?

Rutherford

From:

Subject:  Vicious muthuh

To:

Uh, no.

Working the mixing board on the weekends at the radio station had long lost its appeal to Lori, and any recording work that came her way had become frustratingly scarce. She was also growing tired of relentlessly recording mock biotechnology reports only to be sent away with a long list of critiques by the fussy station’s general manager. 

She needed to make it real. 

She attended a launch party that was being held on behalf of the station’s new programming. She swept through the huge reception hall in search of anyone and everyone who could help her, laughing at jokes she did not understand, touching the arms of those she barely knew, and trying to make eye contact with those who she knew did not care to know her. Breaking through the confines of the mundane was what drove her that night and what kept her moving, and touching, and laughing.

She migrated over to Helga like a clown fish seeking out immunity from a sea anemone in a vast sea of sharks. It was good to see a familiar face among such a diverse and intimidating crowd of people, the face of someone she had learned to know and trust.

“So I’m hearing that I might not be asked to voice anymore of the station’s commercials,” Lori said, a glass of coke in her shaky hand. “I think they’re going to go with a former colleague of the general manager. I feel like I’m getting phased out.”

“You are,” Helga said.

Lori looked at her, waiting for the support Helga used to give to her when she was feeling nervous or insecure.

“How do you think I feel?” Helga said, breaking up the silence. “I’m in-house. Full-time. I’m not a former college intern just dabbling with radio in her free time in between classes. And they’ve never asked me to do any of the commercials.”

“I don’t really understand them,” Lori said. She swirled her coke and watched bubbles pop at the surface of a chunk of ice. 

“That’s why, honey …” Helga started. Her voice was directed toward Lori, but her eyes moved searchingly around the room. “You have to get out there if you’re serious about breaking into radio. Market yourself. I keep telling you! Don’t just depend on this place!”

“But I have so little time to have to first start hunting around,” Lori said. “I’m still in school, for Christ’s sake.”

“Well…” Helga said, shaking her head. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

Lori paused, and took a sip of her coke. She was picking up on negativity. Jaded negativity. It used to just be ambivalence. 

“Jonathan called me last night,” Lori said. “Around eight o’clock.”

“Jonathan called you?”

Lori nodded.

“For what?”

“He said they really need biotech coverage for the new business format.” Lori took a slow sip of her coke. “I mean, it’s not exactly carved in stone, but I suppose if I’m looking for something to keep me tied to the place, this could be it.”

“You’ve been talking about doing reports for those guys forever now,” Helga said.

“Jonathan said they’ll be considering airing them soon.”

Helga nodded, expressionless. “Well, I wish you luck,” she said, coldly. “The last time I talked to Jonathan, he referred to me as ‘passive-aggressive’ and went on to lecture me about all the ways that I could fit in better at the station. I guess I could start by shoving a large stick up my butt.” She turned to Burt who had just crept in place beside her. She nudged his arm with the back of her hand, forcing him to turn around and give her some attention. Once he did, she turned her back to Lori.

Lori felt a shiver, an uneasy chill that ran from the backside of her neck down to the small of her back. There was something about the radio environment that seemed to make it easy to make friends, but difficult to keep them. A certain degree of vanity and a certain degree of ego, both fueled by unfathomable, deep-rooted insecurity, were what Lori believed drew her to the business in the first place. There was a good chance that the same was true of Helga. And all the subjectivity and flighty favoritism that incessantly danced around them only fed into the insecurity, and made the hollow emptiness inside of each of them echo more loudly. 

Lori spotted Nick in an outer hallway. He was dressed in a gray suit and black tie. She saw Jonathan standing not too far away from him, huddled together with a small group of power black suit and tie figures splintered apart by one or two sparkly evening gowns.

She glanced back at Helga before moving coyly toward Jonathan. Jonathan was the co-host of a morning business and finance show that Helga had run the mixing board for on occasion. He was also a financial advisor whose firm was one floor above the soon-to-be launched business station. It was common knowledge that Jonathan had an interest in eventually buying the station, and that he was already an integral force in planning the design of the station’s business format. 

“I have a lot of respect for you,” he had said to Lori the previous night, with a slight southern drawl. “We need someone who can give the listeners insight into the biopharmaceutical industry. I think with your college background and the fact that you’re majoring in science, you can do that for us.”

She had gotten off the phone with him, dizzy with glee at the prospect of there existing an alternative to a future consisting of transference of clear liquids from one polystyrene tube to another in a gray metal rack on a bench top under long rectangular fluorescent ceiling lights in a room that often smelled of gas or sulfur.

She continued walking toward Jonathan, stopping short of the group of elegance and supremacy that clustered before her. She lightly tapped on his shoulder. He turned around to face her, looking pleasantly surprised to see her. She smiled and leaned toward him and kissed his cheek. His look of pleasant surprise quickly changed over to simply a look of surprise. Lori blushed and stepped back, feeling awkward about what she had just done. 

“How are you, Jonathan?” she asked. She hung her head and bashfully looked down at her feet. “I just wanted to tell you how excited I am about the possibility of doing biotechnology updates for the station.”

“I can see how excited you are!” he said with his trademark drawl. “It’s something the station needs, and we’re happy to have you on board to do it.”

“Thanks,” she said. “So it’s official? I’m really doing this?”

“So far as I can tell you are,” he said. “We’ll get you together with the program director sometime in the next couple of weeks, and you guys can work out the details.”

“Thanks again,” Lori said. “So how soon now before the station’s yours?”

“Soon, hopefully,” Jonathan said. “I’ve got some plans. A few things are in the fire.”

Lori smiled and shook his hand. She pivoted around in her half-heels, and found herself facing Nick.

She slowly approached him. 

“Hello, Lori,” he said stiffly. He moved only the lower half of his body to face her, while keeping his head and neck in the same awkward position they had originally been in. It was obvious that formal attire made him skittish.

“So, are you and I O.K. with each other?” she asked, nervously.

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t we be?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’re fine,” he said. He glanced around the room. “You know, Mona and I broke up. Couple of months ago.”

“Angela had told me when it happened.” 

“Yeah. She decided that she needed space,” he said.  

Lori looked up at him, searching his face for signs of regret, or sadness. But his icy blue eyes and taut lips looked the same as they always had. Immune. Impervious. 

“So where’s … Paul?” he asked, interrupting her. He looked thoughtfully around at crowds of people huddled together in the adjacent ballroom.

“Paul?”

“Yeah. How come I’ve never met this guy? You still with him?”

Lori shrugged, and decided not to answer his question directly. So you think I’m still seeing Paul, she thought. Maybe it’s best that I remain just as much of a mystery to you as you’ve been to me since the day I met you, so we can finally have an even playing field.

“Ah,” he said, obviously attempting to answer his own question despite her silence. “So … can I be of any … assistance to you this evening?”

“No,” she said. She could feel his eyes on her, even if for only a second before he felt the need to return them to the strangers in the ballroom. Despite his façade, she could still feel his masked loneliness; she could still feel his stifled hurt. Mona was gone, and it was obvious that Mona was very near to being gone when Lori had last seen him. But although it helped her to understand, it didn’t take away her own masked loneliness and stifled hurt. 

 “I do want to do this, though,” she said. She stretched her arms out toward him and drew him tightly to herself, wanting at that moment to squeeze all of the bad feelings away, like pinching a pus-filled blemish tightly between one’s thumb and forefinger. His hands were lightly perched on her waist, his back still hard and erect. She pulled away from him slowly, and kept her eyes averted and pointed toward the floor. She started moving through the crowds of people away from him.

From:

Subject:  closure hugs

To:

Jesus, Lori, you’ve had nothing but “closure” with that loser for months now. “Closure” hugs, “closure” talks, “closure” this and “closure” that. Closure my ass. You are so hot for that guy it’s hilarious to hear you deny it so much. If you weren’t, you’d be ignoring him and avoiding him, but instead you’re giving him warm huggies. That wasn’t exactly the SMARTEST move you could have made if you truly wanted him to go away, you think? You may as well have whispered, “take me,” in his ear, because I guarantee you that’s the message he got. 

Oh, well, I’ve got my own problems, too. I’m on my way to Kansas City in a few hours. I’m leaving there next Friday, so I can imagine Thursday will be the big “fight” day. Screw it. I just can’t wait to get laid. 

Rutherford

The days passed lazily by, and Lori was just beginning to feel like her mildly, as opposed to highly, neurotic self once again. It was still difficult for her to envision visiting the radio station, knowing that it was possible that she would see Nick, and knowing there was a chance he would treat her like a large, fetid turd. Yet she felt her strength returning, and also felt the vast bulk of the stinging hurt starting to drift away. She was growing weary of dealing with the recurring, pointless anguish, and there was a good chance that her very fatigue would end up being the best friend she could ever hope to have. 

Angela called her one evening in the middle of a tuna and corn chip feast.

“Guess who called me?” she asked.

A small chunk of albacore got caught somewhere between Lori’s tonsils and her windpipe. She started to cough and gag.

“Are you all right?” Angela yelled into the phone.

“A-hah!” Lori gasped. She continued coughing for a few more seconds and swallowed hard to push the dry, sticky fish all the way down her throat. “Went down the wrong way,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

“Well, I’ll continue when I know you’re all right,” she said.

“I’m all right. Just tell me. Was it Nick?”

“He left a message on my answering machine at home, just to ‘say hi’ and to ‘see how I was.’ I didn’t get back to him. And I’m not planning to,” she said.

“I can picture how he sounded on your machine,” Lori said, making her voice high pitched and nasal, and putting on her thickest New England accent. “Yeeaah, so Angela… This is Nick. Yeeaah, so… aftah I kicked my retahdid girlfriend’s ass outta my dad’s basement, I realized that I was missin’ the aaah… convahsation you and me used to have. Yeah, so I’m in need of some… convahsation. Would you be interested in… aaah… conversing with me sometime, Angela?”

“I just hope he doesn’t call me again.” 

“Whatever,” Lori said, adding a spoonful of mayonnaise to the tuna. “I’m getting so tired of trying to figure him out. Look, just tell him you’re a full-blown lesbian, you and I are lesbian lovers.” 

“You mean tell him the truth.”

Lori was feeling particularly staunch as she walked into the radio station early one evening to work on a piece that was to air that weekend. Nick was sitting quietly at his desk when she breezed past him toward the production studio. He paused only to give her a gentle greeting before turning his attention back to his work. 

“Hi,” she said softly, picking up her pace. She closed the heavy wooden door behind her, positioned herself in front of the editing equipment and microphone, and began shuffling the papers of script she had brought in with her. She heard a light rapping sound. She looked up and saw Nick’s face in a little transom window in the door.

“Hey, I got something for you,” he said. He walked inside the room with a sheet of paper in his hand. “A spot for Joe’s show this Saturday.”

“Thank you.” She stood up and pulled it gently from his hands.

“Do you want me to help you?” he asked.

“No.  I can do it myself.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I feel self-conscious reading in front of someone else.”

He diverted his glance toward the screen of a nearby computer. He smiled and said, “But I’ve seen you naked.”

She felt a surge of adrenaline strike the pit of her stomach and make it lurch. “I heard you called Angela,” she said. 

He laughed. “She and I just flirt and kid around. We have fun.” He grabbed the chair Lori had been sitting on and began to prepare the production equipment for the read. He looked up at her. “I could see down your shirt before.”

Lori glanced down at the V-necked polo shirt she was wearing, and saw only the fabric lining her collar tight against her clavicle.

“I can touch you,” he said. He pointed his finger at her chest.

“No, you can’t.” 

“Why not?” 

“Because I’m over all that,” she said. She was surprised at what was coming out from between her lips, as it bore no resemblance to anything that was going on in her head or her heart.

“Okay,” he said, briskly. He looked away from her and rose to leave.

“Could you explain something?” Her mouth was moving before she knew what was to come out of it. 

“Sure, what?” he said.

“Why were you so nasty to me the last time we were together? When I drove you to the train station that one night?”

“What do you mean?” He looked puzzled.

“When I asked you to tell me something about yourself, you told me that I had no reason to know anything about you,” she said, blinking hard. The memory was flashing at her full force.

“I didn’t say it like that!” he shouted, backing away toward the door. He smiled nervously at her.

“That’s what I heard.”

“That’s not what I said.” He continued to look at her for a few seconds, grinning stupidly. He walked out of the room.

Lori completed the commercial read, and then walked over to his desk and asked him to load it into the station’s system for her.  He marched into the production studio, his head bowed. He went through the motions very fast. He did not look at her or even face her. He just finished, and headed toward the door.

“Bye!” Lori called out to him.

He said nothing and disappeared around the corner. 

From:

Subject:  Numb nuts

To:

Jehovah’s Witnesses approached me today. They’re lovely people, well meaning and friendly, and they’reCRAZY! I just don’t understand these weirdo Christian sects like the JW’s and the 7th Day Adventists and the Mormons… not to mention the Irish Republican Army, which I’m technically a member of. TECHNICALLY. I’ve never been to church in my whole friggin’ life, so how is it that I’m considered an Irish Catholic just because my ancestors were? I wouldn’t know a Holy Rosary from a Snicker’s Bar. And why is it that corned beef is so prominent on St. Patrick’s Day? I usually associate corned beef with the infamous Reuben sandwich, which is a Jewish New York Deli creation. I just don’t get it.

Rutherford (a.k.a. Crafty Barnardo) 

Lori’s eyes opened at three o’clock in the morning. She lay flat on her back, motionless, staring up at some ceiling cracks, and began to recall every single person or non-person in her life that had ever hurt or wronged her over the years. Merciless hectors that had exploited her shyness as a child, heartless cretins that had ridiculed her for not being beautiful, past love-interests who had turned their backs on her for not being lovable enough, family that had criticized, acquaintances that had degraded, strangers that had insulted, dogs that had bitten.  It gravely concerned her how easy it was for her mind to pluck from the vast reservoir of life experiences such blatant negativity, and how pristinely preserved the bad memories were after all of the time that had passed. 

She wasn’t sure what had triggered it, if it were a dream or a nightmare or a peppery food she had eaten before she climbed into bed for the night. All she knew was that it was all there, perched and ready in its typically dormant state to leap out at her unexpectedly and make her feel- at least for the moment- that life can be one pain-in-the-ass.

Lori flung the bed covers off and restlessly folded her pillow over underneath her head and shoulders so that she was partly sitting up. Her brain was pulsating rapidly beneath her skull, and her body was filled with pent-up libido energy in dire need of an outlet that was nowhere to be found. She wondered if bread would still rise if she injected the contents of an old tube of Monistat 7 into a mound of freshly prepared dough. She wondered if the rumors were true that she heard as a child, that she would turn into a black hole if she tried to simultaneously belch, sneeze, and hiccup. She wondered how big of an object in her apartment she was capable of picking up with her toes. She wondered if there would be a change in her stool color if she ate nothing but vegetables for a week, then nothing but beef for a week.

She staggered over to her computer, hoping to lose her self-indulgent thoughts somewhere in the chaotic whirlwind of someone else’s universe. She felt effortless joy when her eyes fell on the number “2” sitting temptingly in her e-mail “inbox.” She decided to first read a message she had received from Pista Bakfark, who was responding to an e-mail she had sent him the previous week. It was obvious from his steady decline in the ability to write intelligible English sentences that he was speaking only Uralic in his native country.  

He Lori,

Did I just speak out that you are simply and truly the sweetest thing on the surface of that planet. I was just reading again what you were writing some days ago, in fact, I had to read it again, and once you’ll also read it again you simply know why I truly call you the sweetest thing. I kiss the sweat from all over your naked body (esp. from your inner tighs where it is even sweeter).

I kiss your boobies! (I mean both of them!)

Just missing to go on your nerves. Just missing to expose myself to you. Just missing you, but NOT missing that stupid lab for a single second.

I was just phantasizing about our ‘sordid past’, was just finding myself getting totally aroused. I mean squezing and striking myself, just getting offffffffffff, oooohhh Jezzzzzzzz, I mean …

Love ya, 

P.B. 

Dear Pista,

Do you know what “striking” means? You said that you were punching yourself. Did you mean, “stroking?” Also, “fantasizing” is spelled with an “f,” and “squeezing” is spelled with two “es.”

Lori

She moved quickly to a message from Rutherford. She hoped that his innate cynicism and sarcasm would tap into her uneasy state of mind and bring her some much needed relief.

From:

Subject:  ectopic pregnancy gone badly

To:

God dammit! I was just writing you a message and friggin’ AOL logged me off for “inactivity.” Did you get it? I can’t BELIEVE how much AOL SUCKS!!!!! WHY do they do that!?

I’m kind of worked up right now, baby. A little while ago I almost got into a FIGHT with some idiot in a parking lot near here. To make a long story short, I was about to make a turn in the lot, and this guy was coming in the opposite direction and stopped in front of me rather than driving by. I waved with my hand as if to say “go ahead” or “you first” or whatever, and this little punk-ass drove past me and hung his head out the window and said “Use your directional, schmuck!” I couldn’t believe it! He went by me and I did a U-turn and pulled up to his truck after he parked, and I very calmly said “Dude, don’t you think it’s a little stupid to talk to people that way?” This clown looked like he weighed about 130 pounds, and he says “Whatchya gonna do about it!” Oh my God! I swear, I was so mad after that I almost jumped out of my car to beat that jerk within an inch of his life, but I got hold of my testosterone and I just shook my head and said, “You ain’t even worth it,” and I left. Why? WHY do sawed-off little punks like that talk like friggin tough guys to someone MY size? I swear, in my life, I’ve been challenged to fight by maybe five or six different guys, and they’re ALWAYS guys that are about HALF as big as me!

Oh well, I think I did the right thing by walking away. I don’t want to have to answer my e-mails from a prison computer.

Rutherford 

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

You did the right thing. You fought fire with fire. Hauled off some obscenities in return for the obscenities he hauled off on you. Feel sorry for the jerk. He obviously had a bug up his butt over SOMETHING. What sucks is that people whose lives suck make things difficult for the rest of us.

Lori

She happily sent her message off to Rutherford and was just about to log off, when her eyes fell on a message that must have just been sent to her from Angela. It was twenty minutes after three in the morning. What was she doing awake? 

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

Hello my Lovely Lesbian Lover,

Sorry I couldn’t see you last night; I was tired and depressed all weekend. Don’t really know why. I think I’m lonely and horny… Haven’t heard anything from Ted … I did hear from Stanley, my otherwise “unavailable” friend. But it was just a joke that he sent to all his e-mail buddies. I didn’t respond. I’m done with him. I know he’s more miserable than ever in his relationship. Why won’t he leave her for me????? Now that is someone I am absolutely HOT for in every possible way. Life is not fair, Lori. Why can’t I find a guy whom I am attracted to and LIKE at the same time????? It’s always either one or the other!!!

Love, 

Your LL/SF 

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

I don’t know why life has to suck so badly. What I do know is, with Stanley, you must ask yourself ONCE AGAIN the same question I keep asking myself: Why are you time and time again attracted to these insurmountable, self-defeatist challenges? What about that nice guy Ron who you went out on some dates with a while back? I mean, what was wrong with him? He was single, outgoing … Or what about Jerry? The one I introduced you to? What ever happened there? He didn’t seem so bad to me. It seems like we both push the promising ones away, and gravitate toward the ones that are nothing but trouble. 

Anyway, we’ve got to talk. There’s a lot more I’d like to say on this subject!!

Your L.L./S.F.,

Lori

Lori sent the message to Angela with the intent of turning off the computer and trying to fall back to sleep, when her eyes fell on a new message from Rutherford. Insomnia seemed to be running rampant that night. 

From:

Subject:  It’s slinky … It’s slinky …

To:

You ain’t kidding about how people with miserable lives make it tough on the rest of us. Jesus, all I wanted to do was stop at a sub-shop and pick up a pizza and go on my merry way, and because of that knucklehead I almost got into a friggin fistfight. Can you imagine? I’d have either been ARRESTED for beating the guy senseless, OR he’d have pulled out a gun and shot my ass. Where’s the LOVE, god dammit!

I’m getting a crush on this chick that works at Dipstick Donuts, by the way. I stop in there every night and get a donut and chocolate milk for the mentally retarded guy I’m taking care of, and this girl is always so bubbly and friendly and jiggly-wiggly. Tonight she was asking me about what I do for a living, and I gave her a quick run-down. She said something like, “Aw, that’s nice, you must have a big heart to work with disabled people.” I felt like saying, “My heart ain’t the ONLY thing I’ve got that’s big, baby,” but I held my tongue. God, I’m a pervert. That chick is probably about sixteen years old.

Well, I’m outta here. As always, I’ll speak with thee expediently and with much Godspeed.

P.S. OY!

Rutherford 

Lori switched her computer off and lay down in her bed again. She finally fell asleep. The sound of her ringing phone awakened her the following morning. 

“Hello?”

Rutherford’s voice sounded strained to Lori on the other end of the phone line. “I know this is kinda short notice, but can you come for a visit this weekend?”

“I read all your e-mails last night. To what do I owe all this sudden attention?”

“I’m needy.” He laughed. “No, seriously, can you come up here for a visit?”

“Uh… Maybe. I don’t know. I’m kind of tired,” she said, feeling the weight even of just the receiver in her hand. “I don’t know if I’ll have enough energy to drive all the way into New Hampshire. As you well know, I had a lousy night’s sleep. So did you, apparently.”

 “Look,” he said. “Without getting into detail here, I’d just appreciate the company.”

There was something about being needed and depended upon that gave Lori a strong sense of warmth, like sitting in front of an open, roaring fire, cloaked in a soft comforter. She felt the same rush of fulfillment then as she had months earlier, when Rutherford had phoned her at four in the morning to seek advice about an inebriated friend of his who had urinated into the vegetable compartment of his refrigerator. Perhaps the strange, befuddled high she would get was due to knowing deep down inside how unstable of a character that she, herself, was, and yet having people in turmoil actually leaning on her for strength. 

That night, she drove to see Rutherford. Grinning, saliva-dripping dust bunnies swirled around her feet when she stepped inside his apartment. She neared a grease-splattered ping-pong table covered with stale cake and cookie crumbs and looked for a chair to sit in.

“Make yourself at home,” Rutherford said. He pointed at the ping-pong table. 

“Didn’t you used to have a real kitchen table here?” she asked.

“Yeah. Termites,” he said. “Can I get you something?” he asked. 

“Oh, no.… No,” Lori said. She knew that he was knee-deep in a phase in which he was experimenting with various exotic foods that included obscure crustaceans and candy-coated insects. Obviously bored with cheese, he had been talking about getting Lori to try a strawberry syrup-dipped grasshopper, or a scorpion frozen motionless in the center of a square butterscotch flavored lollypop. 

He reached his hand into a metal cooking pot of white and green mushrooms. “I want to be lowered into a shark cage.” He carried a plate of growth over to the ping-pong table and sat across from her. “Saw these guys doing it on T.V. Looks pretty cool.”

“You wouldn’t be scared?” Lori asked.

“Only maybe when it comes to paying the bill. Whoo!” He shoved some mushrooms into his mouth.  He shifted in his chair and pushed his emptied plate to one side of the ping-pong table. “Hey, I’m thinking about becoming a voo-doo priest. What do you think about that?”

Lori smiled. “I think that one of the things we both have in common is a constant need for stimulation and change. Or else we get bored.”

“True …” he said, smacking his lips. He stood up and walked over to the pot of mushrooms sitting on a stove burner. “You absolutely sure I can’t get you anything?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m really not hungry. But thanks.”

He quietly stirred the mushrooms, flipping them with a spatula over and over until Lori believed he was only doing it to keep himself busy. He added a pinch of some kind of seasoning, before wiping his hands on his fatigues.

“Things suck,” he said. “And things just keep sucking. Things in my life increase in suckiness every day by a factor of ten, at least. Life is a suppository in the rectum of the universe.”

“Life just keeps going on and on and on, doesn’t it?” Lori said.

“Things suck. But right now, whatever. Don’t care. Screw it,” he said. 

“So what sucks, exactly?” she asked.

“What doesn’t?” He continued flipping mushrooms over and over with the spatula. “Got to go in for surgery on my back.”

“Really? That’s… That’s right,” she said. “You mentioned you were in pain the last time I talked to you.”

“Yeah. Spinal surgery. They’re going to check to see if I have one.” He started laughing loudly, and then put on a fake Indian accent. “Yah, Mistuh Jones… We haf gone in and looked, and haf discovuhed dat you haf no spine! You wimpy bastaaad!”

They segued into discussing the general futility of life as both of them saw it. How often Rutherford couldn’t help but venture off into such extremist thrill-seeking behavior that he found himself tinkering on the edge of self-destruction, all for the purpose of warding off stagnation. Lori was just beginning to get heated up, clawing at what she perceived to be a whisper of justification for her own recurring adventurism, when the tides of the conversation shifted toward Rutherford’s unyielding hopelessness and regret. Regret over lost loves, lost career pursuits, a perceived lost life. Lori had tried many times to bring Rutherford’s mind to the forefront of the present, even pushed it on occasion and tried to get him to contemplate a future for himself. He was still so young, yet he talked like he was an old man. He insisted on lamenting over that which was gone, that which could do nothing but immobilize him like an institutional straight jacket.

“So are you O.K.?” Lori asked.

 “Me? Yeah…” 

“Are you sure?” Lori asked. 

“Yeah,” he said, chuckling. “I mean … life just… sucks, you know? I’ve seen so much… so much and it all just… sucks.”

“I know,” she said. 

“People out there… just going through the motions. Not giving a crap about anyone other than themselves, not really giving a crap about anything, you know? People just suck.”

“I know,” she said. 

“There’s no such thing as morals anymore. People are jerks, they know they’re jerks, and they just don’t care that they’re jerks. They do things just because they can. Not because they should. Society has never been as selfish, corrupt, and depraved as it is now.”

“Yes.”

“And it’s the selfishness, the corruption, the depravity that is tearing down any sense of union or structure that society may have once had,” he said. “We’re individuals struggling for more and more individuality, constantly justifying our selfish, corrupt, depraved crap, rationalizing that it’s simply our right as individuals to be this way.”

“Yeah.”

“Lord, I’m good with words,” he said. “Hey, guess what?”

“What?”

I have a new… suspicious… mole.” He laughed.

“Have you had it checked?” she asked.

“Nah,” he said, continuing to laugh. “Screw it.”

“You should get it looked at.”

“You know, there’s something I need to let you know.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

He dug underneath the mushrooms with the spatula and lifted a group of them high in the air. Letting them fall erratically from a lofty height back into the pot, he said, “I’m attracted to you.”

Lori felt her face grow warm. 

He looked at her then, while continuing to stir the pot.

She shifted her eyes toward the table and focused on a box of cheese danishes. She wondered if there were any pastries still inside of it, and if they were moldy or stale. She thought about the Dipstick Donuts girl. She thought about Babette. She thought about Angela. She thought about what it’s like to be alone.

“You got pretty quiet,” Rutherford said, laughing. He reached over his head and pulled a plastic bowl out of a cupboard. He began filling it up with seasoned mushrooms. 

 “Well …” Lori started.  She paused for a moment to collect her thoughts. “I think … that you’re just ready to be with someone.”

“Y…eah …” he said. He nodded and continued to toss mushrooms from the pot into the plastic bowl.

“It’s been a long time for you, and you’re just feeling lonely,” she said. “And I think we’re too good of friends to let a moment like this ruin what we’ve had for so many years. Don’t you think?”

Rutherford covered the bowl with plastic wrap and set it in the refrigerator. “Hey, would you like to … see this book that I just got?”

They moved to his cluttered living room where he pulled out some writing guides that he had picked up at a yard sale. They carried on with their evening as though nothing had happened. Yet something had happened. It was something that she feared. And it was also something that she sort of, kind of, craved. It was something that she sort of, kind of, craved because it was something that she feared. 

Rutherford knew this. He could tell from the gleam she had in her eyes when she talked about Nick. He could tell from the sparkle that was still in her eyes when she berated herself for letting it happen. Rutherford knew that Lori was attracted to the randomness of peril. He also knew that he, himself, was wrought with danger and uncertainty, the very qualities that Lori found irresistible. He knew all he needed to know, and it was just enough for him to bathe Lori in her own juices, and stir her like a steaming pot of his sautéed mushrooms.  

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

Lori, I want to follow up on something you wrote to me recently that kinda disturbed me. Don’t worry. This is not a criticism. I just really want to set the record straight with you about certain guys in my past that I rejected. You brought up Ron and Jerry the other night, and it really threw me for a loop. Lori, I really, REALLY need you to understand that you are WAY off base here, and this is truly NOT my being in denial about anything. The guys I have rejected- like Ron and Jerry- were SO FAR beneath my standards in so many ways that I could not, SIMPLY COULD NOT, bring myself to settle for them. Not only did they all mentally/emotionally repulse me, but they physically repulsed me as well. You apparently never noticed how completely rank and nasty Ron was. Well, my friends at work met him once, and they were like, “Angela, for God’s sake you can do better than THAT. That guy is gross.” My friend Jack Wiener actually welled up a bit when he asked me why I felt I had to “settle” for guys like that. And when I described his disgusting living conditions, both Jack and my other pal at work, Mark Pigeon, said they couldn’t even listen. Lori, the guy was THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL. He stank. His breath smelled like I don’t know what.  He smoked cigarettes AND pot, and the list goes on and on. And further, he ADMITTED to me that he had “intimacy issues” and had never been in a long-term relationship. You REALLY think I should have continued to see this guy? I could not give Jerry a chance because again, I just would not allow myself to sink that low. He didn’t seem clean, his teeth were awful (and he had bad breath), he was disheveled and way overweight. And he was ALL about himself the night I met him, never ONCE asking me a bloody question about ME. I am sorry, but at least the guys I find myself genuinely wanting to be with have been light years ahead of the aforementioned two- physically, emotionally, and mentally.

I think one reason people like Ron and Jerry don’t seem as “nasty” to you as they do to me is because, as you’ve admitted, you kind of have a hippy side to you. And I definitely do not. Like, you wore jeans with huge holes in them for a while, and that’s just something I would never do. And neither would I want to date a guy who wore such clothes. Of course, I have no problem with YOU wearing torn jeans or anything else- because you are not a potential love interest. And besides, you are a basically clean person who bathes regularly and brushes her teeth! You take CARE of yourself, and always look attractive and appealing. Ron and Jerry do not. I just hope you understand, and don’t think me shallow for feeling as I do. I also happen to think the outer is a reflection of the inner, and if the outer is a mess, you can make a pretty good guess that the inner is a mess as well. When people are happy with themselves, it usually shows in their appearance. 

Gotta go do the TRAFFIC now.

Love ya!

Angela

(stay tuned for chapter 16…)

Here is a link to a real-life illustration of a challenging relationship dynamic, entitled “Reeling.”

And here are some other interesting and pertinent links:

DeMars Coaching – YouTube (DeMars Coaching)

Surviving Narcissism – YouTube (Dr. Les Carter)

NARCDAILY- You Are Not Alone – YouTube (NARCDAILY- You Are Not Alone)

Lisa A. Romano Breakthrough Life Coach Inc – YouTube (Lisa A. Romano Breakthrough Life Coach Inc)

DoctorRamani – YouTube (DoctorRamani)