Youtube link to audiobook of Chapter 20 and the rest of the book!

Chapter 20

Grief is the agony of an instant, the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

LL/SF,

I just want to tell you that I REALLY appreciate the way you always “stick up” for me when I am complaining about either my weight or my nose. That is the sign of a really great friend, one who will accept me just the way I am. 

I want you to understand that I am not just “dumping” on myself indiscriminately about everything. I want you to understand that I DO recognize all of my good points, as well as my bad. I’ve had a lot of work done on parts of my face- like having big circles under my eyes sucked out, wearing braces, and getting my teeth whitened when they’d become dull. But I NEVER went to extremes, like getting higher cheekbones, collagen in my lips, and so forth and so on. I realize that even with a better nose, my face won’t ever be perfect (no one’s is, really, not even supermodels because they’re all air-brushed). But you won’t see me going to a plastic surgeon every other month for some other “procedure.” I just want you to know that the things that have bothered me over the years really SHOULD have bothered me. They were things that others noticed and suggested I get “fixed” so as to improve my looks. And they were not all that difficult TO fix, know what I mean? Sure, it was not fun to wear braces for five years (at two different times, to fix crooked bottom teeth and a big overbite). Nor was it fun to have the liposuction. But it was WELL WORTH IT for the results. And once I lose the weight I want to lose, if I still have a paunch belly, I will consider having a tummy tuck. Sometimes, not even a thousand sit-ups a day will correct a potbelly. But that’s probably the only other plastic surgery I would consider having. Except for a facelift in 20 or 30 years- if I need it. I really am lucky to have such great skin. That’s one thing you will never hear me complain about.

I think it is important that we accept ourselves as we are for the most part. I do think people “go under the knife” way too often and for too many things. But at the same time, there is also room for improvement in everyone. And in many cases, it is in our best interest to try to improve upon certain things. Do you understand what I’m saying? 

I feel the exact same way about my personal and professional self. I want to continue to work on myself in every possible way, so as to be the best person Angela Allen can be. I want to LOOK as best I can, I want my broadcast work to be the best it can, and I want to be as good, sensitive, and compassionate a person as possible.

I hope it helps you understand where I am coming from on all of this.

Angela

Lori sat on a couch in the university library reading a chapter on cloning.  As her eyes skimmed diagrams showing elaborate nucleotide sequences being elegantly spliced by “restriction enzymes” and magically glued back together by “ligases,” she wondered how Nick was spending his Saturday evening. She wondered if Nick was wondering how she was spending her Saturday evening. She wondered if Nick was wondering why she was not spending it with him. She wondered if Nick was wondering anything about her at all.

Genetic manipulation.  Manipulation. All of Lori’s thoughts seemed to melt into one as she pressed her back more deeply against the middle cushion of the couch and randomly flipped the pages of her textbook. It was not a night when she wanted to be studying. It was not a night when she wanted to be alone. 

She headed home just as the darkened skies had begun to crack open with the insults of blinding lightning bolts.  Cold streams of water pierced her skin the second she left her car and darted across the flooded parking lot to her apartment building.  She lifted her drenched hand to her face and tried to wipe away the mucus that had just begun to drip from her nostrils, yet the gesture served only to cover cheeks and chin with discomforting wetness.  

Once inside, she peeled off water saturated jeans and a sodden sweatshirt, and slipped into warm, dry jogging pants and a black concert t-shirt. She tried calling Paul. She waited with the phone resting between her chin and her shoulder as his phone rang and rang. Only the torpedoing of water pellets against the windowpane above her head stole from the emptiness of his absence on the other end of the line.

She leaned back against a pillow and held the phone against her chest. An hour passed before she sat upright on the twisted sheets strangling her bare mattress and realized that her thumb was starting to ache from pressing down on the receiver. The storm outside had picked up in intensity, hurling gusts of angry, heavy air against her bedroom window.  The night sky turned bone white every so often, followed by flashes of cloudy darkness and earth-shaking explosions

She could not get her mind off of Nick.

She moved lethargically over to the computer, rested her hands on the cedar wood table it sat on and bowed her head in front of it. She was dizzy from not having eaten anything for hours, yet she was feeling too weak and saddened to fill her stomach. She started to hack away at the keys of the computer in an attempt to escape into her writing.

She was so lonely.

She checked her e-mail, and saw that she had two messages. One was from Rutherford. The other was from Angela.

From:

Subject:  The Tao of my Balls

To:

I’m in a strange mood. On the one hand I’m content, but on the other, restless and

suspicious. I’m eating vermicelli out of a stainless steel bowl and drinking water right out of the gallon-jug that it came in.

I spoke with Babette on the phone for about 2 hours last night.  We had a good talk.  She might even come here to visit next month.  Ugh! Is this a good idea? I don’t know! Dearest, you have no idea how complicated it is to be a male.  I’m hearing “no, no, no!” from above the neck, but “yes, yes, yes!” from below the neck.  It’s a quandary, I tell you! Where is the middle ground?  Being a “male” means being in a constant and irrepressible struggle between the brain and the weenie… and unfortunately, the weenie usually wins.  No matter what the implications are, dammit, I still can’t figure out why women don’t rule the world! You’ve got the power! Men are so easy to manipulate! What’s WRONG with you women?! 

Respectfully submitted,

Rutherford (a.k.a. Philip Le C’est Bon)

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

Lori,

I just wanted to share with you what happened at the doctor’s office this morning. I weighed in at exactly 200 pounds. My doctor was FURIOUS with me. She said I need to lose an absolute minimum of 30 pounds, an average of 50, and eventually 70. She also switched my medication to one that will help curb my appetite in addition to speed up my metabolism. So, there you have it, right from the ol’ doctor. I told her that some of my friends actually think I look good at my current weight. To which she gave me a smirky look and said, “You have to wonder what their motives would be, Angela. Are those so-called friends trying to give you excuses for staying at your current weight so that they can be sure they’ll always look better than you? I am here to tell you that you do NOT look good. You look well over the standards for obesity, and I want you to be 30 pounds lighter the next time you enter my office. Or I will insist that you get into a 12-step program for an eating disorder.” 

Okay, Lori. That is a direct quote, and I NEEDED you to hear it. Having told you that, I must make it clear that I do NOT think for one minute YOU have been telling me I look good at my current weight so that you can feel somehow superior. But, I must admit, at times I have been truly perplexed as to why you would be the SOLE person in my world (including family, friends, even casual acquaintances) who ever tells me I look good at 180-200 pounds. It just has not made sense to me. So I have to ask you to please not EVER say that again, because it feels like an untruth from a very good friend, regardless of whether you mean it or not. And, more importantly, it has a VERY BAD effect on me; in my subconscious mind, it is literally enabling me NOT to take better care of myself. I am grossly overweight. That is the plain and simple truth, right from my doctor’s mouth. 

I respect the fact that you honestly think I don’t look bad at my current weight. But please respect the fact that I am admitting that I have a big problem with food, and it has affected my appearance and my health. And I NEED HELP COMBATING IT. THAT DOES NOT LEAVE ANY ROOM FOR ME TO BE TOLD I LOOK GOOD.

I don’t know how much clearer I can be about my needs on this issue.

Forgive me for coming on strong. It’s very tough to finally come out of denial about a problem I’ve had for the last three years. This is serious business. It is NOT about having a few extra pounds. It has become a serious health issue for me, and quite frankly, it has scared the PISS out of me.

Angela

Lori felt her heart thumping hard in her chest. Her mouth was dry and her head was light, and she knew without looking in a mirror that some color had drained from her face. She hit the reply cue above Angela’s message and started to type fast. 

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

Angela,

The clothes you were wearing the other night were very flattering, and this is true of the clothes you usually wear whenever I see you. It wasn’t until you started lifting up flaps and pointing to trouble zones that I couldn’t help but take notice of your weight gain. 

When you’ve told me in the past what you weigh, and that your weight puts you at risk of having a heart attack or a stroke, have I ever ONCE told you that I thought it was healthy for you to carry so much weight around? I remember telling you the exact opposite countless times. And even then, did I ever really tell you something that you didn’t already know? What could I possibly say to you that you can’t see for yourself when you look in the mirror in the mornings or when you step on a scale in a doctor’s office? I guess I just don’t understand why you lean so heavily on others to reinforce what I see as already being obvious.  

I feel that I’ve only ever tried to be a good friend to you. If you have friends that seriously want to keep you “down,” that’s really unfortunate, and I feel sorry that you have people like that in your life. As for me, I can’t try any harder than I have been for so long to try to make you feel good, and to try to offer you advice that I think will make your life better. If you can’t see that, then it’s a problem you have with me that I can’t do anything about.

Lori

Lori sighed and shut off her computer. She moved back toward her bed, leaned against the same upright pillow, and tried reading a novel that she had bought months earlier at a yard sale. Her eyes captured the words printed on the pages, yet nothing was penetrating. 

She placed the book down on her comforter and drifted into her living room to see what was on television.  After she passed all of the channels three consecutive times without seeing anything that she felt could hold her interest, she turned the power off and migrated back into her bedroom.  The emerald green numbers on her clock shifted from 9:15 to 9:16 pm, and the sliding sound they made went rhythmically in sync with the rumbling of thunder and the tapping of rain droplets on her cold, foggy bedroom window.

The phone rang.

“Lesbian lover?” Angela said, meekly.

“Hi.”

“I got your e-mail.”

“Yes?”

“Look, Lori. I don’t have a problem with you. I love you, and I know that you love me. And you really have been a great friend to me. Okay?”

“Okay…”

“I’m the screwed up one here, okay? I have an eating disorder and I have to come to terms with that. I’m angry. I’m hurt. I’m depressed, and I’m frustrated.” She started to cry.

“Angela…” Lori started.

“I’m sorry if I seem to have taken all this out on you,” she said, sobbing.

“It’s okay,” Lori said. “It’s all right.”

“It’s… hard to explain how I feel, Lori.” Angela muffled the receiver with her hand and blew her nose. “I do know that I feel like I just want to go to sleep and never wake up. I hate myself.”

“Angela…”

“No. I hate my life. I hate everything.” She continued sobbing.

“Come on, Angela,” Lori said. “Are you going to be all right?”

“I’ll be all right. I’ll be all right.” She blew her nose again. “I’m just having a really tough time right now.”
“I know you are,” Lori said.

“You always pull through for me, Lori, and I honestly don’t know what I’d do without you. I’m so scattered and moody a lot of the time, and sometimes I don’t feel like I’m being a good enough friend to you. I get so caught up in my own self-pity crap.”

“Look, we all get moody. I know your heart’s in the right place with me, and honestly, sometimes I don’t see things clearly either. I’ll always consider you to be a good friend. So stop.”

“I think I’m in love with you.” Angela giggled.

“Love you, too.” Lori gently hung up the phone. She stared down at it for a few seconds before picking up the receiver and dialing Rutherford’s number. She leaned her head back against a pillow.

“Hello?” a deep, solemn-sounding voice answered.

“Hi. It’s me,” Lori said. “Just read your latest e-mail.”

“Lori!” Rutherford chirped. “It’s been a while. I mean, since we’ve actually spoken to one another.”

“Yes it has,” Lori said. “How are you?” she asked.

“I’m broke,” he said.  “All I’ve got is this cat that sits on the other side of my room and occasionally falls into my toilet. Come over here, Boo Bear.” He shuffled the phone. “Not right on papa’s groin. On papa’s thigh. There. Lori. It was the funniest thing. All of a sudden… plunk!  I had to wash the blue crap off her.” He took a gulp of something before saying, “Could you just wait a second? I have to pee very badly.”

Lori waited with the phone resting between her chin and her shoulder. She heard him shut a door in the distance. 

“I’m back,” Rutherford breathed into the phone.

“So… I started finally doing little science updates for radio,” Lori said.

“Really? Hey, hey. Congratulations.”

“They’re not airing too many, but I’m patient.”

  “You know what?” he said. “I helped make this jingle that they still play here on some of the local stations.” He cleared his throat and started singing in a soft, high voice, “Everybody loves Jack Burns… Everybody loves Jack Burns… Everybody, everybody, everybody, everybooooody… Everybody loves Jack Burns!”

“Huh… Did you now?” Lori asked. “That’s pretty cool. You wrote it, and came up with the tune?”

“No. Someone else did that. I just convinced them to change the guy’s name from Dick.” He started laughing uproariously into the receiver.  

Lori leaned back and let Rutherford fill her ears with tales of sickness, torture, injustice, and Babette. An hour passed. She waited for an appropriate break in Rutherford’s monologue so she could segue off the phone.

She was still restless. She thumbed her little black “at a glance” address book and scanned the pages for more potential distractions. When her eyes fell on Nick Warren’s cell phone number, she hesitated for a few seconds.  She quickly dialed it, not bothering to enter star 67 this time to veil her identity.  The phone rang and rang. 

He was not there. Or, more than likely he was there, studying her number on his caller I.D., and just not answering. Lori slowly hung up the phone. Her stomach twisted into a taut braid. She listened to the sound of raindrops, and nervously played with a callous on the upper side of her palm. She walked over to her computer and logged into her e-mail account.

From:

Subject:  Re:

To:

I came away from that conversation feeling so very good. It’s undeniable how much we both love and care for one another. This friendship is very important to the both of us. I love you so very much, Lori. You are a one-of-a-kind friend… and I NEVER want to lose you.

We have a “clean slate” now… and there is no reason to ever have another nasty episode again. Don’t you agree?

So… are we back to being LL/SF again??? I sure hope so!!!!!

Angela

Lori logged out. She pushed her chair away from her desk and threw herself onto her bed. She lay down on her stomach, clutching her chin with her fist. She fluttered her legs and felt the muscles in her calves tense. Thoughts of Paul began to form a pale haze in her head, a distorted image, worn and faint from time that had passed since she last saw him. She wished at that moment that he was by her side, telling her how much he loved her, how much she meant to him, how she had changed his life by choosing to be with him. But instead she had chosen to be on her own. She had chosen to be so miserably on her own. 

Her stomach felt achy and empty, yet she was anything but hungry. She picked at the dry skin on her hand and flicked a flake over the side of her bed. The allure of Nick Warren seemed ridiculous to her, his once-shimmering image dull and lifeless in light of the stinging reality that … she was alone. She moved to the edge of her bed. She began to reach for the phone receiver, pulling herself away only at the realization that there was no one to talk to.

She needed Nick to know that she did not need him. She did not need his touch. She did not need his validation. She did not need his control. But she did need for him to know that she did not need him. She called his cellular phone, not protecting her identity by pushing any codes because she wanted him to be aware of whom it was trying to get in touch with him.  She listened to his voice-mail. She lowered the receiver and redialed. She listened to his voice-mail again. She left him a message asking him to call her back.

He never did.

The following morning, she called him at work, figuring that she had probably scared him off by not making any references to screwing in her recorded message. 

“WBUZ…” a black woman’s voice rang out.

“Hello,” Lori said. She assumed one of the receptionists had answered. “Is Nick Warren there?”

“Uh …” She paused for a moment. Lori thought she could hear his distinctly nasal, New England-accented voice in the distance. “Heeeeeee’s … uh … he’s away from his … desk right now.”

“Oh,” Lori said. “Should I hang on?”

“Well …” The woman sounded distracted, and must have placed her palm over the receiver for a few seconds because Lori suddenly couldn’t hear anything. “Why don’t you … leave a message on his voice-mail?”

“Um … I’ll call back later. Thanks.”

“O-kay,” she said. The woman’s voice sounded strained.

Did the little blue or green man inside Lori’s head detect suppressed laughter? Was this woman screening his calls? Did she know who Lori was? Did Nick tell her who she was? Did he tell anyone who she was? Why didn’t he return her call?  

Her face started to feel warm, and the skin on the back of her neck began to tingle.  She gathered her coat and her purse and hastily decided that she needed to face down the truth, even if the truth was manifested as her most neurotic prophecy. She walked quickly and purposefully to her car, envisioning everyone at the radio station crowding around his desk and gazing in disbelief at the screen of his computer.

“Yeah, so she sent me these,” she pictured him boasting to his colleagues. “Get a load of this one!”

“She wrote that?”

“Lori? Lori wrote that? To … you?”

Laughter. Gasps.

“I don’t believe it!”

Amazed silence.

“Yeah.” She could see him shrugging helplessly. “And now she’s callin’ me at home. She’s callin’ me here at work. I can’t get rid of her! Thanks, Shelly, for mannin’ my phone.”

“You poor thing, you.” Lori could picture Shelly, the garish black receptionist patting his back and shaking her head and smirking.

Lori arrived at the station. As she passed through the narrow hallway leading to the office cubicles, she anticipated the worst. She saw arms reaching out to restrain her while she violently threw shadow punches at Nick, and she saw her already precarious position as science reporter at the station die an embarrassing, instantaneous death.

To her relief, upon rounding the corner of the corridor, what greeted her was not a band of leering, suspicious eyes, skulking, cowering silhouettes, and chilly silence, but rather the heartwarming pandemonium of a radio station’s midday administrative and production staff.

“Hi, Lori!” Bob, one of the producers yelled out. He shuffled a stack of paper and smiled broadly at her before sitting down at his desk.

“Hey, Lori!” Sharon Warsaw, the station’s lead news reporter called to her with a long strand of sour kraut dangling from the corner of her grinning mouth. “Pardon me,” she said, with a laugh, shoving it quickly between her greasy lips.

“Lori! How are your studies going?” an engineer named Chet asked as he made his way to a nearby water cooler.

“Fine,” she responded. She felt her hands quivering beneath the pockets of her button-down sweater. 

She saw Jonathan standing in back of the desk in his office, leaning over it to kiss his wife lightly on the lips. His wife smiled at him and caressed his cheek before heading off to his upstairs financial advising firm with a stack of papers pressed against her chest. They seemed so normal. They seemed so happy. Lori wondered if she, herself, would ever know of such normality and such happiness.

“Hey, there,” she heard Nick say in a high-pitched voice as Lori neared his desk. “What brings you here?” 

“I–”

“Hey,” he interrupted. “I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you the other day.”  He stared at the screen of his computer and began typing something. “I wasn’t feelin’ well. Had to go in for a biopsy yesterday and they loaded me up with narcotics. Passed out around six-thirty or seven last night.”

She glanced over to the center of his desk, where a large solitary rose sat in a tall glass vase, looming over a stack of CDs and minidisks. Because he never talked about it, she still found herself often forgetting about the transplant. She’d frequently forget that he was walking around with someone else’s heart. The heart of someone she’d never know.

“Can we talk?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said. “What about?”

She looked up briefly at the others, who were talking amongst themselves. “Can we go… around the corner to talk? Away from everyone?”

“No,” he said cheerily, with raised eyebrows. “Let’s just talk here.”

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

“I’m not budging.”

“Why not?” she asked.

His eyebrows sunk deeply in his forehead, and his voice became very low. “Because it will look bad.”

Any fears Lori had of Nick betraying her trust disappeared. The blasé attitude of his peers and his steadfast reluctance to be seen even walking around a corner with her told her everything she needed to know.  She bowed her head, leaned closer to him, and bent her body partly over the counter lining one side of his desk. “O.K.,” she whispered, careful to talk only when the hum of voices in the background was loud enough to drown her out. “I’ve been doing some thinking. No more e-mails.  No more phone calls.”

“I don’t want to talk about this here,” he said quietly, sternly.

“You’re not leaving me with any choice, are you?” she said.

He glanced quickly up at her, and then directed his eyes at his computer screen, making sure to keep his fingers dancing busily against the keyboard as she continued.

“Things are too up and down with you,” she said. “There’s all this intensity, then there’s nothing.”

“But that’s me,” he interjected. “That’s the way I am.”

“But that’s not the way I am,” she said.

“But that’s me. That’s the way I am,” he repeated, as if programmed like the computer in front of him.

“Look at me,” she said. 

He peered up at her face.

“That’s not the way I am,” she said, slowly and methodically. “There are two of us here. It’s not just you.”

He just sat there, staring straight into her face with his cavernous, glacial blue eyes, giving off the impression that he was truly listening to what she was saying, perhaps even affected by it. Yet Lori had a feeling that she knew what he was really thinking.

Yeah. Oh, well.

He kept his eyes fixed intently on Lori’s as she walked slowly away from his desk. He said nothing, but continued to stare at her with a blank expression. 

The rose became a red blur in the corner of Lori’s eye as she continued to distance herself from him. She could hear it whispering to her. Was it whispering? No. It was hissing at her, trying desperately to make her understand that Nick was living his life in a way that was different from most. His fears were buried in an attempt to try to get as much out of life as he could in the short amount of time he was told that he had. Emotional attachments and all the stresses and annoyances that went with them could only get in the way of Nick living his life the way he wanted to live it. His mortality was fueling him, and Lori was only standing in the way. The rose continued to sputter. She pictured its stem bending forward and all of its petals pointing in unison toward the corner of the wall from behind which Lori had disappeared. If she could just open her eyes and unmire herself from the sloppy mess of her own demons, maybe she could finally see what the hell was going on.

(stay tuned for chapter 21…)

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)