Chapter 22

Life is half spent before we know what it is

George Herbert (1593-1633)

Lori was still plagued by a desire that she could not control. All she could do was try to will it away, like a dull ache in one’s back muscles after sitting stationary in the same awkward position for too long. The less she focused on it, the less she figured it would bother her.

But it was still there.

From:

Subject:  Seize this …

To:

I’m free next week for a potential lunchable interlude. I’m on a new diet, by the way. I’m tired of feeling like crap. I’m tired of looking down and seeing my gut instead of my prodigious manliness. I’m also tired of starting every sentence in this message with “I’m …” That’s kind of egotistical, don’t you think?

Anyway, the next time we have lunch, don’t let me order any fried clams or crap like that. I’ll get the alfalfa burger, with a side order of hot water. I’d like to lose enough weight in the next few months so that I can feel comfortable mowing my lawn without a shirt on. There’s nothing worse than a shirtless fat guy, wouldn’t you agree? Lately I’ve felt so fat that I even wear my shirt in the shower. That way I can feel thinner and wash my shirt as the same time. The thing that sucks the most about having shaved my beard and gotten a haircut is that my lack of head-hair makes me look fatter. I look like a big fat dork with short hair and duplicity of chins right now. I don’t like it. I’ve got to be the only clown in the world with no chin who actually has two chins. A goatee may be in order.

Rutherford

The loud drumming of the Commuter Rail rocked the canals of Lori’s ears as the train rapidly approached. She stepped into it, sat down in the nearest empty seat she could find, and began staring thoughtlessly out the window at the blackened, passing landscape. She stayed on the train as long as she was able to. She wanted to see nothing, to hear nothing, to feel nothing.  She wanted to be in a complete void, a soothing, distancing, dulling state of sheer darkness.  She wanted no light, no music, no poetry, and no conversation. She wanted to be so alone that it did not feel real, yet just real enough for her to embrace her own arms and rock herself gently in rhythm to the swaying movements of the train against the tracks. 

As the train approached a stop, it slowed down in such a way as to propel all bodies on it forward. Lori had to bear her heels down hard on the floor to keep from being thrust into a neighboring seat. A wave of nausea forced her to close her eyes and rest her cold knuckles against her clammy forehead. Once the train pulled away from the platform and started to chug again evenly against the rails, she leaned her head against the cool metal wall next to her and began to feel some relief. The squeaking of the breaks grew fainter as the rocking motion of the train made her drift into a light slumber.

From:

Subject:  Chi-zeese and mac

To:

Dearest of the Dear,

Art cold? Why hast thou been silent? How now, sirrah!? Anon! Our great beacon has gone out? Hear more than thou knowest; set less than thou throwest. Leave thy drink and thy whore, and keep in a door, and thou shalt have more than two tens to a score. 

What’s up?

I need to hear your VOICE so that my increasing paranoia that you are actually a sinister FBI operative can be pacified.  If you call here, ask for me as “Raskolnikov.”  Say, “Is Raskolnikov at home?” My secret agent KGB-defective name is “Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov.”  The British know me as “Unya de Gato.” The African nation knows me as “Johnny Fajita.” 

Yours in Bodhisattva,

Rutherford

At home again, Lori lay face down on her unmade bed, blowing her nose and dabbing her eyes with a tissue. She cried for a long time, pausing only to toss her used Kleenex into a bulging trash bag. She buried her face in her pillow and thought about holding her breath until she had reached the verge of blacking out. Then she thought about pressing the pillow tightly against her mouth and nose so that no air could get through. The thoughts passed. She quietly stood up, lifted the blankets off her bed, and shook them. She coughed as a cloud of dust rose and thickened the stale air.

From:

Subject:  her armpits

To:

Dearest,

I am not having ANY luck with my phone calls lately.  I’m now 0-4 with you in the last 2 days.  I don’t know. Cogito, ergo sum. Sin qua non.  Dominus vobiscum et cum spiritu tuo.  Unya de Gato vuelando como una paloma.

Let’s do THIS… Just CALL me at exactly 6:30 pm on Friday evening.  If you’ve got something else going on, let me know expediently, because if you DON’T call me I’ll assume that my suspicions about you being a KGB operative are correct.  Go back to Russia! You’re a Soviet Kremlinite Cawmniss! What have you done with Lori?! 

Rutherford

She sat outside her apartment on the top of a set of concrete steps. She closed her eyes, and taking long, deep breaths of the breezes swimming across her face she imagined a vast, pitch-black emptiness, much like the tunnel described by those close to death. She sat very still for a long while, with her eyes tightly shut and her head tilted back slightly.  Apart from hearing an occasional car drive by, or the howling protests of a chained neighborhood dog, she felt consumed by what seemed to be an almost simulated pilgrimage to death. She was gliding away from the blinding, sour light of existence, falling through the beautiful passageway leading to eternal happiness…

From:

Subject:  Looooooooser

To:

Lori,

Everything just seems to suck, and I don’t know why.  It sounds cliché, but it’s all so MEANINGLESS! The entire stratum of existence is like a pot of boiling water, and our lives are nothing more than fleeting little bubbles that rise to the top and pop into a steamy void.  Oddly enough, I know exactly what the ANSWER is to everything, I think, but I just can’t work out the dynamics of the equation involved, and therein lay an absence of reconciliation.  I used to think I could divorce myself from any depressing ripples in the collective consciousness, but I’m sensing it all around me right now, and I’m both disturbed and intrigued by a growing sense of hopelessness that I don’t think is unique to any single human being or even seemingly independent cultures.

I don’t know what’s up or down, and I’m not sure I even care.

Rutherford

Lori felt herself slipping away. She thought wistfully back to the time when she made sand castles with her brother, her parents sunning themselves nearby on a patch of beach with lotion on their noses and an umbrella over their heads. She could see it as if it were just yesterday. It was over a decade ago.

Life was over in a blink. Sex was over in a blink. There was impermanence to everything, even memories, which eventually also had a tendency to evaporate with time.

She couldn’t help but think about Nick, and what life was like for him. Honestly. All considered. Day to day. Minute to minute. Second to second. Not knowing when would be the last batch of sunny-side up eggs and hashbrowns you’d ever have the chance to taste on a sun-drenched spring morning, or when would be the last hot, candle-lit bubble bath you’d ever have the pleasure of soaking in while reading a cheap, paperback novel. Not that anyone, no matter who they were or what their story, could ever really know, given the haphazard way life had a tendency to be. But it was still different with Nick.  It was still very different, and it made Lori wonder. 

The sky had gone from a rich auburn to a dark, dismal gray. Lori ambled slowly along a wide road flanked by sparse streetlamps and dark, expansive cornfields, a balmy wind blowing against her face as she closed in on a cluster of tombstones.  She had to walk around an ornamental wrought iron fence to get near them, and to trail her hand across their rough, curvy surfaces. She paused only to skip over an occasional rock that had been placed on top of a few in memory of the resting loved one that lay beneath it.

It wasn’t too long ago that they had buried her grandmother in that graveyard. She was lowered into one half of a double burial plot near Lori’s grandfather. The two had always quarreled rancorously during the time Lori had known them, with squabbles culminating, at times, in fits of rage. Yet her grandmother’s spirit passed on only a few months after her grandfather’s body died. And now both would be by each other’s side for eternity. 

Lori knelt before the tombstone, and felt a soft wind pass over her and through the leaves on some nearby pine trees and blueberry bushes. She leaned back slightly and rested her palms against the cool earth behind her. A dust-filled gale made her eyes tear as it picked up debris and carried it across the graveyard. She pulled some scraggly weeds from the ground and matted down the uprooted soil with her fingertips.

Paul had been with her the day they buried her grandmother. He had held her tightly as they shoveled dirt back into the hole they had dug for her. As the biting cold wind of that day gusted and tousled their hair and tried nudging them from where they stood, Paul had continued to hold her tightly in his arms.

Restless, she walked over to a wind-tossed bouquet and picked it up.  She dug a hole, small but deep, in front of the tombstone and crammed the stems into it.  She patted the soil around the flowers and made them stand at a tilt in the dirt, and then turned and walked back to the open gate of the graveyard. A gentle wind hit her from behind and sent some of her hair flying forward. She turned to face the breeze, taking one long look at the cemetery before continuing back into the world of the living.

From:  

nick,

do you want to resume what we had before? 

just a “yes” or “no.”

lori

From:  

yes

From:  

i’d like very much to make you feel good again. 

just let me know how, when and where

From:  

wow …

are you serious?

in which way are you talkin about

From:  

the same way we’re always talking about

From:  

tell me straight forward!

in which way

give me description

From:  

tell me what you want

From:  

why now again?

i thought no more?

From:  

i changed my mind

From:  

ahh i see.… 

From:  

i just want to make you feel good

something about that makes me feel good

From:  

ahh ok … 

what u gonna do with me when you see me

TELL ME IN DETAIL

The connection was re-established. She had capriciously reached out as one mere mortal to another, floundering aimlessly on this strange little planet with the constant threat of demise looming quietly and incessantly over their delicate porcelain heads. She craved his touch. She wanted his validation.

But could she handle his control?

She knew she wanted him, as part of the finite, miserable blur of her life. But suddenly and unexpectedly, she just wasn’t sure to what extent. Fear of being hurt, fear of hurting, and fear of being consumed with poignant anxiety and confusion again were making her think and behave exactly as Nick had a tendency to behave toward her. And yet her passion toward him, her need to be bonded with him, made it impossible for her to loosen the grip she had so whimsically tightened around his loins.

(stay tuned for chapter 23…)

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)