Youtube link to audiobook of Chapter 16 and the rest of the book!

Chapter 16

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

The last slice of pizza lay untouched in the cardboard box it came in, the cheese on its surface having turned into a rough, lukewarm rubbery sheet. Three empty coke cans surrounded it on Lori’s coffee table, partly shadowed by an imposing half empty bottle of Madeira wine Lori had swiped from her uncle’s house. Lori was leaning lazily against the arm of her couch, while Marta sat cross-legged on the hardwood floor.

“It’s star 82 to block our number, or theirs?” Marta asked, lifting the phone receiver to her jaw and trying to untangle the attached cord. 

“No,” Lori said. “Star 67 blocks our number from being seen by someone else. Star 69 lets you call someone back if they call you and hang up without saying anything. And star 82 counter blocks a block that prevents unregistered calls, like from phone solicitors, from getting through.”

“It’s a strange world we’re living in, is it not?” Marta asked.

Lori shrugged and nodded. “I was wearing a retainer the last time I did something like this.”

 “Yes? And?” Marta said, raising her palms toward the ceiling. “Who cares? Who’s going to know?”

Lori shrugged. 

“Since when should fun be reserved only for children?” Marta asked, flipping her short dark wisps of hair out from underneath her shirt collar. “Let’s see. Let me find the Swiss guy’s number for you.” She lowered the phone to her lap and pulled a folded white sheet of notebook paper out of her purse. “Still haven’t gotten myself a proper address book,” she said, laughing. “You’d think something like that would be important for a European attending college in the United States to have, eh?” She took a sip of wine and began dialing the digits of her former beau. She handed the phone to Lori.

 “Please leave a message and a phone number, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible,” a male voice announced with a mild accent.

Lori cleared her throat. “Is this … Dick’s Eatery?” Her voice was rich and sultry. She tried to suppress her drunken laughter as she went through the script in the same exaggeratedly theatrical way she would have if it were going on air as a commercial. When she finished, she handed the phone to Marta.

“O.K. Who’s next?”

Lori thumbed through her little black address book for Nick’s number. She had to copy it from a laminated list of personnel at the radio station, since she had destroyed any numbers that he had personally given to her months ago.

Marta pressed star 67, followed by his number, and waited. Her forehead creased and she mouthed, “answering machine,” to Lori. 

“Hi,” she said in her sweet, soft Italian voice. “I’m … I’m not sure if this is the right number, or not. But … I was looking for Dick’s Eatery. I was wondering if you had anything for my friend and me to eat.”

 Lori pulled a pillow close to her and squeezed a corner of it.

“You know,” Marta continued. “Bite, suck, chew …  swallow. Something … soft. Well, actually,” she said, chuckling. “Hard is what we’re really looking for. A … Popsicle … or … a hot dog …”  

She covered the receiver and let out a silent laugh. “Something creamy and rich. Or maybe … meaty. Hot and tasty. I’ll get back to you, because we’re really, really hungry.” 

It was just past eleven at night when Marta rose to leave. She was going to see a boy named “Matteo,” whom she had met several months earlier through the Internet. Marta and Matteo saw each other infrequently in person, yet flirted on an almost daily basis through an “instant messenger” service.

“So I asked him why he never returns my calls when I leave him messages on his answering machine,” Marta said. “And he tells me he’s just not a ‘phone person.’” She swung the thin black strap of her purse over her tiny shoulder. “He spends every waking hour on the Internet,” she said. “I can only communicate with him if it’s in the form of writing. I tell you, it’s not normal.”

 After Marta left, Lori cleared away some pizza crumbs and dishes and lay down on her couch. She pointed her remote control at her television, and began flipping from one channel to the next in rapid succession. Nothing interested her.  Her eyelids started to droop, and she closed them. The blare of the television was keeping her awake. She fumbled in vein for the remote control, and surrendering, recoiled under an afghan and tried to block out the noise. 

The phone rang. It was still on the floor near the coffee table where Marta had been sitting. 

Lori lifted her head out from under the afghan and stared at it. Keeping the afghan wrapped around her shoulders, she bent down to pick it up.

“Hello?” 

“Hello. Is Lori there?”

 “Oh, God …”

“So you rang?” Nick said.

“It was my friend. We were drunk.” 

“Is she cute?” he asked.

“Yes,” Lori said. “We used star 67. Did my number come up on your end?”

“No,” he said. “I just knew it was you.”

She nodded.

“So … what are you wearing?” he asked.

Lori smiled, trying to push her lethargy away just enough to be conscious of the moment. “Sweats,” she said. “And a white tee-shirt.”

“Bra?”

“Yes,” she said. “What about you?”

“I’m wearing my boxers.”

“The blue ones?” she asked.

 “Yes,” he said softly. “The blue ones.”

“I remember those.”

“Picture me there with you,” he said. “I come up behind you.… I start kissing your neck … your ear …”

He went on to talk dirty to her, very dirty, and tried to get her to envision the two of them together … being dirty, very dirty. She stayed on the phone with him, lying languidly in the middle of the living room’s hardwood floor and staring directly into a light fixture on the ceiling. She felt as though she were dreaming, yet was in too deep to wake herself out of it. She told him that the wine and pizza had made her very tired, too tired to continue what he was trying to start. Yet she remained on the phone.

“… your pink passion pit,” he said. 

“Pink passion pit?” she repeated, laughing loudly. 

He ignored her and continued. “My hand is on your …”

She lay there with one arm outstretched, and the receiver wedged inbetween her chin and shoulder. She emancipated it only after a considerable amount of time passed, when a torrent of energy dissipated and left her feeling listless and weak. 

It was then that she realized that whatever was going on inside her was not simple childishness, or anything that she was capable of simply tying up in an unassuming carton and shoving far under her bed amidst clutter and balls of dust. It was something very serious, very insidious, and very undeniably real. 

From:

Subject:  self-pleasure is the best pleasure

To:

I’m glad you mentioned your attempts to prank call me last night. My parents have been HERE very frequently lately, especially on Friday and Saturday and Sundayses. In a word, if you call here looking to prank me on the wrong night, the joke might be on YOU. My parents are actually very laid-back and wouldn’t yell at you or anything (in fact, my father might even LIKE to answer the phone late at night and hear a female voice saying she was looking for something long and hard and creamy). But just be warned. It might not be ME that picks up the phone. 

My vacation with Babette went differently than I’d expected. We didn’t really have any “fights” at all. However, I must say, after the “honeymoon” period during the first five days, I was suddenly SEIZED with the torment of wanting to get the HELL outta there. The last two days in Kansas City ALL I could think about was how much I wanted to go the hell home, you know? That girl was irritating the CRAP out of me. I know it sounds bizarre and egomaniacal, but the only reason I can’t bring myself to completely break it off with her is because I feel so BAD for her. She’s obviously completely attached to my stupid ass, and I just don’t want to hurt her feelings, god dammit. The fact that we live so far away from each other is the ONLY reason I haven’t told her to get lost by now. If I had to be around her every day, there’s no way in hell I could stand it. The funny thing is… the more I blow her off and act like a complete jerk, the more she seems to get attached to me! Jesus…

Oh well. WorkSUCKS! I HATE it! If you never worked with retarded people, you just wouldn’t understand.

Rutherford

P….S…. Give the Nick crap aREST! You’re like a freakin’ Jr High School girl prank-calling her dream-boy for Christ’s sake! If you really aren’t obsessing over that blathering dickhead, then WHY do you keep interacting with him? Why? 

The days of the week were beginning to pass by at a decently enough pace. Lori went to her classes in the mornings, studied at home in the afternoons. She paused from her routine only to occasionally peer into her e-mail and open friends’ messages left in her “inbox.” Nick Warren had sent her nothing new, yet this did not concern her- at least initially. His puzzling, and at the same time predictable, absence had no adverse effect on her ego or her psyche until around mid-week, when she found herself thinking about how their phone conversation had made her feel that steamy, searing night as she lay euphoric on the dusty hardwood floor of her living room. 

From: Lori  

so … i’m fine for MONTHS, then you get my motor running again

what exactly are we to each other?

From:  

playmates 

Playmates. The word suggested innocence. Fun and freedom. Thanks to Nick, there was a whole magical underworld of possibilities that Lori would know nothing about had she not considered straying somewhat from the so-called norm. And the wonder of this virtually uncharted universe would be enough to carry her, if she had the discipline to take only small tastes of it from time to time. If she could sneak tiny bites that were little more than pleasing to her palate, then she believed that she could enjoy this world. Yet Lori knew that she could easily indulge too much, engulf too fast. When teased with only a morsel, Lori tended to want the entire dish. The contingency of this world, if Lori wanted it to last, was restraint. After all, it was fleeting passion. Recurring passion, but fleeting passion all the same. To enjoy it as it were, she would always have to feel a certain degree of hunger. And at times, perhaps even starvation.

From: Lori  

then play with me

From:  

SAY THE WORD AND I WILL 

The exchanges continued for several days more. Lori sent messages out, and Nick responded only seconds after receiving them. Unable to resist the instant gratification of opening these gates to sex-splashed adventure, Lori periodically slipped out from underneath her papers and textbooks to check for e-mail messages on her computer. The longer it continued, the more she wondered if Nick’s sense of equilibrium and control were being compromised to nearly the same extent as her own. 

Her heart would sloppily fold upon itself whenever she would see no immediate response after sending him a message. Part of his game seemed to be keeping her guessing, by suddenly and inexplicably not responding to her. 

From: Lori

so are we done playing? or do you want to continue? 

She held her breath as she exited her e-mail, and then she began busying herself with a magazine that she lifted from her desk. Helplessly, she logged back into her account and let out a long, relieved exhale as her eyes fell on the number “1” sitting in her inbox. The only thing that could kill the ecstasy of the moment would be if the number “1” corresponded to one of her uncle Hyman’s many forwarded Jewish jokes or blanket political e-mails. 

From:  

what shall we do next? the real thang?

From: Lori  

is that what you want?

From:  

yeah 

Lori sighed heavily and rested her forehead against the computer screen. She had been hurt before. Why should she be spared now?

From: Lori

i liked that phone conversation we had a week ago 

From:  

isn’t it better live, actually doing that stuff?

From: Lori  

you’re more attentive to me when you’re not actually there with me

From:  

then i guess that’s a no

From: Lori  

does it have to be so all or none?

From:  

why not … you like it

The anticipation that encircled their sex-drenched rapport was too tempting to walk away from. Yet the idea of something more tangible or concrete stemming from any of this was daunting. Her passion pit of pure, unadulterated wanton desire was best left as an unmatched fantasy in his mind, the same as his pulsating lightning rod of delight was better off as a remarkable image in hers. Why couldn’t she abstain from propositioning him? Why couldn’t she just enjoy the ride as a passive spectator?

The next few days brought Lori some reprieve. Her libido was derailed, with school-related stresses causing her to feel drained and weary. She could look at a message from Nick from a distance and not feel powerless to resist the temptation to respond to him. Even her responses carried a careless wit, devoid of the painful gut-kneading emotion she had so often in the past bathed them in. She simply had other things on her mind. And although these things were, in essence, little more than annoying, mundane hassles, she was grateful that they were there to divert her attention away from what she felt was so oddly unsettling. 

(stay tuned for chapter 17…)

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)