Have a seat.
One Friday morning, I was awakend by a horrific car crash near our apartment. It was about 6:30 am. Joe and I ran outside to see what happened (I was in my robe), turns out some jackhole had fallen asleep at the wheel and rammed their late 70's Impala into a two seater Benz. The Benz was about the size of a sugar cube.
Now, while we were standing in our driveway watching in amazement, C, our neighbor two doors down, stomps up to us, and throws a baggie of dog shit at me and starts yelling the let Ollie shit in her lawn and don't pick it up. It escalated to a yelling fight that ended with Joe throwing the dog shit (that was really old and hard - she was trying to pass it off as fresh.) back at her and telling her, "It ain't mine."
On Sunday, I was cleaning the kitchen and Joe comes in from walking Ollie, chuckling to himself. I asked what was funny and he told me that C had been following him with a video camera while he walked the dog.
Something in me just snapped.
I stormed out the door, stalked down the street and just started SCREAMING at her. I told he that we were calling the police, getting a restraining order, and for fuck's sake, it's NOT OUR DOG. And she had better quit taping me without my consent. I still had enough of a thinking mind to remember to stay on the sidewalk, which is public property, and not to go onto her property. Well, as I walked back home, she followed me with the video camera. I turned, saw her, and did the Dennis Leary patened "Fuck You" dance. I turned to walk away again, and she was still following me. I got almost to my driveway and the red mist Deb described hit me.
I turned and went after her. I chased her back home, screaming and swearing at her. I had visions of ripping the camera out of her hands so hard, that the camera strap decapitated her and I could jump up and down on her head. I chased her onto her property, onto her front porch, and then called her a very horrible, very terrible name. By this time, Joe grabbed me from behind because he knew that if she said anything to me, I would have jumped on her and beat her to a pulp.
He got me back home, where I promptly burst into tears.
All was apologized for and we exchnaged food stuffs and everything is ok now, but I hate remembering that day because I hate that I can get that angry and say such things that I would normally kick anyone's ass for saying.
I remember that incident, Aimee. And truth to tell? I also remember being eight months pregnant. The woman was luckier than she deserved not to be road patè. Stupid, stupid behaviour on her part.
When I'm approaching homicidal, my voice goes quiet and I pull out all the big words. I've only physically struck someone three times in my life, and I don't give warning, either to the strikee or to myself, which is what worries me most.
Unspoken
So many years, so many bridges, so much dirty water.
What was said? What wasn't? I don't remember. Did you ever say, I love you? Not directly; I'd remember that. Did you ever say it obliquely? My memory remains stubbornly silent.
Did I ever say, I love you? I don't know. I think not. I was young, frightened, stupid. Above all, I was afraid you'd leave if I spoke up.
Silence, bridges, dirty water. Did I ever say it?
So much left unspoken. Had we said any of it, I might have avoided the one thing better left unsaid: goodbye.
Damn Deborah. (Incidentally applies to others too. I've been distracted).
Better off unsaid?
If I hadn’t been so honest, we might be celebrating anniversaries now. I might have had a child with your long lashes...a triumph of medical science. It’s funny that in trying to avoid one trap, I seem to have found another one. A bright and sunny but somehow lonely one...if I told you that would you console me, or feel that you dodged a bullet? I don’t know. We don’t talk anymore. You represent the road not taken in my head.
But living half a lie for forty years might even be a challenge to a fiction-spinner like me.
In some alternate Silver Spring, I see us, domestic wheelchair conga line, ripping heartstrings to shreds everywhere we go...it really makes you think. I’ve put on weight around my middle and occasionally think about the degree I didn’t get and wonder why your mother still dislikes me so much. Maybe the baby would’ve helped. Maybe, I have to tell myself now, as you live a life I can’t picture since the plane hit the Pentagon, and your computer voice made me almost cry with relief, not. Not at all.(I have to think that, don’t I? I opened my big mouth. I need to think she’d follow along behind me, undoing all the careful feminism whenever my back was turned. Because then I made the right decision and was brave, not stupid and selfish.)
“But I’m not ready...find someone your own age.”
Thanks...I did apologize for the last part of that statement when I talked to him, in that immediate post 9/11 "We need to make up because we could be DEAD" thing. I asked a lot of people to forgive me for things that week. Most of them did, too. His age wasn't the issue. I just freaked.
I made the right choice. But when I feel that I didn't get the shiny future I wanted to be free for, I get upset with myself about it and start idealizing domestic bonds. Sometimes. Not as much as when I thought he was a million miles too good for me, though.
Words better left unsaid? Sometimes it seems like I can't go a day without saying them. Too much time alone? Something off in my brain that sees the world at a skew angle, so that it only strikes me two days later why somebody might have been offended by what I said? Maybe I missed some accquiring important skills during the twelve or so years I spent where any day I was in contact with people my own age included getting beat up. But seems like my mouth can hold not only my foot, but my leg all the way to kneecap.
Pillow Talk
I wished, after he said it, that he hadn’t. It was what I’d always wanted to hear from him, those three words. I don’t think it was a complete lie, but it wasn’t the right time to say it. He should have told me when we were just out for a drive to his parents' house or a walk around the block after dinner. Maybe, when we were eating pizza and arguing over semantics or who was better at Scrabble. I would have believed it then; he might have actually meant it with all of himself, not just his cock.
