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WRONGED SIDE OF THE BED
She only wants me when she’s drunk; I only want her when I’m sober—thank God I’m never sober anymore.
It was the last days of our last mistake, and we were both the other person’s last resort. Indeed—in fact, alas—months into our madness, her love was only like a prayer in that she never fucking listened either...and really, nor did I. At the end of our run, there would be no runner’s high; instead there would only be another high in lows…
She shall be known here as “Mary Moistpoison,” and elsewhere, some things likely far, far worse. Call her what you will; just try not to call her often, lest her curse be visited upon thee and thy household.
The girl can wreck a home like I can wreck a womb, and I pity any child that calls her womb a home.
Every cursed bastard seemed to want her; but sadly, I was the bastard cursed among all others seemingly to need her. And I certainly never wanted—and prayed I never needed—her to ever be "the one."
It was a fling that just kept flinging things upon me...seemingly romantic glares that stared back coldly from the depths of her abyss. I never thought I'd want to keep her, or anyone for that matter. I had dropped the dreaded "L bomb" to only three girls in my life, and only really meant it twice. This was just a wet hole in a dry season—right?—a torrential downpour, a sensual upswing…an oasis in an "oh" face, in some throbbing time of desolation. There could certainly never be another L-bomb from this grizzled cynic's lips… And when said cynic's lips touched hers again strange weeks ahead, that wretched frigid wench could never be dreaded Girl Three—feared in the prophetic sense like the Third and Final Antichrist, correct? And denial...it is still firmly in Egypt, is it not?
***
I’m not sure about “love,” but I do know angst. I have a heart full of soul and a soul full of sin and the sort of things they hang men for down south.
Sometimes, one imagines that he or she is actually a good person who merely does bad things now and again; othertimes, it seems very much reversed—that one is, at blackened core, a considerably bad person who only occasionally fails at evil or, by some cruel and playful whim, does something right. And rarely have I been exactly confident as to whither side I've stood.
I’m well-meaning on occasion…depending on the meaning of “well,” and the occasion in question. My character can be summarized in one fell swoop: I lied my way into Bible College. Think about that one.
There are elements of my life I’m obviously not proud of, which occupy some strange nightmarish place between Fear & Loathing and Curb Your Enthusiasm. I’m not even a good anti-hero; I’m really just a prick. I'm selfish, irresponsible, and frequently insane—and this by my own standards. It’s not that there isn’t method in my madness; it’s simply that my madness frequently overwhelms my methodology.
This is all to say, of course, that there are reasons why I’m frequently alone.
After my first traumatic romance, I disconnected from the concept of it all. Over the course of the next few years, I’d discovered club scenes, drug scenes, and crime scenes. I never “dated” anyone, but rather, semi-drunkenly stumbled up a ladder of unremarkable vaginas, or had random flings with friends. Even then, I was never quite a seducer so much as I am simply an excellent salesman. My point is that, at my age, I face a strange dichotomy: I’ve racked up years of sexcapades, but have the actual dating habits of an awkward 9th grader.
I don’t really “date,” so much as I merely choose the form of my destroyer, Ghostbusters-style.
Alas, there is no love; there is only Zuul.
***
I’m not sure about “love,” but I do know “dirty.”
I felt like a dirty old man, but then, as most dirty old men will tell you, the night is always young—though likely not as young as she was when we met. Truth be told, dating women my own age grows less fun by the year: Women my age are more like ogres—all they want is gold and babies.
But this girl was dynamic, euphoric, and eccentric all in arbitrary spurts—an utterly engaging, almost mystically-adorable little trainwreck with an equally adorable caboose, and the heaviest, most intensely overwhelming pheromones to ever drift my way—so much so, that I frequently found it difficult to concentrate in her presence. Irresistibly-unhinged, cold yet giggly—bipolar in her charm…and when the poles aligned, she had the sort of youthful smiles and knowing smirks, shy winks and evil laughter, which could nearly take ten years off of your face, and more yet off your hands. “Nice soul,” would say her rape-eyed gaze, “I think I’ll take it! Good Sir, bag ‘er up!”
My sister introduced her; I’d assumed them to be friends, though they had met mere moments prior at the club. My roommate—hereafter referred to as the Drunken Sage—hurriedly called dibs on her, as I already had a girl that night; still, I found this new arrival eerily curious. Despite luring her home into our basement grindhouse filth n’ film-room, the slurring Sage struck out; we all assumed this was the end.
Tense weeks rolled past, and the girl I’d gone to bed with was past-tense. Suddenly, as if on cue...manna from Hell: God sends quail, and the Devil sent a message, then a text. I hadn’t recalled getting her number…but I looked, and there it was. She’d even tracked me down online. She asked if anything was going on; and by evening’s end…there was. Little would I suspect that it would likewise be ongoing, in the maddening months to come before it all went down.
To those that knew me, she seemed like an unlikely choice: entirely too young, unfathomably out of place, and though attractive, hardly my “type” at even second glance. Full-figured and a fraction taller, she had a curious combination of features, with her deep-set eyes, eternally-flared nostrils, long devilish grin, and this certain look of looking uncertain…a gaze that registered as either heartfelt or heartless, malevolent or maladroit, terrified or aroused—or maybe just a little bit of both.
She was awkward unto awe, aloof and yet alluring, bravely assertive with a perpetually-frightened stare…indifferent and disinterested—despite whatever interest that she stirred, or difference that she made. So graceless and indelicate in all her movements, it only seemed to make her strangely more endearing in my increasingly confounded eyes…
She slept haphazardly, as if recalling horrific crimescenes for a court: limbs sprawled in all directions, mouth agape, with her tongue slumped out the side…one tit hanging out, and one leg hanging halfway off the bed, her tattered fishnets snagging on my bedframe as she flipped and flopped—still dreaming—like a fish thrown in a boat. I was bizarrely smitten. Though she’d rolled over and across me throughout the night, she finally—accidentally—threw her arm across my chest and gradually slumped inward towards me; it wasn’t quite a snuggle, but it would do. And as I laid back, equal parts bemused/confused, I thought, “Oh bloody hell…why her? Oh fuck, I am so screwed…”
***
She was definitely a “project” girlfriend. She’d been hurt, misused, abused, and traumatized beyond reasonable articulation. She was frequently physically distant, and emotionally demanding; romantic sentiments were hard-earned, though we talked and laughed for hours daily. She was clinically bipolar, unmedicated, with tendencies toward dissociation—her opinions about any one thing or person could change wildly, based on her mood, or with whom the subject was discussed. It all required a savage patience few might have possessed. But I felt uniquely qualified—as if our unlikely pairing was somehow necessary… Yet, I remained unsure whether this was because she really needed “saving,” or rather because—a decade past that first and last disaster, the Alpha & Omega of doomed romance that forged so much of what I had become—I still desperately needed somebody to save. Truly, did she need the “salvation” of someone patient and devoted enough to care for her unconditionally…or (given my history) did I merely need the “redemption” of providing it?
Regardless, over the weeks and months that followed, I felt a certain vindication with every change I slowly saw in her, every blessed inch of progress—no matter how much grief it had entailed. Things were far from perfect; but it was that one rare perfect moment that eternally erased all others. The impossible had occurred, with every denizen of Hell a snowcone in their hands: some weird and troubled girl had unknowingly inspired a hardened, selfish, drunken, womanizing, ranting addict toward an equally weird and troubled attempt at being a fiercely determined romantic. I wasn’t very good at it; but it was something few before her had experienced from me.
Naturally, you know what must come next.
***
I’m not sure about “love,” but I do know denial.
There is little more embarrassing than not knowing when to end things…except, perhaps, the failure to recognize when something has already ended.
Love is a cattlefield, and my sexlife needed way more cowbell. A relationship without sex is like working as a cook in a restaurant that doesn’t let you eat. My gal had cut me off of late, with some new excuse or strange “emergency” each night. I’d been patient in recent weeks, but my frustration was fully erect, and my edginess was showing through my jeans. She didn’t seem to want me; but neither did she want me gone, or with somebody else. But then again…a girl changes her mind like she changes out a tampon; and when she says she wants you, that only really means she wants you now. Tomorrow, a dog will bark, there will be clouds in the sky, and she’ll decide that she’d be happier with pads.
And when a woman says, “I think we should see other people,” know within your broken heart of hearts that she most surely has someone in mind…
My dearest Poison Girl always held a mighty Cock Harem of platonic manchild man-friends, mostly gay or swishing gently towards it. But lately, she’d come to spend most waking hours with her newest guy-pal, Jon. This one only looked gay …wire-limbed and fragile—100 pounds at best—with thick Costello glasses, gently receding hairline and this toothy leer that vaguely creeped me out. They’d become fast friends, she said, because he had many if not most of the same interests and qualities that I did…except he was “successful,” with a great job, nice apartment, and a car. He was also closer to her age, and somewhat more her “type,” which apparently consisted of nerdy effeminate concentration camp victims in faded indie-rock shirts, who look liked they hung out at the public library, pouring over crumpled issues of Nintendo Power, when not jerking off to Hentai in the stall.
This is to say, that something was afoot in the game at hand—and I knew up front who didn’t have my back.
There’s no such thing as a single woman, even if they’re only “married” to ideals. Most romance is only “storybook” if the story involves settling for the least of mankind’s evils in pursuit of life ambition, social validation, and hormonal dictates, in a book about Gynocracy, emasculation, death and bitter loss.
Companionship is always weighed against convenience. It has been my experience that many women will endure abusive relationships, loveless marriages, or date men who are ugly, stupid, assholes, jerks and worse, provided they are self-sufficient, able to kill spiders, and possess a decent-looking vehicle that runs. A man can look like Johnny Depp and fuck like Peter North, with dreams like Martin Luther King, a MENSA-level intellect, and a diamond-plated cock…but for God and Lemmy’s sake, man: you gotta have a car.
I was broke and carless, broken, careless; I never stood a chance. So when her birthday fell on the day right before payday (during the roughest month I’d had in many moons), and it became clear that my attempts to stockpile pocket change were more embarrassing than sweet, I half-expected to be changing the ol’ relationship status on MySpace any day.
“What do you want for your birthday?” I’d asked.
“I already have plans,” she would reply.
“Well, I was going to…”
“You were going to take me somewhere cheap because you have no money, and then guilt me into sex. I’m sorry; I have other plans. Jon wants to take me somewhere really cool and I said ‘yes.’ We can do something this weekend; I promise I’ll call you later.”
Waves of humiliation and defeat would come to wash across my flailing ego like a wounded puppy drowning in a lake. When she called the morning after, she would still be at his house. After letting it slip that she’d passed out in his bed, she went about pre-chastising me about being “possessive” if I “went jumping to conclusions.”
From stranglehold to cuckold, I was out cold in a dead heat. It spun loudly in my head, with so much adoration spinning wildly in its grave. I only had to think about it:
She’s having lunch with strangers; she’s outsourced our ‘together time’ to friends. She’s breaking dates and sleeping somewhere else. She’s hiding texts and dodging questions. She pulls away from kisses; she turns away in bed. She never plans for futures we could share. She still calls me her lifeline…but she’s cut all other cords. And now this final insult: her birthday wish involved my absence, and the presence of another man, with whom she spent the night. Meanwhile, I’ve slept alone for weeks, drifting off to dream of better, as my roommates loudly fuck. Things couldn’t be more obvious; I was clearly being mocked. The winners had stepped forward, and begun to gloat.
I guess this is ‘game over,’ then; I’ve lost.
***
I’m not sure about “love,” but I do know desperation. I’ve come to know it Biblically, of late.
She is the sun in a horizon that I can’t see for the roof, the brightest star in a sky I’ll never find.
I’m exhausted deep inside, awake against my wish or will, by the rolling poison nervous surge of anxiety alone. Is tonight the night I’ve lost her, or has she been lost all along? Did she, in fact, have plans some night…or perhaps merely designs? Is she passed out in her own bed? Is she sharing it with someone else? And what else is she sharing—is someone getting something that I’m not? Is she saving up her best for something better-dressed…some suitor better suited for success? In the end, perhaps it’s that: less a fear of losing love, than of losing it to someone else. Was I just a last resort, or merely next at bat? I don’t care about the sex—we’re mammals; mammals fuck—but I’m consumed by the rejection it implies, the control so coldly stolen from my dreams...the failure left to simmer in my chest. It feels like something licking at your heart. Perhaps all’s fair in love and war; but it feels like theft and murder when you’re curling up alone…wringing out a broken promise, just to wake up on the wronged side of the bed.
I’ve lost a game I never knew we played; I’ve broken rules never agreed to, and angered her with words only implied between the lines—and worse yet, in a book I’ve never read.
Home is where the heart is, and I think we’ve got black mold.
***
I’m not sure about “love,” but I do know dependency.
Even the monkeys on my back must live in constant terror of the demons in my head.
When we think about our lovers, we feel that warm, sweet glow…that gentle wash across the frontal lobe, swabbing out the angst and cobwebs from our otherwise lonely, desperate minds...a stubborn, willful, wanton brave euphoria…and yet…lurking behind the curtain of its comforts, there lie a certain paranoia of romance, an unsettling, deeply-nested morbid fear of losing the peace and happiness it brought—a special sort of panic, a need to know that we will always have our fix regardless of the breaks And what was this strange flickering within? That rising heat of comfort and excitement in the chest, a certain tweaker pitter-patter that I hadn’t felt since the haze of my sleepless, spun, and dope-addled Lost Weekend years of long before, wherein this feeling, glow, and confidence could be purchased by the gram. That was it, I thought: I know this feeling…dear Sweet Pickled Jesus, holy anamnesis—now I get it…I remember what this feels like now…I’m high.
The mind releases dopamines when we dwell upon romance. The urge that I must have this, keep this, salvage and maintain this…the panic and despair that rides even the faint hint of its loss…it’s a drug. It’s just a fucking drug. My mind was making opiates, keeping me docile and sedated, that Nature might have its way with me—in the name of procreation and the survival of our kind—and mold me to its will against my own.
I have plans and ambitions; I don’t want to settle down. But I remember those before me—young girls I’d met on crystal meth, renting out their sloppy ditches for another day that prolonged the inevitable, and kept their cold hearts numb; they had plans once, too. They wanted to be lawyers, doctors, wives to self-made men and senators, living in Barbie’s dream house with a dog. And there they were, drop-outs taking in-calls, club-rats in a cheesy scene, empty shells and blowjob queens. And we were nothing greater, outside those stray and restless evenings one would choose us to be king.
This isn’t real, I tell myself—it’s all just a mirage, a hormone-driven glamory, a pheromonal haze. It’s just another drug like any other—except this dope is mostly cooked in-house, by the pushers of our very glands. I must resist this. It isn’t real. It’s a drug…only a drug.
But like any other instance, I’m consumed by my addictions.
***
I’m not sure about “love,” but I do know expectations.
Love, if it is real, is an all-consuming fire; and the best most lovers hope for is to leave this world a smoking husk.
That is, except for those of us without a car.
It's not that I'm afraid that love is “real,” so much as I'm afraid that it is likewise really not enough. It’s not that I can’t stop believing; the problem is that I can’t stop wanting to believe. I lose my faith rather religiously, it seems. Every refuge has its price, and every one of our “beliefs” contains a “lie.” But from sun up to pants-down, all we want is something to make us feel like…something, nothing more.
I mean, pending credit history and criminal background checks, of course.
Truly, what is romance but the synergy and symphony of two souls completely using one another, until we’re heart-beaten into one hot-blooded yet cold-hearted sweet-fleshed meat-machine—careswept with a molten core, making love and weaving dreams, creating distance with our closeness, assembling our alibis and manufacturing intent, forging artificial joy and only sometimes-artificial tears?*
*Offer not valid in Missouri. All applicants must meet minimum income requirements, and provide proof of insurance.
Have you been at your current residence for at least one year? Y__ N__
Are you legally entitled to work in the United States? Y__ N__
Are you at least 18 years of age or older? Y__ N__
Date available for employment? _____
Either love is real, but only lent at great and terrible cost, to those willing, thirsty, and desperate enough to face a maze of death and endless games, gambles and challenges that I am unable—by default and by design—to ever truly win, existing solely at the detriment of peace and hope…or love is merely chemical and fiction, a convenience of speech, a concession to the mysticism—incessant and unchallenged—inherent in our language: the metaphors we live by, the idioms that shape our thought, the anthems that proclaim unquestioned triumph, the lullabies the sirens sing to lull our minds and wills to sleep.
I’d rather be sucked off than sucked in…
But I took her in…I took it on. I took a shot, and caught a bullet in the chest.
***
I’m not sure about “love,” but I do know religion.
I haven’t believed in much of anything in years, but when I contemplate my attitude throughout this confusing time of seemingly new sensations, I realize I had very much fallen back upon the last model of affection I’d been taught…despite my general vehemence toward Christendom, I’d come to rely heavily upon its framework of unconditional love, unwarranted compassion, patience, forgiveness, etc., because it was familiar—the first and only model that I really understood. In retrospect, it only really hastened my damnation, and amplified the hellfire within.
Christianity is incompatible with the dynamics of modern romance: no “love” is ever unconditional, and forgiveness is seen as frailty, itself quite unforgivable—dependent on the cruelty of either gender’s whims. Think about it: Within the confines of Evangelical Christianity, forgiveness is the highest virtue. It is a beacon of “Christ-like” love, compassion, maturity, self-discipline, and strength. It is greeted with unfathomable respect.
For instance, let’s say the pastor’s wife disgraces him: she screws 37 scabies-ridden Eskimos while still wearing the flayed and bloody skin-suit of mangled number 38, before selling off her wedding ring for crack cocaine and a cool Colt 45; she then skewers the family dog alive above a flaming pyre crackling with the boiling blood-snaps of a hundred crisping fetuses—lightly-seasoned, and some still screaming; furthermore, these flailing fetid fetuses—resulting from the forced at-gunpoint couplings of 15-year-old Mongoloids with the weeping alto section of a largely forty-something Mormon choir—have all been forcibly aborted by her own blood/sweat/booze/puke/yak semen-encrusted hands, which still tremble from the thrill of all her fornications, scat-incest-and-snuff fixations, global Satanic child abuse, and Illuminati jack-off sessions…and with the filthiest, rustiest, most AIDS-ridden coat-hangers that liberal Jewish homosexuals working for the ACLU would sell her in the name of Allah, mighty Nyarlathotep, and Hillary.
She’s had a very full night, but hey now—who are we to judge? She claims to have repented—for even Christ was tempted, and we all have bouts of weakness now and then; Scripture dictates we forgive, and the apostle Paul himself wrote that “there are none righteous; no, not one.”
So what, now, happens should her poor, sweet pastor-husband forgive her of this “backsliding,” and perhaps welcome her back with open arms, a gentle, caring smile, and love unfailing, that she may walk as a new creation in Christ and sin no more? How does his faithful flock receive this choice? The man becomes an inspiration. He is a hero among mortals, selfless and strong enough to put his own emotions, needs, and pride behind him. He is respected for his saintly grace.
But in this world—that ball beyond their Bible’s bubble—if a man were to forgive his cheating or neglectful girlfriend, he is seen as weak, sniveling, and passive. Should she leave and he pursues her, he is a shit-stained doormat, to be trod upon and snidely dissed. The girl neither loves nor respects him for the grace he has extended. Rather, it becomes an invitation for more and greater levels of abuse. And the greatest of these evils, ever-increasing liberties, and soon-to-be-unceasing future horrors will be this: that he shall somehow believe he is appreciated, needed, or loved back.
I had come to consider that I was both smitten and smote—doomed to adore some plump n’ buxom archetype of old Hosea’s wife, in some smirking celestial punishment for all I’d done to womankind thus far. I couldn’t let this go. If I’d finally found my heart, now it was high time to find my balls.
Bitch was going down—that’s all there was to it. I’d tried twice that month to leave her…but a tear, a wink, that smile, a seemingly heartfelt apology, with cold and concessionary apologetic intercourse to follow…I fell for these routinely as if falling piss-drunk down a well. This time, I would dismiss the miss of duties in the comfort of my safe-haven of then—namely, I would drag the hag to Dante’s, a club wherein I felt hometeam advantage. The Crüxshadows would be playing there on Monday—or at least they’d be pretending to, whilst their gangly singer lip-synched and hopped about with bike lights on his arms. Truly, what was more appropriate than ending my sham of a relationship and closing out my faith in the Noble Lie of “love,” than to do so at the beginning of some sham of a goth show wherein the band closes out the place with the Noble Lie it’s live?
***
It was settled, though I veered closer to “un”: It was a transitional state of shock, and I was merely succubusted in the end. I was only panty-wasted from the start. I had clearly mistaken a good time and the random swish of dopamines for this mystical L-word ideal…she was utterly aloof, distant, frigid, and clearly cheating on me…and I was going to confront and break it off with her at Dante’s, during the Crüxshadows’ fiasco. This whole endeavor made me feel like I was 14 again, breaking up with that Erickson girl on the bus. I felt almost embarrassed. Afterall…the only thing more embarrassing than not knowing when to end things, or not noticing when something is already gone, is a grown man acting like he’s never had his heart ripped out before, or like he’s the only one it’s ever happened to…
Before we left that night, I psyched myself up in the mirror: I’m a fucking adult, and she’s a fucking child. I’ll get over it. So what?—Not everything works out; not everything that sparks is meant to be. It’s time to cut my losses, and move on. This was never who I was. This was never truly real. The only chemistry between us came in capsule form. I’m not even that attracted to her. She’s a backwards giggling harpy, a wretched post-teen sociopath who is incapable of genuine affection without sustained self-interest, or endless years of therapy. She never truly cared about me. The instant that I see her, I’ll be so consumed with righteous indignation that any lingering attraction or possible regrets will seem like little more than pissdrops on crotchwhiskers. I can stop acting like a neurotic High School kid now—this is going to be a fucking piece of cake. This is ridiculous. What could possibly go wrong with this?
I turned back at my reflection. “Yeah,” I muttered, “a total 9th Grade level…”
TO BE CONTINUED…
)+(
It was the last days of our last mistake, and we were both the other person’s last resort. Indeed—in fact, alas—months into our madness, her love was only like a prayer in that she never fucking listened either...and really, nor did I. At the end of our run, there would be no runner’s high; instead there would only be another high in lows…
She shall be known here as “Mary Moistpoison,” and elsewhere, some things likely far, far worse. Call her what you will; just try not to call her often, lest her curse be visited upon thee and thy household.
The girl can wreck a home like I can wreck a womb, and I pity any child that calls her womb a home.
Every cursed bastard seemed to want her; but sadly, I was the bastard cursed among all others seemingly to need her. And I certainly never wanted—and prayed I never needed—her to ever be "the one."
It was a fling that just kept flinging things upon me...seemingly romantic glares that stared back coldly from the depths of her abyss. I never thought I'd want to keep her, or anyone for that matter. I had dropped the dreaded "L bomb" to only three girls in my life, and only really meant it twice. This was just a wet hole in a dry season—right?—a torrential downpour, a sensual upswing…an oasis in an "oh" face, in some throbbing time of desolation. There could certainly never be another L-bomb from this grizzled cynic's lips… And when said cynic's lips touched hers again strange weeks ahead, that wretched frigid wench could never be dreaded Girl Three—feared in the prophetic sense like the Third and Final Antichrist, correct? And denial...it is still firmly in Egypt, is it not?
***
I’m not sure about “love,” but I do know angst. I have a heart full of soul and a soul full of sin and the sort of things they hang men for down south.
Sometimes, one imagines that he or she is actually a good person who merely does bad things now and again; othertimes, it seems very much reversed—that one is, at blackened core, a considerably bad person who only occasionally fails at evil or, by some cruel and playful whim, does something right. And rarely have I been exactly confident as to whither side I've stood.
I’m well-meaning on occasion…depending on the meaning of “well,” and the occasion in question. My character can be summarized in one fell swoop: I lied my way into Bible College. Think about that one.
There are elements of my life I’m obviously not proud of, which occupy some strange nightmarish place between Fear & Loathing and Curb Your Enthusiasm. I’m not even a good anti-hero; I’m really just a prick. I'm selfish, irresponsible, and frequently insane—and this by my own standards. It’s not that there isn’t method in my madness; it’s simply that my madness frequently overwhelms my methodology.
This is all to say, of course, that there are reasons why I’m frequently alone.
After my first traumatic romance, I disconnected from the concept of it all. Over the course of the next few years, I’d discovered club scenes, drug scenes, and crime scenes. I never “dated” anyone, but rather, semi-drunkenly stumbled up a ladder of unremarkable vaginas, or had random flings with friends. Even then, I was never quite a seducer so much as I am simply an excellent salesman. My point is that, at my age, I face a strange dichotomy: I’ve racked up years of sexcapades, but have the actual dating habits of an awkward 9th grader.
I don’t really “date,” so much as I merely choose the form of my destroyer, Ghostbusters-style.
Alas, there is no love; there is only Zuul.
***
I’m not sure about “love,” but I do know “dirty.”
I felt like a dirty old man, but then, as most dirty old men will tell you, the night is always young—though likely not as young as she was when we met. Truth be told, dating women my own age grows less fun by the year: Women my age are more like ogres—all they want is gold and babies.
But this girl was dynamic, euphoric, and eccentric all in arbitrary spurts—an utterly engaging, almost mystically-adorable little trainwreck with an equally adorable caboose, and the heaviest, most intensely overwhelming pheromones to ever drift my way—so much so, that I frequently found it difficult to concentrate in her presence. Irresistibly-unhinged, cold yet giggly—bipolar in her charm…and when the poles aligned, she had the sort of youthful smiles and knowing smirks, shy winks and evil laughter, which could nearly take ten years off of your face, and more yet off your hands. “Nice soul,” would say her rape-eyed gaze, “I think I’ll take it! Good Sir, bag ‘er up!”
My sister introduced her; I’d assumed them to be friends, though they had met mere moments prior at the club. My roommate—hereafter referred to as the Drunken Sage—hurriedly called dibs on her, as I already had a girl that night; still, I found this new arrival eerily curious. Despite luring her home into our basement grindhouse filth n’ film-room, the slurring Sage struck out; we all assumed this was the end.
Tense weeks rolled past, and the girl I’d gone to bed with was past-tense. Suddenly, as if on cue...manna from Hell: God sends quail, and the Devil sent a message, then a text. I hadn’t recalled getting her number…but I looked, and there it was. She’d even tracked me down online. She asked if anything was going on; and by evening’s end…there was. Little would I suspect that it would likewise be ongoing, in the maddening months to come before it all went down.
To those that knew me, she seemed like an unlikely choice: entirely too young, unfathomably out of place, and though attractive, hardly my “type” at even second glance. Full-figured and a fraction taller, she had a curious combination of features, with her deep-set eyes, eternally-flared nostrils, long devilish grin, and this certain look of looking uncertain…a gaze that registered as either heartfelt or heartless, malevolent or maladroit, terrified or aroused—or maybe just a little bit of both.
She was awkward unto awe, aloof and yet alluring, bravely assertive with a perpetually-frightened stare…indifferent and disinterested—despite whatever interest that she stirred, or difference that she made. So graceless and indelicate in all her movements, it only seemed to make her strangely more endearing in my increasingly confounded eyes…
She slept haphazardly, as if recalling horrific crimescenes for a court: limbs sprawled in all directions, mouth agape, with her tongue slumped out the side…one tit hanging out, and one leg hanging halfway off the bed, her tattered fishnets snagging on my bedframe as she flipped and flopped—still dreaming—like a fish thrown in a boat. I was bizarrely smitten. Though she’d rolled over and across me throughout the night, she finally—accidentally—threw her arm across my chest and gradually slumped inward towards me; it wasn’t quite a snuggle, but it would do. And as I laid back, equal parts bemused/confused, I thought, “Oh bloody hell…why her? Oh fuck, I am so screwed…”
***
She was definitely a “project” girlfriend. She’d been hurt, misused, abused, and traumatized beyond reasonable articulation. She was frequently physically distant, and emotionally demanding; romantic sentiments were hard-earned, though we talked and laughed for hours daily. She was clinically bipolar, unmedicated, with tendencies toward dissociation—her opinions about any one thing or person could change wildly, based on her mood, or with whom the subject was discussed. It all required a savage patience few might have possessed. But I felt uniquely qualified—as if our unlikely pairing was somehow necessary… Yet, I remained unsure whether this was because she really needed “saving,” or rather because—a decade past that first and last disaster, the Alpha & Omega of doomed romance that forged so much of what I had become—I still desperately needed somebody to save. Truly, did she need the “salvation” of someone patient and devoted enough to care for her unconditionally…or (given my history) did I merely need the “redemption” of providing it?
Regardless, over the weeks and months that followed, I felt a certain vindication with every change I slowly saw in her, every blessed inch of progress—no matter how much grief it had entailed. Things were far from perfect; but it was that one rare perfect moment that eternally erased all others. The impossible had occurred, with every denizen of Hell a snowcone in their hands: some weird and troubled girl had unknowingly inspired a hardened, selfish, drunken, womanizing, ranting addict toward an equally weird and troubled attempt at being a fiercely determined romantic. I wasn’t very good at it; but it was something few before her had experienced from me.
Naturally, you know what must come next.
***
I’m not sure about “love,” but I do know denial.
There is little more embarrassing than not knowing when to end things…except, perhaps, the failure to recognize when something has already ended.
Love is a cattlefield, and my sexlife needed way more cowbell. A relationship without sex is like working as a cook in a restaurant that doesn’t let you eat. My gal had cut me off of late, with some new excuse or strange “emergency” each night. I’d been patient in recent weeks, but my frustration was fully erect, and my edginess was showing through my jeans. She didn’t seem to want me; but neither did she want me gone, or with somebody else. But then again…a girl changes her mind like she changes out a tampon; and when she says she wants you, that only really means she wants you now. Tomorrow, a dog will bark, there will be clouds in the sky, and she’ll decide that she’d be happier with pads.
And when a woman says, “I think we should see other people,” know within your broken heart of hearts that she most surely has someone in mind…
My dearest Poison Girl always held a mighty Cock Harem of platonic manchild man-friends, mostly gay or swishing gently towards it. But lately, she’d come to spend most waking hours with her newest guy-pal, Jon. This one only looked gay …wire-limbed and fragile—100 pounds at best—with thick Costello glasses, gently receding hairline and this toothy leer that vaguely creeped me out. They’d become fast friends, she said, because he had many if not most of the same interests and qualities that I did…except he was “successful,” with a great job, nice apartment, and a car. He was also closer to her age, and somewhat more her “type,” which apparently consisted of nerdy effeminate concentration camp victims in faded indie-rock shirts, who look liked they hung out at the public library, pouring over crumpled issues of Nintendo Power, when not jerking off to Hentai in the stall.
This is to say, that something was afoot in the game at hand—and I knew up front who didn’t have my back.
There’s no such thing as a single woman, even if they’re only “married” to ideals. Most romance is only “storybook” if the story involves settling for the least of mankind’s evils in pursuit of life ambition, social validation, and hormonal dictates, in a book about Gynocracy, emasculation, death and bitter loss.
Companionship is always weighed against convenience. It has been my experience that many women will endure abusive relationships, loveless marriages, or date men who are ugly, stupid, assholes, jerks and worse, provided they are self-sufficient, able to kill spiders, and possess a decent-looking vehicle that runs. A man can look like Johnny Depp and fuck like Peter North, with dreams like Martin Luther King, a MENSA-level intellect, and a diamond-plated cock…but for God and Lemmy’s sake, man: you gotta have a car.
I was broke and carless, broken, careless; I never stood a chance. So when her birthday fell on the day right before payday (during the roughest month I’d had in many moons), and it became clear that my attempts to stockpile pocket change were more embarrassing than sweet, I half-expected to be changing the ol’ relationship status on MySpace any day.
“What do you want for your birthday?” I’d asked.
“I already have plans,” she would reply.
“Well, I was going to…”
“You were going to take me somewhere cheap because you have no money, and then guilt me into sex. I’m sorry; I have other plans. Jon wants to take me somewhere really cool and I said ‘yes.’ We can do something this weekend; I promise I’ll call you later.”
Waves of humiliation and defeat would come to wash across my flailing ego like a wounded puppy drowning in a lake. When she called the morning after, she would still be at his house. After letting it slip that she’d passed out in his bed, she went about pre-chastising me about being “possessive” if I “went jumping to conclusions.”
From stranglehold to cuckold, I was out cold in a dead heat. It spun loudly in my head, with so much adoration spinning wildly in its grave. I only had to think about it:
She’s having lunch with strangers; she’s outsourced our ‘together time’ to friends. She’s breaking dates and sleeping somewhere else. She’s hiding texts and dodging questions. She pulls away from kisses; she turns away in bed. She never plans for futures we could share. She still calls me her lifeline…but she’s cut all other cords. And now this final insult: her birthday wish involved my absence, and the presence of another man, with whom she spent the night. Meanwhile, I’ve slept alone for weeks, drifting off to dream of better, as my roommates loudly fuck. Things couldn’t be more obvious; I was clearly being mocked. The winners had stepped forward, and begun to gloat.
I guess this is ‘game over,’ then; I’ve lost.
***
I’m not sure about “love,” but I do know desperation. I’ve come to know it Biblically, of late.
She is the sun in a horizon that I can’t see for the roof, the brightest star in a sky I’ll never find.
I’m exhausted deep inside, awake against my wish or will, by the rolling poison nervous surge of anxiety alone. Is tonight the night I’ve lost her, or has she been lost all along? Did she, in fact, have plans some night…or perhaps merely designs? Is she passed out in her own bed? Is she sharing it with someone else? And what else is she sharing—is someone getting something that I’m not? Is she saving up her best for something better-dressed…some suitor better suited for success? In the end, perhaps it’s that: less a fear of losing love, than of losing it to someone else. Was I just a last resort, or merely next at bat? I don’t care about the sex—we’re mammals; mammals fuck—but I’m consumed by the rejection it implies, the control so coldly stolen from my dreams...the failure left to simmer in my chest. It feels like something licking at your heart. Perhaps all’s fair in love and war; but it feels like theft and murder when you’re curling up alone…wringing out a broken promise, just to wake up on the wronged side of the bed.
I’ve lost a game I never knew we played; I’ve broken rules never agreed to, and angered her with words only implied between the lines—and worse yet, in a book I’ve never read.
Home is where the heart is, and I think we’ve got black mold.
***
I’m not sure about “love,” but I do know dependency.
Even the monkeys on my back must live in constant terror of the demons in my head.
When we think about our lovers, we feel that warm, sweet glow…that gentle wash across the frontal lobe, swabbing out the angst and cobwebs from our otherwise lonely, desperate minds...a stubborn, willful, wanton brave euphoria…and yet…lurking behind the curtain of its comforts, there lie a certain paranoia of romance, an unsettling, deeply-nested morbid fear of losing the peace and happiness it brought—a special sort of panic, a need to know that we will always have our fix regardless of the breaks And what was this strange flickering within? That rising heat of comfort and excitement in the chest, a certain tweaker pitter-patter that I hadn’t felt since the haze of my sleepless, spun, and dope-addled Lost Weekend years of long before, wherein this feeling, glow, and confidence could be purchased by the gram. That was it, I thought: I know this feeling…dear Sweet Pickled Jesus, holy anamnesis—now I get it…I remember what this feels like now…I’m high.
The mind releases dopamines when we dwell upon romance. The urge that I must have this, keep this, salvage and maintain this…the panic and despair that rides even the faint hint of its loss…it’s a drug. It’s just a fucking drug. My mind was making opiates, keeping me docile and sedated, that Nature might have its way with me—in the name of procreation and the survival of our kind—and mold me to its will against my own.
I have plans and ambitions; I don’t want to settle down. But I remember those before me—young girls I’d met on crystal meth, renting out their sloppy ditches for another day that prolonged the inevitable, and kept their cold hearts numb; they had plans once, too. They wanted to be lawyers, doctors, wives to self-made men and senators, living in Barbie’s dream house with a dog. And there they were, drop-outs taking in-calls, club-rats in a cheesy scene, empty shells and blowjob queens. And we were nothing greater, outside those stray and restless evenings one would choose us to be king.
This isn’t real, I tell myself—it’s all just a mirage, a hormone-driven glamory, a pheromonal haze. It’s just another drug like any other—except this dope is mostly cooked in-house, by the pushers of our very glands. I must resist this. It isn’t real. It’s a drug…only a drug.
But like any other instance, I’m consumed by my addictions.
***
I’m not sure about “love,” but I do know expectations.
Love, if it is real, is an all-consuming fire; and the best most lovers hope for is to leave this world a smoking husk.
That is, except for those of us without a car.
It's not that I'm afraid that love is “real,” so much as I'm afraid that it is likewise really not enough. It’s not that I can’t stop believing; the problem is that I can’t stop wanting to believe. I lose my faith rather religiously, it seems. Every refuge has its price, and every one of our “beliefs” contains a “lie.” But from sun up to pants-down, all we want is something to make us feel like…something, nothing more.
I mean, pending credit history and criminal background checks, of course.
Truly, what is romance but the synergy and symphony of two souls completely using one another, until we’re heart-beaten into one hot-blooded yet cold-hearted sweet-fleshed meat-machine—careswept with a molten core, making love and weaving dreams, creating distance with our closeness, assembling our alibis and manufacturing intent, forging artificial joy and only sometimes-artificial tears?*
*Offer not valid in Missouri. All applicants must meet minimum income requirements, and provide proof of insurance.
Have you been at your current residence for at least one year? Y__ N__
Are you legally entitled to work in the United States? Y__ N__
Are you at least 18 years of age or older? Y__ N__
Date available for employment? _____
Either love is real, but only lent at great and terrible cost, to those willing, thirsty, and desperate enough to face a maze of death and endless games, gambles and challenges that I am unable—by default and by design—to ever truly win, existing solely at the detriment of peace and hope…or love is merely chemical and fiction, a convenience of speech, a concession to the mysticism—incessant and unchallenged—inherent in our language: the metaphors we live by, the idioms that shape our thought, the anthems that proclaim unquestioned triumph, the lullabies the sirens sing to lull our minds and wills to sleep.
I’d rather be sucked off than sucked in…
But I took her in…I took it on. I took a shot, and caught a bullet in the chest.
***
I’m not sure about “love,” but I do know religion.
I haven’t believed in much of anything in years, but when I contemplate my attitude throughout this confusing time of seemingly new sensations, I realize I had very much fallen back upon the last model of affection I’d been taught…despite my general vehemence toward Christendom, I’d come to rely heavily upon its framework of unconditional love, unwarranted compassion, patience, forgiveness, etc., because it was familiar—the first and only model that I really understood. In retrospect, it only really hastened my damnation, and amplified the hellfire within.
Christianity is incompatible with the dynamics of modern romance: no “love” is ever unconditional, and forgiveness is seen as frailty, itself quite unforgivable—dependent on the cruelty of either gender’s whims. Think about it: Within the confines of Evangelical Christianity, forgiveness is the highest virtue. It is a beacon of “Christ-like” love, compassion, maturity, self-discipline, and strength. It is greeted with unfathomable respect.
For instance, let’s say the pastor’s wife disgraces him: she screws 37 scabies-ridden Eskimos while still wearing the flayed and bloody skin-suit of mangled number 38, before selling off her wedding ring for crack cocaine and a cool Colt 45; she then skewers the family dog alive above a flaming pyre crackling with the boiling blood-snaps of a hundred crisping fetuses—lightly-seasoned, and some still screaming; furthermore, these flailing fetid fetuses—resulting from the forced at-gunpoint couplings of 15-year-old Mongoloids with the weeping alto section of a largely forty-something Mormon choir—have all been forcibly aborted by her own blood/sweat/booze/puke/yak semen-encrusted hands, which still tremble from the thrill of all her fornications, scat-incest-and-snuff fixations, global Satanic child abuse, and Illuminati jack-off sessions…and with the filthiest, rustiest, most AIDS-ridden coat-hangers that liberal Jewish homosexuals working for the ACLU would sell her in the name of Allah, mighty Nyarlathotep, and Hillary.
She’s had a very full night, but hey now—who are we to judge? She claims to have repented—for even Christ was tempted, and we all have bouts of weakness now and then; Scripture dictates we forgive, and the apostle Paul himself wrote that “there are none righteous; no, not one.”
So what, now, happens should her poor, sweet pastor-husband forgive her of this “backsliding,” and perhaps welcome her back with open arms, a gentle, caring smile, and love unfailing, that she may walk as a new creation in Christ and sin no more? How does his faithful flock receive this choice? The man becomes an inspiration. He is a hero among mortals, selfless and strong enough to put his own emotions, needs, and pride behind him. He is respected for his saintly grace.
But in this world—that ball beyond their Bible’s bubble—if a man were to forgive his cheating or neglectful girlfriend, he is seen as weak, sniveling, and passive. Should she leave and he pursues her, he is a shit-stained doormat, to be trod upon and snidely dissed. The girl neither loves nor respects him for the grace he has extended. Rather, it becomes an invitation for more and greater levels of abuse. And the greatest of these evils, ever-increasing liberties, and soon-to-be-unceasing future horrors will be this: that he shall somehow believe he is appreciated, needed, or loved back.
I had come to consider that I was both smitten and smote—doomed to adore some plump n’ buxom archetype of old Hosea’s wife, in some smirking celestial punishment for all I’d done to womankind thus far. I couldn’t let this go. If I’d finally found my heart, now it was high time to find my balls.
Bitch was going down—that’s all there was to it. I’d tried twice that month to leave her…but a tear, a wink, that smile, a seemingly heartfelt apology, with cold and concessionary apologetic intercourse to follow…I fell for these routinely as if falling piss-drunk down a well. This time, I would dismiss the miss of duties in the comfort of my safe-haven of then—namely, I would drag the hag to Dante’s, a club wherein I felt hometeam advantage. The Crüxshadows would be playing there on Monday—or at least they’d be pretending to, whilst their gangly singer lip-synched and hopped about with bike lights on his arms. Truly, what was more appropriate than ending my sham of a relationship and closing out my faith in the Noble Lie of “love,” than to do so at the beginning of some sham of a goth show wherein the band closes out the place with the Noble Lie it’s live?
***
It was settled, though I veered closer to “un”: It was a transitional state of shock, and I was merely succubusted in the end. I was only panty-wasted from the start. I had clearly mistaken a good time and the random swish of dopamines for this mystical L-word ideal…she was utterly aloof, distant, frigid, and clearly cheating on me…and I was going to confront and break it off with her at Dante’s, during the Crüxshadows’ fiasco. This whole endeavor made me feel like I was 14 again, breaking up with that Erickson girl on the bus. I felt almost embarrassed. Afterall…the only thing more embarrassing than not knowing when to end things, or not noticing when something is already gone, is a grown man acting like he’s never had his heart ripped out before, or like he’s the only one it’s ever happened to…
Before we left that night, I psyched myself up in the mirror: I’m a fucking adult, and she’s a fucking child. I’ll get over it. So what?—Not everything works out; not everything that sparks is meant to be. It’s time to cut my losses, and move on. This was never who I was. This was never truly real. The only chemistry between us came in capsule form. I’m not even that attracted to her. She’s a backwards giggling harpy, a wretched post-teen sociopath who is incapable of genuine affection without sustained self-interest, or endless years of therapy. She never truly cared about me. The instant that I see her, I’ll be so consumed with righteous indignation that any lingering attraction or possible regrets will seem like little more than pissdrops on crotchwhiskers. I can stop acting like a neurotic High School kid now—this is going to be a fucking piece of cake. This is ridiculous. What could possibly go wrong with this?
I turned back at my reflection. “Yeah,” I muttered, “a total 9th Grade level…”
TO BE CONTINUED…
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posted by GABRIEL C. ZOLMAN @ 7:06 AM
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