5th
Adoration, sleep, and sense
I rang Eva when I returned with my smokes. Earlier that Saturday she had called. Instead of answering I silenced the phone. The voicemail was cute; she sounded tired, carrying bags at Macy’s, she was going to get lunch with a coworker, she loved me, I was so cute last night, call her. She was speaking her inner-voice, unadulterated. The tone reflected what each sentence meant to her, void of any misguiding disparities that fatten the day to day conversations I have with Sean and Pete (who had such a misleading tone of voice that one might think he was stoned at all times of the day; he sounded like a twenty-five year old dead-head). Eva left me messages that fell straight and uninhibited as if they rained from her consciousness. That kind of incredible vulnerability is reserved for very few out of the millions of people one encounters in their lifetime and to be on the receiving end always pressed my heart into my lungs. It’s the only time a human being is truly and absolutely adorable. To hear another human being so acutely vulnerable garners a deep sense of fear, sympathy, and most importantly, self acceptance. Such acquiescence causes the temptation, spitting from the pit of self that’s unworthy for any human interaction, to pervert that delivery into a vicious exercise of dominance. The fear of being so powerful reminds us how vulnerable we are to ourselves. A sense of sympathy and the realization that someone was so freely giving you control touches one because it suggests that maybe we can someday be that honest with yourself. Thus, is adoration.
—-
Sean dropped me off in front of my apartment at 2 am. My striped black and white work shirt was draped over my shoulder and I had a slight buzz. As I climbed the stairs, I recounted bits of the conversation at the restaurant. Though it was a Mexican restaurant, I ordered a cheeseburger with lettuce. Sean, of course, felt the need to point out the foolishness in placing such an order at a Mexican restaurant, to which I retorted that nothing on the goddamn menu is actually Mexican food so shut the fuck up. Eva made some comment, but due to the distance of the entire table separating us and the loud generic cha-cha over the PA I couldn’t discern what it was. I felt momentarily awkward, as the statement was obviously directed at me, and she paused afterwards, waiting for a response, to which I could only shrug my shoulders. Sean ordered a Manhattan and I asked him what was so Mexican about a Manhattan.
In my bedroom, I played spades until my buzz disintegrated into lethargy. After beginning the Simpsons third season DVD I lay on my side, holding a second pillow as if I were cuddling it. On some level that pillow was really a large black cat appropriately named Blackitty that I had bonded with as a child. Aside from the testy relationships I shared with my parents and siblings, this was the first true relationship that had been built from nothing. It was the first time I found myself undetachable from another living thing. Every night we slept in the same position: Both of us on our sides, facing the same direction, the soft back of his head against my chin, one arm above him, one arm running between his legs, up his belly, with fingers leisurely stroking his chin. He died the same day my father took us to Waterland, an amusement park themed around everything wet. It was the first time I had ever felt guilty for enjoying myself. I’ve had dozens of pets since Blackitty, but I’ve never held them in the same way I held him while we slept. It was the first time I made a lifelong dedication of love. I owed him a sleeping position. To date, the easiest way for me to calm myself to sleep was in that position, substituting blackitty with a pillow.
—-
Pete ordered us vodka and tonics. The club was only mildly full, some unknown tape played over the PA. It was soft enough to talk over but loud enough to be aggravating. The bar lined the back wall, next to the front booth. From our stools we could see the entire small club: the large open floor flanked on both sides by fenced platforms that housed six tables each, all of which was designed to provide adequate view to the stage which was at the far end of the room. There were two men in their own world on stage, screwing a microphone stand together and obsessively trying to place a cymbal at some specific angle from the lower snare. They were fat and pale and their facial hair was wet and curly and one of them was trying to have a conversation with a group of girls who were laughing when he looked away and his t-shirt had a band logo but it was long since too worn to tell which band he was advertising. The band, Trash, had attracted a decent crowd of teenage girls who hated their fathers, donning thick black eye-shadow and tight shirts designed to trap pedophiles into making some poor life decisions; their skirts competed for size and some of the more angry few wore black or red or blue fish-nets. There was an awful lot of metal jewelry in the club. Pete and I watched the crowd for the first few minutes after receiving our drinks. When the shitty music over the PA was too much to bear and the fat roadie’s pathetic “game” was finally spent I put my half empty drink behind me, turning to Pete,
“So… how’s it going with Kristina?”
“Things are good… hah… actually it’s funny, we came closer to breaking up than we ever have last night.” He finished his drink. I was intrigued to find out what a rational break-up that made sense could possibly spawn from.
“Oh yeah? What happened?” I was hoping he’d tell me that he beat her or threw her from a second story window or he had found her in bed with six high school boys or that he had gotten her pregnant and she refused to get the abortion he requested or even that she finally realized what kind of a fat empty personality whore he was.
“Well… we went home to her parents on Thursday. I honestly have no fucking clue how this came up but… like… when we going to bed, which I just want to aside that I really don’t feel comfortable sleeping with someone when their parents are on the other side of the wall…”
“Her parents don’t like you?”
“Nah… her parents actually love me.” Of course they loved him. Who wouldn’t love someone who made sense?
“Oh… I just… well then how come you feel so uncomfortable?” Pete shrugged, finishing the ice in his glass,
“Dunno… old fashion I guess?” That didn’t make sense to me but it must have made sense because Peter makes sense. I missed Eva but I didn’t want to miss her and I was doing my best to keep her out of my head. That made sense to me. At that moment, I realized that whatever shitty song was being shit out of the PA was about mini-trucks. I finished my drink.
“Is that why you almost broke up?” Seemed plausible to me. I had no idea what constituted a legitimate fight in the world that makes sense
“Oh… no. Anyway, somehow kids were brought up and she knows that I really don’t want to have kids so basically she wanted to push the issue again and I’ve honestly had it. I was like, ‘listen, if this is going to be a real problem for you then maybe we shouldn’t be together.’”
“Have you guys been getting along lately?”
“Yeah… yeah that was like the first time we’ve fought in two months, she…”
“Wait wait… so you were going to break up?”
“Well yeah, lately she’s just been kinda moody and it’s just getting really lame. I honestly don’t know if I’m going to keep putting up with it.”
“Uhhh… you guys have been together for three years… I thought you wanted to marry her and shit.”
“I do… I mean I love her… I can totally see myself married to Kristina but I just really don’t feel like dealing with someone being bitchy.”
“Wow… so you’re going to break up with her cause she got bitchy…”
“No I said we almost broke up. We didn’t. She woke me up crying and we talked and we’re good now.”
“Look… you might as well accept the fact that you’re going to have kids.”
“I really don’t see why having kids would make sense for us.” Suddenly the song about mini-trucks was more appealing than Pete’s soliloquy. I checked the clock, Trash was scheduled in ten minutes, the floor had filled considerably and I drifted from the conversation as I tried to decipher what silent threat was being passed between a juicer wearing a tennis visor and an extraordinarily fat teenage boy.
“You guys are going to get married and she wants kids and eventually you’re going to have kids… that’s what people do… you aren’t going to break up with her because you don’t want kids and she does… you guys are gonna get married and have kids… simple.” The conversation had become anticlimactic and Pete could sense that.
“Wow, it’s like a mall in here.” He said sipping a beer I hadn’t noticed him order.
“Yeah, I was just looking at that…”
“Oh man, there’s a girl over there that is right up your alley… like you’d die over this one…” he guided my sight to the right platform where a short brunette in tight black tshirt and skirt and long white socks was leaning against a support column, talking with a red-head with an equally intensively fit body.
“She’s all right. I like her friend better.”
“The red-head?”
“Yeah…”
“Sometimes your tastes make absolutely no sense to me.” Success. Trash filled the stage.
