MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents"
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MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents" |
| MY GLASS HOUSE | THE PREVIOUS EVENT | THE NEXT EVENT | THE WRITERS/GUIDELINES | |
QUEEN ELIZABETH - "You know what's happenin' here, don't you?" Raheem said through the telephone.
"What?"
"You're turning into the Black Woody Allen."
"What!?!" I screeched, sounding like Woody Allen.
"Yeah, my man. Except you are telling us the story of the Annie Hall from Hell. Anybody can see it..."
So why wasn't I seeing it? Until he brought it up, I hadn't made the connection. Here was all my neuroses, my affairs, my mother, flowing like blood on the page and I couldn't figure out why I was so depressed.
"Hey, Rod-Man," Raheem was saying. "It's okay. I love that line of yours 'Aphrodite in Fog.' That's you all over. Fantastic image. The novelist is forcing himself out whether you like it or not.
"Me, I wish you would bring back more of your detective Geoff Mallory. But if this is the way you gottah do it, have at. One thing's for sure, you have had one damned crazy, interesting life."
This morning I would have put the emphasis on crazy. Four cops and two paramedics had grilled me for nearly an hour Friday night.
One of my "friends," after seeing this saga and talking to me during the depths of my distress, had had his wife call the Baltimore police and tell them she was my wife. She said they should get to my apartment right away because I was going to kill myself.
My apartment is not that big, so suddenly my living room was full of cop. Everywhere I looked, cop. I tried to take it as humorously as I could. No, I don't have any guns or drugs. No, my ex-wife does not live in Oregon, she lives in Fresno.
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"Hey, I used to live in Fresno!" exclaimed one of the cops. He was scripted to be the good cop, I took it.
"Oh really? It sucks, don't it?" I said.
"No shit, " he replied. "How'd your wife end up there?"
"We've been divorced for fifteen years. She's remarried."
"To a schmuck, am I right?"
"Right."
Maybe it's Woody Allen, if you can laugh at this sort of thing. If you're high-minded like Wolf DeVoon, maybe it's Henry Miller.
My problem is that all this stuff is true. My pal, Mike Mallen, used to encourage me to start telling the story of my life. He said it was the best story I had to tell. Exotic countries, famous people, death, war, sex, betrayal, oh man! I always said that my private life was private. Now it flows like blood across a page.
What's so strange for me is that it's been easier to talk about "the Annie Hall from Hell" who cut my heart up like slices of bologna, than it has about the central relationship of my life. Deb and I were together for ten years. By anyone's estimation, that would be the central relationship of my life.
And every time I come near it, I back away. You've already read about our weekend international volleyball games, and our full moon parties. Those are easy to talk about. Even dealing with her mother's brain tumor operation and its aftermath is workmanlike for me. What I can't get myself to talk about, hard as I try, is how I gave up on us... what went wrong.
In the past, I have said that it happened one night when we were lying in bed. She wanted sex and I didn't.
"I don't get it," she said to me. "This isn't you! You always want it! What is it? Don't you love me anymore? Should I have an affair?"
And I found myself wanting to say, "Yes! Yes, please!" If she would have an affair it would let me off the hook. Because yes, yes, since Denver I had lost all my passion for her. I wanted out of the marriage. I wanted to be excited and dance all night. I wanted to feel hunger for someone's lips, their breasts, their body and know they felt hunger for mine. That just wasn't there with us anymore. We were too "adult" suddenly, too familiar and routine.
A few nights later I moved into my study to sleep. Our marriage was over.
"Now that wasn't so hard, Rod, was it?" the internal voice asks.
Yes. It was. Deb and I were such brilliant children. We grew up together. And now it was over. I had betrayed her and ended her childhood and I can never forgive myself for that.
She had hurt me before, of course. We've gone over that ground. That happens in relationships. My friend Ric says that she even hurt me very deeply. I don't remember the particular incident; I have this habit of forgetting unpleasant things. That is probably why I remember almost nothing of my childhood. But Ric claims it was awful and says that is why he never liked her.
It was about the time that I was moving out of Deb's and my house, that we shared with Terry, our former best man, and Heather, her former piano teacher (yeah, big house) that Becky invited me out to lunch and a walk in the park. This was because she wanted to tell me she was pregnant, with Gary's child.
"Are you happy?" I asked her, as we walked hand-in-hand.
"Yes, Rod," she said. "Ecstatic!"
I chuckled. "You glow, you know."
"Do I?" she asked.
"Yes. And I'm very jealous.... But what about your husband?"
"Well, I have to leave him."
"And the girls?"
"They'll come with me."
"Okay," I said. "Okay then. I guess it's settled. Are you sure you're okay?"
"Yes, darling. Stop worrying!"
"I'm not worrying, Beck." I didn't want her to know. It was a beautiful summer day in one of the best places on earth. I was watching squirrels hop across the grass. I was with the woman who had inspired me to be independent, start my own business. She was the woman who had found Peggy, through an agency, too.
The important part was that we were still together. But now, with the child, I knew that I would have to back away even more.
"So is there anything I can do?" I asked her.
"Just kiss me," she said.
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