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Sammy and I just had a huge fight, at least as huge a fight as you can have with someone whose idea of fighting is to sit there and look put upon. He cleared out, went to his precious office where he can scribble equations and avoid all emotion, and left me seething. Couldn't sit in the apartment, sure as hell couldn't work, Kelly is not around to talk to, so I just picked the diary up and walked out the door. Walked off some energy, brooding and glaring at people, now I'm just sitting on a bench. It's vaguely comforting to be surrounded by people who are emotionally 1000 miles away. Everyone is wrapped up in something completely trivial--eating a sandwich, looking as cool and dangerous as possible while rollerblading, complaining about the pitching last night, smoking, getting checked out in leather pants, whatever. Kids are splashing and screaming in the lake. It's bizarre that anyone could be that happy.
It's the same old thing, really. Or I guess two same old things that came together. We were eating breakfast and I said something about the semester starting soon, how I had to get some of my editing stuff done before classes started. And all he could manage was a sarcastic quip about how it was going to be the semester of sex. We've been joking about the infamous Solana sex class for a long time, which was fine with me, but the closer it comes the more bitter and nasty his joking has gotten. He just can't hide his contempt anymore, and the sex class is just the easy obvious target but it stands for all of therapy. How can I expect to live with a man who has only contempt for the work that I'm training to do? Anyway, I kind of snapped and told him I might as well get it in class 'cause I sure as hell wasn't getting any at home. And of course that was just his cue to look hurt, to whinge and apologize and demean himself and say how hard he knew it was for me to be with a man who wasn't a stud. I tried to back pedal, as usual, said all the right cliché things, that it was really him that I wanted, that he was fine and handsome, etc., and maybe he'd like things to get better, maybe we could see someone together and figure out how we could enjoy each other again. He grunted and said he enjoyed me just fine and then just sat there, crunching on toast, wanting to bury his head in the paper but since that would be too obvious just looking sideways to read the parts that were face up. After the silence seemed interminable, I said as sweetly as a could something like "Sammy, I'd really like it if you'd try seeing a therapist with me, just try it, just as a favor to me. It would make a huge difference to me, just to know you tried." And that started the snowball rolling again, and it careened down the mountain knocking down trees, flattening houses, wiping out people and farm animals. First came the brush-off excuses:
Him: We're not doing so bad, are we?
Me: Yes we are.
Him: Well, maybe in a while, right now I'm pretty busy.
Me: Oh, c'mon, we're talking about an hour a week.
Him: It's too expensive.
Me: It's not expensive because I'm a student working at the clinic and anyways I have plenty of money so don't worry about it.
Then we started to get to the heart of things, first that he wouldn't feel comfortable but then, really, that he thought it was a stupid thing to do, at best something that could help out real losers, but not something that he really needed, not the way he wanted to spend his time and money. I yelled at him that he was saying the work that I want to spend the rest of my life doing is a waste of time and only for losers, and how was I supposed to live with that, especially on top of the fact that he was getting more and more remote every day. And he just shrugged and said he had to go to work and, bang, the door was shutting behind his scuttling little ass. I kicked the door and screamed after him and he just looked over his shoulder with his eyes all scrunched shut wincing as if I was beating him and scuttling a little faster. Aaarrggghhh! Just writing about it makes me want to scream again, and it might also get rid of the sleazoid guy who just sat down on the other side of the bench to pretend to read a book but he keeps glancing at me with what he probably thinks is a sincere, concerned look. Shit! I don't even want to hear the opening line, there's too many witnesses around for me to kill him. Gotta run...
A little later...
OK, I'm calmer now. Which doesn't mean happier, just calmer. In fact in some ways calmer means less happy, since as the anger cools I just feel more and more like a bitch and a monster. Sammy should be home soon and then we can go about pretending that nothing happened this morning, and we'll oscillate randomly between being tense, distant, and snippy and then being overly solicitous. Sammy will make a curry and then we'll read things to each other out of the Times, then we'll go to bed and get out books and then I'll go to sleep and Sammy will finally feel like it's OK to touch me. I wish I could say that I can't go through with it, but I know I can, the autopilot always kicks in.
I broke up with Sammy yesterday. I feel strangely calm about it right now, maybe because I've been hanging out with my nieces at Dennis's suburban chateau.
It's funny how it happened. I was at a party at Josie's house and I met this guy that I really connected with. I hadn't realized how isolated I'd gotten, besides Sammy I hardly see anyone these days, especially with Kel out of town. Mostly cause I work at home, but maybe also to protect the precarious stability of Sammy and me. Anyway, I was talking to this guy, Scott, Josie's brother and just in town for a few days. Not a guy who would necessarily stand out in a crowd but he grows on you -- it's funny how people change as you talk to them. He listens handsomely, I guess you could put it that way, he has sharp greenish-blue eyes and a nice smile and he just looked very contented as he listened to me, he sat very still and concentrated, only the corners of his eyes and his mouth would turn up or down, and he would nod or shake his head gently, always keeping his eyes on me. When he talked it was in a lovely, soothing baritone, not monotone but just gently modulated. He mentioned meditating, maybe that's how he came by such poise. He's been on a Jung kick lately, so we talked about that and the various mind/body things it leads to, and I was afraid he'd start in on pyramids or crystals but he's thoughtfully agnostic about most of the hard questions. And when I told him I was studying to be a therapist he didn't make a joke about having to be careful what he said, and he didn't brush it off with some platitude about how good it was to devote you life to helping people. He said that a therapist had helped him at a time when he really needed it, that she turned his life around, and then we talked for quite a while about what made for good and bad therapists.
I wanted to take him somewhere private and try to disturb his equilibrium, I wanted very badly to do that, but he's leaving tomorrow and he has a girlfriend in California. But if he lived out here, and if he was single (a big if and a bigger if, I know) it seems possible. I think he really wanted me, that he found me attractive as a person and as a woman. It slapped me in the face with the fact that there are men out there who could like me as I am now, not a depressive post-adolescent with dark circles under her eyes who lives in her head, but a whole woman, maybe not the queen of good cheer but at least open to the gentle pleasure of a late summer afternoon, dapples of sunlight dancing under a huge old oak tree, skin tingling as a breeze that is just a bit too cool for my sleeveless dress blows my hair softly across my face. Such a simple pleasure, but still not one I can share with Sammy, somehow. It just hit me as I walked home that it was time to move on.
It's kind of weird how easy it was once I decided that. Partly I guess because I was approaching it with calm instead of my usual hysteria. When Sammy came home from the office and sat down on the sofa with me, I just said that I had decided to move out, that I loved him and cared for him blah blah blah but that what we wanted was too different and we were hurting each other too much. He just sat and listened, pulling on my hair in that obsessive way that I used to think was sweet. He didn't say anything for a long time, then he cried and said he couldn't live without me, but it was with resignation, I could tell right away he accepted it and wasn't going to try to talk me out of it. I put my arms around him and told him I'd still be there for him, maybe more than I was now, while there was so much conflict between us, and that, who knows what might happen if we have some time apart. We sat there for quite a while saying nothing, then he asked me when I was going and I said I was going to my brother's tomorrow morning, no sense dragging it out, then I'd find an apartment and move my stuff out. We went through the whole getting ready for bed business like zombies, then in bed he pulled me tightly against him, my back to his front, obviously agitated but not saying anything, but as his attention focussed more and more on my breasts I realized that he was aroused. It seemed like really weird timing but in retrospect I guess it makes sense, both because we were somehow closer that night than we had been in months, and because of all the pent up tension that was resolved. So I gave him one last ride, and he did it very sweetly, not sort of distractedly like he's been doing for god knows how long but with a lot of attention like he was going to memorize all of the feels and sights and smells, and like he wanted to leave a lasting imprint of his loving hands on my body.
He stroked my hair for a while as he went to sleep and I lay awake for hours under a lead blanket of sadness wondering how he could let me slip away rather than take a few risks and make a few changes. He was gone when I woke up, I just found a note saying "call me and let me know when your plans firm up, Love, S." I suppose he thought he was doing me a favor by clearing out, even though I know it was mostly because he just couldn't face me.
The nieces are so, so, sweet, and so sweet on their little, little sister. I remember when Hannah and Charlotte were little and I'd come out to help, I'd actually feel like I could do some good, but now they're the big sisters and they can do everything. In fact, can hardly stop--sometimes it seems like they're a little confused about the difference between a little sister and a doll, at least when it comes to dressing--they want to change her clothes constantly. Her mom says that up until recently she's been a docile little thing, but she's getting more and more mobile, crawling around like a little fiend, and just recently standing and looking like she might take some steps, and she's not so happy anymore being dolled around with by her big sisters. She's got places to go, and she doesn't want to get a new dress put on! Plus everything, everything, everything has to go into her mouth, which riles up the big sisters when it's one of their books or toys or dolls.
The girls have been asking me about Sammy, and I've had to tell him that he's not my boyfriend anymore, which makes them really sad because they used to have great fun with him, especially when they were littler and loved to crawl around on the floor playing tag or have little tea-party games with him. I hadn't anticipated the extra little jolt of sadness that would come from having to tell everyone that we've broken up. It's especially sad with the girls here, they were the first people in my family that accepted him even though he was Indian. And when we'd come here together and I'd watch him play with the girls it would always make me think about the sweet little brown babies we could make together.
But I've been calling my family to tell them, and it does make the whole thing more real. Mom, predictably, could barely stop herself from saying "how nice dear, glad you got rid of him." She can't imagine that I could feel sad or sorry about this particular relationship ending, and is sure I'll find a more suitable (read whiter) man in no time. She asked me if I had any nice clothes to date in.
It was harder to tell dad. He liked Sammy, felt like he took good care of me, whatever that means. I explained about how we had grown more and more distant and about Sammy's disdain for therapy, and asked dad what he would tell someone like me who came in for counselling. He hemmed and hawed like only sensitive liberal divorced preacher can--well if you were married I'd say stick it out, but you're not married, but you are sort of... You need to accept and cherish the differences between you... But on the other hand a relationship has to be built on mutual respect, etc., etc. In the end I let him off with the assurance that I would keep the door open, that maybe after we were apart for a while we might figure out how to get back together.
Actually it's too easy to make fun of dad. It was a nice talk and it helped me to have to talk through Sammy's and my history together and try to explain what happened. And I know it sounds eggheadish, but it really comes down to us becoming a living philosophical debate, him taking the part of the mind and me of the body (or, I like to think, the mindbody). We started together, with the same obsessions, back when we were both outcast geeks huddled in our dark little room in our drab, formless clothes reading serious, important books. We were perfect for each other, we made each other really happy. Well, not happy exactly, that was anathema, but there was a sort of dark contentment to sharing our discontent. All we cared about was up in our heads. But then we went in opposite directions. Sammy went up, to the pie-in-the-sky idealism of mathematics, a kind of philosophy that has no room for human beings. It's true that his haircut is neater now, and he takes a shower more often, but that's just because he doesn't want to be distracted by the effort of not fitting in. On the other hand, I went down, into the meat of the mind, wondering where all those thoughts came from, and finally wondering where the feelings come from, too.
Dad pointed out, quite rightly, that our intellectual paths diverged a long time ago, so what kept us going for 8 long years? I wish I had a good answer. Sammy is a creature of comfort and habit, so I guess that's part of it. Maybe I am too. Maybe I'm just lazy. I mean I really have been sleepwalking for a long time. But that's not all there is. I'm still constantly mentally engaging him in conversation. Sometimes it's fights, I'm telling him I've had enough of his goddamned theorems, I'm hitting his Plato with my Aristotle, smashing his Russell with my Heidegger, beating his Gandhi with my Mick Jagger. I'm yelling at him that I'm a body, not a mind. But most of the time I'm telling him about people I've seen today, things that are bothering me, weird things I heard on the news, the general absurdity of life. And he's very sweet and funny and gentle. As long as he can look over it from a comfortable distance, he's a good friend, and wise, and he knows me in a way nobody else does. From all those years together, I guess. But also because of the time at the beginning, when two loners found that they didn't have to be lonely anymore. And so I think I've struggled and struggled to deny all kinds of sensual things that I care about, I've struggled not to be too feminine, I've struggled to keep my therapy stuff separate and at arms length when we're together. When I think about that I see his smirk and I want to smack him. But then there's this Sammy-in-my-mind who's like a part of me now, and I'm trying to chop it off. God this is getting sad. I think I'll stop for now.
As usual I'm hot and cold about my brother. It's so endearing to see him with the girls, he loves them so much, and he's still so beside himself with happiness at having the third, after so much waiting, and he seems genuinely thrilled that she's a girl, which still amazes me considering how ungracious he was about the first one when she didn't come out a boy. The girls somehow bring out the best in him. But when they're gone and it's just the adults he still makes me want to kick him in the shin every five minutes or so, he's still just as arrogant and self-righteous and right-wing as ever. And of course he's beside himself with glee over the Clinton-Lewinsky thing. About that I'm not sure who I'd like to kick more, Dennis, for being an insufferable gloating shit, or Pres. Bill, for being so stupid as to give all the Dennis's of the world all this ammunition. And Francy, who's such a calm joy to spend a motherly afternoon with, still does whatever she can to turn herself into a nonentity when he's around. I want to kick her to, just to wake her up. Don't you have any opinions of your own?!
The girls are funny. Hannah, especially, is curious about this process I'm going through of finding a new home. I guess she's getting to the age where she's thinking about high school and then thinking about thinking about going away to college. We look through the ads together and discuss what kind of kitchen I need, and what color the walls should be, and how many windows there should be. She keeps wondering what kind of yard I'll get (will there be a flower garden?) and I explain that I'll be in a big apartment building and won't have a lawn. I wonder if she's ever been into a city apartment. The girls do look at me a bit wide-eyed when I explain I'm taking the train to the south side of town all on my own. I think that to them the city is just the science museum their dad takes them to and fancy shops downtown where you go at christmas, and then a big grey area of bad, dangerous people. Maybe I'm being unfair, but they seem awfully sheltered to me. Well, I guess I didn't feel so different from them at their age. I remember Grandma's old house, with its radiators and bare light bulbs and wood floors and off-white paint smudged to grey, I remember thinking how depressing and scary it was. Now it takes a suburban ranch house with faux chandeliers, a huge Empire-style entertainment center, some pastel seascapes, and a chest full of Hummel figurines to give me the same kind of creeps.
I wish actually looking at the apartments was as fun as looking at the ads with Hannah. I checked out some roommate situations but my heart wasn't in it. I don't really want to live with anyone else right now. There was a gorgeous place, incredibly convenient, beautiful hardwood floors, etc. Four bedrooms, right now a couple of guys and a girl, but despite the sex ratio the place was really clean (but maybe they're just trying to impress prospective roommates). I just saw the girl for a few minutes and she seemed kind of cold, or else depressed. Then this guy, Bill, showed me around. He was nice. Maybe a little too nice. I don't feel like fulfilling some guys bed-the-roommate fantasy. At least not Bill's, poor guy, he's just a bit plain. Anyway, they had an elaborate regime of who cooks when, who shops when, who cleans when, who can throw a party when, and for all I could tell who can go to the bathroom when, and it was way more than I want to get into.
There's some studio apts. in a high-rise by the lake, and I can see why they're empty. Dingy wall-to-wall carpet, pitiful little kitchens, views away from the lake or of the back of other ugly buildings, semi-fetid hallways. And it's not even that convenient.
I found it! A pretty nice one-bedroom just a couple of blocks from school on Pritchard St. A nice courtyard building, pretty well kept up outside and in, though all the woodwork has, as usual, been slathered over with drippy coats of paint (another casualty of the 70s), but the floors are pretty nice. I'm on the second floor, which is just what I wanted. It's just three rooms plus a bath--small kitchen opening to a living/dining room, then off of that the bedroom and bathroom. I'll have to make the bedroom serve as an office, too, which isn't ideal, but it means I can make the other room work-free. I look out on a park--not a really attractive one but a patch of green nonetheless.
Funny how emotions can flip on themselves. I was looking around the place, trying to ignore the ratty furniture and piles of boxes, thinking how nice the it was going to be, I could put my sofa there, and hang my Matisse print there, put the bookshelves along that wall, get a nice coffee table, and put the TV there, and pretty soon I was arguing with Sammy, Yes I Can have a TV and Yes I Can buy a coffee table, and Yes I Can get a nice rug and a new cover for the futon and hang a mirror in the bedroom and hang some pictures and plants. All that pent-up frustration. Of course if I was free of Sammy it wouldn't come out like that, I'd just laugh maybe. But I'm not free, I'll have to defend myself against his voice in my head for quite a while.
But when I drew out a floor plan for Hannah and Charlotte and we had a great time planning my decor. Hannah was trying to be very practical, her only frivolous concern was for color my bedroom would be (she was thinking purple and orange), but Charlotte got out her doll furniture and we did some hypothetical setups. The sofa and tables and chairs were all pretty easy to fit in, but then it got down to all the high-healed shoes and the ice cream machine it got a little more complicated.
After a week of getting checked out I guess I passed the test--I was allowed to babysit the girls while Dennis and Francy went out for a romantic evening (I shudder to think). I even got to give Denise her bath. Well, sort of. There was a lot of input from Charlotte. No, don't put her in that way, she likes it that way, and give her this ducky, no, no, not the soap yet the shampoo goes first, etc. Denise mostly sat and gave me the four-toothed grin, pointed at things, and tried to splash a little but she's still pretty uncoordinated. I wanted to hold her and rock her to sleep but Francy said no, she has to go down in her crib, that's how it's done.
Well, my little island of suburban bliss was exploded last night by dear brother Dennis, the shit. After the kids went to bed last night, he got a phone call and he kept saying "Hannah" and "the lawsuit" this and that. I knew it wasn't my business, and I didn't ask, but I must have at least given him a questioning look when he got off the phone. I'm sure at some level he was dying to tell me, even though he knew that for the sake of the girls it was better for me not to find out.
Anyway, the lawsuit is his little jihad against a special public school out here that uses race as a factor in admission. Apparently Hannah was not admitted, even though (horror!) some darker kids with lower scores got in. The angry white male strikes back. Apparently it's not enough for his precious middle-class white kids to have fantastic nutrition, to get ferried around in new Volvos and minivans to music lessons, soccer teams, and play groups, to have computers, every educational toy imaginable, huge libraries of books, academic summer camps, horse-riding summer camps, and every other advantage possible. They must also go to the very best schools. Not just a really good school, but absolutely the very best. We know this because of their test scores. And don't think about trying to get your little girl into this school if her test score isn't as good as his little girl's. Never mind that you grew up in a slum, your mother has to work 80 hours a week cleaning toilets and doesn't have a lot of energy to go over the finer details of your math homework with you. What could you possibly get out of a school like this, which was obviously built for girls like his? Tests are OBJECTIVE, they measure INHERENT INTELLIGENCE and PROMISE, which, as we all know, has nothing to do with upbringing. It's built in. What luck that this fact of nature happens to coincide with his narrow self-interest and overinflated sense of entitlement!
It's all bad enough, but of course to Dennis it's couched in terms of public interest and civil rights, it's not himself he's looking out for, oh, no, it's the health of the country! He's sacrificing his time and energy for the good of his country, exposing his soft underbelly to the all-powerful forces of political correctness. And of course I heard about all of this in his smug, I'm-a-lawyer-and-you're-just-a-softheaded-stew-of-freaky-feminine-hormones tone.
It's so depressing that this is being done in the name of sweet little Hannah, and of course she's being indoctrinated to see herself as the victim. It apparently doesn't matter to Dennis what kind of world she grows up to live in, it only matters that she's on the top of the heap in it.
I wanted to bolt last night after hearing about the lawsuit, but for the girls sake I didn't, since they were expecting to see me this morning. But thank god I picked up the keys to my apartment on friday. I said goodbye to the little dears and came back to the city this afternoon. I'm sitting on the floor now. It's strange to be spending the night on the bare floors of an empty apartment, but here I am, with some stuff in a suitcase, a little desk light and a fan and a camping pad and some sheets. Tomorrow I'll pack up at the old apartment. Then I might have some unexpected help getting the stuff over here. A fresh-faced, clean-cut, All-American MBA student named Steve. I went to Mick's after I got here, hoping to find someone I know hanging out, and maybe sort of hoping not, in a way glad to just sit on my own with a beer and plate of steaming greasy fries, which is what I ended up doing 'cause no one I knew was around.
Steve was hanging out with some other B-school types, a bunch of guys in button down shirts and jeans and one very pretty girl with carefully disheveled blond hair, a scoop-neck tank top and a miniskirt. I was right by the jukebox, and he came over to put something on. He asked me what I wanted to hear and I said how about Sheryl Crow or the Stones. He chose the "Satisfaction" and some blues thing. When that was over he came back and told me I looked depressed and what would make me feel better? I said I'd be fine as long as he didn't put on that goddamned Titanic song, and he said no problem, that I could have my Sheryl Crow but the guys wanted some Aerosmith. I said that figured. He smiled and put his coins in, then when Aerosmith came blaring out he asked me if I wanted to come join them. I said no, I didn't want to have to talk about Monica and Bill, and he sat down on the stool next to me, all smiles, asking if I minded a little company. Didn't seem particularly sleazy so I figured why fight it. And it was pretty much the usual, come here often?, so what're you studying?, kind of small talk. He's from Wisconsin, I'm from the south (gee, you don't have an accent), he's getting an MBA, I'm studying to be a therapist, etc. No matter how sardonic I was, and something about that bar really brings it out in me, besides just using it to keep him at arms length, he was relentlessly chipper. Kind of hyped up, though, which I interpreted at least partly as the effort of approaching a strange woman, especially so conspicuously in front of his friends. He kept glancing over, probably to see if they, and especially she, were checking his action out. I kept thinking, and sort of hoping, he'd get over the hump and really come on to me. I thought about spending the first night in my new apartment getting laid on the wooden floors. Now that would be a statement!
After a while he let it drop, obviously as bait, that he was kind of depressed and I took the bait and asked why and he said his girlfriend just dumped him and I said oh I'm so sorry how did it happen and I got the story, which was pretty standard stuff--a long-distance relationship and she met someone else. When he was done I told him I understood, and that I had just ended a long relationship too and in fact I had to start moving tomorrow, so I'd better get home and get some sleep. He insisted on walking me home, and it's hard to say no at 11 at night around here. He went back to his table and said something, then pointed to me so they all turned to stare blankly. It was a quiet walk, just a few blocks. Nice symbolism, though, to be walked to my new apartment by a strange, and I have to admit pleasantly virile guy. At my door he asked me if I needed help moving. I said sure, just show up at 10 in the morning day after tomorrow. He said he'd be there and I laughed and he insisted no really, he'd be there. I wonder what I've gotten myself into.
Spent most of the day packing at the old apartment. That meant working out with Sammy whose is what, which really wasn't all that hard since he never buys anything and likes to be unencumbered. He's got a roommate coming in. It's another math guy, so things are probably going to be pretty spartan. I made Sammy call him to ask what furniture he was bringing. Not much, it turns out, and I didn't have the heart to take the kitchen table where he always sits to read the paper, I left a bunch of kitchen stuff and that grungy brown upholstered chair that I've been trying to get rid of for years.
But of course the stuff is the easy part. The weird, awkward stiffness and formality is the hard part, the half falling into familiarity and then realizing that all that is over and struggling to find a new way to relate. I wanted to tell him about what went on with my brother, the whole lawsuit thing, but I knew he'd be sympathetic and funny about it and it didn't seem fair. I just told him the girls were well and asked about him. After we sorted out what stayed and what went, he left and I packed up, feeling strange in an apartment that was so much mine and yet already history.
Kelly came back this evening, thank god. She has her own little love tragedy. Turns out dear Luke, our dressed-in-black nihilist hipster, has fallen in love with one of the undergrads he was teaching last semester, and while Kel was off doing her thing in Korea he and his Tiffany were trading scented sonnets and other tokens of love, and now she's moving in with him. This is the same girl whose writing assignments he used to bring to the bar for us to laugh at, with the circle-dotted i's and marginal drawings of maidens with flowing hair and diaphanous gowns. He was especially gleeful about her final paper on Emily Dickenson, written as a dialogue between Emily and that great philosopher of the feminine, Tori Amos. I always thought Luke was a little too obsessed by her, and now we know--under the black t-shirt and leather jacket there lurks a heart of mush. He's even quitting smoking for her. I can just hear them together. "Luke? Luke?! Come on sweetie, come and listen to Tori's new disc! She's, like, singing about us, you know?" I hope he's miserable.
Kel is pissed, especially at the thought that he was carrying on with this girl while they were together and didn't say anything until she got back to town. He said he thought it wasn't fair to tell her in a letter. On the other hand, she had a little fling with a Korean rock singer. Was she going to tell Luke about it? Probably not. That kind of thing happens when a couple is apart, no need to spoil things by bringing it up, I think is her philosophy.
Moving day, and what a strange one! I thought it was just going to be me and Kelly and the Truck. But no, the guys showed up. Guys are helpful in this kind of situation, they're great pack animals, but not so good when they're the guy you've just broken up with and the guy you just met at a bar a couple of nights ago. I pulled up in the truck at about 10, and there was Steve, in a baseball cap, sitting patiently on the curb. He came up to the window as I backed into the alley and said hi, here he was. I said great, we'll be coming out of that gate back there and he walked back and I told Kelly about meeting him at the bar the other night and she grinned and said she had no idea I could be so fast.
When we got up the back steps to the apartment, there was Sammy. Yesterday he told me he would be gone, but he changed his mind and stayed to help. And then Steve's fresh face and baseball cap came bounding up the steps.
Sammy, meet Steve, Steve, Sammy. Steve volunteered to help me today. Wasn't that nice?
It's not something I would have intentionally done to Sammy. Really it isn't. But I have to admit it was pretty funny. Sammy, the least practical or physical of men, suddenly became the foreman and expert in moving stuff--"OK, we have to load the boxes first, then the furniture, carry this this way, that that way, this is how you take this apart, etc., etc." I hope he's not too sore tomorrow, I could see he was making a point to carry a bunch of heavy stuff just to not be outdone by Steve's more conspicuous muscles. Steve seemed oblivious to the undertow, cheerfully willing to let Sammy boss him down the stairs with the bed frame or whatever. I knew Sammy was just aching to needle me about it, but his pride mostly forced him to keep it to himself. Only once, when we were both in the truck and Steve and Kel were up the stairs did he let loose with "so where did you dig up the all-american boy?" and I explained that we met at Mick's a few evenings ago and he guffawed and said "nice work, babe!"
It was great to have the guys, I must say. It was a long, long, hot, sticky, sweaty day. We got the last load up the stairs to my apartment at about 7:30, then we slumped down in some folding chairs and ate pizza and beer off of a card table. Kel and I got up and moved some things around, set up the bedroom. The menfolk stayed glued to their chairs in an amiable face-off. Sammy was holding forth on something his dustbin of a mind had picked up about the conceptual rather than substantial nature of money and the implications of that for economics and business. Goofy as it was, it was a Sammy that I'm very fond of, a sweet, pie-in-the-sky man even when he's trying to intimidate another guy, and it tugged at my heartstrings. A kind of laugh until you cry thing. I needed to shut the door on all of these people before the tears started falling. I knew that there was no way Sammy was leaving before Steve did, and probably vice versa. So I asked Kel if she could start a move towards the door. I thanked them all. I gave Sammy a kiss on the cheek, just to make sure he felt like the winner.
When they were gone I walked around the quiet chaos of what was, this morning, a bare and alien space. It seemed like a good time to cry, but it didn't happen, so I put on some Brazilian music and started to write.
I'm starting to get used to coming "home" to this place. It doesn't seem so strange anymore. When I wake up in the middle of the night to pee I don't walk into the wall expecting the door. My desk and computer are all set up just like it used to be, I sit there all day at work, it feels like the same old life. Except sometimes it feels better. I got the new Liz Phair album, which is great, and I can play it as loud as I want and get no sour Sammy face to remind me of just how gauche I am. I can watch a Seinfeld rerun, or even Friends if I'm in a really tacky mood, without the sarcastic needling. I'll just have to hope the internal controls kick in sometime soon, since I just got the cable hookup that I could never get with Sammy around, and I wasn't prepared for the overload of brain candy that flows in on that innocent-looking little wire. But it's an OK soundtrack for this funny little limbo I'm in-- relationship over, new apartment, school not starting for a week, nowhere I have to be, no one I have to see. Why not the flickering lights of old Rockford Files episodes and lame Chevy Chase movies? Anyway, I'm at the desk long hours finishing up a manual, and the only thing more boring and mindless than writing such a thing is proofreading and indexing it.
Kel and I have been contemplating our mutual bachelorette-hood. She's pretty blasé about it, but she doesn't seem at all sure that I've done the right thing. I know I'm going to be hearing the same thing from everyone, so I might as well get used to it. But he's such a sweet guy! You were so sweet together, the way he would always sit and stroke your hair! I thought you two, of all people, would never break up!
Bit by bit I've also heard more about her summer fling. She was hanging out with a fringy Korean rock band, and as an anthropologist she's fascinated by the cross of American and Korean culture that these guys represent, they're perfect for her dissertation, but she goes to the leader's house after a show and they're drunk and start flinging all sorts of insinuations at her about what American girls like (like sucking dicks--subtle they're not), and how American men are wimps that never give them what they want and how much they really want a guy who won't take no for an answer. They're really into the dangerous guy aspect of rock culture, I guess. And it's very confusing, because she looks Korean but acts American, and she wants to be a neutral outside observer but she has to engage with them at some level and she can't help tweaking them by asking if it's true what she hears about Korean men that they're just big babies and have no self control. Then before you can say sexually transmitted disease the leader of the band is unbuttoning her shirt and her choice is to risk burning her bridges to the band, on one hand, gang rape, on the other, or the middle ground of giving in to the head guy and having some control, or at least some privacy, and a big "in" to the band (so to speak). So she shames him into sending the rest of the band away and then throws the what-American-girls-want card back in his face to manipulate him into giving her head before he fucks her. Apparently this is very adventurous for a Korean man, and somehow that satisfied her need to feel like she was willing partner and maybe even putting one over on him. I know she likes dangerous men, so maybe she's really OK about all this or maybe she's in denial.
Sometime over the weekend it hit me that my hair was completely out of hand. I wanted it gone. I guess a lot of it was how everyone talks about Sammy's love for it. So today Kelly and I went to see Danny, her stylist. Danny was very sweet and totally into the symbolic, ceremonial, major production, girl milestone aspect of it. He took a polaroid before we started, then when we settled that I was going to have something no longer than shoulder length he took a deep breath and we all hugged and then he hacked off all the stuff hanging down to my waist.
After that we looked at pictures, we talked, Danny fussed with my hair to show me different possibilities. For a brief, intoxicating moment, anything was possible. But what a lot of bizarre things women do to their hair! There's the stringy, just-crawled-out-of-a-swamp ringlets, the strawy bleached blond scarecrow look, the artfully-bundled-with-one-strategic-strand-on-the-face look, the un-artfully gelled into place just-got-up-from-a-wild-night look, and that's not even getting into the punk and retro stuff. The three of us each had different agendas--I wanted something serious and low-maintenance, Kel wanted something cute and sexy, and Danny wanted to turn me into a showpiece--but it balanced out. They convinced me the really short, boyish cut I wanted at first wasn't the thing, that it should be chin-length and it should frame my face. They wanted some sort of bangs down to my eyes, or at least some loose strands like you might have to blow seductively off your forehead to show how hot and bothered you are, but I nixed that. And it feels great! Talk about light headed! Talk about taking a load off! Danny took a picture at the end and asked me if he could put it up in the little before-and-after exhibit by is mirror.
Kel said I needed new clothes to go with my new haircut, and who am I to argue? I've been feeling guilty about buying anything nice for myself for so long, after all. So we took the train up to the boutique strip on James St. Kel kept picking out these sleek, black, sleeveless dresses, really just slips, and I kept saying I can't work in those, and anyway it's almost winter, remember? And I kept picking up long drape-y dresses and loose linen blouses and Kel would say hey you just shed all of that hair, you've got hips too, why not use them? So we compromised, I got some snappy tan pants, a short black wool jacket and miniskirt and silk camisoles in black, white and red to go with them. Then we got back to the slinky black turtleneck dress that Kel really wanted me to get. I said when am I going to wear that? and she said tonight, we'll go out together. The credit card said ouch, ouch, but what the hell.
She dragged me to a singles bar of all places. For her it's just a chance to watch mating rituals, and if some guy comes over to worship at her feet that's an added extra. I felt like I was going as someone else, like I was trying to impersonate Jackie Kennedy or something. I'm not quite as amused as Kel by being zoomed by stockbrokers, but we had pretty much fun and the free drinks were nice. Fortunately there weren't any guys that appealed to Kel so we didn't stay too late.
A day of lethargy and voluptuousness. Got up late after all those beers last night. My plan was to sort out the last of the books and magazines to be unpacked, do a little work, and take a run. Started on the unpacking but magazines are dangerous. Hmmm, I don't remember this New Yorker, hmmm, an interview with Tom Wolfe, wow, that looks like an interesting play, gee, I didn't know that was happening in South Africa, etc. Suddenly it was late afternoon and my back hurt from sitting on the floor hunched over magazines, and I remembered that I had to go to the store or I'd have absolutely nothing to eat after I ran, so I went to the store, and who should I see in the cereal aisle but Steve. He didn't see me, he was concentrating very hard on the cereal. I was curious what he would pick, I figured it would tell me a lot about him. Also, I knew that after the radical haircut I have a rare opportunity to make really dramatic entrances. Lucky Charms? No (thank god). Shredded Wheat? No. Muesli? Granola? Long shots, and no. It looked like it was between Wheaties and Corn Flakes. He reached for the Wheaties with the picture of the US women's hockey team on it. It kind of surprised me to hear my voice say "some chics, eh?" He turned around, looked blank for a minute, and said Cheryl? Yeah, none other. Wow, you cut your hair! Yeah, what do you think? I turned to the side and patted my hair in the international check-out-my-do gesture. Nice! Looks great! I can't believe you cut all that hair off! I spun around and said the new me, then thanked him for lending all his muscle to my move. He asked me how I liked my new place. I said it was OK, kind of quiet. It was funny how I was flirting with him, completely unlike me, but it felt good, leaning against a shelf of Oreos and smelling the chocolate and sugar, my head cocked to the side, smiling slyly, twiddling the hair by my chin then flipping it back. He said, hey, Friday night we're taking the new students out to this great blues place, do you want to come along? I said sure and he said he'd pick me up at 9 and I smiled and patted his arm and sauntered away down the aisle, hoping his eyes were fixed on my backside. Before I rounded the corner I turned to give a coy, wiggly-finger toodle-oo.
Back home, I started to change into my running clothes but instead found myself trapped in a kind of hypnotic voluptuousness. There was a charge on my body from my little flirtation with Steve, from the coquettishness that had come over me and felt strange but good. I might have managed to get out to run if I didn't have a full length mirror in my bedroom for the first time in ages. I stared at myself, modelling the new hair for the nth time, but then I started checking out my body in a way I hadn't for years. It was almost adolescent, the way I used to stare at myself and wonder if I was sexy, what my "assets" and "liabilities" were when I wasn't filled with fear and dread at watching my body balloon. Then after the thing with Rev. Harvey I turned that all off and I decided I was better off as an androgyne and an outcast. And Sammy made it OK, he was just as happy with me as a kind of sexless woman that he could fuck. And as I got comfortable in that relationship it felt OK to be more feminine, but still kind of sexlessly feminine, safe behind a mop of hair and baggy clothes. Guess I've known objectively for quite a while that I'm not so bad looking, that there's some sexual power in my body that I could do something with, but it was too threatening to the relationship with Sammy to do anything about.
So I stared and pinched and jiggled. I felt generous cupping my breasts and offering the wine-dark nipples to an imaginary lover. I stared for a long time over my shoulder following the line down my back, over my ass, down my legs to my feet, bending my knee, cocking my hip, sticking my ass out, turning my ankle. The ankle and foot from behind are really quite a gorgeous thing--the flexed foot has such graceful curves.
I studied my anus for quite a while. When it got uncomfortable bending and looking over my shoulder I squatted over a hand mirror. By this time I was completely lost in narcissism and several layers of plate glass had sprung up between me and the voice in my mind yelling c'mon Cheryl get dressed and go. An asshole can be quite fascinating, it turns out. Funny that this bit of dark skin I hardly ever see is "me," but for something that's supposed to be dirty and disgusting it's quite an elegant bit of engineering, kind of like the swirling diaphragm of a camera lens. Compared to its muscular symmetry my cunt seems out of control, a strange fleshy flower that's somehow been attached to my body. Not so much like Georgia O'Keefe flowers as like a Venus fly-trap (is that where the Venus comes from?) or a pitcher plant--deceptive and carnivorous. I closed my eyes and pictured Steve. Would you like to come play, young man? Look at this pretty, soft flower. It feels wonderful, doesn't it? Warm, smooth, slick. There's a treasure inside if you look carefully, follow the folds up to the top, no hurry, no fuss, really, just slide along. Take your time, look around, breath in the moist, scented air. Pull back the hood. There's the magic button. It will give you complete control of me. You'll lose control of yourself, but that's a small price to pay, isn't it? Just rub it. Taste it. Watch it grow. Nothing happens too fast, it takes time, but it's time well spent. See? It feels very, very good to do that, doesn't it?
I kept checking on my arousal down there. It's funny, when you're touching yourself, how far apart the messages from touch and vision are. It was fascinating to see clit emerge from out of the reddening, swelling folds, but even when it felt huge, like the head of some throbbing creature that was growing tentacles up my back and down my legs, it was still not much more than a pea under my finger. When I closed my eyes I was squatting over his face, I had him pinned. He was helpless. He wanted to screw me but I didn't want that, and he had no choice, he licked and licked and licked and I moaned and writhed. I went on and on with myself, with him in my head. I let him take me over the top several times. I wore him out.
Eventually I wore myself out as well, I stopped and slowly reconnected with my surroundings. When I started there were shouts and thumps and cheers from a softball game in the park, and the late afternoon sun was blazing through the windows. Now there was only a hint of deep red from the dying sunset, enough for me to vaguely make out the side of my bed and my bureau looming over me as I lay on the floor. A few cars whooshed by and some heels came clicking down the sidewalk accompanied by low, conversational voices and the jingling of dog chains. I felt heavy and disoriented and very, very isolated and alone. I started to kick myself for not running and for not unpacking and for generally being a lazy slob. I was also extremely hungry, that got me off the floor, which was good. I felt better when I turned on some lights, and turned on the radio to fill up the silence and get my mind off myself. I made some spaghetti, made some salad, decided to just kiss the day off and give myself a break, try to enjoy my solitude. I turned on the TV and ate. I hit all the highlights. The Simpsons. Cops. Home Improvement. Weird young comedians exercising their attitude. A giant snake in Africa eating some sort of deer faun. Finally found something new (to me), a treasure, a cartoon shrink called Dr. Katz. He's my hero now, or at least my role model. Will I ever be that cool?
A bit after 9 on Friday evening Steve pulled up in a van to pick me up for the promised blues club trip. It was me and him and a dozen new MBA students. Romantic, eh? Actually it was pretty fun. It was strange to be the odd woman out in the middle of a bunch of eager beavers trying to figure out who's who and what's what and who's in and who's out. We headed off into Harris Park, which surprised me--I figured we were going to some kind of fancy place downtown. But Steve headed out on Washington street, and when we got to the other side of the park, where suddenly every face is a black face and all the houses are bombed out old brownstones a few in the car started looking a bit apprehensive and the preppy guy next to me asked whether Steve knew where he was going. Then an intense, hawk-faced guy from Brooklyn said this was nothing compared to back home, starting a who's-city-has-the-worst-slums contest. Nah, Brooklyn's nothing compared to Compton. You kidding? Compton's nothing compared to East St. Louis. East St. Louis! Try getting lost in the middle of Detroit, etc. But something of a lid was kept on this banter by the quiet black woman sitting behind me. I couldn't help but stare at her, I hope subtly, in the mirror. She seemed pretty unphased, if withdrawn. I imagined her clawing her way out of poverty into a fancy business school, only to be ignored or condescended to or typecast and stigmatized by a bunch of callow white kids. So guess who was typecasting! Turns out she's a suburban Atlanta girl like me. I should have known from the pants suit. She's very sweet, seems a bit young for 24, and she's homesick and in shock living away from home for the first time. I assured her that, yes, you get used to everything so crowded together and noisy and dirty and decaying, but winter will be a shock.
We got to the place in about half an hour. The neighborhood was unprepossessing, to say the least. Most of the storefronts were one of the twin pillars of desperate neighborhoods--liquor stores with steel grates on the windows and Pentecostal churches. We pulled into a parking lot surrounded by chain link fence with razor wire on top and I was surprised when we got out and the guy directing us said "Hey brother Steve, what's up!" and Steve shook his hand and they chatted as he led us across the street to the club, The Blues Shack. And then I was even more surprised when the huge woman in a red flowery dress taking covers by the door said "Hey, hey! Steve-y-o!" and he practically disappeared into a hug of arm and bosom flesh. I thought, wow he must come here a lot. She asked Steve if he was bringing the whole college over or what and he said, no these are just new students I'm showing around and (putting his hand on my back) my friend Cheryl. I grinned sheepishly as she looked me up and down with an arched eyebrow. She took our cover charge, actually the "student rate," although I think she just made that up on the spot as a way to give us a discount.
The room is cavernous and short on ambience, unless you're into warehouses (I guess Blues Shack is ironic). A stage at one end, long trestle tables covered with red and white checked plastic table cloths on a concrete floor. Wrought iron railing around the stage, which is better than a chain-link fence, I guess. The bar is a hole cut in the wall, and the waitresses are, how to put it? terse I suppose is good. The place was packed, we were one of several sprinkles of salt mixed in the mostly pepper crowd. The band was led by an older guy, Big Jeff something (no irony here--he's big), with his hair conked and greased back, definitely a look from another era. Most of the action was between him and a wiry young guitar player who would throw his head back and squint like his arm was being twisted off as he spewed incredible torrents of notes and Big Jeff sat in a chair and swayed and urged him on with mm, hmm, don't hold back! tell it! tell it! tell it! It's incredibly visceral, sensual music, especially with the band right there, sweating and swaying, and the bass notes vibrating the benches. It's funny, rock is about sex all the time, but it's usually about what you wanna do, what you're gonna do, what you used to do, what you should've done. The blues is doin' it, at least this blues was. The difference isn't the lyrics so much (although there is some really creative imagery, I must say), its the delivery, it didn't actually have to be about sex. Steve was explaining all about it--not the sexiness but just the kind of blues we were listening to--that Big Jeff came from Memphis and played in a Memphis style, but I didn't really follow, especially because I couldn't hear more than half of what he said and I got tired of shouting huh? across the table.
He dropped everyone off on campus and then took me home, though it would have been way faster for him to do it the other way around. We sat out in the van with the windows open and crickets chirping and I asked him how a nice boy from Wisconsin got so into the blues and he said he heard it on the radio and got hooked, but that he got involved with the blues place by doing a class project about the business approach there. They have a problem attracting white folks to the neighborhood, but don't want move or to do so much to accommodate us that they alienate the core black audience. Steve helped them sort out some pricing issues, got them to charge less to park and add some premium beers, and apparently it's worked out. I started to really admire the guy, which was kind of unexpected. I guess I was thinking of him as a bit of innocent testosterone to have fun with, or maybe just as a convenient distraction. But there I was, getting impressed, which is really the first step towards, if not love at least a crush. I was being a good girl for once, sitting and listening sweetly and looking admiringly at the boy just like mom always told me to. It's a feminine pleasure that's been around since Mr. and Mrs. Og sat around in the cave and Mr. Og told Mrs. Og how he managed to spear that mammoth. By 2 in the morning we were both yawning and I gave him a little peck on the cheek and got out of the van before it became impossible not to invite him up.
So that was Friday. It was fun and felt like a real step into a new Sammy-less life. Saturday I was agitated and dissatisfied, though. Didn't really know why. Then Sammy called, hey, how ya doin', what's up? I've been missing you, can we get together and talk? So we went out for pizza last night. I thought he'd freak about the hair but he said it looked nice. Of course it was weird and tense to sit down together, but we got back into a comfortable groove pretty fast. He filled me in on the math dept. goings on, we talked about my brother's assholishness, he told me some White House intern jokes, we laughed. I felt like we could get up, I could pay the bill, and we could walk home together and this moving out thing would just be a bad dream, and I could be whole again. It was whiplash. I had worked my way away from him, and there he was, and mentally I snapped right back. He could have made it easy for me by being whiny or pitiful or critical, but he wasn't, he was just nice and fun. He even paid half of the check. What nerve the man has got, to be nice and fun at such a time.
But I didn't go back to what used to be our place. I told him it was nice to see him and he should call again and then I smiled and dragged myself home to mope. It disgusted me that I had been so pleased with myself after the evening with Steve. It disgusted me that I was in the middle of supposedly becoming a therapist and I couldn't keep a relationship going with a nice guy like Sammy. I'm supposed to advise other people?
Kelly talked me down over brunch today. She says she doesn't think I'm a failure, that I did everything I could with Sammy and a nice time over pizza doesn't change that, that it's not hopelessly shallow for me to have a good time with Steve if it feels good. She doesn't think I have to have everything worked out perfectly to be a good therapist. After all, look at my dad, he's been a good pastor and counsellor for years and he isn't even sure if there's a God and look what a mess he made with us.
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