Have I told you about Jimmy? He is my deus ex machina, it appears. It began, again, as I was writing on the back porch and I thought to E-mail him a succinct note, admittedly petulant, entitled “disillusionment” to tidy things up, finish up any thought of “it” working out. My intention was to write him in order to help me better know what I knew.
From: xxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 1:04 PM
To: jimmy
Subject: disillusionment
Are you in treatment? Perhaps off the radar screen, yet sober? I hope the latter is the case. I don’t understand the last phone call. I don’t understand why I made plans for you to come, believing you. I don’t understand why I thought anything would be any different than it was last time around. You’d make remarks about plans for us. Clear statements about your intentions. They wouldn’t manifest. I wouldn’t hear from you any more.
That, after being informed, through my writings and words, about my sincere feelings about you, toward you.
sounds like my problem, as I read this.
Christine
From: xxxxx>
To: me
Sent: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 14:21:09 -0600
Subject: RE: disillusionment
Don’t be disillusioned. After I saw you I went on a binge. So stupid. You actually caused me to reevaluate my whole life. I don?t like what has been going on. Perhaps you would consider moving here. It is cozy and I think we could have fun and help heal each other
I wrote back, “Part of me immediately sees the beauty and possibilities. But you must lift a finger; I will not write/call you 5 times with no response, and then the roulette wheel lands 00 and I get a response inviting me to live with you, so I change my life suddenly predicated on a whim.
You could come see me and take me out to dinner. You could invite me down. You could begin communicating w/me on the phone or E-mail in an open honest way, with continuity.
I have been through so much hardship. I am working to insure that I do not ask for pain to be heaped on me. It is one thing in the world of Christine to not seek to avoid pain when it comes. Braveness, openness, Buddhist reality.
It is quite another to encourage it (pain).
When we speak, I will tell you the pain and suffering I came home to, with my boys. I am feeling very anxious and scared and hurt. The idea of sanctuary sounds great, but is a Pandora’s box.
I care about you. I have some “thing” for you. The fiction writer in me can envision living with you, having love, requited, as well as humor, loads of highly erotic sex, and being giddy about the successes of business we launch, manage and sell.
A nice fantasy.
What am I to make of you and your words that never mean what I think they do?
Did the re-evaluation of your life proffer insights that have helped?”
Christine
On Wednesday he proposed that we live together and that I come right away to Dallas, to his home. I pulled over as I drove to visit my son, Ian. In a 7-11 parking lot with the engine running, I heard everything I had wanted in my heart of hearts to hear from a man.
Sweetheart, I don’t want to lose you again. I know what I want. Please come to me and let us be together, happy. We’ll travel around the world to places I have lived, vacationed, in South America, Switzerland, Asia. We will live as God intended man and woman to live. Without anxiety. Happy. Together. IN love. We will stimulate each other intellectually, read, go to movies, book stores, coffee shops, events, we will make love every day. We will cook sometimes, dine out, and be so close. I will take care of you. I am so so sorry that the wreck happened to you. I wish I could have prevented it. I want to make it better, I want to make everything better.
He called back, just to hear my voice again. Yes, I admit that there was something odd about his speech, the eerie far away timbre of his voice. But he was sharp, it seemed. He certainly wasn’t slurring. But there was a tiny, tiny dream like speck of acknowledgement of a practiced not-sounding- intoxicated overlay to his speech. Like editing thoughts and clipping stream of consciousness words when one is stoned, so the other, over the telephone, remains unaware.
The urgency entered our dialogue that same night. “Come as soon as you can. I want it to be now. Monday seems too far away. It seems impossibly far away. Please come right away. Bring everything you can. We’ll ship the rest after you get here.”
Yet, the following day the phone calls seemed terse, polite, business -like but with the same undertow of desperation. As if he were on the verge of bursting into a million tiny pieces and he was exhausting all of his mental energy trying to will them, to reign them, back in. Trying to hold them together.
He was at the office. I couldn’t read him because I didn’t yet know what I soon would discover.
So I sent him nice E-mails
My laptop is balanced on extended legs as I sun on my deck.
I do not know what to make of you or your proposal.
I think it is the lift a finger plan. You must do something to show your sincerity and stability in that which motivates you.
A. I think with AA one is supposed ot have a year of sobriety before entering a relationship
B. What about the Asian girl
C. You know I have a vulnerability
And after more romantic phone calls, I was toast.
Now Monday seems far away. Hardly slept, for I am happy and hopeful. I want to hear your voice and I want you to tell me the same things you told me last night. I took a huge blank piece of pretty white art paper to my favorite coffee shop on the Lake and wrote out my vision of this new life together.
Please re-assure me that the you who wants me is the you whom is everpresent.There is much I don’t understand about you. I don’t even know how to separate that which is the disease from that which is the personality. I am so trusting. And so eager to give to you and make everything wonderful, to make everything good and right.
You know me, and you know me not at all. My heart is so so ready to be met.
How are you now, at this moment?
How will I find you Monday?
Are you really going to let me love you?
Christine wide open
By that night he was on the phone with me for over an hour and I knew he must be drinking. He said “some, not much.” He admitted lying to me in San Miguel, saying that he wasn’t drunk when he called me at five in the morning, with a hollow sound, like speaker phone but from his own throat, and ordered me to take off my clothes and touch myself.
Then I heard nothing. He said, abruptly, “I’m coming to San Miguel,” and hung up. I called him back and said “I believe you.” I asked if he had gone back to sleep, he said he was trying to and that was the end of the conversation.
Let me backtrack, about the on again off again nature of the supposed visit to San Miguel, for it will offer insight into what I must next reveal.
I found Jimmy after 23 and a half years. Called him up, out of the blue, in Dallas, Texas. I was there between Thanksgiving and Christmas, working at the Galleria in north Dallas, promoting alligator purses, shoes, belts. I felt the “big Jack” wave of ennui, the emptiness of commercialism and witnessed the harried look on perfected faces under coiffed do’s of Pilates soccer Moms , mostly sad and resentful about being cheated on by mostly scared, empty businessmen Dads.
Had to sit down to get past waves of feelings of futility, observing mass fear based searching, striving, outside always outside of one’s self.
Drifted past the honey colored Rolls and the nineteen year old actress filming a scene, while aspirants ogled, and entered Oceania, the restaurant inside the Westin Hotel.
Not many people, 3 p.m. Had oysters and wine, and found myself calling information for Jacobson printing; Jahsee was Jimmy’s best friend, and Jacobson Printing had been one of Jimmy’s advertising accounts, 23 and a half years ago. A secretary whose voice I recalled answered. I explained that I was tryng to find Jimmy. She claimed she remembered me, from our earlier dating days, and she supplied me with his number as well as some background.
Jimmy was in Dallas. He now worked in a company in online sales. When we met,Jimmy would explain that he had been pivotal in creating frequent flier programs, handling all of their direct mail, in the 80’s. He was CEO of N-tice, pulling 1.2 million, with a net worth of 58 million. Homes in San Moritz and Connecticut. Burying Stoly in the yard, near the mailbox and marking the spot with little twigs in the shape of crosses.
But that was a long time ago and buckets, volumes, seemingly water towers’ worth of alcohol was under the proverbial bridge, having passed through the sluice gates of liver, pancreas, kidneys, taking its toll.
When he met her again, after 23 and a half years, he still looked like Jimmy . I attributed his unnatural gait, stiffly picking up legs like some one suffering from early Parkinsons, to lumbar surgery. I immediately suggested yoga. He looked at me with a strange, momentarily piercing Padre Pia look. As if his side were about to spring a leak of vodka in a clear stigmata of some remembrance or knowingness, reverie or regret.
She would later discover that it was neuropathy, irreversible damage from alcoholism that included a ½ gallon of vodka a day. He drank Listerine at the beginning of binges so he could hide it from others and conveniently drink at the golf course or a business lunch. He drank Listerine towards the end of binges, because when his resolve to stop eroded he would have something to fall back on, when all the liquor bottles had been polished off, heaps of dead soldiers rattling, veiled, in white plastic shrouds with red ties.
He came clean with me when we met, 23 and a half years later. And I spent the night with him, but there was no touching, no sex. In the morning, he said “I’m coming to San Miguel to see you.” But he never came.
So, upon her return from Mexico, upon his re-initiating their relationship, she came to him, knowing he still had a problem to deal with. Knowing that he needed her in order to stop drinking. Knowing that it would be a risky investment of time and emotional energy that she felt confident, through her love, would pay off.
So she felt like a Bride. She didn’t hide
that fact or the word from him. “You should feel like a bride” he had retorted. She was in heaven, floating, loved, claimed.
The same day that Jimmy announced his intentions for their lives together, another old beau, married, had written her “My passion is yours. Now. I am ready. Now. ” She blasted back “And and and and and how does that change my life? Your life? What are you saying? What do you want? What about your wife?
He quit writing for a while. She had disrupted his fantasy. What was not fantasy, she pondered. Everyone existed in their perceptions. Qualia is the premise that no one is really able to agree on something as simple as “what is red”? We can never truly, with any certainty, know how another perceives anything.
Understanding the unwieldiness of semantics as drivers for expressing thoughts that are purely subjective impressions, believing we can count on our interpretation of another’s words even when they ARE sober is an impossibly long shot. Take away sobriety and try it. OR not. It’s all in whether you choose to duck the punches, or not.
She nearly missed the plane. Put off shaving her legs until the very last minute, not packed, partially blaming her lateness on the owner of the dog in heat for whom Cracker kept Houdini-ing his way out of house, pen, and chains. The woman’s head bobbed above the bathroom half curtain, as Christine dragged the Gilette sensor razor over challenging pubes, whose grooming had been ignored recently. Jimmy’s firm, handled the $22 million kick off,and entire advertising campaign, for this very razor, a long time ago.THe firm had to develop storyboards without ever seeing the prototype, it was so sacred, so secret to the Japanese owned company. When the original was brought into the boardroom, 24 carat gold under glass, Jimmy passed out and had to be carried from the room. It was 9:00 a.m. He was lated fired, for drunkeness.
THe neighbor’s voice was monotone, not happy about having to take time out from her day to return the white Eskimo Spitz to 1013 Wild Basin Ledge. THe cell phone displayed 3:55, when the latest possilbe leaving was 4, and she was perched on the edge of the tub trying to shave herself, for Jimmy. When prepared properly, her labia felt just like the steamy plump flesh of a horse’s grazing mouth and nose, nuzzling corn our of one’s palm, Soft and full, velvety and warm. This was a ritual she couldn’t meet a lover without. To make it perfect.
The maid was repacking her never unpacked clothes, clean and dirty, from San Miguel. She had been home one week. One week. Long enough to go to court with her youngest son, clean up the total chaos and disaster heaped upon her by her eldest son, enroll the youngest in college, and fall in love.
The maid drove her to the airport for $20.00.
On the Southwest Airlines plane, with the red heart logo in a circle like a breast between the two, gold wings, she took a moment to meditate. To ask. Something she should have slowed down long enough to do before leaving.
After all, she had taken the time to shuffle and pick tarot cards three times. She kept repeating it, hoping to not once again pick the three of swords that looked like tiny silver olive piercers sticking into a juicy red heart, which took up most of the card. That heart looked like the Southwest airlines one, but with drops of blood, falling.
She thought of the Pelican on the state flag of Louisiana, with babies pecking at the breast, drops of blood captured mid air, like an excellently timed boxing photograph where the sweat is actually suspended and the lights make it look like a halo.
Broken heart. Pain and suffering. That was the interpretation from the Rider Tarot deck. And leaving on Friday the thirteenth, as well.
She ignored that stuff. Thought the pain and suffering card was surely child related, something she had trauma bonds to, but then again, she had trauma bonds to pain and suffering in relationships with men, as well.
When she took a few minutes to breath into the situation once she was on the plane, legs shaved, Clarins body splash smacked on appropriate chakras in another gratifying OCD ritual that did smell nice, she saw a cemetery. Very clearly. Tufts of grass, some longer sprigs above mostly Bermuda, that a grave tender hadn’t whacked with a weed eater in a while. An imperfect rectangular mound with a head stone, and she suspected that was Jimmy’s grave and the little bulge was displaced dirt from Jimmy’s coffin in the ground.
She though of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem, Orpheus, for which she won honorable mention in a much sought after literary contest in the 30’s. It was about a woman gazing at her surroundings who sees only perimeters, as she inspects ocean with three little isles in one direction and timber meeting sky in another, a silhouette of wooded Hills. Having perused limiting earth, a fenced in 360, she experiences a sudden release from that which tethers her, and wafts up into the sky. The writing is in the genre and language of mystics, from Rumi to Zukav to near death experience webpages.
The protagonist then descends to the earth, and deeper, startlingly, sinking into the ground. She hears birdsong, muffled, and yearns to see dew on grass, to touch tendrils of buds, to witness the sunlight, again. In time,she is released from death and brought back to life. In Edna’s real life, at age 47 she flung herself to her death, down stairs. In chronic pain as the result of a car wreck, she became a morphine addict. A drunk. She remained a genius.
Christine didn’t think of Millay’s poetry because she thought Jimmy would also be a Phoenix. She didn’t think of Millay’s poetry due to Jimmy’s 178 I.Q. The cemetery vision put her on notice that Jimmy was terribly ill and going to die. Soon.
He’d been pronounced terminal, the word underlined for emphasis by the attending physician at the clinic he was carted off to after turning yellow, in 1989. His liver was too enlarged to fit on one x-ray. Having survived, having cheated death, maybe he now thought he was invincible. Or maybe he just had a hard time killing himself off.
Still, he hadn’t been sober longer than 6 months , continued to binge and brag about his blue chip status as an alcoholic, referenced the “clubhouse” of morning male AA bonding, and made comments about the uselessness of a non alcoholic therapist or any one even making comments if they weren’t an insider.
Arrival. January. Friday the 13th 2006
The cabbie was Iranian. She’d had a string of Iranian drivers, from LA to London, of late. The answer to “where are you from” seemed temporally fixed. A string of drivers from Laos, and before that not only Palestine but members of the Hammas. There was the period in 2003 when it was the Somalians. But this one was Iranian and he informed her he had been here for 20 years. “An alcoholic, not good, not a good thing. Terrible for a beautiful young woman such as yourself.”
Which startled her into realizing she had forgotten to apply makeup, and it was two minutes before her arrival. Lipstick, no lip liner. Clarins Beauty Flash balm with OJ’s lotion’s secret ingredient, something the French women have always used, witchhazel, for tightening and lifting. She curled her eyelashes.
The sheer black dress that weighed ounces hit her at the knee, not daring, but draping seductively accentuating breasts and hips. Flattering. Fluttering.
No panties as per Jimmy’s insistence. She recalled Henry’s, (another narcissist) anger when she had show up with panties after the same request, anger because he had envisioned it one way. Her up against the hotel door after he pulled her inside. Him on his knees in front of her, pulling up another black dress to reveal black Donna Karen stockings, not panty hose, creamy thighs overflowing boundaries like scoops of vanilla topping slender dark cones. And where no panties should have been, the space below black garter with miniscule satin bows hiding each hook… panties! Henry stopped his ascension and stared in amazement. “You’re wearing panties!” he exclaimed in horror, disbelief in her disobedience.
She wouldn’t make that mistake again.
She had tied a flowing cream colored muslim Eskandar blouse around her hips for travel, to not be blatant in her uncoveredness.
Another marker, of interest, besides her extreme lateness and riskiness in nearly missing her flight, was leaving without the address. And then transposing the numbers she thought she remembered.
The Iranian dropped her, frettingly, at a curb in front of a house that did not look familiar. Maybe it was the dark. Maybe she was crazy to be considering, much less acting on this impulse to come, love, heal and save a man whose house she had been to only one night.
She’d find out, as she barreled to Whole Foods two days later, to buy milk thistle and Aura Cacia detox bath salts, noni and soup, to help him through horrific detox, that his house on Thorton, once she found it, was only three blocks, three blocks! from her house, 23 and a half years ago, where they had last been lovers. Her street, her old Dallas address, was between Thorton and the Whole Foods location on lower Greenville.
And, as she drove, amazed, noting the Greenville Avenue Bar and Grill, still intact, some memory ever so gently nudged her, reminded her, almost. It waited patiently.
For her to come visiting, to inquire. But it was there. Its arms crossed. Just waiting for her to ask for a dance, to uncross them, to embrace lovingly and enter that which is, which she knew on one level. X’s or 0’s, tic tac toe check mated better than stale mated for one who always chose change, even revisited. “Remember” the roadsign said.
He opened the door. She’d called information for the address only. They promptly connected her call, giving no address, that one out of three incorrect information average holding true for all directory assistance calls. She called back, realized her error or self protective “no no don’t do it!” escape route construct of transposed numbers…5204 Thorton not 5402, and had the cabbie unload her bags at the proper address.
He stood there, emaciated, no thigh muscles, looking like the alligator farmer she saw dying of liver cancer with spindly femurs with not much more covering of sinew than her Agnes B black dress proffered her body, and a hard, tight bulge of liver, like a couple of footballs squashed under his ribcage.
He was shaky, vibrating, holding onto the door handle, standing back. “I’m not 100 %” he said. Well that was an understatement! He looked horrible! His face was swollen like a steering wheel around the jowels and his skin looked white, dry, tiny bumps of roughness and a road map of spidery capillaries.
He took her in his arms. His liver met her breasts. Nothing else touched. He stank of old, barely processed alcohol and something like Aramis and gum disease, something sicky sweet. But there she was, off to the races, either seeing yet refusing to address it, or hoping she could heal, or in flat out denial. Maybe something like sympathy and seeing the useless of having a “talk” right then as he was and had been completely drunk for God knows how many days, weeks, months.
Later her friend Nina said, more as a way to not reject Christine herself as she expressed repulsion over the image of her friend going down on this guy, making love to him, being a willing participant, mused,” I guess you were just making love to his Higher Self.” She called her Christina the Astonishing, Nina knew all the Saints days, and Christina the Astonishing was the patron saint of madness, performing acts of kindness that only the recipient could comprehend.
Christ emptied himself, kenosis. gnosis, taking the form of a servant Christine remarked.
When Christine told her about Jimmy adding the loaded gun of Viagra to the mix, in order to perform, she chastised Christine for risking his vision. She had heard about the dangerous side effects of cirrosis and Viagra, leading to blindness, on CNN headline news.
The house was a wreck. A home that had, two months ago rivaled the cleanliness of her mother’s museum quality home. In the house she grew up in the carpets were vacuumed off of their moorings every two to three years, leaving little rivulets of carpet that necessitated replacement. She would find, many similar qualities between Jimmy and her mother. Which meant she would be forced to admit her role in re-creating the trauma bonds to loving and (attempting) saving one who will always reject and attack after any level of intimacy is achieved .
Dust dulled the sheen of mahogany armoires, desks, bedside tables. Trash was strewn. Dirty clothes were mixed in with folded clean T-shirts. She always found herself putting other people’s laundry away in a crisis, but the crisis generally involved death, no one living to put away their clothes, or the clothes of others, who could depend on them no more.
They sat together on the couch. She assessed the situation, wanting to quantify the amounts of alcohol he had been ingesting, wanting an answer to the odds of him having been any where near in his right mind when he said the things that brought her to him.
He kissed her, shakily. But well. Even though he was smelly, reeking of body breakdown, he kissed her like a woman wants to be kissed; softly yet with control, just right lips and tongue and it made her melt, shudder. She could love a serial killer, she thought. And that flicker of her willingness took her two steps closer to the yellow tape cordoned off memory of a sawed off sweet 16 shotgun by her bed in the Goodwin Avenue house, in case Jimmy came by.
How could she forget such a thing??? That, and the voice that emanated from him as he fell asleep the last time they were together, between driving through Mexico and moving to San Miguel. It was terrifying. He shuddered and a voice like that of a frail Asian man in a distinguishable dialect moaned, then begged, shouted, as if to torturers to stop something unspeakably inhumanely cruel. It lasted 4 seconds maybe. Repeated. Shocking.
She was going to be murdered, she thought. It was scarier than Zach Masey’s “others. ” It was an alter, some evil aspect,a multiple, a demon or his own tortured soul controlled by demons. Whatever it was it was fucking scary and she seriously thought of escaping, running, imagining getting to the door and unlocking it just as he reached me, crazed.
They touched each other on the couch. Her mind was occupado. Whether she took his rather limp cock in her mouth, working working on it, or whether he lifted her dress and, finding no panties gave her oral sex first, she couldn’t remember. His technique was good, she could have come. She felt comfortable taking her time to find the strand of good orgasm. He gently sucked her clit just right with a warm, eager, appreciative and experienced mouth.
And then he left to take the Viagra.
He returned. They laid on the rather narrow green, now stained couch, and watched TV. It was what Jimmy did these days. Chef channels, Sports. Never news, for he might see other CEO’s and reminders of where he had been, of what he had achieved and lost.
It took over 45 minutes for the Viagra to kick in. In that period he showed her his cut finger and repeated in a whining, wistful voice that he knew that he was going to cut it before he did it, but he wanted to give her flowers. He wanted everything to be perfect. He had told her he wanted to have flowers for her on the phone. He repeated how much he wanted to have the house cleaned, perfect, closets emptied and ready to receive her things.
The finger turned brown above and below the cut, the knuckle turning angry purple then near black. I mentioned it. The alcoholic denial came out and he insisted it was a shadow from the band aid. It darkened. It looked like gangrene. I thought it was either the abundance of surface capillaries of the lack of platelets to clot, or both. The latter was confirmed when his nose began to bleed, his liver to further swell.
But he was able to have sex. Most of the night. And he knew what he wanted, beyond sex. Yet it was the sex that was the replacement therapy. I had been summoned by his survival motivated self to fuck him long enough to get him to stop drinking for 12 hours.
ON one level he knew exactly what he was doing. Having huge brain power often gets one into trouble in life in the first place, but it is very useful in providing residual battery life when you have burnt up lots of cells, so many that a less graced individual would be a blithering idiot. Jimmy’s brain fixed on using me in order to stop drinking and then for what he knew, and I didn’t, came next.
Before the detox effects became evident, he told her everything wonderful, everything her heart and ears and body and mind desperately needed to hear in order to continue, in order to not stumble and fall down forever. And, crazily enough it was accompanied by really good sex. He always had fit her perfectly, that rare fit whether it was her special erogenous zone, G spot, the mechanics of angle, something simpler or something rarer and finer, she didn’t care. She just knew that every thrust, every glide seemed to perfect her. And, although she wasn’t getting little fractals of happiness and strong male energy in every cell like sex with the boxer in San Miguel provided, she still felt happy, completed, safe, fulfilled and in love.
He was able to hold himself up above her, providing her the comfort of her favorite position, nestled somewhere in between a man’s chest and his underarm, seeing his face a few inches above her, being covered and filled by him.
And then he’d exclaim, not like the tortured Asian man, but like Jimmy that he was going to hop out of that bed tomorrow, invent a new business direction, make kazillions, be well, travel with her, make love to her and they would be happy and healthy and wealthy and fulfilled, with friends and respect. They would be successful, productive, and use cooking tools lined up like sentries, which he had never used, in his kitchen.
He was pretty sick in the morning, and made it as far as the couch. He was white as a sheet, like someone in shock. Then red, like someone in Florida on the second day of Spring break. Then both. His tongue, which he stuck out willingly, a good patient, was greenish bile coated. But his eyes were not yellow.
He began to puke. He began to puke violently. His liver pain and kidney pain and pancreatic pain were inseperable. It took all of my boxing arm strength to hold his head, this oscillating wonder, over the trash can. Later, when he tried to drink cranberry juice, I lifted him with one hand and held the glass to his lips with pressure in order for the liquid to make its mark.
He told me, the night before, like Romeo speaking to Juliet, iambic pentamenters of love,
“You are captured! I claim you!
I’m never letting you go.
You are mine! I, a man again;
it has been so long.
YOu make me whole.
I can do anything with you.
Another lovemaking session and more words. To paraphrase:
“Fill my house with vibrancy thou fairest flower, for love hath not encountered an equal protectorate, to uphold and allow to bloom all that which is feminine … you get the picture? And I believed it.
It scared me, like it was my turn to say, what if he is hurt if I want to take it slowly, what if he drinks again if I travel what if.? But the what if’s were small for I was happy and I could do this. Sober and smelling better, the sex was great, his mind was brilliant, he knew what to do in so many realms and he just needed a little jump start and support and all would be FINE.
It soon became clear that this day was about him staying alive. And not having the body snatchers take him, oh! the irony, the Shakespearean closeness of usurping Loss. I trembled. I shivered.
But I was doing that anyway, empathetically. He would sweat, he froze, he suffered, he puked. His eyes will haunt me, for they contained an unblinking realization of the fleetingness and preciousness of life, of all he had done to allow the hourglass sands to pour increased measure, of the good boy, the honest man the one who only wanted love, and the all seeing eyes behind which marched the history and pageantry of all mankind. Human suffering. And a willingness. To love? To die? I wasn’t sure. Maybe just to “No escalvar golpez.” But don’t seek it out, either. A fine line sometimes.
I rubbed, prayed, healed, tended, cleaned, willingly, happily. I saw a spirit, a cellophane wispy see through spirit as I squeezed out the toxins with shiatsu maneuvers. This apparition floated softly above him, putting lips to his, breathing in, aiding his spirit in leaving, leaving, taking life force. Then rising and becoming more distant. Now visible, closing in. Not an evil, vampirish figure, rather one that seemed a fitting attendant of death, which is a most natural process. There was a yellowish tint to the astral spectre, with the pretty woman face and hair strewn back as, if by the wind. Note to self, that’s all. I said nothing. Just watched, as I rubbed.
He was Kojeve’s Wise Man. Satisfied with desiring, he desired his own most impossible death.
On the third day, he asked for sex again. Insisted. Got up, shaved with an electric razor, brushed his teeth (after sex) and put on jeans, deck shoes and a white polo shirt. He took out the trash, with great difficulty, and landed back on the couch.
It began subtly. “Don’t put these knives (the one he had cut his finger with) in the dishwasher.” He said, a look of mild discontent at my intrusiveness. And the luggage still piled up near the entranceway, including photos for the mantle, a printer, files, clothes and provisions, became uncomfortable, a chess move yet to be taken, or blocked.
I had to address it, all of it. I asked permission. I asked if he were well enough for it to be my turn. And then my mouth turned downward, quivering, and my lips whitened and my strongest efforts were required to speak. I spoke. Cried. Spoke. Cried. I said “This is how I interpret and understand what has occurrd and I’m trying not to put any spin on it so please help me understand. You said things to get me here because you needed sex as replacement therapy in order to stop drinking. Then you needed me to get you through de-tox. Having accomplished that you act as if you don’t remember anything you said, and I think you don’t want me here.
He was offering me a ride somewhere, anywhere, in less than five minutes.
He was also saying he was sorry if he had said anything that was misconstrued. EVerytime he began that I countered, “If you really meant it, you wouldn’t let me go.” He just looked sheepish. When my friend Nina appeared, I said it again, as she was carrying luggage to her mini van. Just ask me not to leave if you meant the things you said.
The first E-mail expressed gratitude for my unselfish care, and an apology for the detox I had to witness and endure.
The following E-mails were all about him and what step of the 12 he was focusing on and how he had no ability to be present and be in a relationship.
That is your decision. It took me a very long time to learn and an even longer time to accept this statement “anything you put before your sobriety you will lose”
It has proven itself over and over to me. Today is my 6th day dry-I won’t say sober. I have been to 2 meetings. I have resumed my reading and prayer is a continual part of my existence. I am working on my 4th step from 4am till 5:30am.
Christine, I do not expect you to “understand” any of this. You can’t. There are many highly trained, extremely knowledgeable counselors/therapists that are not alcoholics. However, within the walls of the clubhouse it is well understood that they are of little value to real alcoholics because they can never get “it”
I hate to sound so exclusionary but it is true. It is such a weird disease. I could easily have a relationship with you when I am sober; spiritually, physically, mentally, emotionally on every level-levels this disease rips from you. If you can accept that and would like to stay in touch great. If you can’t I understand that as well.
You are a beautiful woman and I mean that in a very large expansive way. You deserve the best because you are a giver not a taker and that is the highest compliment I can think of. Good luck.
Love, Jimmy
He quit calling. I had an unexpected interview come up, in Dallas. Against my better judgment and in a weak moment I called and asked if I could stay.
I hope your interview goes well. I’m confident it will cause you wow them.
I am not rejecting you but there is no sense trying to pound a round peg into a square hole and right now I am a square hole.
Monotone answer, yes, and no call that evening made me rethink my choices. I couldn’t risk feeling pulled in or rejected or just plain stupid at my interview. And I still didn’t think he really understood the profound impact the experience had on me. So I wrote:
This is what I wrote to you after you asked me “to move in with you, in order for us both to heal.”
It might provide clarity and be helpful for your inventory. Yes, I’m a natural giver. I don’t know any other way. I don’t understand people who aren’t from my tribe, of givers, any better than a non-alcoholic therapist might understand a client who is a drunk. But I still give to them, happily. It keeps me wide open and spiritually connected, magic flowing.
Your expressed needs, your heart’s desire-words, offers, promises- contained a hard, shiny kernel of Truth even in the throes of madness. I touched it. I saw it in your eyes, felt it in your arms, your lips, your sex. The human desire to be met, loved, inspired, and cared for looms so large in you, like a cavern in need of Light and filling up. So glad I could give those things to you for a short while.
An old boyfriend from New York called last night and is coming to Austin for ten days; maybe he’ll pay it forward. What comes around goes around, the Universe provides, and although I feel like the Wounded Healer I’ll get through it. And I’m still, always, honored to have had the experience.
I hope one day after over a year of sobriety you will look in my eyes and tell me you understand what happened to me in all of this, that you comprehend what I went through, and that you are compassionate and sorry. The hardest of all was when you told me “tell Patrick he has a Daddy now, who’ll spank his little butt.” I went for that one. Patrick never had a father or father figure ever. It has been devastating.
Christine
Upon telling him that, a complete 180 occurrred. Vehemence which only a narcissist can project like a virtuoso. He is a virtuoso of hurting women after needing them.
You know this is all BS. Here’s why. I was minding my own business in Dallas and you come here and seek me out. We have a nice lunch and then a nice evening and you spent the night. I treated you respectfully and did not even try and seduce you although I was sure it was OK. Then you write me and ask me why I didn’t make love to you. Our evening had been thoughtful and thought provoking. I’m not married, engaged or even going steady(ha). Our e-mails were not a one way street. In fact upon my review you were doing some pretty good manipulating.
Damn right I was drunk and probably said some things that were exaggerated by my a. drunkenness b. loneliness and c. that I felt a strong attraction reemerging. Regardless, you a woman with free will elected to come to Dallas. Had an evening which by my standards was passionate and extremely exciting and really did make me feel whole again.
Saturday was a disaster and I have much remorse that you had to endure it. Regardless it happened.
What happened Sunday is what makes me grit my teeth and question if I ever want a relationship again. You made me feel like crap and I’m still not 100% sure why.
Do women really think men don’t understand your gender and see through these little stupid games you play. “Oh no Christine don’t leave I can’t live without you” was what you wanted. Its all about power and having things your way. I’m 54, been married 4 times and have had lots of normal and very weird relationships. But it all boils down to the same thing. You want what you want and you want it now. Period.
Then the “I’m coming to Dallas blah blah blah-then I’m going to stay in a hotel and then according to my cell phone you called at 10pm and then lunch today. More idiotic games.
I have got several women in Dallas that try and play that stupid stuff with me and I slammed the door. I could be fucking my brains out every night if I wanted to play.
I don’t and I won’t.
I recognize your plight I think it is awful with your kids and I hope you put your life together and emerge happy with the result. But I am weary of nonsense
From: ????]
Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 5:59 PM
To: narcissistic abuser
Subject: Re: Christine
Jimmy, I feel very very sad. I don’t want to defend or counter your points. I don’t understand a lot right now. I would like for you to understand my POV about Sunday, for it wasn’t anything meant to harm or bother you, and I’m sorry that you felt that way.
I had photos for the mantle and my stuff piled in your living room. I moved there with free will, of course, but I rushed it because it was so important to you. I believed totally that we were going to “live together, travel to places you had been before, work out, intellectually stimulate each other, make love, and heal each other.” These were some of the things you told me repeatedly. I could bring a dog. My other stuff would be shipped.
Friday night was great sex and intimacy, and you held me tightly and told me so many times that you’d never let me go, I was captured, that you were whole, that you felt like a man again. I was so happy.
What happened Sunday- my luggage was piled up and I didn’t feel that you wanted me to stay or unpack. You seemed uneasy in the beginnings of soberness and didn’t seem to recall or ”get” why I was really there with “stuff.” I began to feel terrible, foollish, duped, horrified at myself, and alone. I so wanted everything you said to still be your truth. I broached the subject, barely able to spit it out, crying, saying that I wouldn’t stay if you didn’t want me to. I wanted to know what you wanted me to do. I so wanted it to be the last page we were on. I felt scared and alone. I felt so much love for you already, esp. seeing the terrible things you endured. I wanted to make it better.
Of course I wanted you to say the same things you said Friday night, not too leave that you didn’t want me to go. I could hardly bear it, the leaving, it not being real.
Manipulative? If you say so. I’m tired and sad. What I want when I want? I dropped everything for you, at your insistence. I don’t want to fight, Jimmy. I think you are more clever at rhetoric than I. I know my feelings for you.
I’m sorry, so sorry that it can’t be the pretty picture or even something good and nice. I so liked the sounds of the life together “living the way man was meant to live, without anxiety, just being happy.” One or both of us screwed that one up big time. That was a quote from you, by the way.
I wanted to stay with you. I wanted to make love to you. I wanted to see you. I wanted your advice. I just tried to feel the situation and do what’s right, Jimmy. It didn’t seem like you wanted me there. I didn’t want to feel pulled in with hurt feelings berfore my interview.
So forgive me for that one.
Christine
He wrote:
I’m not clever at anything and it’s not rhetoric. That is the whole point. I am simply trying to make sense out of what is becoming a senseless life. I have many problems that no one else can fix. They require complete focus.it is just that simple.
I meant what I said about women.not just you all women. It is really funny. I got on those personal boards and continually there were two overriding themes amongst the women-honest and no games. Jesus Christ! Listen to when women get together.if there is a stitch of honesty I can’t find it. Men just shake their heads at the phoniness and lies. And games. We don’t play games.we want to get you in the sack. We don’t have this complicated emotional life. We are simple, Neanderthal
I feel sorry for women because you have gotten so pulled around. Instead of the hunter/gather dynamic you now think you are both until confronted by the real world and then it all breaks down. You become neither. And your solutions to the breakdown are so transparent-never think that any halfway astute man doesn’t know exactly what is going on because we do. You play games-rarely do you say what you mean. Very odd.
There is a saying “men marry women because they do not want them to change and women marry men so they can change them.”
I have compromised myself in the past but no more. I told you-clearly-that I am going to get sober on every level before all other things. If Saturday did not stress the severity of where I am then consider this-that was mild in comparison.
If you want to stay in touch fine by me. If not again I understand and God speed.
No signature.
He called me, drunk, on Valentine’s day. I called him in April to see if he was alive. He was curt, Jimmy, in control. Jimmy shielding against any incriminations, layering over the hurt little boy who couldn’t assure his mother she and all of his siblings wouldn’t end up in the poor house. Jimmy the abandoned, abandoning. He said as an aside that it was interesting that I chose this day to call him, as his fiancee was arriving from Thailand the very next day.
Two months later he began calling incessantly. With a slight slur. “I made a mistake. I never should have let you leave the house. I’m sorry. I want us to live together as God intended, man and woman, caring for each other, being happy. We can travel, make love, cook together….”
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