Battle Fatigue

I return from the field with the spoils of war in hand, blood-spattered but head held high. My tight smile stays firmly in place as I march past the waving and cheering ghosts. They, the apparitions, are the reasons for this war. I fought for them, for their pleasure, for their pride, for their ego gratification. They know they need to show their gratitude now. Because they know the truth behind the frozen grin and stiff-gaited step. They know that the blood is not the enemy’s. They know that no prisoners were taken because I am too weak, too tired, too drained to hold the vanquished in restraint.

Behind the bluster, beneath the bravado, my victory is hollow and futile. The white flag was hoisted with a look of pity and compassion in your eye. You gave in more than you gave way. Your words say that I have won, but you have offered no guarantee, no promise besides the immediacy of your surrender. From the moment you handed me your weapon, you knew and I knew that capitulation was one way out, one way of stopping the bloodshed, one way of creating a diversion to make full and utter retreat possible.

I carry on holding the weapon and the flag before me as evidence of my strength and my power. You and I know the truth, though.  We both know that domination is only possible with willing submission. If you are gone, and you are indeed long gone, no ground has been gained. But at least the battle is over.

War Zone

We pretend not to be at war. We wear our mufti, and keep our camouflage well hidden at the back of our closets, accessible but invisible. We disguise our weapons with the prettiest of words. We hide our wounds well beneath the tinkling laughter. You’d never know that we’ve left a path of destruction in our wake. The bodies are carefully interred, the blood stains covered with flowers and delicate objets d’art.

The truth is that I am broken, and tired of the fight. I wish for nothing more than to raise my white flag, acknowledge my surrender. The price in casualties has been too high. I no longer have the strength to keep this battle going. The screams are becoming deafening. I am confused, and don’t know which way to run off the field.

How about you? Are you exhausted in your bones the way that I am? Do you dream of peace and tranquility? Are you willing to do anything to make our gentle appearances reality? You can. All you need to do is give up. Admit that I have conquered you. Make me the victor, grant me the spoils. That’s all it will take.

Otherwise, I will continue to ignore the begging of every nerve and impulse in me to be done with this. I can keep this up forever, if I have to. I can sustain this beautiful pretense for as long as it takes. Keep fighting if you wish. It doesn’t matter. Eventually, I will win.

Cut & Paste

The insides of my mind are covered in wallpaper paste, with bits of torn up Deep Thoughts half glue-submerged and half blowing in the draught. I find a bit that says:

“you are totally exposed, open, pliant… the natural instinct is to protect you, cover you, shelter you”

which logically must go with:

“Yes … I remember trying to get a reaction out of you. You were very disciplined, and I felt like seeing where that might break down.”

but apparently doesn’t, because it can be summed up with:

“I think he gets protective of me because he thinks my vulnerability shouldn’t be exposed. I think other people want to try to expose it”.

which rather kills the discussion dead. Trawling through reasons why some people would want to break me down and others want to preserve my strength doesn’t really yield up anything particularly edifying about anyone much, so I end up abandoning that train of thought.

Then stuck to the glue I find a whole lot of prickly bits about fathers, the lack of, and Alpha Males, and things my daughter has to say about the kind of man she’s looking for (how come it took her 20 years less than it took me?). I could write a whole plethora of posts, I think happily, but they elude me.

I’m sucked into a black hole of advice-giving, which leads me to wonder why it is that every single man I’m involved with appears to have some inability to resist dingbats. Or is it me? No, apparently not: I’m the dingbat antidote, I’m told. But maybe this is because as an ex-dingbat I have the inside scoop on them, I’m subsequently told by someone else.

This morning a colleague asks me to be the union representative: I’m diplomatic, I don’t kiss ass, I’m not self-serving, I can say my piece, I don’t take sides, I can negotiate. Huh. So it’s only lovers who want to cut me off at the knees. Or alternatively, all the people I normally infuriate with my impartiality suddenly see how this can be turned to their advantage.

Underneath it all runs a little thread of worry and dread and anger, and that’s the mouldy paste my thoughts are sticking to – the things I don’t want to write, that pervade everything I do write.

Mea Culpa

To whom it may concern (if it does not concern you, then you need go no further — a lack of concern would only distress us both):

There’s something I need to tell you… a confession, if you will. In fact, I think of you as my virtual confessor. That makes sense, since everything we do together is virtual — confession, sex, gossip, fight. It’s all virtual. You’re virtual. But anyhow, dearest virtual one, here is my confession. I believe the world is ending. This may disturb you… either the fact that I believe this to be the case, or the fact of the ending itself. Either way, my confession has achieved its purpose. I may now pass my sense of responsibility on to you. You may choose to make me feel better about the ending of the world, or you may choose to prevent such an ending. Either way. Your problem now.

Oh, there’s more. I have another confession. I have deceived you with another (virtual) woman. Well, I assume she is a woman. She types as I imagine a woman would type. During our impassioned session of virtual lovemaking, she keyed in the appropriate sounds and reactions, so I can only assume that I have, in fact, deceived you. My previous declarations of undying virtual love are now to be considered null and void. Please tear up the contract. Then, please forgive me.

You have forgiven me? Then, I have another confession to make.  I am not who you believe me to be. I do not ride stallions majestically across the white sands. I will not, cannot, never intended to sweep you into my strong, sculpted, hirsute arms (sorry — I found the picture that I sent you on an anonymous blog about arm fetishes) and rescue you from the drudgery that is your so-called real life. There is very little in what I emailed you that is fact. I am really 14 years old, live in my parents’ basement, and masturbate nightly to that slightly blurry photo you sent me of you in that diaphanous white gown and silver stiletto heels.

Oh. Not really you? I am deceived. I am destroyed. I am devastated.

You are forgiven.

Easy

I’ve always had it easy, you know.  Everybody knows it, surely you should too.  It’s my special talent: I roll in the shit, and come up smelling of roses (it comes in a spray, you should try it): I fuck up my life and I get what I want (I box myself into a corner, and then I cry for help.  It usually works, you should try it).

Oh, I should wail, I should tear my hair out by the roots.  I should get out of bed and kick myself every morning.  I should be ever so humble, and I should repent.  I should smile with gratefulness, and not with pleasure.  I should repeat my litany of thankfulness, I should be so grateful for everything I have (but I am, that’s why I smile.  Why are you too stupid to see this?)

If I don’t cry out in pain, then I must not feel.  If I don’t confess, then I must not know the sins I have committed.  If I forgive myself first, then there must be something I don’t tell.

I keep it to myself.  I don’t tell anyone (but I do.  Just not you).

It’s not reaction you want, it’s the reaction you want that you want.  I think you’d back me up against every limit I have just to push me into something raw and real.  And yet I throw emotion at you, and you discard it: it’s not what I give you want, it’s what you want to take. (And then again, I know that’s unjust.  I know you’d give me good things if I asked for them.  But I won’t, and it infuriates you).

Real

On my end, the words appear on the white background, one letter at a time, staccato, clicking, high speed… the thoughts, ideas, expression of feelings and beliefs come from me, me the person, the whole person. My fingers and the computer are only the vehicle to tell him my story.

On his end, he sees my words one sentence at a time, appearing each time I hit enter. The words are the same as I have sent him… they still express me. That is my intention. I am sending him bits of me, telling him who I am, proving myself, telling, sharing. Sometime in that space, that invisible, instantaneous, non-existent piece of time, though, everything changes. The words become an illusion, the portrait of someone who doesn’t exist. The intentions disappear in subspace. The meanings dissipate. Somehow, the absence of flesh, and movement, and breath, and pulse, means that the fact of me is lost.

With that loss, my expectation and my assumption of being understood also disappear. Letters, black lines on white, words, punctuation, mean nothing, or maybe everything. My essence has gone missing somewhere between here and there.  I use the words to insist on my reality. But I am not believed. He can’t see me, so, to him, I am this pretty thing, and that exciting thing, and that other arousing thing, but really, if I am not me, I don’t exist.

You can get here from there

I have no idea what direction I’m coming from at the moment.  I’m OK at work – there I’m walking straight at you and I’ll be right up in your face if you don’t move.  Here and now… no idea.  No clue what’s going on in my head, although there seems to be some surface activity, doing the chitchat thing.  But really I keep wanting to say:  “What do you think I’m on?  Where do you think this stuff is coming from?  When do you think it’ll stop?”  And more than that: “Do you think it’ll do any good?  Is this all I’ve got, or is it just a symptom (this mental discharge)?”

I suppose I’ll know in a week or so, or I’ll just get used to it.  I suppose whatever direction I’m going in I’ll just keep going in.  I think I’m headed somewhere familiar, but I still wish I knew how I got here, or what way I’m facing.

The Time

For this one, for him, I disregard the distance; I take the map, look at the continents and the oceans, I crumple it in my hand, and I toss it carelessly into the bin. Pfft! What do kilometres mean to us? Not a thing. We live on our connection, our commonalities, our caresses, cyber though they be. Nothing stands between our traveling minds, our drifting thoughts. Right? Right?

Nothing stands between us but time. Ten years worth of time. A decade.

I entered the world to the sounds of “Downtown“.  For him, it was “Blitzkrieg Bop“. Think about it. My first moments were captured in black and white… by the time he came along, the colours of kodachrome were already long taken for granted.  I feathered my hair à la Farrah. He wore his sunglasses à la Bono. I nervously began life as a married wife and mother as he strode confidently through the doors of high school for the first time.

A decade. A world of time and experience. Does it matter? Is time a more significant measurement of distance than the number of miles between us? Yes. Time creates and describes the cavernous divide between the enthusiasm of first realizing opportunities, and the acceptance of those missed, between the need to grab and gain a strangle hold on every moment, and the knowledge that moments are plentiful and cruise by at just the right speed to judiciously choose or ignore. Time gives him a keen grin, me an indulgent smile. His present is my past, my present his future. Is there a plane, a boat, a bridge to close this gap?

At times the numbers are jumbled and meaningless, and float just out of reach, requiring no acknowledgment. But sometimes they sit between us like great, lumpy, uncomfortable couches upon which we continually stub our toes, endlessly in the way, always obvious, never attractive.  Right now, in this moment, with the reality before me, I can’t imagine a way of reaching across. Time travel is only a theoretical possibility after all, not an actual likelihood. He seems to have the key, though; his words momentarily create the wormhole that can take me to his time, or him to mine. If I take his hand, somewhere along that path, will the minutes and the years ignore us, let us find our own way? I want to say ‘time will tell’, but I have not found it particularly loquacious so far. I’m still listening, though.

The Distance

There is a distance, a number of inches, of miles, of kilometres, of light years, that is the limit presented to us. Within this distance, this is what we may think and feel about each other. Beyond that distance, there is a completely different definition of what may be experienced. Who decides on the standards? Who identifies the dividing line between possible and impossible? Not I. I stumble over the invisible barrier each time in complete surprise. I never recognize or recall where it is. I can never predict or remember the location.  Perhaps I should carry a map, displaying a series of bright red lines circling my current location. When I meet someone new, I should pull out my map, check to see whether his home base is within the first circumference. If not, can we love, or should we ensure that emotions are left to those who have the same postal code? Perhaps he lives somewhere between the first and second circles. May we at least have a platonic coffee together once a month? What if there is a major body of water lying between us? No attraction may be admitted. Those first stirrings of passion need to be ignored, suppressed, before the alarms sound, before irreparable harm has been done.

You and I… you and I… we are not neighbours. We do not have a shopping centre or a post office in common. We will not run into each other at the grocery store. Your sister’s hairdresser is not related to my cousin’s first grade teacher. Does this really mean that I may not appreciate your only slightly tarnished innocence, your unquestioning acceptance? Must I truly not smile indulgently and affectionately at the unintended contrast between your erudition and your enthusiasm? If you say my name aloud for the first time, do I have to nod politely and not melt as those syllables are pronounced by that voice, in that tone, with that accent, with such tenderness? Am I not permitted to ever hear that same name called, yelled, grunted in abandon and in lust? Am I barred from the potentials, from the possibilities?

Don’t do this. Don’t make this rule. Let me blindly push these limits, break these rules, accept these consequences. I promise I won’t complain when my world explodes and debris rains down on my head. I will risk it, without complaint. I promise.

Talk to me

I’m gazing into the foam on top of my cappuccino when a voice makes me jump. I look sideways, and there are a pair of adolescents engaged in their awkward mating dance. They shift from foot to foot, look thoughtfully at their coke cans, lean faux-casually against the nearest available surface (sometimes a passing adult), and I drag out my coffee just so I can listen to him.

It’s not quite the timbre, but it’s all about the accent. I know exactly where he’s from, and exactly who he reminds me of.

She’s the daughter of a friend of mine, so I keep smiling at her encouragingly to make her nervous, so that she will blurt something out, and he must respond. I work out that if I stare at him intently every so often he will jump a little, and engage her more in conversation to deflect attention from the mad woman at the counter. I alternate, working out how long it will take each of them to wind down, and then stabbing them with a look to release another little rush of words.

His accent gives me the long, hot, wet, shivers. I consider turning round and telling them both that I’m not really there to freak them out, but that I’d really appreciate it if he wouldn’t mind just talking for a bit. Perhaps he could read out the price list, or the opening times, or something at random from the notice board or the local free paper. Recite the alphabet, even.

How many of you are there? I want to ask him. Are there many more of them that talk like you? Line them up for me and make them speak. I’d just stand here with my eyes closed and listen, no trouble to anyone.

I decide against saying anything. They would just think I was nuts.