Chapter Seventeen – Origami
Elephants and the Garbage
Mountain of Lakeview
501
I
felt the beauty and ironic panic pains of life playing forward absent the
certainties of rewinding video. The
utter evolution battered my chest in a blunt skull ram from the inside and from
the out in a convergent act.
I
had the love poem printed from my laptop on my dresser. The what-if predominate probability spun like
a yet to magnetize compass. This
un-plotted island was erupting from beneath the ocean in a volcanic awakening
of divergent emotional consequence.
Elyse
was so intoxicatingly beautiful, an impersonation of nothing, just her
self. Elyse throttled a revving engine
dexterously rough around the edges of insides, but with angel feathered
thighs. Making love to Elyse was such a
beautiful act, a child such a beautiful manifestation, and yet this Nottoway world was my necklace albatross. We had afternoons in Elyse’s purple sheets at
her house laughing. Elyse’s dog Bilbo
sat there listening low to the ground. I
remember praying for the feeling to stay with me.
We
had cautious interludes with adult preventative measures, yet life does not
always see all the traffic lights in the same color. There was the timing of inside-out condoms
and trust and the iteration of sperm to egg.
God’s blessing unplanned and expecting the ultimate zenith and nadir of
my judgment and apex. Deluge descent
into elation and madness in the crosshairs of composing a response. Precautions, compliant, further
interrogatories all futile, non-productive iterations of thought laid with the
sword for a plowshare to harvest or uproot whom was invariably planted in her
womb. A uterine wall obstructing the sight
lines of this stadium, seeing the game that will be, could be.
502
Elyse
came over. We talked lying over the
white sheets of my bed. I held her,
knowing where we were and the thoughts bursting beneath. We wanted to converse before the certainties
of test results. I read Elyse the poem
aloud with one hand on the paper and the other over her shoulder. The mood was solemn and sweet, cautious and
uncertain. Elyse said she loved me too.
Neither
of us could conceive how to bring this potential child into this morphing world
we now lived. We were just beginning to
bloom our self. A seesaw scale was
ripping upwards and slapping me on the bottom of my jaw as I tried to stand on
this sardonic Nottoway playground. So many thoughts and the eventual mathematics
in each of us concluded we could not bring this child to term. How would that choice be fair to Elyse,
Penelope, this child or me to add another degree of immense pressure to an
already stressful dynamic? I did not
know if that was being selfish, realistic, honest or what.
The
blood test results came back confirming the initial implantation. Elyse and I were hand in hand. I pondered the growth of our child growing in
size doubling by day, tripling by week, a soul as large as it will ever
be. In six weeks a face, fingers, and
inherently a bridge to all I had ever dreamed; this son to be loved. The counterweight to this seesaw Tunisian
fruit-scale doubt and tangible structures of logistical battlefields still lit
afire in the remnants of civil war.
I
was in a campaign my fair nightingale Elyse had nothing to do with, but to aid
the wounded. In the silent solace of
darkest confidence to God I slipped a hand-printed barely legible stone-cracked
pocket note on the altar that I dared not verbalize. I saw the potential proliferation of my,
Elyse and this child’s continued presence in my desolate Apocalyptica.
Each
of us could be irradiated and mutated in this foul nuclear fallout. Each could atrophy; speckle their lily skin
with blackened metallic infections. I
might eventually look at Elyse as a combatant zombie Ashley. Elyse would be transfigured as Penelope and
trapped. We lost either way.
503
From
my birthright obligated Catholic perspective I was supposed to weigh eternal
damnation against the beauty of sexual intimacy with a person that I love,
because of the human life created and the sanctity.
We
put things in boxes. We wrap them like
gifts, tear off the hypocritical paper, reassemble, exchange and adapt the
contents and wrap the boxes again; over and over dependent on our whim and
rationalized holidays.
What
if you chose to abort your child and before the abortion there is a
miscarriage? Are you still faced with
the same onus? What about asking God,
the church, for forgiveness? What dominates
your remorse: guilt or sadness?
Where
is the balance in power of religion: a sacrament or mortal sin? What is Christian forgiveness? Is it my role in accepting this un-God-like
choice? Am I to be more careful? Am I to be more loving to not put us in this
position again? Is this respect to take responsibility
that aborting our child is not a choice or sin to take lightly? Is this a prayer to say, “God, you are still
here in our life? We are not rejecting
you, but this is what we feel is best for our human reality right now?”
How
does a father explain to his unborn, “I want you, I crave you, but I fear I am
bringing you into a maelstrom centrifuge of chaos?” The Satan of my other choices will stab you
in the bassinet.
I
am afraid your mother will never love me; feels forced, and may have never
wanted children. I fear I will never
love me, feel forced and may not want another child. I fear she will abandon me and in my weakest
unjust-imprint of your sister’s mother upon your own, may pit you in the middle
of a second civil war founded in my unlovable inefficacies.
The
spider-bite of my divorce still surges.
Everyone speaks in foreign tongues and accents. Innocent death is a better path than entry
into this bullet-riddled battlement. How
does a father explain to his aborted child?
504
I
do not morn menstruation or ejaculation.
These are biological materials, but this embryo even less than six weeks
of development possessed a counterweight in a connection to God. Elyse and I had to be at peace with letting
this soul go back to God. I want to
believe that what we are as humans is so much more than our human form or even
our individual identities, but we are part of a one.
We
as humans are split-off pieces that will inevitably re-circulate into the nexus
of God. Maybe in this abortion whatever
disconnection we are making from this physical human world, we are not doing
out of anger, but out of a logical choice for each other and our future as a
family. We are important too. God loves us too. God wants us to have a positive and happy
life and celebrate and not resent each other or this child.
Children
seemed like weapons. I was irradiated
from feminine-war. I was no intrepid
hero, just a felled leaper asking for limbs.
I was trying to balance thoughts.
505
The
choice was made in my poem profession of love, turned mutual decline of our
child; to condemn and to save, to choose our lives over his, to rewrap the
box. Do the adults in the equation stand
on equal footing before God as conceived children? For inside each of us, are we not just taller
version of our prepubescent selves?
Evolved in bifurcating genesis of mitosis and meiosis, we each were
innocent once.
I
was afraid of sacrificing our chance to nurture a couple. I was afraid I could ever function as part of
any “us” again. I did not want to plant
the roots of our being during an earthquake.
In beautiful rationale this was a gift destined by God. Fear paints our machines ugly. I did not want a panic son or daughter to be
bartered as burden like a ticket to board the Titanic.
Ultimately,
the silent sadness of me felt like I stole Elyse’s choice. The shrimping net of my former life snared
her absent the turtle excluder device for the option of fair escape. What could she say? I had Penelope in flux. I had a rented alleyway home of cardboard
walls praying to dodge the soak of rain.
In a moment absent these tethers, Elyse and I wished to embrace as our
own. Absent the shell, this tortoise in
me was the mutant-trump. I felt so
guilty for the position I put Elyse in; even sea turtles can drown.
The
choice was the selection of fear in what we could not be. I knew we needed more time to grow. Such forks do not pass go, but leap to the
finish line of final Jeopardy answers, despite the contestants wanting more
time to prepare.
What
is the question Elyse? Do you love
me? Could you bare Ashley’s fang nails
in this coffin I am trying to escape.
Can you risk this pine-box-Poe Houdini-move to be alive, to be a man
living, un-zombie, a non-walking dead?
Can I?
I
am trying to hammer free like Tarantino’s bride set out in fist to finger-chop
to kill my Bill. I am struggling to gasp
freedom under shoveled dirt. How can I
ask Elyse to excavate this grave site?
How can I request anyone to pull this buried Edgar-Allen body, skittish
for the fear of being clubbed over and shoveled down there again under the
pressure of another courtroom-bartered child?
How
can I segregate what was and what is in this moment of deliberation? How can I have the knowledge and faith to
love enough when we both know my current capacity is diminished? I am still plugging leaks in the levee,
refurbishing the waterlines. The
pressure of the system is beyond whole. FEMA
is late with the check. I am broken. I am choosing. I am flooded with fear.
506
We
waited and lived those weeks for the fetus to develop far enough along for the
abortion to be performed. Elyse’s body
was adapting biologically. We blocked
thoughts we wanted to have in the tortuous contradictory behavior of lovers.
I
was giving all I had. These manual
contributions were not enough. Elyse
waited so long. I was still learning how
to be this new me; this single man and single dad in one person. The single dad part could not function well enough
to give Elyse what she deserved.
We
went through two-week cycles of feast and famine of my Jekyll and Hyde parent
and bachelor bifurcated life transposed by M’s and D’s on the calendar in my
available time for Elyse. I felt Elyse’s
stress. Elyse and the child within her
deserved more. Where is his letter on
the calendar? It broke me and tore me
that I could put everyone through this.
I loved Elyse, but I felt stretched and futile. Elyse’s levee finally cracked.
507
Every
word I said about the biology or nuances of pregnancy with a taint of
experience reeked of a stench reminder to Elyse that I had been through a
pregnancy before. The cycle of thoughts
repulsed Elyse. Elyse blew up at me,
angry and cross.
I
was incapable of loving Elyse the way she needed to be loved. Her anger made me feel tossed in a bargain
bin of relationships stacked in a corner of her closet like a pair of shoes
exposing my place as a generic pair of scratched blue pumps.
I
was stranded in this po-dunk trammel Nottoway. My life was a shit confection. The chains of my fucked-up past clattered
around our relationship supplying brown flour for the baker.
God
and I were pushed further apart. I was
part of a church that basically said, “Get an annulment. Sit in the pew. Watch your ex-wife pray in the same spot with
your child with the guy she was fucking while she slandered you to hide her
problems and vows.”
Elyse
told me Ashley must have had a reason.
The applied feminine logic was smashing another pie into my eyeballs and
nostrils. Elyse was intimately
injured. I felt like the fibers of the
girl who had always been put last were furious, scared, alone and ultimately
disappointed I could not save me from me, to be the man she needed.
How
do you call timeout in that melee? Elyse
felt sick, horrible and drained. Elyse
was grumpy and lonely and pummeled me with pregnant frustration that no matter
the symmetrical algebra I made a choice.
Uterine contents were heading for a vacuum tube. Others were marking off calendars.
I
did not mind being Elyse’s punching bag for this interim if it made it easier
on her. I deserved worse. However, the fight broke us into limbo. I was no longer boyfriend, but I was the
father, a friend. I was everything and
nothing, but a requested ride to a clinic.
Elyse
scheduled the procedure. The weekend
before my brother Tim had his son Baptized in the chapel on Ursuline’s campus
in uptown New Orleans. We went to eat at Dookie Chase’s
afterwards. Elyse was not there.
508
I
had a camping vacation scheduled for departure with my parents and Penelope to
visit Devil’s Den State park in Arkansas
for a week the next day. We were
supposed to relive childhood memories.
My
worlds lapped over each other in the confluence I held inside. How could I cancel the trip? I wanted to be there for Elyse’s
recuperation, yet her feminine external voice told me to go. I rearranged to pick up Penelope at six p.m.
on that Saturday under the guise of giving Penelope more time with her mother
before our camping trip.
The
morning of the tenth I got a call from Elyse two blocks from her house. Elyse was not feeling well. Elyse told me she would reschedule. I stopped in a Japanese restaurant empty
parking lot at seven a.m. I felt the
uncertain internment camp of a purgatory trip to the “Natural State.”
Elyse
invited me to spend the day with her. I
drove. Elyse felt there was not much to
say. Why cry? Why make this more out to be than it was;
accept and own our choice. I agreed with
Elyse, but I knew inside we were both hurting.
Elyse told me she wanted to make love.
I let go of trying to figure out what things meant and set aside my
contemplations for unsolvable logarithms.
In the end I felt like we were two high school kids in the last night of
summer before venturing to colleges split across America.
I
did not know what I was to Elyse, just the father of this child. The guy she just dumped, but let me brush her
face with my distended fingers. I gave
Elyse a massage and slept next to her, but no further kisses or post-coital
intimation of that elevated level closer.
The definitions of intimacy at the moment were confounding, numerous and
scarce.
This
did not make me friend or partner. The
feeblest part of me pondered as soon as this abortion was over I would be a
nothing to her. I also knew how hard all
this was on Elyse. I was not going to
judge, if Elyse needed an oyster shell I was going to let her grow her focus on
her pearl for as long as she needed.
The
feelings were mixed, complicated and powerful in divergent directions. I spent the time I could with Elyse before
being sequestered for a week in some mountain valley in Arkansas, which was supposed to be my first
vacation in years. I knew all I would be
thinking about was Elyse and the timing of this rescheduled appointment.
509
The
week in Arkansas
was interminable. We were in a small
cabin. My cell phone did not work. There was only a pay phone at the ranger’s
station. When I could gerrymander the
logistics of sequestering Penelope with her grandparents, I utilized a calling
card to try to catch Elyse for a private conversation. Elyse said the week was just work and normal,
and the appointment was for the next Saturday.
I think Elyse appreciated me showing concern on some unspoken
level.
I
felt guilt in every activity down in that valley: hiking trail, tadpole
catching park adventure, cave spelunking and horseback ride attempt I had
planned out for Penelope’s ignorant Persephone-bliss. My parents enjoyed getting to spend an
abundance of time with their grandchild.
In the “Lacey was always an immediate option days” they were never
selected for free-time indulgences due to highway mile radius logistics. This was my first vacation since Disney World
in 2007.
510
I
was trying to make sure the following Saturday everything I could do as a man
was going to get done, which at minimum was transportation. I had to rearrange schedules again to get
Penelope to Ashley the Friday night of my return instead of the Saturday
morning in order to be available.
The
thoughts in my head circled like prospecting ravens. I wanted someone to love this scared monster
in my smudged skin; me, Ashley, Penelope, God, someone. I wanted to birth our child and bask in the
love of what I wanted most in the world; a family with a true-wife basking in
the beautiful simple. I wanted so much
of that with Elyse. I was suicide in a
new grave knowing all the non-simplicities of why this could not exist, because
I was still so infected, debating a filibuster virus.
I
remembered weeks before Elyse spreading ample mustard on a ham and cheese
sandwich for me on a Saturday for lunch at the rental. The simple act of not having to prepare or
fund the totality of my own meal was a foreign novelty. My inner-gratitude was indebted to propose
grand-overtures for such indulgent generosities. Now I was in a different type of sandwich:
feeling plate-less, bread-less and maggot meat lumped on a curb for strays.
511
I
was an insane man bargaining to an empty room.
It was not fair. Life is not
about fair. It was not fair. Fair is justifying the inevitable in a myopic
vantage point. It was not fair. I mourn my son. It was not fair. I wanted more time. It was not fair. It could have been worse. It was not fair. To whom are you referring? It was not fair. Hell is knocking. It was not fair. God is immune to human planning and trumped
by free-willed choices.
It
is not fair. Rental houses do not make
for optimum nurseries with un-paintable walls.
It is not fair. God does not give
you veto powers. It is not fair. The carpet assaulted her allergies. It is not fair. Bermuda Triangle cell reception negates
timing. It is not fair. Can I just finish my senten...? It is not fair. I was starting to love your mother. It is not fair. Ashley is a predatory precursor in a bum-fuck
anchor of a town.
It
is not fair. I could not smile the way I
wanted to under all this rumbled concrete in my teeth. It is not fair. I felt like my choice was the victim of a
terrorist act of my own prior choices.
It is not fair. I murdered you
before I named you. It is not fair what
I chose. The man I knew in me is
dead. It is not fair for me to ask God
for anything again. From the first word,
every me-prayer now feels selfish.
512
We
both knew somewhere in the unspoken that ultimately proclaiming, I do not want
this baby was an equivalent to an “I am too week to express the faith that you
will love me back.” Growth in a communal
direction was truncated based on the fast-forward. Fairness was irrelevant. The real question-fear was if I had the
courage to say “yes;” what would have happened if Elyse said “no.”
If
Elyse did say “yes,” could I unearth the faith to risk the threat of the
porch-house mortgage bankrupting me on Ashley’s whim, Ashley’s conspired deeds
to Penelope and Elyse and ultimately my child in her wrath? Could I risk the fallout if I failed and saw
two more victims under this avalanche?
The
inclination sat there hanging and begged before this faith, this bravery that
Elyse wanted me. The contingent scenario
wanted a proliferation to shackle bodies to a meal to be served in so many
repeated iterated nights.
I
was terrified of going through a similar being shed, manipulation, betrayal, of
untrue love, of making Elyse unhappy and having our child be used as a
bomb-threat one day. I felt guilty and
wary to imprint on Elyse, the role of Ashley, but in the breach the pain, the
fear, the blood still smeared as liquid.
513
Ten
days before Penelope’s birthday, I picked up Elyse from her home at
seven-thirty. I played a Sarah McLachlan
compact disc in my car, fumbling with pillows and blankets and these rations of
softness and tranquility to ease the voyage.
Elyse asked me to turn the music off.
I was no Caprice magician capable of illusions. Elyse wanted no distractions, just a
business-like to the point “I functionally need a ride therefore you are here”
experience. Elyse was segregated of
heart. Emotions were too hefty to lug
externally. They would have been like
ankle weights to an already arduous climb.
I was a Travis Bickle taxi-man.
Do not complicate this process.
Eight
or so protesters huddled with coffee and signs.
Today a thousand babies were killed by abortion. Proof democrats are for the children. Photos of aborted fetuses were held up like
the guts of slain gladiators in the coliseum being sucked out in dirt devil
Dyson cyclone suction by that German guy on the commercials. Norma McCorvey’s adopted child is sleeping
somewhere. One hundred and fifty fetuses
will be like air through bent straws in that building today.
Elyse
said that the facility did not allow transport vehicles to wait in the parking
lot: limited space. Besides the
surveillance cameras, the Catholics might stare the paint job off my Chevrolet
with their Cyclops-sight. I pulled out five
minutes later and headed to some nearby big-box retailers to wait for Elyse’s
ringtone.
First
I went to Toy’s R Us to buy birthday presents for soon-to-be six-year-old
Penelope. When else was I going to go
into the city to acquire Tinkerbelle figurines, Lego racecars, and a
rubber-cast Chinese-made Unicorn and Pegasus tandem? The irony was not lost. Life and I were in a stare down. I roamed through aisles of Barbie’s and baby
carriages, G.I. Joe’s and Scooby Doo Mystery Machines, parents and blissful
grandparents.
514
Next
I went to Barnes and Noble with its mortar coffee shop and endless stacks. I never tried coffee. The contemplated taste seemed too bitterly
similar to chocolate, which I never consumed either. Who wants to be awake? There were all these normally-adopted tastes
licorice, mint, tobacco, bubble gum; that I honestly never desired on my
palate. Olfactory rejection was
sufficient.
So
I never truly tasted them to confirm my natural repulsion. I did not like them. Who is to say what goes in there? Just because everybody else seemed to love
them, who are they to say I should?
Brushing teeth was hard as a kid.
This was not a day for reckless culinary experimentation.
First
I passed the local best sellers with Drew Brees’ Coming Back Stronger
and Sean Payton’s Home Team inspiring the city. I headed up the stairs and stared at the
hobby section. A display of boxes of
origami, Japanese paper safari animals folded into intricate printed sheets
nested to the right. My hands were too
big to from the required creases. The
pictures of what it might be like for such tiny perfections were nice to
imagine. Something was stirring inside
me to come out. I rambled to the
restroom.
I
sat on the commode and hazed out. I saw
the toilet paper and thought about folding an origami elephant. Maybe I should use a dollar bill instead. The white double-plied paper would fall to
mush. Besides I already had a bi-fold
wallet, keys, and receipts in my pockets.
I would have to hold the trunked creation the whole time. So, I wiped my ass and flushed instead.
I
wandered through the two-story catalog of writers in wait. I went through the Spiderman comic books,
then the sci-fi, Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter, Frodo Baggins these were
people I knew. One more night in the
shire, and on to Jillian Michaels on the front of Shape magazine, “I am going
to adopt. I can’t handle doing that to
my body.” I glanced at an Archie
Manning’s biography with his two Superbowl MVP sons on the cover with his
golden testes hidden beneath.
Physics
for Scientists and Structural Engineers Extended Version, The Young Hitler I Knew , Spain by Train:
a Traveler’s Guide, Muppet Peter Pan, Animal Factory: The Looming
Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment,
Make Your Own Sex Toys: 50 Quick and Easy Do It Yourself Projects, Gangs
and Their Tattoos: Identifying Gangbangers on the Street and in Prison, O
Magazine: “Dream Big: O’s Guide to Discovering Your Best Life”, How the
Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Thomas E. Woods: I made my
parade. At the end of the route I
wandered over to the cooking section with Emeril, John Besh and Paul
Prudhomme. These were people I
knew. I knew how to cook catfish and
gumbo and stir a scratch roux.
515
I
finally succumbed and sat at a table by the coffee bar. I did not order. My stomach remained unsettled. I stared out the window at the flat New Orleans suburban
landscape. There were no hills here,
just lease spaces by Lake Pontchartrain. I thought about the eponymous garbage
mountain of house debris in the neutral ground I use to be able to see from the
window back at Boudreaux and Borges outside Lakeview after Katrina.
I
would pass the gargantuan pile in the neutral ground on this same street on my
drive back “home.” Sometimes I would
imagine it talking like the Fraggle Rock version of the trash heap with sage
advice for the city. Like maybe we could
create a Buddha salvation out of our waterlogged mattresses and soggy
stuffed-animals and attic insulation.
But I would just ride back to Nottoway in silence across the longest
bridge in the world over Lake Pontchartrain
back to my post-Katrina life.
Elyse
called and said she would be out in five minutes. I drove and waited in the parking lot for
another hour and a half. A Metairie soccer-mom look-alike came out to bum a smoke
from a MLK-boulevard ghetto girl. In the
minutes like stitches I saw meandered zombie-uteruses depart for their
respective rides. I read Bukowski’s Factotum
over my steering wheel, “The arrival and the departure of the faces
continued.” I needed to urinate again.
A
few hours; the extraction, the selection, was now done. Elyse was slow moving in self-managed steps,
not asking or wanting my hand, just her sunglasses and a seat, a drive back to
allow Elyse a place to sleep. Before pulling
out, Elyse wretched a smatter of her stomach contents in the parking lot due to
the drugs to dull the surgery.
Elyse
had a few medications and some lecture material on how to prevent this type of
thing from happening again. When I was
filling her prescriptions, the pharmacist inquired the recipient’s birthday. I Freudian-slipped Ashley’s, before stumbling
to the proper combination of month, day and year.
I
set Elyse’s purple pillows and quiet and ease as she bared the slow bleed. I stroked my fingers across her back,
fully-clothed in the silence, hoping to be of some use. I bought Elyse Chinese food, after she had a
craving for an eggroll, crab Rangoon
and lemon chicken. I picked up the
takeout, made dinner and felt out of place and out of words, out of time and
out of turns.
516
Our
relationship was forever forked by the spoken and unspoken. There were parts of me that were emotionally
unavailable. If all of me was not even
in Nottoway, how could Elyse and I live there
building on a hypocritical foundation?
Catholicism and Elyse’s version of Christianity sat like Taiwanese
assembly instructions. How could we bare
a child with the burden of this train track that I had hooked Penelope to,
doubting in myself? I knew this was not
what Elyse wanted for her family.
I
felt like a man who owed money to the mafia for betting my life savings on the
Colts versus the Saints in the Superbowl.
I felt like a traitor, a heathen spouting profanity like vomit in the
construction of my being, weak and broken.
Maybe God was giving me the greatest gift of my life and I was too weak
to accept him. I circled fear over love.
The
pressure needed some place to dissipate into vapor. Elyse wanted me to be happy, to find
joy. She knew a part of me was a vacuum
that diminished my capacity of what I was capable of giving to her or anyone in
this world until that void was resolved.
Elyse deserved to feel special and chosen by a man who could cherish
her, not feel put in the box of another woman’s life in some bargain-bin Family
Dollar town.
For
a while I felt lost. I wanted to relish
in self-flagellation, to be angry at myself.
I was not angry. My life was
fucked up and in no way ready to bring a baby into it. I was still healing. Anybody not from Nottoway
could see that. My humanity was cracking
in my own inefficacies.
Acceptance,
forgiveness, damnation, and joy collectively teetered. How could I complain? God sent him here to give to me and I
murdered him. There was no convincing,
no external debate proportionate to the internal. Elyse vocalized her intentions of processing
the mathematics based on knowing I was not ready for a child. I was compliant in my surface agreement,
absent rebuttal. I think if I would have
said “let’s keep the baby,” Elyse would have.
Elyse had more faith in me.
I
saw the fear of complications rather than solutions. I saw oilfields on fire and the pyre pillars
growing higher from a divorced man still pulling out shrapnel from his abdomen
and decompressing incisor marks in his thighs.
How can I call myself father, a man?
Yet I convince myself all the time of these professions and
vocations.
I
hoped that we might have had a chance to wander out this Fallujah, this Mogadishu, this Belgrade
to have our own time. I hoped to not
have such ego-centric conversations on my tethered scars. Ashley was this bloody tramp
spaghetti-strand-stitched to my body that I once had the suicidal machinations
to love. Like a radioactive Katrina dog
I was riddled with routine cancer polyps in full chemo. I was treading water for better and a kid
came along wrapped in an anchor-chained Onesie.
(Hug him and we all drown.) I
just prayed that with a normal load, maybe Elyse and I could make it to shore. Maybe it was a life preserver; who the fuck
knows?
517
I
went to Catholic reconciliation, confessed my sins to an out of parish
priest. A year later, on the news I saw
the priest was shot to death by a paroled child molester when the pastor was
staying at a retreat home in Waveland Mississippi. A month earlier a priest in my own parish
hung himself in the rectory. The
remaining pastor at St. Marks explained family histories of depression on the
pulpit.
I
was too embarrassed to confront the face of God within my own representative’s
jurisdiction. I prayed my penance. I contemplate God always knew that this was
how it would all play out. To know which
path I would choose, murder or martyr. I
dare complain that I did not have or make a choice. I chose.
I choose.
I
confessed. The blessed one of seven
sacraments was performed. I felt no
different in a direction of clarity or peace in its absolution. I felt like I talked to a man without a wife,
without an employed dick, protesting me outside the walls of his vagina-dress,
holding my hand and telling me to wear a rubber next time. I was no better, just standing by the
roadside asphyxiation of my faith. This
Jesus man I was in love with became like every other woman, just a cereal bowl
I poured milk into every morning spooning up an oat mush sustenance of a man
that does not exist or worse a really-nice guy who got used as a puppet for
someone else’s twisted fantasy.
Nietzsche knew the immortal blemish – the trans-valuation of all values!
518
For
as much fun as speaking of tooth-jarring fist fights, fire ant infernos and
transgendered adulteries are to quid pro quo banter in family gathering
discourses, abortion is just not something so benevolently discussed over
white-elephant dinner tablecloths.
African genocide, Darfur, Auschwitz, Waco, Dahmer; compared to talking about a man
choosing to temper the warzone of his own life over a progeny in mitosis. Hell no.
Damn that fucker. Shut the fuck
up son. That’s the privates of private. Damn my own ranting internal thoughts.
Elyse, I know you do not want this me. Truncate this love before I become a believer. I understand.
I hold no resentment. I
comprehend the reluctance to forge a commitment in pink flesh and soft skin,
just turn around now before the wound sets.
This love is a detached comma, a period missed praying for a semicolon
and all I have got is an Easter stone that keeps on rolling away from a cave
that is barren.
Where did he go, before I gave him a name? I can not use Jesus. That would be alphabetic profanity. Go before this spear in my side is permanent. The hole will not close. The bird will not silence. All I have is an internment courtroom
appointment, drama and another world of disappointments for sap to make bitter
syrup nobody wants to taste. Drown these
self-indulgent pity-trips. Nobody wants
to hear complaint. Put the stone back on
the cave.
519
Ashley
rejected my property offer, but finally agreed to settle with me on the house
and everything else for thirty-five cents on the dollar of the equity we put in
to originally construct the monstrosity.
Ashley post-departure Discover Card wardrobe and five grand “before I
knew what hit me” cash advance to her attorney were divorced-wife lagniappe for
Ashley’s coffers. I signed to just move
on. You win bitch. I can not take this anymore. Let me suck on the Blunderbuss. Waiting on a realtor would be masochistic.
Elyse
was taking some time. I was not sure
what we were or what we were not, but we were talking. Elyse helped me look for houses. In the back of my mind I wished I would have
known there was an option to settle this financial mess just a month and a few
weeks before. Would it have made a
difference? Probably not, I was still a
damned vagabond pirate mother-fucker with distended squid guts afraid to stake
ground.
We
looked at the walls and the parking spaces as what-if’s. It could be Elyse’s home as well in some
weird contingency thinking. I imagine
it’s the way AIDS patients think about retirement. I wanted Elyse to be part of the journey in
case this was what we wanted, but my life was as if someone scrambled a put
these pictures in sequence order task kindergartners might get assigned. Step five became two and three became
nine. Seven was drunk in a Parisian
dumpster.
520
Time
was a duplicitous asset. The melting pot
of mid-July hormones and the scent of dead bodies were less abrasive in the
contingent ticking realities of choice.
I told myself, “Nottoway had to be
enough.” If I closed my eyes when I said
it, the logical part of my brain could prison-shank the emotional neurons that
transmit phantom pains for a removed and tormented kidney. Wrong is all in the wrappings.
Elyse’s
disconnect from me had everything to do with my disconnection from myself. The satellites, of a daughter, an ex-wife and
Nottoway orbited, but the gravitational core
was my own black hole. I needed to pull
out from the event horizon and reform a planet.
I had to at least emit hope from this body by decreasing the volume of
the force that was ramping up my own density.
I
overestimated the symmetry of the bond I felt with Elyse. Elyse said she kept giving and giving and I
was not giving back. I was giving
everything I could, but my self-focused gravity was impossible to defy. I never believed Elyse loved me, because I
did not love myself.
My
retinas were funhouse mirrors full of shadows and convex optical
illusions. A weed-eater was always
operating in the background of my auditory opera house. My hands were replete with blunt numb hacked-off
digits by a butcher’s cleaver. I was an
immutable man.
One
day in October at noon, while I was at work, Elyse called me and cursed me out
telling me she hated me. At four-thirty
Elyse called asking to see me that night.
She said she needed some time with me.
The oscillation appeared to define Elyse’s image to me. I was hurting her. She was suffering. I had no answer to turn this gravity
off.
521
November
6, 2010, Elyse was consumed by a leviathan of doubt. A wax and wane foreign moonlight seemed to
compel the tide on Elyse’s skin. Some
nights I was incapable of loving Elyse the way she needed to be loved. She wanted to run. Other lunar cycles were joyous affinity.
Elyse
displayed this penchant for a threshold of attention to satiate her insecurity
over whether she was loved. I could not
be that man. My zombie-skin was shedding
all over the Berber. I elected to leave
our relationship.
How
could either of our voodoo doll bodies believe the other loved us? Poetry from a black hole versus curse words
from a closet; we each gave in to our shadows.
Our November rains finally came.
There was no Slash standing on a grand piano to save us. This was the same day I found out I got the
house I put in an offer to purchase.
522
I
was not mad at Elyse. I was
disappointed. I was hurt. I was sad.
I deeply cared about Elyse. We
were amicable. Elyse did not feel like I
had a place for her in my life. I felt
like Elyse did not want to be in the life I had to offer. Both things were connected. What I had to offer was a bloated, smothered
version of me covered in horse flies and mud.
I had to get the caked sludge off before I could even have a
conversation with myself.
Maybe
I killed Elyse’s dream too in my lack of a retort with a varied response for
our child. Maybe Elyse wanted me to give
her permission to love, to come get her in that hope that beats in the heart of
every little girl. Maybe Elyse wanted
more, “shut up and kiss me” moments.
Maybe Elyse wanted that stained picket-fence dream. Maybe she grew nauseous at the thought.
I
know in retrospect Elyse was not happy.
She was an iridescent blue butterfly bleeding in cold flight
precipitation. Conjecture in the
lucidity confirmed this diving board was indeed a pirate plank. Elyse remained in motion to avoid the
stagnant sink.
I
do not blame Elyse. I loved her in the
way I felt capable. I wish I knew how to
love at all. At times I selfishly wished
Elyse was more of who I needed, but I felt lucky to see her fly over my
quagmire hovel. I saw Elyse glitter on
the fringe of a woman so alive and inarguably unfettered.
I
plead for Elyse to reach such Everest-joys embraced with someone capable of
rock-climbing her adventurous precipitous elevations. I knew I could not be that man. Most of me wanted that for her. I would rather Elyse be happy away from me
than selfishly wish to bury her in the amber of my sticky details and have her
wings found useless in time. This
letting Elyse go gave me the ever smallest hope that I was capable of love.
I
loved Elyse in this way that was both rare and honest, but in the end was not
an electron in the nucleus orbiting a magnetized atom of marriage. I dreamed in folly and saw why to defy Newton’s laws would lead
to the fusion of our own mutual destruction.
The electricity in the physics strangled me into a compliant man,
witnessing life from afar.
The
part that saw the Hiroshima
of my love, the melted skin living in the aftermath of a doctor’s prognosis was
a grim puppet. I knew the number of
weeks I had to live in this town, seven hundred and eighteen. I was in this sarcoma space battling with
hope itself that my organs would one day be able to function in a former
planet’s atmosphere.
523
The
next months I hunkered in my new fresh sheetrock home. The spiders had not found it yet. I had a kitchen capable of creative meals for
a seating of a thirty-something man and an under-ten on alternating
reservations. I found the glory of my
iPod. Musicians’ contributions to this
world became my associates. The walls
were mine for the first time in what felt like ever.
There
were times when I missed Elyse. I knew
embracing that thought was noosing a millstone in an opposing logistical
direction to the whisking cogs and the subtle touch of what alive might feel
like. The yoke of lonely hung. The concept of Elyse’s feminine tones could
raise the weight from my shoulders in temporal flutter, but the bulk would
always come back to the vast heavy.
With
my sedentary and Elyse’s mercurial nature, I knew this woman was born to molt
and shed chrysalis after chrysalis. Elyse was a migratory animal by nature; an
orange Monarch up from Mexico
landed here with me in pit stop. Elyse
was a winged flutter silk, moving by the inclination of compulsion being where
she must. I knew if Elyse did not, who
she was would cease to exist.
I
loved her for gusts of life emanating her veins. I was killing an auricle, compressing her
organ to a cold necropsy table next to my zombie-appendages. It was better I not clamp Elyse down, like a
specimen in entomologic exam.
When
I realized how unhappy Elyse was with that version of me, it broke me in a
place I could not bare the thought of generating more sadness. The pragmatism exceeded my own
emotionalism. I still loved her, just in
a way I could justify to myself that I needed to be alone, removed and
segregated to allow Elyse a path away from me and let it be.
524
In
2011, for Elyse’s birthday I wrote her a hand written letter.
Elyse,
Happy birthday beautiful. I thought I would write you a letter like
some dinosaur relic skeleton of correspondence with these email, texts, and
tweets probably buzzing at you. I wanted
to give you the thought that I was thinking well enough of you out here in this
peripheral America
to put ink to loose leaf and find a stamp.
I will always be glad that you were born and thank God for you to be in
this world. I remember last year meeting
you and putting together a card with a joy of potential and wanting you to dive
in and drink me up.
A year later you have and do know me in a way so few
do. It breaks my heart that I could not
fall in love with you. I wanted you to
be my resurrection and a thousand sunsets, yet I know we are each better
destined for other paths. I have written
more analogies and metaphorical equations on the why’s and how’s than I care to
count. I just want you to be happy. I know I did not make you happy. So whatever confliction I have is moot.
I figure that you have started dating someone
new. I wish you the best. Maybe you are living your life of learning,
work and travel. Either difference some part
of me assumes that you know that I need my time to work on myself as I have
said. You told me “Sometimes the people
too close to someone can not be the ones to help.” I hope you understand I do not really want
help, just a friend. I wish there was
still time to pretend.
I operate at some minority percentage capacity of what
I am capable of giving to anyone. You
need your freedoms to try, to learn, to taste, to touch, to see a prism
spectrum that I am a failure at enhancing and a source of unhappiness in
denying. These were very harsh realities
for me to accept.
I question in my corrupted contraption heart if I am
even capable of love. The greatest hope
for my capabilities is that I know I really wish the best for you, knowing that
does not include us being the partners that I once hoped we would be.
I think of our son once in your womb, the stems of
life that could have extrapolated out from divergent choices. I still battle the thoughts that God gave me
the blessing I have prayed for in a form I was too weak to accept. I wander through embracing trust; for seeing
you as a reciprocal counterpart woman that for as much as we both claim to have
wanted love in our life; we each were too timid to say I love you no matter
what. Maybe we were never supposed to,
most people are not.
I am lonely a lot.
I need to deal with what is lurking in me. I wander in pursuit of a vagabond forgiveness
from whom, for what it changes, reverts and recycles. Ultimately I have detached from human
contact. I miss hugs.
I know I need to insulate like a scab to deal with
what I need to, no matter how long it takes or however much it hurts or I am no
good for anyone. It is desolate and
hard. The few times I have talked to you
are like coming up for breaths of air.
I have been afraid to be happy for so long now, afraid
to call anything happy, feeling so deceived and rejected, worthless and
burdensome. I reflect on these
decades. I see a lonely socially-adverse
kid, who has trained to be isolated in part by choice, in part necessity. I am exhausted and resigned.
For your birthday I wanted to write you this
hand-written endangered species. I want
you to know I love you in the complex way I love you as honest as I am with battling
my bitter and you traveling your detachment.
I love you as a human in my flawed and lost distance. I love you in a way that is not seeking
romantic endings or trying to convince you or me of anything. I love you in recognition of what is and what
is not.
I love you in a way that hopes you find your husband
who can give you every joy you deserve.
I can be there to give you a toast and wish the two of you the
best. I love you as an indelible mark that
once landed and is flown off to other islands.
I hope you can taste the nectars.
I love you in way that only wants what is best for you and in my
mathematics that is a reprieve from my sinkhole.
I am glad you were born. Happy Birthday
With deepest regards,
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