Chapter II
In the 15 years
since I met Joe, I never once stopped thinking about him. Even now, all these
years after I broke up with him via a one-night stand with his roommate, I
wonder what he looks like, how he sounds, whether he’s happy, though I know
that he is and that we wouldn’t have lasted because we were young and
impetuous, and I did not believe, from the beginning, that we had a chance
because we began as a one-night stand in a lie about who we were.
Once I had
resigned myself to being the disappointing daughter that I was going to be to
my parents, having sex became really easy. Maybe I was looking for comfort, and
maybe I was never going to find it in a guy who was willing to wrap himself
twice instead of having a conversation with me, but I was never alone, at least
physically, unless I wanted to be. I was always in solitude, though, up until I
met Joe. The intensity of the conversation and sitting with someone and feeling
alive was a very powerful aphrodisiac, and all these years later, at the age of
34 and with two children and a husband, I feel his presence in my heart, even
when I desperately want it gone.
Today is one of
those days. I feel riveted and torn apart. Today I got the note he sent me five
days ago via e-mail. He wanted to wish me and my family a very merry Christmas.
He usually sends his notes on or around new year’s day, but this year he sent
it three days before Christmas. He also wanted to send another picture of his
son. I don’t see any resemblance of him in his son, although surely… surely,
this is his son and must resemble him. His son bears a name that was on the
list of names for my first child—no tremendous event, as this is a popular name
enjoying a renaissance right now. I have no idea to whom he is married—the woman
he was on-again, off-again with the last time I saw him, or some new woman with
whom he was intimate on the sly. How can I know? He doesn’t tell me about her
and I do not ask. His holiday greetings are short and to the point. “Hi, I
haven’t heard from you in a while and thought I’d say hi. Have a great year!
Joseph” No more “Love, Joey,” which hurts and puzzles me.
K. says it
cannot possibly be true that I do not understand that he cannot possibly say
that anymore. To which I respond, “Why can’t he?” If I felt like he would
listen to my words, I would write to him and sign my note, “Love, Amy.” I shall
always love him.
Once I confessed
my sin of infidelity, even though fidelity had never been offered at the
bargaining table, the three of us quibbled over the details, over the who did
what and how it was and why it was and what would and would not come of it, and
then, exhausted, the three of us went to breakfast. He wanted to know if I did
anything more interesting, felt anything more enticing, than I did with him. Of
course, the answer to that question was no because M. was not into me, he just
wanted a taste, and frankly, I was not into M.; I just wanted to hurt Joe, to
make him hate me. M. did not want me. I was not his type, never would be,
didn’t care to be. He liked long, lithe women, ballerinas—not my body type, not
my interest, and not in my nature to ever become one for someone who would tell
me of his predilection for the dancer body when we later met, long after Joe
had left for Vegas and during a weekend when I missed Joe fiercely. M. was
never Joe. In economic terms, not a
good substitute. I didn’t see M. after that weekend when he wanted me to dance
for him but, instead, stripped for me in his ridiculous silk boxers and
programmer’s geeky sex face. It just didn’t work for me.
These are the
things I do not know, but wonder, about Joe:
Who
is his mother?
Where
did he grow up?
Where
was his father?
Does
he see his brother who lives in Phoenix and who lost a little boy many years
ago?
Is
he Irish, or Italian, or Catholic? Was he really an altar boy?
What
did he look like as a boy?
Did
Joe really kill someone, or was that more of the random minutiae that he made
up and fed to me for fun?
Did
he love me? Would he still if it were not a danger for him and the safety of
his child?
Does
he love her?
Does
he miss me?
In his annual
note to me that I read today, he tells me he has included another picture of
his son, at a place I may remember. A place I may remember? I think of that
pond in California I had to pass to get to his place the last time I saw him.
Perhaps some place in Portland, the city he needed to leave? His apartment
above Vaseline Alley? The park blocks? We only have so many places, most of
them in Portland, because after he left, I only saw him three more times—once in
Vegas, when I was driving through from Colorado to San Diego; once in L.A.,
where he and Christine lived in a small apartment down the street from The
Viper Room, where River Phoenix had just died a few months prior; and once at
his apartment in Marina del Rey when we were to meet for coffee—the apartment
where he told me he wanted to give me a child because he thought I would be a
good mother.
As I wait for
the large image to download, its progressive scan coming in line by line, I
wonder what this place is—there is no son, yet, only these pillars—and then I
know. I know this archway, and I am seized. I cannot breathe for one tiny
moment. This is the place where, on the first night I left the library with Joe
to go for a motorcycle ride after we sat and talked at the Heathmann Pub for
two hours, we rode at midnight. We went in the darkness and the cool spring
night air through mazes of foot paths in wooded areas and arrived at this place
in the dark, lit by the moon or the bright, clear night sky; I cannot remember.
I only remember the detail of that wide-open sky and rose bushes. I thought,
this place is beautiful; this must be what he does—to know this place, how to
get here, how to say the right things and make a deeply sorrowful girl feel…
strangely and suspiciously happy.
I watched him
walk away from me, silhouetted against the darkness, me loitering near his
motorcycle. I did not want to be left in that park in the middle of the night,
and I did not know the person, only his name. He walked and then turned and
held his hand out to me. I went to him. I took his hand, and we walked on the
walkway of little smooth stones over water colored blue or white by submerged
uplighting, and he held my hand, cold from the night and shaking because I
couldn’t make it, nor any part of my trembling body, stop. He covered my hand
and held it in his bomber jacket pocket as we walked along the pebbled corridor
under those modern arches, and as we stood there for a second or an hour, I
leaned into him and he wrapped himself around me and kissed me—my first kiss,
the kiss I had anticipated and wondered about receiving throughout my
adolescence, though by that time, I was no longer a virgin in the literal sense
of the word—and, as the Modern English song performed by Nouvelle Vague says, I melted with him.
"I Melt With You"
Moving forward using all my breath
Making love to you was never second best
I saw the world crashing all around your face
Never really knowing it was always mesh and lace
I'll stop the world and melt with you
You've seen the difference and it's getting better all
the time
And there's nothing you and I won't do
I'll stop the world and melt with you
(We should know better) Dream of better lives the kind
which never hate
(We should see) Trapped in a state of imaginary grace
(We should know better) I made a pilgrimage to save this
human's race
(We should see) Never comprehending a race that's long
gone by
(Let's stop the world) I'll stop the world and melt with
you
(Let's stop the world) You've seen the difference and
it's getting better all the time
And there's nothing you and I won't do
(Let's stop the world) I'll stop the world and melt with
you
The future's open wide
I'll stop the world and melt with you
(I'll stop the world) You've seen some changes and it's
getting better all the time
And there's nothing you and I won't do
(I'll stop the world) I'll stop the world and melt with
you
The future's open wide
hmmm hmmm hmmm
hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm
hmmm hmmm hmmm
hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm
I'll stop the world and melt with you
(I'll stop the world) You've seen the difference and it's
getting better all the time
And there's nothing you and I won't do
(I'll stop the world) I'll stop the world and melt with
you
I'll stop the world and melt with you (I'll stop the
world and melt with you)
I'll stop the world and melt with you (I'll stop the
world and melt with you)
No comments:
Post a Comment