Guy
The 1960's arguably saw the most drastic shift in how music influenced the social and political climate of our times in the past century. Imagine being a young man, fixing your eyes on the future, but without worry because music eases your doubts.
You're invincible, for starters. Youth is on your side. The year is 1964. The Beach Boys have released the classic and timeless "I Get Around" with lyrics as careless as "I'm a real cool head," and "I'm making real good bread." It's silly. Borderline dumb. But who cares. It's fun. The melody and harmonies are there and hey, these guys are gettin' around. What's not awesome about that? The song is catchy. It makes you feel good. In fact, all the Beach Boys songs do. They don't write sappy love songs. Caroline No is probably as sad as it gets, but it's still a pretty song. I always thought it was "Carol I know" and it was a song about a man telling Carol he understood what she and they were going through. So it never seemed sad to me, 'til I listened to it again just now, but I still felt happy hearing it. So there. The Beach Boys write happy, feel-good songs.
It's also 1964 when The Beatles (introduced once on the Ed Sullivan Show as These youngsters from Liverpool), release "I Want To Hold Your Hand", and women everywhere (at least the ones that recovered from Elvis-induced heart attacks) become sex-crazed swooners at the thought of a guy wanting to hold hands. All of a sudden anything the Beatles say or do or wear (or sing) becomes the benchmark for sexy. And girls everywhere want it all. And if I remember middle school correctly, I know what hand holding leads to. It leads to sex. Not that I had sex in middle school. But it gets the ball rolling. Those butterflies in your stomach.
The Beatles changed the playing field for young men in the 1960's. Guys could get a mop-top haircut or learn to play guitar, or even better, learn a Beatles song to entice their lover. They could wear ankle-length boots with a fitted toe to school or a paisley shirt or pants with floral patterns to a party to look desirable or suit up in all white for a formal event and girls would flutter. Gone were my grandmother's days, when attraction came with poetry and bashful requests for first dates at the movies. Buying flowers, walking her to class, carrying her books - these acts became secondary. My mother even told me that she was disgusted by a guy in high school who tried to carry her books to class. She said what attracted her to my dad was that he ignored her. She found allure in that. And if you're curious what their marriage is like, 37 years later, not much has changed. The only thing they do is watch Fox News and fart on the couch together.
Old fashioned romance, even reflected in the music written today, started to become endangered. Now women wanted their ears tickled and their eyes hypnotized. Playing hard-to-get was taken to a new level. A sexual revolution sparked a sense of freedom for women and men alike to be with multiple partners, to engage in homosexuality with less shame, to experiment with hallucinogenic drugs. In a nutshell, people did what they wanted. Social and religious and cultural constraints loosened.
Geoff's father, a budding young professional during this time where women wanted it all, wanted to be a guy that could offer it all. His name was Guy, and he was raised by his grandmother, likely missing out on the emotional spoils a mother and father could offer. Later in life, material possessions and wealth became his love currency, which he shared generously with his family and extended family when Barbara brought others' children into their home, and even through their help in taking care of me when I was in a pinch.
Guy played Division 1 football out West before being accepted into law school. From there he built himself a successful practice and later in his thirties wed Barbara and had three children by the age of forty-five.
He told a story about a football player injury at the dinner table one night while the whole family was gathered round.
"One game, a player was taken out after breaking his femur bone. Does anyone know the sound a femur bone makes when it breaks? It's extremely loud! The whole stadium went silent. It was as if a very large tree snapped in half."
We all continued to chew our food, reluctantly.
"The femur is the largest bone in the body," he added.
Nothing seemed to bother Guy. Ever. He was trapped in a 60's mind mist. Still. After all these years. As if Don't Worry Baby still played on rerun in his mind. The morning fog that 60's music emitted must have generated a vapor only those who didn't witness the 60's could see from afar off. Like I watch these old(er) successful professionals with hippie mindsets and wonder how they balances work and play all their lives. I'm just sitting here feeling too agoraphobic to go check the mail most days, let alone get a job or have a social life.
I didn't grow up in such a hopeful, happy-music generation. I grew up with Kurt Cobain, Dave Matthews, and Phish. And those were the better bands. I'm trying to suppress Madonna, Mariah Carey, Boyz 2 Men, TLC, Ace of Base, Hanson, and Creed.
Women's rights in the 90's were more about abortion than equality and political wars were more about trading blood for oil than liberating oppressed countries. Not to say Vietnam was completely pointless. I guess all decades have their meaningless wars. But the 90's were so apathetic compared to the 60's. No hippie love. Just cancer and suicide and instant messenger to replace human conversation, tapered jeans to make the tops of my legs look extra fat, and lots of cigarettes and anorexia to combat those tapered jeans. If my memory serves me. I got gypped.
But the 60's cloud that followed Guy well into his later adult life kept him up in the air on some kind of unnatural high. A trance-like haze that even closet hippies walked through unknowingly and got trapped in. Maybe they didn't see it, but what a beautiful blindness. Growing up in the 60's distorted the reality of what really was going on in the world. Truly 60's songs served as escapism music, even if many reflected the political climate or used it to inspire people to be more kind. And people needed this. They needed an escape from the horrors outside our borders. I would have lost myself in it, too. The feel-good music. The feel-good generation. But instead I'm a product of the damage it created. It created an American dream delusion. The idea one could live on borrowed money. Do what you want. Go after your dreams. Now look what happened.
Suddenly Guy's generation had everything. Things that my generation now has to pay for. Few generation X's I know will get beyond student loans. Forget owning anything. All we own is our parents' debt. And if we're lucky, college debt. Then comes credit card debt. And if we're really lucky, and qualify, a home mortgage.
I digress. Guy has paid his loans. But other products of the 40's, 50's, and 60's have not. Which is why children today will have a very hard time even dreaming.
The only downfall I really saw to Guy being a bit stuck in the 60's was his wardrobe.
I've seen him wear corduroys straight out of a Syms or Klopfensteins likely purchased fifty years ago, since it was cool to wear worn down corduroys then. His informal and dated style of dress provokes one to wonder if he is not only stuck in the 60's but believes at all times it is Sunday afternoon.
Guy also has mixed priorities when it comes to caring for living things. He needs to snap out of the do what you want mentality, at least when it's dinnertime. On more than two occasions I witnessed the underhanded serving of handfuls of sirloin and other fine cuts of meat to the family dogs that sat drooling beside Guy at the dinner table while sophisticated humans ate with napkins in our laps. This was appalling, to say the least. And this coming from someone who lives in Tupper Lake!
I not only thought of starving children around the world when this happened, but of my father at home who would have lit up like a Christmas tree if I'd brought him home even a scrap of one of those fine pieces of meat, and to hear his big stinky dogs swallow those pieces whole without even taking the time to chew and enjoy the meat one bite at a time? What a waste! Why not throw the meat straight into the compost! It made me so angry, but the anger dissipated quickly when I took my next bite of steak dipped in mashed potatoes, gravy, and green beans, and followed it up with a sip of Shiraz.
Road trips with Guy and Barbara were always fun. I enjoyed Guy's childhood spirit which always came out on family vacations. Guy kept the tunes rolling and always sang along. If we weren't listening to Carol King or The Carpenters or The Drifters or The Supremes or James Taylor, it was most definitely the Beach Boys. February 2002, the middle row seat of the Ford Expedition Geoff and I sat, Sophomore and Junior in college respectively, on our way to Montreal, listening to Guy belt out "Barbara Ann" seemingly more to annoy his wife than to enamor her, as she slurped at a fountain soda. We all had snacks in our laps. It was a rare moment Geoff's family went without food at arms-reach. But in-between the slurps and burps and stories and songs, Guy would take a moment to educate whoever cared to listen about whatever was on his mind at whatever given moment.
"Exciting news Geoffrey. The APA has recently approved the construction of cell phone towers in the mountains of the Adirondack Park so long as they don't jeopardize the Adirondack scenery" (chuckles). How do you suppose the map surveyor on that team will fair at those approval meetings?
"Oh, yeah, he'll have to think creatively for sure!"
"I hope he is prepared to draw up several drafts!"
"Oh, for sure, a whole bunch."
"Talk about job security. Approving this policy approves everyone's wallet for the next 5 years."
"Why don't they bury them underground?" I interject.
"They have to be out in the open air - we did an experiment at school." Barbara replies.
"Geoff did you cover the wood pile and ever get around to putting air in your mother's tires?"
"Yes-"
"Because if that tarp is not securely fastened and flies off that wood pile and we get that storm all that wood is good for nothing-"
"I covered the wood and fastened it!"
"And mother's car is not for you to borrow unless you can be responsible for it."
"I put air in the tires!"
"Changing the oil. Checking the lights. Fluids. Gas. Insurance. Lots of responsibility-"
"Dad."
"...You see 'em wearing their baggies, huarachi sandals too, a bushy bushy blonde hairdo, surfin' USA..."
Geoff's dad didn't quite reach the falsetto of Brian Wilson but made an effort that fooled the listener into thinking he did. He was quite brilliant at fooling people this way. Accomplishing the task at hand with autoschediastical fervor. The way he told stories, he could have convinced a conspiracy theory skeptic that Bigfoot existed and that he'd personally nursed him during his military training days in Madison County, Illinois. No questions asked. This is the effect Guy had on his story-telling listeners.
Sometimes I think Guy convinced himself that his big fish stories were true. But even with potential embellishments the ends always justified the means when everyone enjoyed a good story. And the stories were always believable. It was the kind of stuff that couldn't be made up. There were no Bigfoot stories. But these incredible accounts were worthy of being pitched to Hollywood execs. The setting and character depictions and plot details and climax were all there. All the elements of a good fiction. (Or non-fiction. Creative non-fiction to be fair).
One time Geoff and I went to see a movie called Big Fish. It was about an older dying man who told incredible stories. And one story was about catching a big fish, if I remember correctly. But what I remember most about the movie was how similar in appearance and demeanor the main character was to Guy. The way he told stories - there was no room for interruption. Let alone a sneeze. Stories that captivated you one moment and made you roll your eyes the next, and left you wondering at last which parts, if any, were embellished. Also the character's jowls, the roundness of his face, and rosy cheeks, and how every part of skin on his face moved: from the muscles beneath his fleshy cheeks to the bulges of his eye balls to the lines on his forehead, his entire face told the story, one detail at a time, each one carried word by word with its own energy. Nothing was dull or irrelevant. This character resonated with Guy so well. It was as if the producers and writers of the film had known Guy personally and based the character on him, it was that uncanny.
Apart from being a storyteller and lawyer, Geoff's dad was a drill sergeant. He wasn't appointed by the military with such ranking, but rather gave himself that role at home when he was board.
My father, being a pastor, always said "The truth shall set you free." The first time I told this to Geoff, Geoff told me his father said "Work shall set you free." Since Geoff was the oldest son, and his little brother went to a boarding school far away, and his little sister was a delicate flower, Geoff became the bearer of his father's command. He often had work to do at home.
One summer it was excavating a driveway. Guy told the entire neighborhood he was putting in a stone driveway. Then when the time was nigh he handed Geoff a chisel and some other tools and told him to get busy. Since Geoff's reward would be a Jeep Cherokee, Geoff obliged. Barbara, feeling sorry, offered lemonade (the spiked kind) to Geoff's friends when they came to offer a helping hand. That driveway got beat up with chisels all summer and pieces of pavement got carried away. I watched my boyfriend become thin as a door-rail, chiseled as his chisel. He amazed me. Guy struck me as a hard father. He ate sandwiches and sat in an Adirondack chair and watched Geoff and his friends and sometimes Barbara burden themselves day in and day out, drenched in sweat clear into mid-September. The only sweat that exited Guy's body was a few drops from his temples where the warmth of the sun struck his face as he sat and drank iced tea while watching the work get done.
I tried to kidnap Geoff from his driveway job on Sunday mornings so he could come to church with me. This was a constant battle throughout our decade-long courtship. We never had outright fights about attending church but I always knew that Geoff preferred not to go. But this summer he seemed more than willing. Obviously as an excuse to get out of slave labor. We'd go to church, grab a couple beers at a bar, then return to his house and he'd put in a half-ass 2-3 hours of digging. He actually started listening to a Tool song called Dig that summer and he said it helped him to dig faster and harder. I think the beer drinking helped his digging too. And I'm sure church helped. I know when I go to church on Sundays, my whole week just turns out better.
When the truck delivery came with all the stones in mid-September, you would think only the Grand Pontiff could maneuver these pieces of earth. Yet somehow they were miraculously strewn about in just the right places when all was said and done. And Geoff got his Jeep.
Exciting improvements were always happening at Guy's household. One winter he put in an outdoor Jacuzzi. Geoff and I frequented it during blizzardy college weekends. Later on he purchased a vacation home in Rhode Island, and we eventually moved there. At some point in between, Guy bought a motel restaurant business where I tended bar and waited tables while Geoff entertained patrons with his singing and guitar playing. Sometimes I brought my keyboard and played songs, too.
We truly felt like family during those times. Me and Geoff's family that is.
I don't know that my family ever felt like they got to know Geoff like Geoff's family got to know me. My family never had all that much to offer Geoff in way of entertainment or spoils. And that was pretty obvious to me by way of how often he chose not to visit.
Guy was also able to be more generous to me than my parents were able to be to Geoff. When I first graduated from college and was doing graduate work at Plattsburgh State, Guy bought some condos up the road from his home, and let me live there rent-free for over a year. I worked my first teaching job, and saved enough money to play Party-Poker and eat expensive cheese like there was no tomorrow. Times were good. Geoff still lived at his house, but slept over at my place a lot, and came over when we had friends visit. He even put the electric bill in his name since my credit score was bad. When I got behind on my electric bill, Geoff's credit score was affected. We had a big fight about it.
The electric eventually got turned off. I couldn't pay it. Out of the apartment I went. Back home to my parents' house. Found a homeschooling job. Good money. Private pay. Did save money this time. Paid Geoff back. So Geoff and I agreed to move into a house together back in his hometown, just down the road from his parents', not far from where I was living before. Our hopes were high.
It was a fresh start after a very bumpy year. While I was living at home, I'd become depressed. I abused amphetamines to get through my second and final year of grad school and also found myself drinking shots with patrons while tending bar at a golf club. On two occasions within 6 weeks of each other, I was arrested for DUI. I spent a night in jail each time. I had to strip squat cough, the whole works. The severity of having two offenses should have really destroyed me. I should have served at least 3-6 months in jail and paid thousands of dollars in fines, but Geoff's dad got me out on a technicality.
Barbara, I should add, even marched into the police station after my second offense and from the temporary cell I was being detained in, I could hear her in her Rhode Island accent hounding the cops who arrested me:
"You couldn't give her a break? The girl's gettin' her degree and she blows a .08 for Christ's sake! We live right up the road. She said she'd walk home! All this over an out tail light? You gotta be kiddin me! This is ludicrous. A downright shame."
I'll never figure out how she in her right mind could defend me after I'd blown a 1.5 the month before and driven straight into a telephone pole, taking out an old lady's stone wall and totaling my parent's vehicle at 3 a.m. I'll never figure out how her husband could go to court as a retired, unpaid lawyer to bail out a girl who was clearly not good enough for his son. I was from the other side of the tracks, so to speak. He should have told Geoff to head for the hills.
When I ended things with Geoff many years later, Guy finally did tell Geoff to head for the hills. He bought him a membership to an online dating website. He told Geoff it was unacceptable for him to remain friends with me, after learning we were pursuing a friendship long after our break-up. Geoff shared this with me during one of our walks down Westwind Road in Wakefield, RI in 2012, one year after we'd split.
"My dad thinks it's weird we still hang out."
"Do you think it's weird?" I asked.
"Well, we are broken up. My dad offered to buy me a membership on Match." Geoff laughed in his typical way.
"But we still love each other." I reached out and tried to hold Geoff's hand. He resisted.
"My dad's right. It is weird. This is weird. Going on a walk with you right now is weird. Holding hands is really weird."
"It's hard for me to think of you dating other people. I can't even imagine dating someone else right now."
"Well at some point we both have to move on. You're the one that didn't want to get married."
"You didn't want to get married long before I gave you the ring back."
"I don't know what you want me to say."
"Nothing. There's nothing to say."
A month later I packed up what was left of my life in Rhode Island and moved back to New York to live with my parents. I told Geoff I'd always love him as I collected the last of what I could fit in my car from his parents' vacation house where we'd accumulated so many things. I told him I'd be back within a year to get whatever was left. I blew him a kiss and he just stood there and waved and smiled. I think he was relieved to finally see me go. He needed some closure.
I spent the remainder of 2012 and all of 2013 with my parents. I visited Geoff once in the spring of 2013 to collect the rest of my personal belongings. We met at the Chophouse Grille, which used to be a place we frequented under the previous name Casey's, just to grab an appetizer and a beer. We had a humorous yet bittersweet conversation, which ended all too soon. As I went out to my car to leave, he helped me load boxes into my trunk and beckoned me to stay a minute more.
"Isn't there anything else to talk about?" he asked.
"No, I don't think so." I replied.
"Oh," he frowned.
"But if you think of anything you can call me..." I said.
I drove away. He stood outside his car watching. I cried but it was just a couple tears. He never called. Well, about 8 months later he did. To wish me a Merry Christmas.
That was the longest 8 months of my life.
And the following year was the longest 12.
Presently we have no meaningful communication. It's probably a good thing. There's no way to have a healthy friendship. I re-experience the breaking of my heart just thinking about him. No sense in trying to communicate.
Speaking solely from my own experience, I'll say that letting go of someone you love is like putting a piece of your heart into a drawer. Shutting the drawer and never opening it again. You know the piece is in there. You'd like to open it, look at the piece, hold it, massage it, maybe even someday put it back in your body. Feel complete again. Even for a moment. Maybe longer. You see the possibility.
But alas. The drawer is closed. I'm sad again. Sad for even dreaming.
You're never quite right. Fragmented, sad, broken. Just a few words to describe it. The feeling of knowing you're incomplete. Your shattered pieces exist outside of you. You are simply incapable of putting them back inside, let alone together, the right way, the way they used to be. You can never go back to who you once were.
You don't just get over someone. You don't just pick yourself up and move on. You and somebody else exchanged parts of yourself with one another. When you split up, you don't get those parts back. They're gone. Forever. Parts of your heart. Your heart even beats differently. It's been shown scientifically that living creatures can and do die from loneliness. Breaking up is beyond hard to do. It's deadly.
All the memories I've lost, too. Many I've forgotten, just because I have a poor memory, and don't have access to all the pictures Geoff and I took. I've lost our memories. A decade's worth. Which makes writing about our relationship even more difficult. I've lost a friend. A family. The security of feeling unconditionally loved by a person in this world that isn't obligated to love me, but chose to do so.
As for Guy, I hope if he were able to conjure up some empathy for his son's runaway bride, he'd have sat me down and consoled me like he did Geoff. I never got any pity or counseling from his parents nor mine. I just went on solitary midnight drives to scream my lungs out after the break-up. That was what I resorted to. If I could go back and have a conversation with Guy and Barbara, I'd tell them first Thank You for all they did for me, and apologize for not being a better girlfriend to Geoff or better friend to Geoff's sister. I'd apologize for a few other things, too. I'd also say good-bye. It never really occurred to me that I'd never see them again. And to face that reality without any real closure has been unsettling to say the least.
I'd also tell Guy I'm sorry for never amounting to anything. My best excuse maybe would be that I just wasn't made for these times. I'd ask him to tell me about the 1960's and help me to imagine a better world, where people did dream and did get jobs and have marriages and families and have decent lives. I would ask him if he ever had to break up with a girlfriend. What was his secret to happiness? He had so much wisdom and I had so much more to learn from him. Wouldn't it be nice to have more answers? Guy always had all the answers. And if he didn't he made them up. I miss talking to Guy. Or rather listening when he spoke.
I'll close with a more happy and fitting memory of Guy. When I first started dating Geoff, Guy made me try escargot (a snail!) at a fancy restaurant and I firmly objected but he more firmly insisted so I plugged my nose and swallowed one whole! And that's a memory I'll definitely never forget! I'm really glad I tried it. I think he was proud of me for doing it.
Sunday, December 10, 2017
Sunday, November 26, 2017
The Story of Geoff: Ch. 7
Dating Again
I haven't written in almost a year. I tried to tackle a chapter on Geoff's father, but he couldn't be captured. Too big of a man for my mind to grasp. Completely out of reach. I let my mind spin around in the past trying not to forget him... but sometimes you need to step away from the past to remember.
I started dating again. I didn't want to write. All the words I wrote for a season drained me of all the emotion I'd carried for years, leaving me feeling empty again. A good empty. Like when you haven't eaten for a long time.
The words, or building blocks of a well-written sentence are like threads of a loom, the various colors being the emotions directing the needle. My fingers were paralyzed, my heart calloused over, and my mind drifting contentedly toward a supervoid, when suddenly I was escorted into a wave of ecstasy. It just came upon me one day. I almost didn't recognize the feeling, a puddle of fear and excitement, pessimism and hope. A longing and a pushing away. My heart was at odds with itself, being that what evoked these feelings was a 19-year-old boy. An emerging man who seemed almost as lost and afraid of life as me. And hunger returned. I craved him like a starving child.
Jesse worked with me at the health food store. We started out just having tea together when the store was slow. I gave him a ride home when it was too cold to walk, though usually he preferred walking. We became friends quickly.
Daily he educated me on teas and herbs. Supplements he'd discovered and the illnesses they might cure. His dreams - literal dreams - as he seemed to somewhat loiter in them during his waking hours.
By the time we spent too much time together, we fell into something that felt like love. It was a crushing fall for me. The age difference made me question my own sense of morality. My friends didn't judge. Though it was still uncomfortable having these feelings.
I went to a house party to meet some of his friends one day and one of his friends was a boy I'd babysat. My father forbade it. "I don't want you having a relationship with him until he's 25."
I explored in my mind all the different ages we would be as he grew up to catch up with my adultness, and at just the perfect ages I imagined him, my age did not fit the picture. He would be 30 and I would be 46. He would be 46 and I would be 61. All the best retinols and serums and eye creams wouldn't keep me beautiful enough to match the majestic man I knew he'd turn out to be. He would certainly leave me someday.
I had to stop thinking about the age difference. It was a conscious choice I made. I gave up that worry. And one night, in full abandonment of the modesty mask I'd worn as a single woman for 5 years, I gave Jesse a hickey.
It was a playful kiss, void of any passion. The passion may have preceded but it left as soon as I lunged. We'd already exchanged verbal concurrences of our shared feelings, and I felt that his neck was safer than his lips. His lips might melt me. They were unapproachable. Full, soft, passionate lips - the ones all his beautiful words escaped from. A sacred part of his body, maybe, based on how he spoke to me. When I wasn't lost in his gaze during conversation, I mostly stared at his lips. They were perfect.
I loved talking to him. He preferred tea to alcohol and conversation to activity. He loved the things I did and had a spirituality so profound I wondered if he'd be a famous guru someday, and told him so. I wondered if God could have orchestrated this unlikely and socially frowned upon relationship. A 35-year old woman and a teenage boy? I convinced myself yes. It had to be. The feelings were so strong and held me hostage to believing so.
If Sheldon Cooper took a liking to health food and nature - he'd be Jesse. Jesse spoke in poetry sometimes. One day over tea he was telling me about his dreams, and how difficult it is to wake up. But when his eyes would open in the morning, he searched for God. A sign that today would be alright. "If God isn't the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning, I need to go back to bed," he said.
In his waking hours, when taking a pause from the company of his dream friends, he devoted himself to me. He introduced me to mystic music, guided me on night walks through the woods in foot-deep snow, and made me tea. Sometimes he would reach out and hold my hand or hug me for no reason at all. We squeezed when we hugged. I felt so close to him when this happened. These hugs. Like if we held each other long and hard enough, we'd become one person.
Much to my embarrassment, Jesse's dad commented on the hickey one day, elbowing me when he visited the store, and reminding me how unfortunate it was that Jesse suffered such a serious burn injury on his neck while fixing that muffler.
"Oh yeah. That was a shame." I answered back in all seriousness.
Finally one day Jesse and I kissed. I mean really kissed. It was out in his dad's garage where he'd built us a fire in the wood-stove and laid out a deck of cards to teach me a new game. I stood up and faced him to say good-bye for the night when the fire started to die, as I can't stand the cold, and he stood up too, but we had run out of things to say. He put his hands on my hips. Whether he was overly respectful or just scared to touch me anywhere else, I'll never know. The relationship didn't last. But that kiss filled me. I was warm all over. As if I'd never been kissed before, my body got the tingles of a teenage girl. I was young again. I was swimming in the puddle. My first love all over.
But the age difference was too much. Sixteen years. I was the same age as his mother. Something was wrong with this picture. Even though his parents supported it. I couldn't stifle these pressing concerns, this generational gap that made itself more evident as time went on. It crept up like a Jack-in-the-Box, and one day frightened me so much I began missing my empty feeling again.
To just go back and rewind and suppress...
If only he'd not come to volunteer at the store...
If only he wasn't born...
If only...
I kept a letter he wrote me. He handed it to me one morning at the store, after we had our first fight the night before. He probably suspected that some things better left unsaid are even better written down. I have it here with me:
"I'm happier with you. I love every dimension of you: personality, soft warm body, colorful face, colorless teeth, blue eyes, long brown beautiful naturally curly hair, the way you are, the characteristics of your uniqueness. I think about our smiles when I'm alone. How you balance me and teach me. You're making me better. You encourage, model, and motivate me to make better decisions. I can be myself with you. I can relax. You are so nice, so funny. You cook amazing food. I'm grateful for every hug, every kiss, every touch by you. I appreciate all we have done and all you have done for me. I feel unworthy, that I can't give you adequate repayment at this time. I want to give to you. I want you to be happy. Everyday I want to say, "I love you." You took a huge risk in dating me. I realized it would affect your personal life in negative ways if I were to disappoint you. You look and dress nice every day, clean well, drive well, take good care of your dogs and family and self. I am having difficulty expressing my feelings and concerns and I don't know what is best to say next, so I made this gratitude list that I may more clearly hear the voice of God if I am aligned with love and kindness."
That letter validated my existence in the moments I tearfully read it. I gave him a hug. We were cutting onions and both began to cry. I forgave him for what I felt was a grave offense against me and wanted even more to make us work, but when we had our next fight, a couple weeks later, it was our last.
One thing I do hold onto besides that letter is a silver chain. One he said he wore daily in high school. It's shiny and beautiful. Like his eyes. His eyes were deep and troubled as he handed it to me, like he might regret giving me this extension of himself. I put the necklace on remorselessly but took it off after our fateful second argument.
I kept the chain in my purse, thought of pawning it, sheerly out of financial desperation, but couldn't let it go.
Life is sad. Sad and hard. It's hard to let go of things. Harder than letting go of people, sometimes.
I haven't written in almost a year. I tried to tackle a chapter on Geoff's father, but he couldn't be captured. Too big of a man for my mind to grasp. Completely out of reach. I let my mind spin around in the past trying not to forget him... but sometimes you need to step away from the past to remember.
I started dating again. I didn't want to write. All the words I wrote for a season drained me of all the emotion I'd carried for years, leaving me feeling empty again. A good empty. Like when you haven't eaten for a long time.
The words, or building blocks of a well-written sentence are like threads of a loom, the various colors being the emotions directing the needle. My fingers were paralyzed, my heart calloused over, and my mind drifting contentedly toward a supervoid, when suddenly I was escorted into a wave of ecstasy. It just came upon me one day. I almost didn't recognize the feeling, a puddle of fear and excitement, pessimism and hope. A longing and a pushing away. My heart was at odds with itself, being that what evoked these feelings was a 19-year-old boy. An emerging man who seemed almost as lost and afraid of life as me. And hunger returned. I craved him like a starving child.
Jesse worked with me at the health food store. We started out just having tea together when the store was slow. I gave him a ride home when it was too cold to walk, though usually he preferred walking. We became friends quickly.
Daily he educated me on teas and herbs. Supplements he'd discovered and the illnesses they might cure. His dreams - literal dreams - as he seemed to somewhat loiter in them during his waking hours.
By the time we spent too much time together, we fell into something that felt like love. It was a crushing fall for me. The age difference made me question my own sense of morality. My friends didn't judge. Though it was still uncomfortable having these feelings.
I went to a house party to meet some of his friends one day and one of his friends was a boy I'd babysat. My father forbade it. "I don't want you having a relationship with him until he's 25."
I explored in my mind all the different ages we would be as he grew up to catch up with my adultness, and at just the perfect ages I imagined him, my age did not fit the picture. He would be 30 and I would be 46. He would be 46 and I would be 61. All the best retinols and serums and eye creams wouldn't keep me beautiful enough to match the majestic man I knew he'd turn out to be. He would certainly leave me someday.
I had to stop thinking about the age difference. It was a conscious choice I made. I gave up that worry. And one night, in full abandonment of the modesty mask I'd worn as a single woman for 5 years, I gave Jesse a hickey.
It was a playful kiss, void of any passion. The passion may have preceded but it left as soon as I lunged. We'd already exchanged verbal concurrences of our shared feelings, and I felt that his neck was safer than his lips. His lips might melt me. They were unapproachable. Full, soft, passionate lips - the ones all his beautiful words escaped from. A sacred part of his body, maybe, based on how he spoke to me. When I wasn't lost in his gaze during conversation, I mostly stared at his lips. They were perfect.
I loved talking to him. He preferred tea to alcohol and conversation to activity. He loved the things I did and had a spirituality so profound I wondered if he'd be a famous guru someday, and told him so. I wondered if God could have orchestrated this unlikely and socially frowned upon relationship. A 35-year old woman and a teenage boy? I convinced myself yes. It had to be. The feelings were so strong and held me hostage to believing so.
If Sheldon Cooper took a liking to health food and nature - he'd be Jesse. Jesse spoke in poetry sometimes. One day over tea he was telling me about his dreams, and how difficult it is to wake up. But when his eyes would open in the morning, he searched for God. A sign that today would be alright. "If God isn't the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning, I need to go back to bed," he said.
In his waking hours, when taking a pause from the company of his dream friends, he devoted himself to me. He introduced me to mystic music, guided me on night walks through the woods in foot-deep snow, and made me tea. Sometimes he would reach out and hold my hand or hug me for no reason at all. We squeezed when we hugged. I felt so close to him when this happened. These hugs. Like if we held each other long and hard enough, we'd become one person.
Much to my embarrassment, Jesse's dad commented on the hickey one day, elbowing me when he visited the store, and reminding me how unfortunate it was that Jesse suffered such a serious burn injury on his neck while fixing that muffler.
"Oh yeah. That was a shame." I answered back in all seriousness.
Finally one day Jesse and I kissed. I mean really kissed. It was out in his dad's garage where he'd built us a fire in the wood-stove and laid out a deck of cards to teach me a new game. I stood up and faced him to say good-bye for the night when the fire started to die, as I can't stand the cold, and he stood up too, but we had run out of things to say. He put his hands on my hips. Whether he was overly respectful or just scared to touch me anywhere else, I'll never know. The relationship didn't last. But that kiss filled me. I was warm all over. As if I'd never been kissed before, my body got the tingles of a teenage girl. I was young again. I was swimming in the puddle. My first love all over.
But the age difference was too much. Sixteen years. I was the same age as his mother. Something was wrong with this picture. Even though his parents supported it. I couldn't stifle these pressing concerns, this generational gap that made itself more evident as time went on. It crept up like a Jack-in-the-Box, and one day frightened me so much I began missing my empty feeling again.
To just go back and rewind and suppress...
If only he'd not come to volunteer at the store...
If only he wasn't born...
If only...
I kept a letter he wrote me. He handed it to me one morning at the store, after we had our first fight the night before. He probably suspected that some things better left unsaid are even better written down. I have it here with me:
"I'm happier with you. I love every dimension of you: personality, soft warm body, colorful face, colorless teeth, blue eyes, long brown beautiful naturally curly hair, the way you are, the characteristics of your uniqueness. I think about our smiles when I'm alone. How you balance me and teach me. You're making me better. You encourage, model, and motivate me to make better decisions. I can be myself with you. I can relax. You are so nice, so funny. You cook amazing food. I'm grateful for every hug, every kiss, every touch by you. I appreciate all we have done and all you have done for me. I feel unworthy, that I can't give you adequate repayment at this time. I want to give to you. I want you to be happy. Everyday I want to say, "I love you." You took a huge risk in dating me. I realized it would affect your personal life in negative ways if I were to disappoint you. You look and dress nice every day, clean well, drive well, take good care of your dogs and family and self. I am having difficulty expressing my feelings and concerns and I don't know what is best to say next, so I made this gratitude list that I may more clearly hear the voice of God if I am aligned with love and kindness."
That letter validated my existence in the moments I tearfully read it. I gave him a hug. We were cutting onions and both began to cry. I forgave him for what I felt was a grave offense against me and wanted even more to make us work, but when we had our next fight, a couple weeks later, it was our last.
One thing I do hold onto besides that letter is a silver chain. One he said he wore daily in high school. It's shiny and beautiful. Like his eyes. His eyes were deep and troubled as he handed it to me, like he might regret giving me this extension of himself. I put the necklace on remorselessly but took it off after our fateful second argument.
I kept the chain in my purse, thought of pawning it, sheerly out of financial desperation, but couldn't let it go.
Life is sad. Sad and hard. It's hard to let go of things. Harder than letting go of people, sometimes.
Thursday, March 2, 2017
The Story of Geoff: Ch. 6
Barbara
Few girlfriends gain such favorable rapport with their boyfriend's mothers as I did with Geoff's mom. Barbara took me in like her own baby duckling. She did things like that in general. It was in her second nature. She fed and housed orphans, adopted children, donated gifts and money and time to charities, and in her day-job, worked with children who had special needs. And she became my specially needed mom for ten years.
My first impression of her was that she was too short to be Geoff's mom. And that she didn't speak right. There was an accent I couldn't place.
"Hi, I'm Bah-brah, so nice to finally meet you, Geoff has said such nice things, let me take ya coat."
Was she from Boston? Long Island?
"Hi I'm Erin. Nice to meet you too!"
"So come on in. You can leave ya shoes offo on, doesn't matta ta me. Geoff can show ya around. I'll show ya what's ta eat though."
She showed us what was leftover from dinner. There were some Mike's Hard Lemonades in the fridge which Geoff pointed at and raised his eyebrows when Barbara opened the door and I grinned at him from behind.
"Guy's upsteah's workin but he'ahs the clickah for you two if you wanna watch TV in the kitchen or Geoff you can show her both living room TV's but downsteah's TV is bettah since Dad is up and he has a deposition hearing tomorrah."
Barbara handed us the remote and poured two differently colored Mike's Hard Lemonades into a glass of ice she had sitting on the counter then scuffled around the kitchen island in her velvety slide-on slippers, and up the stairs she went to leave Geoff and I alone, as we slid into the booth-table and turned on the TV.
"So where's your mother from?"
"Um, she's from, uh, whatchamacallit, Warwick, Rhode Island, yeah."
"Oh, I could tell something like that cause of her accent. I was thinking Boston at first."
"Oh yeah. Yup. She gets that a lot."
"So what she was drinking looked tasteh." I poked my finger into Geoff's ribs to tickle him.
"Oh! Yes. So 'mazin. Indeed." Geoff slid out of the booth and went to the cupboards for glasses, then filled them with ice from the inside of the freezer as to not make noise with the ice machine. He brought the glasses and three hard lemonades to the table. I poured.
"Does your mom still have family in Rhode Island?"
"Yep, she goes there quite often. Her sister Jeannie and brother-in-law Bob, and her mother all live together in Matunuck Beach, and she has a sister named Rita who lives not far from there. She goes down several times a year." Geoff let out a laugh. "She's always begging the rest of us to go with her but nobody ever wants to."
"I want to! A beach? Why don't you want to go?"
"Well, it's a beach but mostly it's a bunch of older people sitting inside a house and smelling the salty beach air and listening to the sound of the beach waves." Geoff let out another laugh.
"Well we should go and WALK on the beach and go SWIMMING in the beach!"
"Yeah I will mention it to my mom. She would love that. My dad would love it too, so he doesn't get dragged down or made to feel guilty for not going." We both laughed.
_________________________________
Barbara came to me in the guest room of her home as I prepared for my job interview. I'd only been out of college for two months. I held my English Teacher Certification shakily in one hand, seated on one of the twin beds, whilst penning at my resume on a clipboard with the other. Soon I would print out a final copy of my cover letter and resume, and turn in everything altogether the following morning when interviewing for my first teaching job.
The job was for teaching tenth grade English, at Saranac Lake High School. Barbara wrote me a blushing letter of recommendation two weeks before. I had another letter from my student teacher advisor, and another from a writing professor at St. Lawrence. All my ducks were in a row. All that was missing was an outfit. And somehow Barbara knew.
She came to me and asked me if I had anything to wear. I worried that she was going to take me on some kind of mother-daughter shopping spree, and I'd have to politely-awkwardly decline, since she'd already done too much for me all these years, and this was really my own mother's job, but one my own family could not afford, nor would afford me, even if they could.
"Erin I have something, an old outfit, you probably wouldn't even care to wear it, it's so dated, but you might want to try it on, just in case you like it. It might fit you. I outgrew it a long time ago-"
"-I'd love to," I interrupted.
"You can just give it a try, and it might be over the top, or not right for the occasion, or it might not even fit, but-"
"No, no, let me try it, I just need something, anything to wear-"
"Okay, let me go check my closet, I think I know where it is, just gotta pull it out, I know it's clean-"
"Yes, thank you so much."
Barbara came back within a minute with a beautiful vintage jacket and skirt suit in hand, covered in fitted plastic, which Barbara laid on the twin bed opposite me. She promptly removed the plastic from the hanger and then the hanger from the jacket, and detached the skirt as well. The jacket had a nipped-in waistline and seven buttons, and a delicate collar that folded naturally down. Nothing was masculine or bold, yet the jacket said, "I am assertive, I have fashion, I demand respect." This outfit was a winner, and I felt it would win over my interviewers the following morning.
I gave Barbara a hug, and asked her for privacy so I could try it on right away. She hesitated, as to show me where a clasp was hidden above the zipper on the skirt, and then left the room. I stripped down to my undies and put the thing on. There was no mirror in the guest room so I flew out of there and into the adjacent bathroom to get an almost-full-length glimpse, and caught a lovely torso-up view. Then I flew up the stairs to Geoff's sister's room to see the whole thing. Without shoes and with my muscular bulging calves it seemed slightly awkward, since the pencil skirt cut at my knees, but I knew with the right shoe this outfit was a hole-in-one, and so was I.
I flew down the stairs to the guest room and Barbara was waiting in the hallway and she smiled. She read my face. I put my hands on my hips and did a half turn in each direction.
"So you like it?"
"I love it."
____________________________________
I never did get that teaching job, so Geoff's parents bought a home in RI and helped us move there and start a new lease on life. It was meant to be a hopeful new future. A fresh start.
___________________________________
There's just one thing I'll hold to forever, there's just one little glint in your eye...
Barbara's eyes bent downward and sparkled, a melody her gaze cast upon the dinner table sang volumes louder than the momentary laughter that followed. Geoff's eyes matched hers, their smiles a mirrored image from a generation past. I imagined over dinners shared at the Hayward household, Barbara nursing Geoff from birth, her firstborn son, watching him grow, her good one, searching his eyes as a baby, before he could speak, how he'd speak with his eyes, and smile with them, as she smiled back. That mother-baby talk. How maybe I'd have a baby like Geoff, those glinty smiling eyes to look back at me someday.
Barbara passed the long string beans around the table once more, almost begging someone to finish them. I obliged. She knew I was a healthy eater, loving my veggies. Geoff and his father took seconds on mashed potatoes and gravy. Scraps of meat fat and even some good cuts I noticed Guy sneak off the serving platter to the dogs as they begged at the dinner table, come end of meal...
...The last time I saw Barbara was at her workplace in 2013. I took some time off to spend with my family that year, and worked part time as a substitute teacher. One day I got called to substitute for Barbara. She met me in her classroom before leaving for an in-house meeting. It was nearly two years since I'd seen or spoken to her, and I wanted to throw myself into her arms and unleash a well of tears into her goosy neckpit and explain everything I'd felt and held inside all this time. But that's not how our encounter went.
How do you explain? Explain to the mother of her dear boy she raised from birth, that he disappointed you by making you wait a decade for an engagement ring? That he complained about the wedding details as I planned our special day, alone? That he didn't seem to want to marry me at all, after he asked?
But I couldn't explain, because I knew, all too well, that I hardly deserved him in the first place. I'd never fully remained faithful to Geoff. There was a flirtiness in me that had gotten me into trouble on at least two occasions. And Geoff knew. I'd confessed. Partially just to hurt him. I was mean to him. Impatient. Ungrateful. Spoiled.
I couldn't complain to Barbara. She had raised a good son. There was no venting to her. I'd already done enough damage by leaving.
There really was nothing to say. Just sadness and pain stood between us like an invisible third party stranger. Barbara handed over her sub plans to me like she would to any other substitute teacher. All businesslike. She was decent and pleasant but not overly so.
She handed over the plans. That was the last I saw of Barbara. A stack of papers handed from her hands to mine. A forced smile and a shadow in her eyes where a glint used to be. I knew this would be one of her last years of teaching and perhaps the last time I saw her.
She would retire two years later and have some time to finally embrace her life. Enjoy her family and children and the grandchildren she already had, and future grandchildren Geoff might bring her with his new present girlfriend, since I was unable to bring her the ones she'd probably imagined having by now, as I write about her from my empty bedroom at home.
If she reads this someday I hope she knows how special she is to me and that I love her as deeply as anyone can love a second mother.
Few girlfriends gain such favorable rapport with their boyfriend's mothers as I did with Geoff's mom. Barbara took me in like her own baby duckling. She did things like that in general. It was in her second nature. She fed and housed orphans, adopted children, donated gifts and money and time to charities, and in her day-job, worked with children who had special needs. And she became my specially needed mom for ten years.
My first impression of her was that she was too short to be Geoff's mom. And that she didn't speak right. There was an accent I couldn't place.
"Hi, I'm Bah-brah, so nice to finally meet you, Geoff has said such nice things, let me take ya coat."
Was she from Boston? Long Island?
"Hi I'm Erin. Nice to meet you too!"
"So come on in. You can leave ya shoes offo on, doesn't matta ta me. Geoff can show ya around. I'll show ya what's ta eat though."
She showed us what was leftover from dinner. There were some Mike's Hard Lemonades in the fridge which Geoff pointed at and raised his eyebrows when Barbara opened the door and I grinned at him from behind.
"Guy's upsteah's workin but he'ahs the clickah for you two if you wanna watch TV in the kitchen or Geoff you can show her both living room TV's but downsteah's TV is bettah since Dad is up and he has a deposition hearing tomorrah."
Barbara handed us the remote and poured two differently colored Mike's Hard Lemonades into a glass of ice she had sitting on the counter then scuffled around the kitchen island in her velvety slide-on slippers, and up the stairs she went to leave Geoff and I alone, as we slid into the booth-table and turned on the TV.
"So where's your mother from?"
"Um, she's from, uh, whatchamacallit, Warwick, Rhode Island, yeah."
"Oh, I could tell something like that cause of her accent. I was thinking Boston at first."
"Oh yeah. Yup. She gets that a lot."
"So what she was drinking looked tasteh." I poked my finger into Geoff's ribs to tickle him.
"Oh! Yes. So 'mazin. Indeed." Geoff slid out of the booth and went to the cupboards for glasses, then filled them with ice from the inside of the freezer as to not make noise with the ice machine. He brought the glasses and three hard lemonades to the table. I poured.
"Does your mom still have family in Rhode Island?"
"Yep, she goes there quite often. Her sister Jeannie and brother-in-law Bob, and her mother all live together in Matunuck Beach, and she has a sister named Rita who lives not far from there. She goes down several times a year." Geoff let out a laugh. "She's always begging the rest of us to go with her but nobody ever wants to."
"I want to! A beach? Why don't you want to go?"
"Well, it's a beach but mostly it's a bunch of older people sitting inside a house and smelling the salty beach air and listening to the sound of the beach waves." Geoff let out another laugh.
"Well we should go and WALK on the beach and go SWIMMING in the beach!"
"Yeah I will mention it to my mom. She would love that. My dad would love it too, so he doesn't get dragged down or made to feel guilty for not going." We both laughed.
_________________________________
Barbara came to me in the guest room of her home as I prepared for my job interview. I'd only been out of college for two months. I held my English Teacher Certification shakily in one hand, seated on one of the twin beds, whilst penning at my resume on a clipboard with the other. Soon I would print out a final copy of my cover letter and resume, and turn in everything altogether the following morning when interviewing for my first teaching job.
The job was for teaching tenth grade English, at Saranac Lake High School. Barbara wrote me a blushing letter of recommendation two weeks before. I had another letter from my student teacher advisor, and another from a writing professor at St. Lawrence. All my ducks were in a row. All that was missing was an outfit. And somehow Barbara knew.
She came to me and asked me if I had anything to wear. I worried that she was going to take me on some kind of mother-daughter shopping spree, and I'd have to politely-awkwardly decline, since she'd already done too much for me all these years, and this was really my own mother's job, but one my own family could not afford, nor would afford me, even if they could.
"Erin I have something, an old outfit, you probably wouldn't even care to wear it, it's so dated, but you might want to try it on, just in case you like it. It might fit you. I outgrew it a long time ago-"
"-I'd love to," I interrupted.
"You can just give it a try, and it might be over the top, or not right for the occasion, or it might not even fit, but-"
"No, no, let me try it, I just need something, anything to wear-"
"Okay, let me go check my closet, I think I know where it is, just gotta pull it out, I know it's clean-"
"Yes, thank you so much."
Barbara came back within a minute with a beautiful vintage jacket and skirt suit in hand, covered in fitted plastic, which Barbara laid on the twin bed opposite me. She promptly removed the plastic from the hanger and then the hanger from the jacket, and detached the skirt as well. The jacket had a nipped-in waistline and seven buttons, and a delicate collar that folded naturally down. Nothing was masculine or bold, yet the jacket said, "I am assertive, I have fashion, I demand respect." This outfit was a winner, and I felt it would win over my interviewers the following morning.
I gave Barbara a hug, and asked her for privacy so I could try it on right away. She hesitated, as to show me where a clasp was hidden above the zipper on the skirt, and then left the room. I stripped down to my undies and put the thing on. There was no mirror in the guest room so I flew out of there and into the adjacent bathroom to get an almost-full-length glimpse, and caught a lovely torso-up view. Then I flew up the stairs to Geoff's sister's room to see the whole thing. Without shoes and with my muscular bulging calves it seemed slightly awkward, since the pencil skirt cut at my knees, but I knew with the right shoe this outfit was a hole-in-one, and so was I.
I flew down the stairs to the guest room and Barbara was waiting in the hallway and she smiled. She read my face. I put my hands on my hips and did a half turn in each direction.
"So you like it?"
"I love it."
____________________________________
I never did get that teaching job, so Geoff's parents bought a home in RI and helped us move there and start a new lease on life. It was meant to be a hopeful new future. A fresh start.
___________________________________
There's just one thing I'll hold to forever, there's just one little glint in your eye...
Barbara's eyes bent downward and sparkled, a melody her gaze cast upon the dinner table sang volumes louder than the momentary laughter that followed. Geoff's eyes matched hers, their smiles a mirrored image from a generation past. I imagined over dinners shared at the Hayward household, Barbara nursing Geoff from birth, her firstborn son, watching him grow, her good one, searching his eyes as a baby, before he could speak, how he'd speak with his eyes, and smile with them, as she smiled back. That mother-baby talk. How maybe I'd have a baby like Geoff, those glinty smiling eyes to look back at me someday.
Barbara passed the long string beans around the table once more, almost begging someone to finish them. I obliged. She knew I was a healthy eater, loving my veggies. Geoff and his father took seconds on mashed potatoes and gravy. Scraps of meat fat and even some good cuts I noticed Guy sneak off the serving platter to the dogs as they begged at the dinner table, come end of meal...
...The last time I saw Barbara was at her workplace in 2013. I took some time off to spend with my family that year, and worked part time as a substitute teacher. One day I got called to substitute for Barbara. She met me in her classroom before leaving for an in-house meeting. It was nearly two years since I'd seen or spoken to her, and I wanted to throw myself into her arms and unleash a well of tears into her goosy neckpit and explain everything I'd felt and held inside all this time. But that's not how our encounter went.
How do you explain? Explain to the mother of her dear boy she raised from birth, that he disappointed you by making you wait a decade for an engagement ring? That he complained about the wedding details as I planned our special day, alone? That he didn't seem to want to marry me at all, after he asked?
But I couldn't explain, because I knew, all too well, that I hardly deserved him in the first place. I'd never fully remained faithful to Geoff. There was a flirtiness in me that had gotten me into trouble on at least two occasions. And Geoff knew. I'd confessed. Partially just to hurt him. I was mean to him. Impatient. Ungrateful. Spoiled.
I couldn't complain to Barbara. She had raised a good son. There was no venting to her. I'd already done enough damage by leaving.
There really was nothing to say. Just sadness and pain stood between us like an invisible third party stranger. Barbara handed over her sub plans to me like she would to any other substitute teacher. All businesslike. She was decent and pleasant but not overly so.
She handed over the plans. That was the last I saw of Barbara. A stack of papers handed from her hands to mine. A forced smile and a shadow in her eyes where a glint used to be. I knew this would be one of her last years of teaching and perhaps the last time I saw her.
She would retire two years later and have some time to finally embrace her life. Enjoy her family and children and the grandchildren she already had, and future grandchildren Geoff might bring her with his new present girlfriend, since I was unable to bring her the ones she'd probably imagined having by now, as I write about her from my empty bedroom at home.
If she reads this someday I hope she knows how special she is to me and that I love her as deeply as anyone can love a second mother.
Saturday, February 25, 2017
The Story of Geoff: Ch. 5
Paraphernalia
Definition 1: miscellaneous articles, especially the equipment needed for a particular activity.
Definition 2: all the objects needed for or connected with a particular activity.
I'm using definition 2 here, taken from the Cambridge English Dictionary, and blending it with definition 1, source unknown (popped up first on a box on Google) to discuss miscellaneous articles connected with particular activities Geoff and I did together.
I came across these articles by accident just this morning, while searching for my box dvd set of Seinfeld. A friend was asking me to take him a blanket and pillow to his work so he could take a nap, and it reminded me of season 8 where George takes a nap under his desk. I felt inclined to show the episode to my friend, a younger man of just 20 years, who'd never seen Seinfeld. In my search for the dvd's I accidentally opened an old storage bin with some paraphernalia in it.
I began fingering through some manila envelopes that looked like they may have old tax information inside, but were labeled "Music," "Cards," "Grandma Dukett," "Stickers and Pins," "Misc. SLU," "SLU Poems & Assignments" (with a paper inside entitled On the Limited Selection of Guys at St. Lawrence which discusses the lame toss up between jocks, Beta boys, Phi Sigs, and nerds), "Travel Memorabilia," Paystubs," and "Photofilm."
I didn't go through all of them meticulously, but some I did. It was emotional but I didn't cry. I found pieces of things I didn't recall writing or receiving. Especially the cards. There were concert ticket stubs and newspaper cutouts and pictures and receipts, all kinds of memorabilia. Special remembrances saved I suppose for today, February 25, 2017.
Since this is the story of Geoff I'll mention a few things that reminded me of him. A Valentine's Day Card with a Tetris theme to start. The cover looks like the game screen, and when you open it, it still makes the sound of a Tetris piece falling. My heart started to beat in rhythm with it when I opened and read: Hope your Birthday (crossed out to read "Valentine's Day") is one good thing on top of another! And written below, "I love you Erin! (Even if you sometimes beat me at Tetris.)"
NOTE TO READER: I always beat Geoff at Tetris.
"Love, Geoff."
Geoff probably gave this to me on our first or second Valentine's Day. 2001 or 2002. We had exchanged the words I love you, quickly. It was located in the manila envelope with my oldest things - not with the other cards. It was mixed in with newspaper clippings from my freshman and sophomore years of college. So this card is old. It is special.
In the manila envelope labeled "Cards," I found a card from 2011. It is from my parents. Mostly from my mom. Inside the card reads, "Feel free to flaunt your love! Congratulations." My mother's chicken-scratch handwriting covers the rest of the card with messages of frantic hope. "Looking forward to the Big Day with MUCHO anticipation! Love, Hugs, and Prayers!" There is a picture of a diamond ring on the front of the card, quite like the one I was wearing. My mother has drawn smiley faces all over. Exclamation points abound. It's too much excitement, even now. I have to close it and put it away, all over again.
A birthday card. The last birthday I spent as Geoff's muffin. I turned 29, not realizing my thirties would be so impossible. The card actually just has a great big number 9 on it. Geoff has written in red marker above the 9, "So, you're turning 2 (9) ... That's cool ...
I open the card. It reads, "Today's your day to shine! Happy Birthday!!"
He writes below: "Tineh! I love you so much! You are my older woman, and I am proud to be your trophy muffin. Love, geoff."
NOTE TO READER: I am only 4 months older than Geoff.
He has drawn red and blue balloons and a muffin cupcake hybrid on the left blank inner page of the card. He is a good sketch artist and it's worth framing, but I'm closing the card now, as my eyes begin to water.
I take a glance at the back of the card - it was only $2.75. My eyes dry up. He definitely went somewhere cheap for that card.
I've discovered in "Stickers and Pins," a Mountain Music Meltdown press pass from Geoff's days working as a reporter for the Enterprise in Saranac Lake. The Gibson Brothers are listed as headliners, as well as Ana Popovic and Tcheka and Doc Watson and New Riders of the Purple Sage.
I've found a National Grid bill for $523.44 dated 9-25-06 while we lived in the birdhouse, though some of that bill was carried over from my previous apartment on Cliff Ave, where Geoff's dad let me live free of charge as he owned the property. There is a note penned in on the bill, Geoff's handwriting, that says "Pd 75- 10/4/06" as Geoff was probably chipping away at my debt while he worked at the paper. I was a grad student and trying to substitute teach. These were tough times before we got out of Saranac Lake and moved to Rhode Island, though we couldn't make it work there either. Money. The root of all evil. Bills. Oil. This oil bill. I remember crying to the oil delivery man one night when I had just made a $600 sub paycheck and had to spend the entire thing on a midnight delivery. We'd run out of oil in a matter of days during a really frigid cold spell in winter. Geoff kept saying we couldn't keep the heat up past 68 and I hated wearing blankets on my head around the house but had to thereafter.
I've found an Ernie Ball Custom Gauge 9 Electric/Acoustic Guitar String - probably the top E string, since it's so thin.
A receipt from Cove Electronics Repair Store in Newport, RI for $25.00. Bad Input, Replaced Jack. Date 10/30/07.
A receipt from Smokey Bones Restaurant in Warwick, RI for $23.89. No items listed. Signed by me. Date 4/12/08.
A receipt from The Incredible Pulp Comic Book Store in Narragansett, RI for $14.96. No items listed. Date 8.8.09.
I also found a stack of envelopes along with fourteen one-cent stamps, three two-cent stamps, and one twenty-eight cent stamp and felt like I hit the jackpot.
All in a morning's work, and chapter five is done, and I feel like a healing is in order.
It's okay to cry and to feel things.
It's okay to need medication and rest and pity parties.
It's okay to lash out at your friends and family sometimes. They'll understand and they'll forgive you when you apologize.
Write, talk, embrace new friendships. Share your pain with others. You'd be surprised at how willing even strangers are to listen.
It's okay.
It's okay even when it's been six years since your break up with the boy-man who maybe never wanted to marry you in the first place.
It's okay if he moved on easily and you still can't.
It's okay if letting go seems impossible. For most normal, caring people, letting go of someone you love isn't normal at all. It's the most abnormal, unnatural, tear-out-your-own-intestines feeling in the world. Like cuttings without the euphoric release. It feels like self mutilations, suicide, and death, only without the luxury of dying. And you live through the process all over again every day you work at letting go. Letting go is hard. So whatever amount of time it takes to do that, it's okay.
Even when you're the only person telling yourself the words, it's okay, it's okay. Because most days, yours will be that only voice saying those two words you so desperately need to hear. If you listen even closer, you might hear the Lord say them too.
Whatever the process looks like, that's okay too. Just let it out, keep it in, everyday is different. At least that's what I'm learning. Expression comes in all different forms. Healing does too.
Definition 1: miscellaneous articles, especially the equipment needed for a particular activity.
Definition 2: all the objects needed for or connected with a particular activity.
I'm using definition 2 here, taken from the Cambridge English Dictionary, and blending it with definition 1, source unknown (popped up first on a box on Google) to discuss miscellaneous articles connected with particular activities Geoff and I did together.
I came across these articles by accident just this morning, while searching for my box dvd set of Seinfeld. A friend was asking me to take him a blanket and pillow to his work so he could take a nap, and it reminded me of season 8 where George takes a nap under his desk. I felt inclined to show the episode to my friend, a younger man of just 20 years, who'd never seen Seinfeld. In my search for the dvd's I accidentally opened an old storage bin with some paraphernalia in it.
I began fingering through some manila envelopes that looked like they may have old tax information inside, but were labeled "Music," "Cards," "Grandma Dukett," "Stickers and Pins," "Misc. SLU," "SLU Poems & Assignments" (with a paper inside entitled On the Limited Selection of Guys at St. Lawrence which discusses the lame toss up between jocks, Beta boys, Phi Sigs, and nerds), "Travel Memorabilia," Paystubs," and "Photofilm."
I didn't go through all of them meticulously, but some I did. It was emotional but I didn't cry. I found pieces of things I didn't recall writing or receiving. Especially the cards. There were concert ticket stubs and newspaper cutouts and pictures and receipts, all kinds of memorabilia. Special remembrances saved I suppose for today, February 25, 2017.
Since this is the story of Geoff I'll mention a few things that reminded me of him. A Valentine's Day Card with a Tetris theme to start. The cover looks like the game screen, and when you open it, it still makes the sound of a Tetris piece falling. My heart started to beat in rhythm with it when I opened and read: Hope your Birthday (crossed out to read "Valentine's Day") is one good thing on top of another! And written below, "I love you Erin! (Even if you sometimes beat me at Tetris.)"
NOTE TO READER: I always beat Geoff at Tetris.
"Love, Geoff."
Geoff probably gave this to me on our first or second Valentine's Day. 2001 or 2002. We had exchanged the words I love you, quickly. It was located in the manila envelope with my oldest things - not with the other cards. It was mixed in with newspaper clippings from my freshman and sophomore years of college. So this card is old. It is special.
In the manila envelope labeled "Cards," I found a card from 2011. It is from my parents. Mostly from my mom. Inside the card reads, "Feel free to flaunt your love! Congratulations." My mother's chicken-scratch handwriting covers the rest of the card with messages of frantic hope. "Looking forward to the Big Day with MUCHO anticipation! Love, Hugs, and Prayers!" There is a picture of a diamond ring on the front of the card, quite like the one I was wearing. My mother has drawn smiley faces all over. Exclamation points abound. It's too much excitement, even now. I have to close it and put it away, all over again.
A birthday card. The last birthday I spent as Geoff's muffin. I turned 29, not realizing my thirties would be so impossible. The card actually just has a great big number 9 on it. Geoff has written in red marker above the 9, "So, you're turning 2 (9) ... That's cool ...
I open the card. It reads, "Today's your day to shine! Happy Birthday!!"
He writes below: "Tineh! I love you so much! You are my older woman, and I am proud to be your trophy muffin. Love, geoff."
NOTE TO READER: I am only 4 months older than Geoff.
He has drawn red and blue balloons and a muffin cupcake hybrid on the left blank inner page of the card. He is a good sketch artist and it's worth framing, but I'm closing the card now, as my eyes begin to water.
I take a glance at the back of the card - it was only $2.75. My eyes dry up. He definitely went somewhere cheap for that card.
I've discovered in "Stickers and Pins," a Mountain Music Meltdown press pass from Geoff's days working as a reporter for the Enterprise in Saranac Lake. The Gibson Brothers are listed as headliners, as well as Ana Popovic and Tcheka and Doc Watson and New Riders of the Purple Sage.
I've found a National Grid bill for $523.44 dated 9-25-06 while we lived in the birdhouse, though some of that bill was carried over from my previous apartment on Cliff Ave, where Geoff's dad let me live free of charge as he owned the property. There is a note penned in on the bill, Geoff's handwriting, that says "Pd 75- 10/4/06" as Geoff was probably chipping away at my debt while he worked at the paper. I was a grad student and trying to substitute teach. These were tough times before we got out of Saranac Lake and moved to Rhode Island, though we couldn't make it work there either. Money. The root of all evil. Bills. Oil. This oil bill. I remember crying to the oil delivery man one night when I had just made a $600 sub paycheck and had to spend the entire thing on a midnight delivery. We'd run out of oil in a matter of days during a really frigid cold spell in winter. Geoff kept saying we couldn't keep the heat up past 68 and I hated wearing blankets on my head around the house but had to thereafter.
I've found an Ernie Ball Custom Gauge 9 Electric/Acoustic Guitar String - probably the top E string, since it's so thin.
A receipt from Cove Electronics Repair Store in Newport, RI for $25.00. Bad Input, Replaced Jack. Date 10/30/07.
A receipt from Smokey Bones Restaurant in Warwick, RI for $23.89. No items listed. Signed by me. Date 4/12/08.
A receipt from The Incredible Pulp Comic Book Store in Narragansett, RI for $14.96. No items listed. Date 8.8.09.
I also found a stack of envelopes along with fourteen one-cent stamps, three two-cent stamps, and one twenty-eight cent stamp and felt like I hit the jackpot.
All in a morning's work, and chapter five is done, and I feel like a healing is in order.
It's okay to cry and to feel things.
It's okay to need medication and rest and pity parties.
It's okay to lash out at your friends and family sometimes. They'll understand and they'll forgive you when you apologize.
Write, talk, embrace new friendships. Share your pain with others. You'd be surprised at how willing even strangers are to listen.
It's okay.
It's okay even when it's been six years since your break up with the boy-man who maybe never wanted to marry you in the first place.
It's okay if he moved on easily and you still can't.
It's okay if letting go seems impossible. For most normal, caring people, letting go of someone you love isn't normal at all. It's the most abnormal, unnatural, tear-out-your-own-intestines feeling in the world. Like cuttings without the euphoric release. It feels like self mutilations, suicide, and death, only without the luxury of dying. And you live through the process all over again every day you work at letting go. Letting go is hard. So whatever amount of time it takes to do that, it's okay.
Even when you're the only person telling yourself the words, it's okay, it's okay. Because most days, yours will be that only voice saying those two words you so desperately need to hear. If you listen even closer, you might hear the Lord say them too.
Whatever the process looks like, that's okay too. Just let it out, keep it in, everyday is different. At least that's what I'm learning. Expression comes in all different forms. Healing does too.
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
The Story of Geoff: Ch. 4
Chapter 4: Music
Songs
I started a singing group in third grade. Ellee Loffler and Erica Beggs and Mary Hornig were in it. I named it The Bad Girls, and wrote our first title track, appropriately named after the band. The refrain repeated, "We're the bad bad bad-bad girls, We're the bad bad bad-bad girls." I added verses composed of clever rhyming depictions of ways in which we would torture unsuspecting other girls if they didn't watch out for us.
This was presumably the development of some alter-ego I formed shortly after I realized I was not going to be popular. I was smart enough to understand what being left out and bullied felt like, and it seemed a harmless enough outlet for expressing my feelings. Ellee and Erica and Mary were good sports. I choreographed dance moves I'd learned from after-school fame dance lessons my mother took me to and wrote maybe two other songs, three in all, and talked one of the older school aids on the playground into letting the four of us girls use the auditorium stage for practice on rainy recess days. Our group lasted all of three weeks, if that, then fizzled out, like most bands and great ideas later in my life did. But it served its purpose for the time being. I had a creative outlet for my momentary childhood rage.
Piano
My mother put me in piano lessons at the age of 5, probably to stop me from banging out heart and soul already on the household Wyman. But after coming home in tears week after week, entirely disenchanted with how the ivories and ebony had been reduced to nonsensical two finger exercises called "ping pong" and the like, mother pulled me out. Thank God. Back to heart and soul, and on to the feather song from Forrest Gump and the love song from Titanic and other melodies I could hear and emulate. What a mystery, to play by ear, and the satisfaction thereafter of matching up the notes just right. It brought me such joy. Much more joy than ping pong. What a joke that was. What was mother thinking. Or that piano teacher. I felt sorry for her other students.
But later on I came to envy my cousins and friends in school who could open up more advanced piano books in school and play beautiful scores, and songs I could not play by ear. They baffled me, these rhythms and riffs. I hit a wall at an age of 10 or 12 and stopped playing piano altogether. I joined the middle school band and played flute instead.
Come high school I couldn't play flute very well either. I never did learn to hit the high C. My cheeks were too fat to tighten them and blow any solid note really. And when I tried, I felt goofy and smiled, and ruined the seriousness which was necessary to blow. I fudged recitals, All State competitions, and even band practices. Maybe that's why my band teacher who became superintendent fired me so easily years later when I took pictures of fifth graders' art projects and posted them on FaceBook. He remembered that I couldn't blow my flute notes and didn't take band as seriously as he most certainly did. He never so much as smiled, as even practice was war to him. He sweat globs of perspiration down his sideburns while conducting full band rehearsals with his tiny baton. He would be soaking wet from head to toe by the end of performances, bowing a long time after each ensemble as if he'd written and performed it himself.
I did try to learn piano chords from my mother so I could play in church during my teen years. On a handful of Sunday mornings, when services were short an entire worship team, I offered to lead, and had to learn to play instantly, and my mom came to the rescue. I would choose a few songs with three chords and learn how to play them that very morning. I knew the words already and by the grace of God managed.
In eleventh grade I joined a high school rock band. There were three guys who played guitar, bass, and drums. They wanted a female keyboardist who sang. That was me. I did a Sheryl Crow and Janis Joplin song and a few others. Natalie Imbrulgia. Some harmonies with the guys. I can't remember everything. But it gave me my first real experience playing in a band. I went on to play with a few more bands in Rhode Island but won't delve into that here, other than to say it happened and isn't worth mentioning. One was a loser basement band with a few old men who wanted a lead singer who could shake it. That went terribly wrong at our first paid gig and I quit. For starters I have nothing to shake. The next was a lesbian rock band and I did not get along with the angry lesbian lead singer and didn't like rocking my keys to her lesbo lover rocker rage lyrics. The end.
I also tried a duo with my friend Fred, who I devote a later chapter to. He's the best piano player I've met, and also my best friend. Fred. I really should write a book about him.
In the Bloomingdale Ave house where Geoff and I and the bird resided after I graduated college, I really learned to play keys. I bought my first real keyboard, which I still have today. A Yamaha Portable Grand, 76 keys, light as really heavy feather, and purchased a sustain pedal and stand and padded foldable bench to go along, and let it sit in my bedroom for about two months before attacking the damn thing.
Yes, Geoff and I had separate bedrooms in the Bloomingdale Ave house too. Maybe we weren't meant to be after all. I'm beginning to wonder that as I write this book. Maybe these chapters are meant more of a farewell than as a fetching fare for him. I digress.
The first song I decided to learn to play, of all songs, was a ridiculously difficult one, by Journey, called Don't Stop Believing. I looked up the riff on YouTube and got busy. About a month later I had the right hand down. Then came the left bass riff. That took all of one day. Then was putting both hands together.
I cried like there was no tomorrow. My brain just became mush when combining these left and right hand parts. It wasn't going to happen.
But then one day, maybe a week later, out of the blue, it happened.
But then I had to sing the words along with it.
Oy Vey. Another two weeks. And then I had the whole thing memorized. Left and right hands together and words. I was afraid to stand up from my keyboard after the first time playing it through flawlessly, like I might unglue my brain from it's knowledge by lifting my hands and going to sleep that night. But the neurons and synapses had fixated themselves, had solidified something in the neurotransmitter nonsense in my mind that still exists today somewhere up there in the electricity upstairs, so that whenever I sit down to play, even after a year or more of playing that song, I can place my hands and bust out that tune. I know I can. It's a song I'll take to the grave, watch me.
Everything else came somewhat easy after learning Don't Stop. So I didn't. I looked up chords on the internet, blues progressions mostly for songs not involving complex riffs, and simply placed my fingers in position and remembered. I bought a mini spiral notecard flipbook I still have today with all my song notes on it for about 50 cover songs. Carol King, White Stripes, Carly Simon, Ben E King, Elvis, John Prine, Regina Spektor, Sheryl Crow, Sarah McLachlan, Van Morrison, Indigo Girls, Beatles, Counting Crows, Coldplay, Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson, Grace Potter, and John Lennon. There were even more. Dolly Parton's Jolene though White Stripes did a version, too. And there was House of the Rising Sun by The Animals. And Breaking Up Is Hard To Do by Neil Sedaka, which I learned for a Josh Hartnett film I was once cast in as a bar room singer, but then a promoter pulled out of the film last minute and the movie was never made.
I would have learned more songs - Elton John and Joni Mitchell and Fiona Apple and Tori Amos and Stevie Wonder and Natalie Merchant and Christine McVie were just a few personal idols and bar room requests I'd get from time to time. But alas I couldn't please everyone, lest myself, mostly because I was pursuing work and pleasing Geoff and often times playing in a band where somebody else chose the tunes. Learning a song well enough to perform took me a good week or two, and getting down 50 tunes was a feat in and of itself, and I kind of sat on that flip book for a while and retired. Today though I feel like going back and learning a few more.
I also spent a few years writing songs. I wrote my first piano song, Bottle of Tears, on my Yamaha, at the birdhouse on Bloomingdale Ave. I went on to record a full length piano song album with a record studio in Rhode Island shortly after moving there, having written most of my remaining songs for the album at the cottage on Matunuck Beach. They were mostly sad songs, but Geoff helped me record demo's and get them up on Myspace Music, and a music producer in the state found me online, saw potential, and reached out. The rest was history. He and I spent the past eight years working on the album, which is in mastering this winter. The songs are beautiful, and he is the only man in my life besides my dad who has never given up on me. Rob. He's believed in me more than any other person ever has.
Rob introduced me to other artists he worked with, including a world renowned folk singer named Virginia Dare, who tells me to this day her greatest compliments come from her song Mother Mary, on which I sang harmony with her for the album Divine Mother.
I'd taken a fairy out to Block Island one day with Rob and just scrapped the sheet music handed to me since I couldn't read it anyways, and made up my own vocal harmony line, often discarding the actual lyrics for oohs and aahs, and Virginia loved it, and so did Rob, and six hours later we called it a rap. I was even paid several hundred dollars for my effortless attempts at coloring this song of hers with my voice.
On the fairy ride back to Point Judith, Rob told me I was special. He gave me a high five and said, "Good job Erin. You really are something."
He also said, "You know what else, Erin? You're going to make it someday. And this whole thing with Geoff. Don't worry about it. You're going to make some guy feel really special. And that guy will be really lucky to end up with you."
Rob always had a way of making me feel like I mattered. I really did feel special that day. Rob's one of my most special friends, maybe even as special as Fred.
Guitar
My late grandfather bought me an acoustic Roy Clark Signature guitar for $100 and gave it to me when I graduated high school. I took it to college and wrote two songs on it right away. They were called Distractions and Hey, Hey. They were inspired by a break-up with a high school sweetheart I'd dated for only two months, but shared some firsts with. I won't share his name here, because I feel his family would be sensitive to that if reading, but he was a special first boyfriend. And I was depressed leaving him behind. He'd applied to St. Lawrence and didn't get in. But I did. It was the most bitter bittersweet thing I'd gone through, that break up. But the two most beautiful songs came out of it.
I played those songs all year, and even competed in an open mic with the song Distractions, beating out a local artist at the time who often played in the Brewer Bookstore, named Grace Potter. But I gave up guitar after writing those two songs. I got depressed, put my depression into writing poetry and throwing up my food and starving myself, but then met Geoff a year later, and took to letting him play guitar for me. Music as I knew it, my love for it at least, went on the back burner for about 5 years after that. Those two songs though, sit in my mind as if I wrote them yesterday. Like little children that never grew up. I like it that way. They stayed just the way I liked them.
Maybe someday I'll write more songs on guitar.
I did come to inadvertently acquire another guitar. Geoff and I competed in an open mic competition in Matunuck Beach. At the oldest Irish Pub at the end of nowhere. Where Geoff and I drank Guinness and left the day behind.
For nine weeks finalists were narrowed down from twenty some-odd musicians to somehow, just Geoff and I. A strangely competitive match-up, but I thought a fair one. We were the best. Some slightly competitive talent had chosen poor songs for this older Irish whiskey-drinking crowd. Other performers had poor stage presence and audience interaction. Surely the judges were using some sort of rubric.
Geoff and I played songs we'd played before, at non-competitive open mics, that we knew would be crowd pleasers here. I saved Don't Stop for this epic finale performance, and won. Geoff felt slighted by that, I could sense, but I was too happy to care. I'd played it with all my heart, and a drunk man told me my foot was going wild. I took that as a compliment since I'd marveled at other keyboardists whose playing would get so wild their non-pedal-using-foot would start dancing around like a puppet on strings. And mine had. What a cool night I'd had.
Geoff mostly played it. Really I barely touched the thing. But when we split 3 years later, he sadly gave it back to me.
Songs
I started a singing group in third grade. Ellee Loffler and Erica Beggs and Mary Hornig were in it. I named it The Bad Girls, and wrote our first title track, appropriately named after the band. The refrain repeated, "We're the bad bad bad-bad girls, We're the bad bad bad-bad girls." I added verses composed of clever rhyming depictions of ways in which we would torture unsuspecting other girls if they didn't watch out for us.
This was presumably the development of some alter-ego I formed shortly after I realized I was not going to be popular. I was smart enough to understand what being left out and bullied felt like, and it seemed a harmless enough outlet for expressing my feelings. Ellee and Erica and Mary were good sports. I choreographed dance moves I'd learned from after-school fame dance lessons my mother took me to and wrote maybe two other songs, three in all, and talked one of the older school aids on the playground into letting the four of us girls use the auditorium stage for practice on rainy recess days. Our group lasted all of three weeks, if that, then fizzled out, like most bands and great ideas later in my life did. But it served its purpose for the time being. I had a creative outlet for my momentary childhood rage.
Piano
My mother put me in piano lessons at the age of 5, probably to stop me from banging out heart and soul already on the household Wyman. But after coming home in tears week after week, entirely disenchanted with how the ivories and ebony had been reduced to nonsensical two finger exercises called "ping pong" and the like, mother pulled me out. Thank God. Back to heart and soul, and on to the feather song from Forrest Gump and the love song from Titanic and other melodies I could hear and emulate. What a mystery, to play by ear, and the satisfaction thereafter of matching up the notes just right. It brought me such joy. Much more joy than ping pong. What a joke that was. What was mother thinking. Or that piano teacher. I felt sorry for her other students.
But later on I came to envy my cousins and friends in school who could open up more advanced piano books in school and play beautiful scores, and songs I could not play by ear. They baffled me, these rhythms and riffs. I hit a wall at an age of 10 or 12 and stopped playing piano altogether. I joined the middle school band and played flute instead.
Come high school I couldn't play flute very well either. I never did learn to hit the high C. My cheeks were too fat to tighten them and blow any solid note really. And when I tried, I felt goofy and smiled, and ruined the seriousness which was necessary to blow. I fudged recitals, All State competitions, and even band practices. Maybe that's why my band teacher who became superintendent fired me so easily years later when I took pictures of fifth graders' art projects and posted them on FaceBook. He remembered that I couldn't blow my flute notes and didn't take band as seriously as he most certainly did. He never so much as smiled, as even practice was war to him. He sweat globs of perspiration down his sideburns while conducting full band rehearsals with his tiny baton. He would be soaking wet from head to toe by the end of performances, bowing a long time after each ensemble as if he'd written and performed it himself.
I did try to learn piano chords from my mother so I could play in church during my teen years. On a handful of Sunday mornings, when services were short an entire worship team, I offered to lead, and had to learn to play instantly, and my mom came to the rescue. I would choose a few songs with three chords and learn how to play them that very morning. I knew the words already and by the grace of God managed.
In eleventh grade I joined a high school rock band. There were three guys who played guitar, bass, and drums. They wanted a female keyboardist who sang. That was me. I did a Sheryl Crow and Janis Joplin song and a few others. Natalie Imbrulgia. Some harmonies with the guys. I can't remember everything. But it gave me my first real experience playing in a band. I went on to play with a few more bands in Rhode Island but won't delve into that here, other than to say it happened and isn't worth mentioning. One was a loser basement band with a few old men who wanted a lead singer who could shake it. That went terribly wrong at our first paid gig and I quit. For starters I have nothing to shake. The next was a lesbian rock band and I did not get along with the angry lesbian lead singer and didn't like rocking my keys to her lesbo lover rocker rage lyrics. The end.
I also tried a duo with my friend Fred, who I devote a later chapter to. He's the best piano player I've met, and also my best friend. Fred. I really should write a book about him.
In the Bloomingdale Ave house where Geoff and I and the bird resided after I graduated college, I really learned to play keys. I bought my first real keyboard, which I still have today. A Yamaha Portable Grand, 76 keys, light as really heavy feather, and purchased a sustain pedal and stand and padded foldable bench to go along, and let it sit in my bedroom for about two months before attacking the damn thing.
Yes, Geoff and I had separate bedrooms in the Bloomingdale Ave house too. Maybe we weren't meant to be after all. I'm beginning to wonder that as I write this book. Maybe these chapters are meant more of a farewell than as a fetching fare for him. I digress.
The first song I decided to learn to play, of all songs, was a ridiculously difficult one, by Journey, called Don't Stop Believing. I looked up the riff on YouTube and got busy. About a month later I had the right hand down. Then came the left bass riff. That took all of one day. Then was putting both hands together.
I cried like there was no tomorrow. My brain just became mush when combining these left and right hand parts. It wasn't going to happen.
But then one day, maybe a week later, out of the blue, it happened.
But then I had to sing the words along with it.
Oy Vey. Another two weeks. And then I had the whole thing memorized. Left and right hands together and words. I was afraid to stand up from my keyboard after the first time playing it through flawlessly, like I might unglue my brain from it's knowledge by lifting my hands and going to sleep that night. But the neurons and synapses had fixated themselves, had solidified something in the neurotransmitter nonsense in my mind that still exists today somewhere up there in the electricity upstairs, so that whenever I sit down to play, even after a year or more of playing that song, I can place my hands and bust out that tune. I know I can. It's a song I'll take to the grave, watch me.
Everything else came somewhat easy after learning Don't Stop. So I didn't. I looked up chords on the internet, blues progressions mostly for songs not involving complex riffs, and simply placed my fingers in position and remembered. I bought a mini spiral notecard flipbook I still have today with all my song notes on it for about 50 cover songs. Carol King, White Stripes, Carly Simon, Ben E King, Elvis, John Prine, Regina Spektor, Sheryl Crow, Sarah McLachlan, Van Morrison, Indigo Girls, Beatles, Counting Crows, Coldplay, Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson, Grace Potter, and John Lennon. There were even more. Dolly Parton's Jolene though White Stripes did a version, too. And there was House of the Rising Sun by The Animals. And Breaking Up Is Hard To Do by Neil Sedaka, which I learned for a Josh Hartnett film I was once cast in as a bar room singer, but then a promoter pulled out of the film last minute and the movie was never made.
I would have learned more songs - Elton John and Joni Mitchell and Fiona Apple and Tori Amos and Stevie Wonder and Natalie Merchant and Christine McVie were just a few personal idols and bar room requests I'd get from time to time. But alas I couldn't please everyone, lest myself, mostly because I was pursuing work and pleasing Geoff and often times playing in a band where somebody else chose the tunes. Learning a song well enough to perform took me a good week or two, and getting down 50 tunes was a feat in and of itself, and I kind of sat on that flip book for a while and retired. Today though I feel like going back and learning a few more.
I also spent a few years writing songs. I wrote my first piano song, Bottle of Tears, on my Yamaha, at the birdhouse on Bloomingdale Ave. I went on to record a full length piano song album with a record studio in Rhode Island shortly after moving there, having written most of my remaining songs for the album at the cottage on Matunuck Beach. They were mostly sad songs, but Geoff helped me record demo's and get them up on Myspace Music, and a music producer in the state found me online, saw potential, and reached out. The rest was history. He and I spent the past eight years working on the album, which is in mastering this winter. The songs are beautiful, and he is the only man in my life besides my dad who has never given up on me. Rob. He's believed in me more than any other person ever has.
Rob introduced me to other artists he worked with, including a world renowned folk singer named Virginia Dare, who tells me to this day her greatest compliments come from her song Mother Mary, on which I sang harmony with her for the album Divine Mother.
I'd taken a fairy out to Block Island one day with Rob and just scrapped the sheet music handed to me since I couldn't read it anyways, and made up my own vocal harmony line, often discarding the actual lyrics for oohs and aahs, and Virginia loved it, and so did Rob, and six hours later we called it a rap. I was even paid several hundred dollars for my effortless attempts at coloring this song of hers with my voice.
On the fairy ride back to Point Judith, Rob told me I was special. He gave me a high five and said, "Good job Erin. You really are something."
He also said, "You know what else, Erin? You're going to make it someday. And this whole thing with Geoff. Don't worry about it. You're going to make some guy feel really special. And that guy will be really lucky to end up with you."
Rob always had a way of making me feel like I mattered. I really did feel special that day. Rob's one of my most special friends, maybe even as special as Fred.
Guitar
My late grandfather bought me an acoustic Roy Clark Signature guitar for $100 and gave it to me when I graduated high school. I took it to college and wrote two songs on it right away. They were called Distractions and Hey, Hey. They were inspired by a break-up with a high school sweetheart I'd dated for only two months, but shared some firsts with. I won't share his name here, because I feel his family would be sensitive to that if reading, but he was a special first boyfriend. And I was depressed leaving him behind. He'd applied to St. Lawrence and didn't get in. But I did. It was the most bitter bittersweet thing I'd gone through, that break up. But the two most beautiful songs came out of it.
I played those songs all year, and even competed in an open mic with the song Distractions, beating out a local artist at the time who often played in the Brewer Bookstore, named Grace Potter. But I gave up guitar after writing those two songs. I got depressed, put my depression into writing poetry and throwing up my food and starving myself, but then met Geoff a year later, and took to letting him play guitar for me. Music as I knew it, my love for it at least, went on the back burner for about 5 years after that. Those two songs though, sit in my mind as if I wrote them yesterday. Like little children that never grew up. I like it that way. They stayed just the way I liked them.
Maybe someday I'll write more songs on guitar.
I did come to inadvertently acquire another guitar. Geoff and I competed in an open mic competition in Matunuck Beach. At the oldest Irish Pub at the end of nowhere. Where Geoff and I drank Guinness and left the day behind.
For nine weeks finalists were narrowed down from twenty some-odd musicians to somehow, just Geoff and I. A strangely competitive match-up, but I thought a fair one. We were the best. Some slightly competitive talent had chosen poor songs for this older Irish whiskey-drinking crowd. Other performers had poor stage presence and audience interaction. Surely the judges were using some sort of rubric.
Geoff and I played songs we'd played before, at non-competitive open mics, that we knew would be crowd pleasers here. I saved Don't Stop for this epic finale performance, and won. Geoff felt slighted by that, I could sense, but I was too happy to care. I'd played it with all my heart, and a drunk man told me my foot was going wild. I took that as a compliment since I'd marveled at other keyboardists whose playing would get so wild their non-pedal-using-foot would start dancing around like a puppet on strings. And mine had. What a cool night I'd had.
Geoff mostly played it. Really I barely touched the thing. But when we split 3 years later, he sadly gave it back to me.
Sunday, February 12, 2017
The Story of Geoff: Ch. 3
Chapter 3: What Went Wrong?
I was a wonderful child, according to my parents, who beam from ear to ear when reminiscing of my earliest years.
My mother says I never argued back with her, and she found that odd but pleasant.
I recall my dad spanking me once when I was eight, and I had a belt on that was hard to untie, and I had to help him untie it.
"Hold on Dad, let me get it. I did this knot thing since it's too big for me. Just a sec - almost ready. Okay you can spank me now."
And my dad gave me the weakest spanking ever that night.
My sister's spanking must have been harder because I remember her screaming bloody murder as I started walking up the stairs without so much as a tear in my eye.
My parents really marveled in me as a child. They didn't know I was being picked on at school or molested by a babysitter next door. Things that happen to lots of little girls, I suppose. And that by the age of 11 I'd become rebellious and sneak out to middle school dances since I wasn't allowed to go, and a few years after that I'd start throwing up my food, and shortly after that, I'd start smoking cigarettes and experimenting with drugs and alcohol.
Such is the epidemic of modern society's treatment of little girls. We let society molest them, even when they don't get raped.
They are stripped of their innocence. They are robbed of their simply put words and thoughts and views of the world, simply by having to grow up in it.
Today I sit around and my eyes water like a leaky faucet. What went wrong? I ask myself. Everything, God whispers back. It's like the earthquake in my life that pulled everything apart, so I need to rebuild from scratch. But I don't know where to begin, and I'm still picking up all the pieces, and it's so exhausting. The pieces of my brokenness. I don't know where this part goes. Or that. Much of it is reduced to ash. Nothingness. Irredeemable burnt up dust. I must start new. A new me. All over again.
My lawyer calls and says it will take five years before I can see a judge about my case concerning work. So I have another eternity to wait in potential sadness and misery. Only the prison bars are not some steel bars I can wrap my hands around. They're inwardly projected. I'm a prisoner in my mind. It races. This black hole of sad thoughts. Anxious thoughts. Regrets. What ifs. Where is he. Will he come back. Will anyone want me. Will God just take me. What will come of this.
A prisoner in my body. Where panic works its way around like ants, busy building homes and procreating new thoughts to worry about. Panic breeds panic. I have no medication for this, because it would interfere with my seizure medication. I don't drink caffeine. I don't drink alcohol. I sit with my panic and I write as to distract myself. When I stop, the panic returns. I turn on the TV, I cook, I vacuum, I play with the puppies, and then the panic returns. I take my Trazodone at night and go to sleep, only to wake at 3 a.m. and panic some more, and write, and take two more pills and then go back to sleep until morning, and have another day of panic. Panic and sadness and misery and tears.
I was a wonderful child, according to my parents, who beam from ear to ear when reminiscing of my earliest years.
My mother says I never argued back with her, and she found that odd but pleasant.
I recall my dad spanking me once when I was eight, and I had a belt on that was hard to untie, and I had to help him untie it.
"Hold on Dad, let me get it. I did this knot thing since it's too big for me. Just a sec - almost ready. Okay you can spank me now."
And my dad gave me the weakest spanking ever that night.
My sister's spanking must have been harder because I remember her screaming bloody murder as I started walking up the stairs without so much as a tear in my eye.
My parents really marveled in me as a child. They didn't know I was being picked on at school or molested by a babysitter next door. Things that happen to lots of little girls, I suppose. And that by the age of 11 I'd become rebellious and sneak out to middle school dances since I wasn't allowed to go, and a few years after that I'd start throwing up my food, and shortly after that, I'd start smoking cigarettes and experimenting with drugs and alcohol.
Such is the epidemic of modern society's treatment of little girls. We let society molest them, even when they don't get raped.
They are stripped of their innocence. They are robbed of their simply put words and thoughts and views of the world, simply by having to grow up in it.
Today I sit around and my eyes water like a leaky faucet. What went wrong? I ask myself. Everything, God whispers back. It's like the earthquake in my life that pulled everything apart, so I need to rebuild from scratch. But I don't know where to begin, and I'm still picking up all the pieces, and it's so exhausting. The pieces of my brokenness. I don't know where this part goes. Or that. Much of it is reduced to ash. Nothingness. Irredeemable burnt up dust. I must start new. A new me. All over again.
My lawyer calls and says it will take five years before I can see a judge about my case concerning work. So I have another eternity to wait in potential sadness and misery. Only the prison bars are not some steel bars I can wrap my hands around. They're inwardly projected. I'm a prisoner in my mind. It races. This black hole of sad thoughts. Anxious thoughts. Regrets. What ifs. Where is he. Will he come back. Will anyone want me. Will God just take me. What will come of this.
A prisoner in my body. Where panic works its way around like ants, busy building homes and procreating new thoughts to worry about. Panic breeds panic. I have no medication for this, because it would interfere with my seizure medication. I don't drink caffeine. I don't drink alcohol. I sit with my panic and I write as to distract myself. When I stop, the panic returns. I turn on the TV, I cook, I vacuum, I play with the puppies, and then the panic returns. I take my Trazodone at night and go to sleep, only to wake at 3 a.m. and panic some more, and write, and take two more pills and then go back to sleep until morning, and have another day of panic. Panic and sadness and misery and tears.
Friday, February 10, 2017
The Story of Geoff: Ch. 2
Chapter 2: Letting Go
Stuffed Animals
Like in most romantic relationships, lots of gifts accumulate. My first gift from Geoff was a stuffed turtle, tucked atop a pile of prizes in a bowling alley arcade drop claw game where Geoff worked. He spent an endless supply of free tokens trying to win it for me one day when I pointed out how cute it was, but he was unsuccessful.
A few months later, Valentine's Day rolled around, and sure enough, that turtle was in a gift bag for me. I kept it all these years.
I never found out for sure if he won it legitimately or simply unlocked the machine and pulled it out by hand later on. But I loved that turtle, although it's been abused somewhat by my parents' two new adopted puppies.
They're actually not puppies anymore. They are going on two. Elmer and Dutchess, a boy and a girl. Miniature Schnauzers, though Dutchess looks more like a Schnoodle, and she's white as a cloud. Elmer is black and grey, and feels like a really densely stuffed stuffed animal. He's built like a mini linebacker dog. Very heavy for a little thing. I call him a chunk. He's fun to pick up and squeeze, since he goes so limp in my arms when I do. He doesn't know how to fetch or play with our other two dogs, and I've taken a keen liking to him, probably because I identify with his antisocial skills.
One of the cutest things about Elmer is this: When Dutchess wrestles with Brody, our older 5 year old Schnauzer, Elmer will grab a sock or slipper or boot - anything around him - and shake it all about - as if he is vicariously playing with the other two. But he will not physically interact with them. Or me. He prefers to play alone.
They've gone after all my stuffed animals, Dutchess and Elmer, about seven stuffed animals in all, most of which are from Geoff.
There are two grey elephants holding pink hearts in their trunks, presumably gifts from past Valentine's Days, a soft pink Valentine's bear and a few other teddies from Geoff. They line the smaller spare daybed in the bedroom where I live now, in my parent's home in Upstate NY, and whenever I invite the puppies upstairs to visit me, they go right for the stuffed animals.
So far one teddy has lost his nose and each elephant has lost an eye. A few weeks ago, I found the turtle's tail sticking straight up out of a snow bank in the back yard. I don't even know how they got it outdoors. But I do see them take stuffed animals down the stairs when I leave my staircase door open. They're sneaky about it. Elmer, especially. He wants to get the animals outside and buried in the ground. Last spring, I had to wash two of my beanie babies he buried. They were collectables, and he'd even ripped the tags off. I know better now. I keep my beanie babies in a storage bin.
But the stuffed animals I've learned to let go of. Since I've let go of Geoff, I've let go of them. The things that Geoff has given me. A blue shirt his sister bought me that I loved, I lent to a friend and she never returned it. I was angry for a time, but I let that go. And there were other articles of clothing that his parents bought me that I simply outgrew, and eventually I donated or consigned those items after we split. I couldn't hang on to them any longer. They were just memories of the past, hanging in my closet, never to be worn again.
The jewelry he bought me over the years, it was all gone too. After letting go of the diamond, what else really mattered? So the stuffed animals were kind of the last thing to go. But I was holding onto them still. But the puppies helped me with that. I loved these dogs. They made me smile everyday. They were giving me unconditional love. I looked at these chewed up, maimed, half blind, deaf, and nose-less stuffed animals.
I realized moving forward, my dogs could have them, for at this point in time, they loved them more than I.
Bethany
Letting go of Geoff helped me rekindle a relationship with my own sister, one I'd put on the back burner for far too long.
Bethany is eighteen months younger than me, so growing up I naturally picked on her, and by the time we would have been old enough to be friends, I'd met Geoff and blocked Bethany out of my life for good.
After leaving Geoff, Bethany graciously took me back into her life, not that I was ever a part of it to begin with. I didn't even know her really to be honest. She was a complete stranger to me. All I knew of this person my parents had birthed twenty some-odd years ago was that she'd purchased a house somewhere far off in the woods and that it took over an hour to drive there from my parent's home, which was already way out in the boonies.
One day I decided to pay her a visit and introduce my new, broken self.
When I arrived at her home, she introduced me to her dog and encouraged me to sit down and make myself comfortable. This was not the little sister I remembered growing up with. The one who seemed to whine and cry and get her way all the time. This person seemed mature and responsible, even moreso than me.
Her house stood atop a hill that overlooked waterfalls. White bunnies lived across the street in a wild patch of land, she told me. She would throw carrots into an overgrown field sometimes, feeling responsible for their lives in some small way. Her pit bull mix of some sort was friends with the bunnies. They even sometimes played together.
Her dog's name was Zoey and Bethany was frustrated that Zoey wasn't acting more like a protective watch dog. She should be baring her teeth, letting saliva gather grossly around her jowls, and growling at creepy bearded mountain men who passed by.
Zoey was too kind, she feared. She might not even realize she was a canine. She was left alone tied up in the woods somewhere for a lengthy period of her puppyhood before a stranger found her and brought her into a shelter. Bethany assumed a pit bull would be as effective as a home security system, and cheaper to boot, so she adopted her. And now it was too late to bring her back.
Bethany explained her theory that Zoey was exposed to, and possibly raised by, deer and squirrels during her abandonment in the woods as a puppy. She pointed out how Zoey walked high on her toes as if they were hooves. When she pranced about the hardwood floors she sounded like a woman in high heels scrambling around before work. The click-clacks resonated throughout the house.
The following morning I witnessed Bethany's frustration with Zoey's click-clacks.
"Either go lay down or go bark at somebody! Be a dog! Stop walking around! What are you doing with your life!?"
Bethany also complained that when Zoey slept, she would stretch out her limbs and cross each set of ankles, looking very graceful, like a deer.
"When she's on her runner, Zoey frolics. She literally frolics and leaps in the air. Over things. Things that don't even exist. She should be darting around, chasing after things! And the squirrels? And birds? They come right up on the grass next to her and eat their nuts and things! She thinks she's Bambi. And then the bunnies hop on over and poop in my yard since I'm feeding them carrots and then Zoey eats their poop! It's ridiculous! What am I? Mary Poopins?"
Bethany and I laughed. I caught her up on the past ten years of my dying relationship with Geoff. She passed me Kleenex and made me tea and added wood to the fire. I felt more cared for during my stay with this stranger who was my sister than in the last combined three years I'd lived with Geoff, I realized.
Bethany eventually changed the subject and walked out to her porch to get more firewood. I heard her yell at the dog.
"Stop eating shit you little bitch!"
Living alone, I realized Bethany was at least taking out her aggression safely. And Zoey was a happy dog. She really was.
Bethany let me indulge in the solitude of her warm, tidy home while I was her depressed couch-ridden guest. I felt like I was in a late 19th century cure cottage. Bethany's town population during winter was all of 300, since its economy mostly relied on summer tourism, mostly campers that came to see the waterfalls.
The only sounds I heard during my three-day stay were the low moans of winter wind outdoors and the wood-stove crackling and Zoey's click-clacks and occasionally Bethany yelling at the dog or at some inanimate object in the house that wasn't doing what it was supposed to.
While I was her guest, she kept the wood-stove burning, and sometimes I got so warm I sweat profusely.
Bethany dimmed the lights each of the two evenings I slept there, and just as I would rest my eyes on the comfy couch, she began to play the bongos. Her beat started quietly and then increased in volume and tempo, as she began chanting a conglomeration of intonations laced with unpredictably placed syllabic accents. It sounded soothing, and mysterious, like a Native American prayer. A speaking in tongues. A song with no words, and yet with so many.
She cooked me eggs and toast each morning, and pleaded with me to take a jog with her each day. On the third day, just before leaving, I finally obliged. I knew I was out of shape, and within a half mile, I felt the weakness around my knees fill with pain. She left me behind and finished her jog without me. I walked best I could and met her on her return, then we walked back up the huge hill to her house together, admiring the waterfalls on the way.
When it was time for me to leave, she said she didn't want to give me a hug because it would be weird to make a big deal out of saying goodbye. I was all like, yeah, of course, totally.
"See you again soon, I'm sure." I said.
"Text me when you get back home! Drive safe! I love you!" She yelled back as I pulled out with my window down, waving.
It was an unexpected and bittersweet parting that perhaps only formerly estranged sisters can begin to appreciate.
I'll see her again at Christmas, I reminded myself. It was sad to leave. We had watched How I Met Your Mother on Netflix together, and during Season 4, Episode 6, we gave each other a knowing glance when in the final moments of the show Ted Mosby told his children, "Kids you may think your only choices are to swallow your anger or throw it in someone's face, but there's a third option. You can just let it go, and only when you do that is it really gone, and you can move forward."
My sister and I moved forward. She took me into her home. She forgave me for all those spats we had as kids, and moreso for all the years I ignored her while focusing my energy on Geoff. Our past pains and sorrows, mostly hers, were now farts in the wind. She let them go. I was now her sister again. Maybe even for the first time.
Work
After leaving Geoff I didn't know how I would support myself. All those sub calls I'd ignored I couldn't afford to ignore anymore. But even subbing wasn't going to cut it, I decided.
We finished out our off-season in the beach rental. Friends came to visit that Memorial Day Weekend and Geoff and I entertained, keeping our breakup a secret for the most part, though I suspect Liam spilled the beans. It was a sad time for all of us. I didn't go on the fishing boat that year.
When it was time to move out at the end of May, I found a live-in nanny job in Wakefield and packed up 4 suitcases and my keyboard and P.A. I didn't really have much. Both houses we'd lived in were furnished, so we hadn't accumulated furniture. Geoff took everything else - the bikes, kitchenware, dvd's, gadgets, and whatchamacallits, back to his parents' vacation house. It was a really sad time.
Despite being broken up, Geoff visited me where I nannied and sneaked me into his parents home for sex about twice a week. We continued to go out to bars and restaurants, only he paid since I was on my own now. He treated me kinder and lovemaking was sweeter than ever - especially knowing each time might be our last - and then each goodbye was gut-wrenching - knowing we each needed to at some point move on - such sweet sorrow were these goodbyes between us, best put.
We went on walks and drives, and talked on the phone most nights.
In August my birthday rolled around and he dropped a gift off to me, but had to leave in a hurry. He was all dressed up.
I was on FaceBook that evening and saw his name tagged in a FaceBook post:
"Enjoying dirty martinis with Geoff at Matunuck Oyster Bar!" The girl who tagged him I didn't recognize, but she had lots of cleavage showing in her profile picture.
I drove to the Oyster Bar restaurant and approached their table, my birthday gifts from Geoff in hand.
I said hello to he and his date. I got a good look at her. She was about twenty pounds heavier than me and that helped my heart rate come down just enough to turn and leave with only doing minor damage to Geoff's VW Golf before driving away. I shattered the glass elephant he'd bought me and used the broken glass to scratch the entire driver side of his car.
Since it was a new leased car, I felt vindicated. I bragged about it on Facebook. Supportive friends likened me to having a Carrie Underwood moment.
And that was the end of the sex part of our relationship.
I looked for a job outside of RI and found one in NYC, nannying, for $1500/week, but it ended after three months because my boss and I had a cultural conflict, and I didn't really want to move to Riyadh and live in a Muslim castle.
My boss, whom I lived with in a small apartment, sat me down for bi-weekly verbal lashings to test my temper, to make sure I was ready to be taken back to the royal palace. I think he was probably a spy. He had white noise machines in every room and we moved three times while I lived with them. We lived in Downtown NYC, Lower Eastside, then Upper Eastside. He would wait until 3 a.m each night to make phone calls where he spoke in Arabic and berated me if I used the bathroom, since I could be listening to him.
"Why are you up listening to my phone call!"
"I have to pee."
"We will discuss in the morning!"
"Okay."
When that gig ended - and it paid well- I mean I got Lasik corrective eye surgery plus bought awesome Christmas presents for my parents and Geoff (yes we missed each other and started having sex again, on Sundays, my day off, when I'd take the 5:30 a.m. bus from NYC to Providence and he'd pick me up and we'd spend a whole day being kids together and doing everything fun under the sun until late afternoon when he'd return me). I was also able to settle all my credit card debt from what this nanny job paid. But when this nanny job ended, I really couldn't return to Rhode Island. It was time to finally say good-bye to Geoff.
My final week of nannying in NYC, I asked Geoff to come spend the weekend at a hotel with me there. He understood the implications of my leaving this time. I booked a room on the top floor of the Sheraton in Times Square. Our time was a mix of pleasant and somber. We were grown ups now. This was good-bye.
I took us out to a fancy Indian restaurant. He really seemed to love it. We watched a movie in bed and I fell asleep spooning him a little while before turning the other way. It was the last time we shared a bed together.
The next morning we shared nothing more intimate than a kiss before parting ways. I took a train to Port Henry where my dad picked me up.
Stuffed Animals
Like in most romantic relationships, lots of gifts accumulate. My first gift from Geoff was a stuffed turtle, tucked atop a pile of prizes in a bowling alley arcade drop claw game where Geoff worked. He spent an endless supply of free tokens trying to win it for me one day when I pointed out how cute it was, but he was unsuccessful.
A few months later, Valentine's Day rolled around, and sure enough, that turtle was in a gift bag for me. I kept it all these years.
I never found out for sure if he won it legitimately or simply unlocked the machine and pulled it out by hand later on. But I loved that turtle, although it's been abused somewhat by my parents' two new adopted puppies.
They're actually not puppies anymore. They are going on two. Elmer and Dutchess, a boy and a girl. Miniature Schnauzers, though Dutchess looks more like a Schnoodle, and she's white as a cloud. Elmer is black and grey, and feels like a really densely stuffed stuffed animal. He's built like a mini linebacker dog. Very heavy for a little thing. I call him a chunk. He's fun to pick up and squeeze, since he goes so limp in my arms when I do. He doesn't know how to fetch or play with our other two dogs, and I've taken a keen liking to him, probably because I identify with his antisocial skills.
One of the cutest things about Elmer is this: When Dutchess wrestles with Brody, our older 5 year old Schnauzer, Elmer will grab a sock or slipper or boot - anything around him - and shake it all about - as if he is vicariously playing with the other two. But he will not physically interact with them. Or me. He prefers to play alone.
They've gone after all my stuffed animals, Dutchess and Elmer, about seven stuffed animals in all, most of which are from Geoff.
There are two grey elephants holding pink hearts in their trunks, presumably gifts from past Valentine's Days, a soft pink Valentine's bear and a few other teddies from Geoff. They line the smaller spare daybed in the bedroom where I live now, in my parent's home in Upstate NY, and whenever I invite the puppies upstairs to visit me, they go right for the stuffed animals.
So far one teddy has lost his nose and each elephant has lost an eye. A few weeks ago, I found the turtle's tail sticking straight up out of a snow bank in the back yard. I don't even know how they got it outdoors. But I do see them take stuffed animals down the stairs when I leave my staircase door open. They're sneaky about it. Elmer, especially. He wants to get the animals outside and buried in the ground. Last spring, I had to wash two of my beanie babies he buried. They were collectables, and he'd even ripped the tags off. I know better now. I keep my beanie babies in a storage bin.
But the stuffed animals I've learned to let go of. Since I've let go of Geoff, I've let go of them. The things that Geoff has given me. A blue shirt his sister bought me that I loved, I lent to a friend and she never returned it. I was angry for a time, but I let that go. And there were other articles of clothing that his parents bought me that I simply outgrew, and eventually I donated or consigned those items after we split. I couldn't hang on to them any longer. They were just memories of the past, hanging in my closet, never to be worn again.
The jewelry he bought me over the years, it was all gone too. After letting go of the diamond, what else really mattered? So the stuffed animals were kind of the last thing to go. But I was holding onto them still. But the puppies helped me with that. I loved these dogs. They made me smile everyday. They were giving me unconditional love. I looked at these chewed up, maimed, half blind, deaf, and nose-less stuffed animals.
I realized moving forward, my dogs could have them, for at this point in time, they loved them more than I.
Bethany
Letting go of Geoff helped me rekindle a relationship with my own sister, one I'd put on the back burner for far too long.
Bethany is eighteen months younger than me, so growing up I naturally picked on her, and by the time we would have been old enough to be friends, I'd met Geoff and blocked Bethany out of my life for good.
After leaving Geoff, Bethany graciously took me back into her life, not that I was ever a part of it to begin with. I didn't even know her really to be honest. She was a complete stranger to me. All I knew of this person my parents had birthed twenty some-odd years ago was that she'd purchased a house somewhere far off in the woods and that it took over an hour to drive there from my parent's home, which was already way out in the boonies.
One day I decided to pay her a visit and introduce my new, broken self.
When I arrived at her home, she introduced me to her dog and encouraged me to sit down and make myself comfortable. This was not the little sister I remembered growing up with. The one who seemed to whine and cry and get her way all the time. This person seemed mature and responsible, even moreso than me.
Her house stood atop a hill that overlooked waterfalls. White bunnies lived across the street in a wild patch of land, she told me. She would throw carrots into an overgrown field sometimes, feeling responsible for their lives in some small way. Her pit bull mix of some sort was friends with the bunnies. They even sometimes played together.
Her dog's name was Zoey and Bethany was frustrated that Zoey wasn't acting more like a protective watch dog. She should be baring her teeth, letting saliva gather grossly around her jowls, and growling at creepy bearded mountain men who passed by.
Zoey was too kind, she feared. She might not even realize she was a canine. She was left alone tied up in the woods somewhere for a lengthy period of her puppyhood before a stranger found her and brought her into a shelter. Bethany assumed a pit bull would be as effective as a home security system, and cheaper to boot, so she adopted her. And now it was too late to bring her back.
Bethany explained her theory that Zoey was exposed to, and possibly raised by, deer and squirrels during her abandonment in the woods as a puppy. She pointed out how Zoey walked high on her toes as if they were hooves. When she pranced about the hardwood floors she sounded like a woman in high heels scrambling around before work. The click-clacks resonated throughout the house.
The following morning I witnessed Bethany's frustration with Zoey's click-clacks.
"Either go lay down or go bark at somebody! Be a dog! Stop walking around! What are you doing with your life!?"
Bethany also complained that when Zoey slept, she would stretch out her limbs and cross each set of ankles, looking very graceful, like a deer.
"When she's on her runner, Zoey frolics. She literally frolics and leaps in the air. Over things. Things that don't even exist. She should be darting around, chasing after things! And the squirrels? And birds? They come right up on the grass next to her and eat their nuts and things! She thinks she's Bambi. And then the bunnies hop on over and poop in my yard since I'm feeding them carrots and then Zoey eats their poop! It's ridiculous! What am I? Mary Poopins?"
Bethany and I laughed. I caught her up on the past ten years of my dying relationship with Geoff. She passed me Kleenex and made me tea and added wood to the fire. I felt more cared for during my stay with this stranger who was my sister than in the last combined three years I'd lived with Geoff, I realized.
Bethany eventually changed the subject and walked out to her porch to get more firewood. I heard her yell at the dog.
"Stop eating shit you little bitch!"
Living alone, I realized Bethany was at least taking out her aggression safely. And Zoey was a happy dog. She really was.
Bethany let me indulge in the solitude of her warm, tidy home while I was her depressed couch-ridden guest. I felt like I was in a late 19th century cure cottage. Bethany's town population during winter was all of 300, since its economy mostly relied on summer tourism, mostly campers that came to see the waterfalls.
The only sounds I heard during my three-day stay were the low moans of winter wind outdoors and the wood-stove crackling and Zoey's click-clacks and occasionally Bethany yelling at the dog or at some inanimate object in the house that wasn't doing what it was supposed to.
While I was her guest, she kept the wood-stove burning, and sometimes I got so warm I sweat profusely.
Bethany dimmed the lights each of the two evenings I slept there, and just as I would rest my eyes on the comfy couch, she began to play the bongos. Her beat started quietly and then increased in volume and tempo, as she began chanting a conglomeration of intonations laced with unpredictably placed syllabic accents. It sounded soothing, and mysterious, like a Native American prayer. A speaking in tongues. A song with no words, and yet with so many.
She cooked me eggs and toast each morning, and pleaded with me to take a jog with her each day. On the third day, just before leaving, I finally obliged. I knew I was out of shape, and within a half mile, I felt the weakness around my knees fill with pain. She left me behind and finished her jog without me. I walked best I could and met her on her return, then we walked back up the huge hill to her house together, admiring the waterfalls on the way.
When it was time for me to leave, she said she didn't want to give me a hug because it would be weird to make a big deal out of saying goodbye. I was all like, yeah, of course, totally.
"See you again soon, I'm sure." I said.
"Text me when you get back home! Drive safe! I love you!" She yelled back as I pulled out with my window down, waving.
It was an unexpected and bittersweet parting that perhaps only formerly estranged sisters can begin to appreciate.
I'll see her again at Christmas, I reminded myself. It was sad to leave. We had watched How I Met Your Mother on Netflix together, and during Season 4, Episode 6, we gave each other a knowing glance when in the final moments of the show Ted Mosby told his children, "Kids you may think your only choices are to swallow your anger or throw it in someone's face, but there's a third option. You can just let it go, and only when you do that is it really gone, and you can move forward."
My sister and I moved forward. She took me into her home. She forgave me for all those spats we had as kids, and moreso for all the years I ignored her while focusing my energy on Geoff. Our past pains and sorrows, mostly hers, were now farts in the wind. She let them go. I was now her sister again. Maybe even for the first time.
Work
After leaving Geoff I didn't know how I would support myself. All those sub calls I'd ignored I couldn't afford to ignore anymore. But even subbing wasn't going to cut it, I decided.
We finished out our off-season in the beach rental. Friends came to visit that Memorial Day Weekend and Geoff and I entertained, keeping our breakup a secret for the most part, though I suspect Liam spilled the beans. It was a sad time for all of us. I didn't go on the fishing boat that year.
When it was time to move out at the end of May, I found a live-in nanny job in Wakefield and packed up 4 suitcases and my keyboard and P.A. I didn't really have much. Both houses we'd lived in were furnished, so we hadn't accumulated furniture. Geoff took everything else - the bikes, kitchenware, dvd's, gadgets, and whatchamacallits, back to his parents' vacation house. It was a really sad time.
Despite being broken up, Geoff visited me where I nannied and sneaked me into his parents home for sex about twice a week. We continued to go out to bars and restaurants, only he paid since I was on my own now. He treated me kinder and lovemaking was sweeter than ever - especially knowing each time might be our last - and then each goodbye was gut-wrenching - knowing we each needed to at some point move on - such sweet sorrow were these goodbyes between us, best put.
We went on walks and drives, and talked on the phone most nights.
In August my birthday rolled around and he dropped a gift off to me, but had to leave in a hurry. He was all dressed up.
I was on FaceBook that evening and saw his name tagged in a FaceBook post:
"Enjoying dirty martinis with Geoff at Matunuck Oyster Bar!" The girl who tagged him I didn't recognize, but she had lots of cleavage showing in her profile picture.
I drove to the Oyster Bar restaurant and approached their table, my birthday gifts from Geoff in hand.
I said hello to he and his date. I got a good look at her. She was about twenty pounds heavier than me and that helped my heart rate come down just enough to turn and leave with only doing minor damage to Geoff's VW Golf before driving away. I shattered the glass elephant he'd bought me and used the broken glass to scratch the entire driver side of his car.
Since it was a new leased car, I felt vindicated. I bragged about it on Facebook. Supportive friends likened me to having a Carrie Underwood moment.
And that was the end of the sex part of our relationship.
I looked for a job outside of RI and found one in NYC, nannying, for $1500/week, but it ended after three months because my boss and I had a cultural conflict, and I didn't really want to move to Riyadh and live in a Muslim castle.
My boss, whom I lived with in a small apartment, sat me down for bi-weekly verbal lashings to test my temper, to make sure I was ready to be taken back to the royal palace. I think he was probably a spy. He had white noise machines in every room and we moved three times while I lived with them. We lived in Downtown NYC, Lower Eastside, then Upper Eastside. He would wait until 3 a.m each night to make phone calls where he spoke in Arabic and berated me if I used the bathroom, since I could be listening to him.
"Why are you up listening to my phone call!"
"I have to pee."
"We will discuss in the morning!"
"Okay."
When that gig ended - and it paid well- I mean I got Lasik corrective eye surgery plus bought awesome Christmas presents for my parents and Geoff (yes we missed each other and started having sex again, on Sundays, my day off, when I'd take the 5:30 a.m. bus from NYC to Providence and he'd pick me up and we'd spend a whole day being kids together and doing everything fun under the sun until late afternoon when he'd return me). I was also able to settle all my credit card debt from what this nanny job paid. But when this nanny job ended, I really couldn't return to Rhode Island. It was time to finally say good-bye to Geoff.
My final week of nannying in NYC, I asked Geoff to come spend the weekend at a hotel with me there. He understood the implications of my leaving this time. I booked a room on the top floor of the Sheraton in Times Square. Our time was a mix of pleasant and somber. We were grown ups now. This was good-bye.
I took us out to a fancy Indian restaurant. He really seemed to love it. We watched a movie in bed and I fell asleep spooning him a little while before turning the other way. It was the last time we shared a bed together.
The next morning we shared nothing more intimate than a kiss before parting ways. I took a train to Port Henry where my dad picked me up.
The Story of Geoff: Ch. 1
Chapter 1: Memory
The Story of Geoff:
Chapter 1
The Beginning of
the End
It's funny how music
brings you back. Back to memory. Back to feelings. Feelings you may
not even want to recall. Funny may not even be the right word here.
I recall the song
played on my phone alarm years ago. A melody really. A symphony. A
violin with piano notes sprinkled throughout. It was sad. Sad because
it woke me up, sad because of how it sounded, sad because of the
season of my life in which it played.
I was living with my
boyfriend Geoff, in Matunuck Beach, Rhode Island. We had a cozy
off-season beach rental just a few steps away from the oldest Irish
pub in the smallest state of the Union. This was our treasured nook.
We'd spent seven years since meeting as teenagers in college,
pursuing degrees, and entering the work force to get to here. And
here was it.
Here was a dead end
road at the edge of nowhere, but it was our nowhere. We had friends
from all corners of the country come to visit during each of the
three off-seasons we stayed in this cottage we called home. We
chartered a deep sea fishing boat on Memorial Day Weekends when they
visited, had cookouts, played horseshoes and board games, and drank
beer. Geoff told hilarious pee-your-pants stories that always made
someone spit out their beer or choke on it. Somebody always drank too
much and threw-up or woke up with a mystery bruise, or both. Somebody
else would inevitably fall asleep in an awkward location like outside
in a lawn chair with a cooler cover as a blanket. Memories were made
on these weekends. And the following year we'd point fingers and
laugh about these memories made the year before.
When the off-season
ended, usually the first week of June, Geoff and I moved out of the
beach house and into his parents' vacation home in Wakefield, about 5
miles away. His mother was a teacher and his father was
retired, so they spent summers with us. They were like my second
family, Geoff's mom and dad and sister, who attended URI. For the
decade Geoff and I dated, I spent more time with his family than I
did with my own.
Guy and Barb had two
Schwinn bicycles leftover from the 70's - a green and a yellow - a
his and a hers - that Geoff and I would ride through the South County
bike trails each of the three summers in RI we spent there. It cost
$50 a year getting them tuned up at a local bike shop, and they rode
like the wind. My yellow bicycle was one of the hardest things to
part with when the relationship ended. I really loved that bicycle. I
wish I had known the last time I rode it that it would be the last
time, so I could have made a mental note to stand up on the pedals
going downhill a few extra seconds, and savor the breeze in my hair,
and take the long way home instead of a shortcut. Stuff like that. I
don't even remember my last bike ride now.
Geoff and I made it
a priority to check out every pub, bistro, brewery, and wine cellar
in the state of Rhode Island when we first moved. So at least three
or four nights per week, we went out. We drank. We ate. Financial
hardship put the final nail in the coffin of our relationship. It
only took three years of bliss to do that. It was a vicious cycle
that crept us into debt, as I secretly activated new credit cards
that came in the mail, and used them to ease the pain of not having
money with spending money we didn't have.
But in-between the
visits from friends and family, and between bike rides to
Narragansett Beach and sea-glass beach walks along Matunuck and bar
outings, there was misery. The silence in our evenings spent at home
was punctuated with thoughts of would-be chatter of little children,
had I had them, having reached the age of 29. But I'd been turned
down for every public sector education job I applied for, about 50
jobs, during the entirety of my 20's, and had resigned to babysitting
and substitute teaching and cleaning houses. Evenings spent at home
pondering my would-be life away, particularly between the months of
November-March, felt as dull as the overcast ocean sky. It never
changed color during these winter months, just different hues of
grey, although there were moments each day that light would peak
through around noon, but I was usually too sad to notice.
Going out with Geoff
at night was virtual Vicodin for wintertime. Alcohol and good food
made all our problems disappear, at least for a couple hours.
Everything was alright at the end of the day when the sound of
conversation and laughter was all around. All was well within my
soul. A burden was lifted. We needed this and I justified it not so
much for me but moreso for Geoff. He worked hard - going into an
office and staring at a computer screen all day for some boring
marketing company.
I sat home and wrote
beautiful sad songs on my Yamaha Portable Grand keyboard, often
ignoring incoming calls to substitute teach, snoozing and sleeping
through my sad violin alarm melody when it played. Geoff and I had
separate bedrooms because he liked to be up late on his computer and
was sort of a slob. I kept my room neat. I also liked to be sprawled
out when I slept. I woke up earlier than him too. I had an 8 a.m.
babysitting job on Mondays and Tuesdays in Snug Harbor and sometimes
cleaned a house in Saunderstown on Wednesdays. But this was small
beans compared to his very important 9-5 desk job that brought in
double my salary, and health benefits to us both.
My real
responsibilities came at night. I felt my duty was to make Geoff feel
comfortable and happy when he came home from work, as I grew up
watching my stay-at-home mom prepare dinners and keep a tidy home.
She played church songs on piano and sang loud hymns to the Lord. She
invited over guests and planned wild birthday parties for my father,
sister, and I. She always put herself last. Our home was always
lively, though after bedtime I'd hear her cry. I didn't know what my
parents argued about but as I grew older I suspected it was due in
part to her own self-inflicted last place taken in the family line.
Geoff would question
my spending whenever I ran errands. I tried to minimize my grocery
shopping and keep the fridge bare, apart from some beer and eggs and
cheese and bread. If I spent too much money on food, there would be a
verbal altercation. It wouldn't last long however, as Geoff could
never stay angry for long. He would grow bored easily though,
especially in the long silent evening hours of winter, and so when I
didn't have a dinner to prepare, I would take him out and use a
credit card. He was always up for that.
That was my biblical
duty, I decided. Proverbs 14:1 says "The wise woman builds her
house..." and I suppose since I could not force marriage and
children on Geoff and build our home to accommodate Geoff's needs,
and tidiness didn't impress him, I could resort to taking Geoff out
to a place where the hustle and bustle and chatter of others would
make us feel alive. The atmosphere of a new restaurant is
intoxicating. We didn't drink heavily. Often we found a coupon online
and printed it out. We'd anticipate the new sights and sounds and
flavors on the drive, and just get out. It was great. Out of the
empty cottage we'd go. We didn't have cable. This was our
stimulation. Our drug. Our therapy. I'm telling you, I justified this
tedious spending habit to a T. This was my way of showing Geoff love.
Being a good woman, partner, and friend. I could deal with the debt
and collection calls later. I didn't care about all that. I cared
about Geoff. I loved seeing him smile. I loved hearing his stories
and jokes. What did he read on The Onion today? I loved how he made
me laugh. I loved how he twisted his thoughts into words and how he
craved me physically after an evening of conversation. How we spooned
and shared a bed on these nights as well.
But suddenly one day
three years later I wasn't happy anymore. We'd been together a
decade. He'd recently proposed. It was the craziest thing. I'd never
considered my own feelings maybe until one day I noticed. I noticed
they were gone. I gave the ring back. And seven years later, I still
grieve this man who is still alive. Whom I still love. And this is
where I take you back, reader, to the beginning of the story. The
story of Geoff. And how it came to unfold that I let him go. For
Richard Bach gave us the famous quote, "If you love something
set it free; if it comes back it's yours, if it doesn't, it never
was."
The Beginning
"Let's try to
sneak into Roomers tonight! I have just the right outfit to wear and
what you're wearing is perrrrfect, HA!" My friend Rachel
snickered and slapped my ass as she finished wiping down her last
table and pocketing a large tip, surely made by flirting with her
customers, a group of four muscular hockey players who were competing
in this weekend's Can/Am tournament, one of many in the seemingly
endless winters Lake Placid, NY has to offer.
"I'll meet you
at your place when I'm done and we'll see, I don't know."
"Don't be such
a pussy!" Rachel made some cat noises and clawed her right
fingers down my bosom, making me feel slightly uncomfortable. She
counted out enough tip money to make the sous chef cry and then
skipped out the door and across the street to her second story
apartment to prepare for a night out dancing.
Rachel was only
fifteen at the time, but was a figure skater with a scholarship to
attend a boarding school in Lake Placid. Her four brothers also
attended the National Sports Academy with scholarships to play
hockey. She was the middle child and somewhat of a tomboy when it
came to athleticism, but strikingly sexual. Her body was extremely
curvy and she knew how to move it both on the skating rink and on the
dance floor. Whenever I was with her, men flocked like baby birds.
On this particular
night however, I got held up on my way over to Rachel's apartment. I
got stopped by the pizza delivery guy. He wanted to introduce me to
his friend.
"Erin, hold up.
This is Geoff. My friend who goes to St. Lawrence with you."
I walked over to the
pizza delivery guy and a few other workers gathered outside the
restaurant and we all talked for a few minutes. Geoff shook my hand.
We exchanged information about our college schedules and first
impressions of SLU.
"Geoff this is
the hot phone girl I've been telling you about."
"Brett you told
him I was a hot phone girl?"
"Well you
answer the phones, and you're hot."
Geoff's pasty Irish
face turned beet red. It was funny. I blushed too. Geoff was
pleasantly awkward and had a strangely deep voice. He chose his words
carefully when he spoke. Everybody in the huddle stopped to listen
when he did. It was cold out and our jackets were all touching, about
five of us bundled together, a short and strangely intimate wintery
evening conversation.
"Maybe I'll
catch you at school when next semester starts."
"Leaving so
soon?" Brett asked.
"Rachel wants
to try to sneak into Roomers." I whined.
"That girl's
only 16!"
"She's 15,
don't tell Mr. Mike, or she'll not be able to waitress anymore -"
"Holy shit! -"
"Yeah, she has
a fake ID, she's gonna use color pencils on mine, I dunno -"
"Well good
luck, are you working tomorrow?"
"Next weekend."
"Okay let's do
something, let's plan a trip to Montreal sometime, Geoff's game for
that, right Gayward?"
"Umm, yeah,
sure, Montreal, sweet."
"Bye guys, nice
meeting you Geoff." I ran across the street, my legs shivering,
as I had a short skirt on and it was probably twenty degrees out.
I wondered if Geoff
noticed how nice my calves were. I always had nice calves. I'm sure
he noticed. He got to see much more than my calves a few months later
anyhow.
Sick Spaghetti
Two weekends after
meeting Geoff, Brett organized a group trip to Canada, where 18- and
19-year-olds could drink and be irresponsible. Not that we weren't
already doing that on weekends in Lake Placid and during our
semesters spent at college, but now we could do it somewhere else and
feel even cooler about it I suppose.
Geoff borrowed his
father's Ford Expedition and Brett drove his Toyota 4runner and
altogether 7 of us drove to St. Catherine Street in downtown Montreal
and rented two adjoining hotel rooms. I had money saved from
answering phones at the pizza place, Rachel had money saved from
waiting tables there, and of course Brett delivered pizzas, and as it
turned out Geoff worked at the bowling alley next door. It was like
we were all meant to be friends. Geoff and I were still on winter
break from college and this would be a time to really get to know one
another before getting back to school.
As soon as we
arrived at the Marriott, Rachel disappeared into a crowd of sexy men
(and perhaps women) with whom to co-mingle in the hotel lounge. She
returned the next day when we checked out and Brett delivered her
safely back to boarding school.
The day and evening
spent on St. Catherine Street was a blur of clubs and lights and
drinks. One of our friends, Liam, disappeared into a strip club and
didn't answer his cell phone well into the next day, hours past
checkout. Geoff and I had to leave without him, to get Geoff's dad's
car back on time, but Brett and the others stayed and recovered Liam
from a waffle joint where he was treating two bouncers to brunch as
an apology for his lewd behavior the night before. Apparently he'd
touched a stripper inappropriately during a lap dance, but was
forgiven when calling his doctor for a verbal doctor note explaining
his condition, one in which he had some sort of inability to control
hand movements when aroused. Liam also had ADHD and Tourette's
Syndrome, and left me perplexed beyond explanation after our first
year's worth of conversations, but I came to appreciate him as you
might an eighth wonder of the world. He was a hoot and was always
included on outings with Brett's circle of friends. Believe it or
not, Liam went on to law school and now has his own firm in Lake
Placid.
But during this
Montreal overnight trip, Geoff and I were strangers. We mingled in
the group, and probably liked one another but were shy about it for
the most part. It was upon checking out, that Brett took it upon
himself to invite everyone besides Geoff and I to carpool with him,
leaving Geoff and I to drive back together. That great big SUV and
just the two of us.
Now I don't remember
my phone number some days or even my age all the time, but I remember
that car ride well. I remember the first impression Geoff left on me
when we had that first alone time together. That vibe, if you will.
How easy he was to talk to. How comfortable I felt with him. I could
have sat and taken a road trip across the countries of Canada and the
U.S. combined in one big circle only stopping for food and use of the
bathroom. His energy was so content, so balanced. He had good taste
in music and wanted to make sure I liked what he was listening to as
well. Once in a while he turned the music down or off, and just let a
stillness set between us.
He was a boy raised
with manners and was full of stories yet dispersed them with silences
and pauses, as to not talk my ear off, though I craved at times he
would. All this in a drive of under two hours.
When we reached
Plattsburgh, Geoff suggested stopping at the mall to stretch our legs
and get a bite to eat. I excitedly obliged, saying I wanted Chinese
in the Food Court, and hopefully they'd have free samples, though I'd
be buying a meal anyhow.
Much to my dismay,
he wasn't a big fan of Chinese. I think he got Burger King or Pizza,
I can't remember. I purchased a plate of chicken lo mein with two
sets of chop sticks and encouraged Geoff to try using chopsticks with
me. I showed him how to hold one like a pencil and pinch the other.
He adamantly refused. I insisted he give me one good reason why he so
refused to try lo mein (I even said he could avoid the chicken meat
if he thought it might be cat or dog meat), and he finally told me
this:
"Lo mein just
doesn't look right. It looks like spaghetti that got sick. I just
can't do it. I'm sorry."
I processed what he
said, and started to laugh. I had some lo mein in my mouth, and it
started coming out of my mouth. I could barely swallow all of a
sudden. Then I thought of what he said some more, and decided I could
not eat anymore of this sick spaghetti either. To this day, I cannot
eat lo mein. Geoff ruined lo mein for me, forever.
That was the first
time Geoff made me laugh. It was such an uncontrollable laugh, and
his words left such a marked impression on me. This is when I believe
I fell in love with Geoff. The sick spaghetti comment. A decade
later, after I'd left Geoff and began mourning the loss of him, I
wrote a poem one day, and a line came out of that poem that gave me
some clarity about love. And that line was this: "A man who
makes you laugh - hold onto that one like a shadow at high noon."
On the day I left
Geoff I didn't know the reason I left, but in the days and weeks and
months and years that passed after leaving, clarity came. It was like
taking steps backward from a mountain until finally you see the whole
thing for what it is.
One of the reasons I
initially thought I left, is that I thought that fundamentally, a
partnership needs a stronger foundation than good sex and laughter at
the end of the day. A good partnership needed financial stability, a
strong parallel faith in God, and a coming together on politics.
No, I've had to step
back even farther. And I see a bigger picture now. A healthy
partnership comes with a significant other who makes you smile, makes
you cry, and makes you laugh. A lifetime partner makes you feel
alive. He makes you want to wake up in the morning. He makes you want
to take on a new adventure each day. He simply makes you feel. That
is what love is. I know that now. I see it. I had to walk far, far
away to learn that.
Our First Time
For the life of me I
can't remember when Geoff and I were officially a couple or when our
first kiss happened or when we first held hands. But as most couples
have a hard time forgetting their first most intimate moments, I will
never forget ours.
It happened in his
dorm room at St. Lawrence University, Whitman Hall, second floor,
close to the balcony. He had a single room, nothing fancy, but it was
all we needed to get the job done.
I'll spare the
details meant only for he and I, and just say that we exchanged those
three special words that come with any promotion of relationship. I
said them first, and asked him not to reciprocate, since I was just
sharing how I felt. I loved him.
But he couldn't
resist, it seemed, to say them back. And after saying them he went to
the opposite end of his room, only 15 feet away maybe, and turned off
the light, so only his computer monitor shed a dim glow in the center
of the room, and our dark bodies - his standing at one end and mine
lying atop the bed at the other, waited for each other like weak
magnets, controlled only by our very weak momentary willpower, as he
pulled off his t-shirt, baring his soft and boyish skin.
I wanted to touch
it. His chest and stomach. Shoulders and back. He had no hair there
at all. I found that extremely sexy. I'd brought a night slip to his
room and planned this out, and had changed into it somehow as sort of
a surprise for him. I was ready to give myself to him and take him
into me. He would be my first, though he didn't know it. I had let
him think he was my second, since I was shy and a little embarrassed
at my virginity, being a sophomore in college and all. He was a
freshman and had let me know in not so many words, that he was not a
virgin. But I believed I was the first girl he loved, and that's all
that mattered. I loved this boy, this Geoff. I believed I would marry
him someday, probably soon after we graduated college, if not the day
after! We would have children soon after that, buy a house, land
jobs, and live happily ever after. This was the man of my dreams, and
he was about to make love to me.
When it was all
over, I replayed our lovemaking over and over again in my mind
throughout the night and throughout the next day, sometimes
inadvertently squealing aloud to myself. I was just in a tizzy. My
stomach was in knots. I was beyond infatuated. I was intoxicated with
this Geoff and with how his body had moved with mine. How he'd looked
into my eyes while we moved together, how he'd been somewhat shy and
sensitive to how I felt while we moved and shifted and took our time
feeling one another out. I'd never known sex could be so beautiful
and non-awkward and slippery and feel-good. It surpassed any
experience I went on to have at college, any high or buzz or
anything. This one takes the cake. My first, with Geoff.
We went on to
explore this newfound passion for each others' bodies for a decade
and it never grew dull, though no experience ever quite lived up to
that first one. We did grow a little self conscious as we put on
weight over the years, but I never stopped loving his skin or how he
felt inside of me. He had a gentle rhythm and we rocked just right
together. Even after a decade, we were still exploring new ways to
please one another, though I was a timid lover and Geoff's appetite
for sex grew as his appetite for food did and I felt diminished in my
capacity to please him as the years went on.
The Bird
College didn't end
with wedding bells and baby diapers. We did however inherit a bird.
Not the animal kind. It was a human bird. Let me explain.
We decided to settle
down in Saranac Lake, where Geoff's parents lived and where each of
us worked. I was a substitute teacher and Geoff wrote for the
Adirondack Daily Enterprise. So we did what any normal couple fresh
out of college would do. We rented a house and lived together, and
sublet an extra room to a stranger.
Now let me say, this
stranger was not creepy but he was strange. He was such a strange
bird, that we actually called him the bird. He was perched
atop the house. As close as one could be to living on the rafters and
tile, this bird resided.
His real name was
Jason, and that is what we called him to his face. We only called him
bird behind his back, as to not be mean. He lived on the third floor
of our A-frame abode with a bird's eye view of Bloomingdale Avenue's
railroad tracks in downtown Saranac Lake.
Our first impression
of the bird was that he looked extremely malnourished, or perhaps he
was naturally just a small boned person. His head was particularly
tiny, and we sometimes joked that he had a bird-brain.
Jason worked at a
factory one hour away, and was up before the crack of dawn. Hours
later when Geoff and I awoke, we'd commend the early bird for
catching his worm.
"The bird has
flown," Geoff remarked one morning.
"I'm surprised
he gets up that early when he stays up so late playing guitar,"
I commented back.
"Yeah wasn't
that Free Bird he was playing last night?" Geoff joked.
"Haha. He's
free as a bird. He ought to find some other birds to play with too.
Start a bird band."
"Birds of a
feather flock together."
"Oh yeah, I've
heard that before. I think a little bird told me that."
Geoff and I laughed.
The bird brought us
lots of laughter.
Geoff brought me
lots of laughter. The bird could have brought me lots of strife. He
was a stranger living in our home and tried to hang out with us
sometimes and it got awkward. But Geoff always made the bird feel
comfortable and had a way of excusing us from the social scene when
he felt I needed my space.
Geoff had a way of
spinning things - situations - to make them laughable. He made life
colorful. He colored my 20's with bird jokes and good music,
interesting films and comedians, YouTube videos and Onion articles,
music festivals and outdoor adventures.
He also invited his
friends into our lives. Not just the bird. The bird was not actually
our friend. But we had other friends I would not have had without
Geoff. One of those friends being Liam. Liam and Meredith and Gigno
and Titus, just to name a few. There was also Brett and Melissa, who
we matched up after meeting Melissa in Rhode Island. They now live
out West together. Meredith lives out West, too. In fact, everybody
has moved on with their lives it seems. Everyone except for me. I
live with my parents and blog and take medications that supposedly
treat mental illness.
Geoff is a writer
too, and has moved on relationship-wise. I can't picture myself ever
seriously settling down with another person. Even though six years has passed since our break-up at this time of writing (2017).
Love doesn't pay the
bills. Not having money pulled the last Jenga block out of our
relationship. It became the source of stress for so many other issues
that would have been non-issues otherwise. We'd not have been arguing
about how messy his room was, for example, if we'd had the money to
own our own home, with a master bedroom with furniture to put all his
clothes in drawers and closets. We'd not have been arguing about late
night boredom if we'd had money to afford cable at the beach-house.
We'd not have been arguing over how fat we were getting if we weren't
so depressed. Poverty is depressing. Debt drained the luster out of
our everyday life. Hence, the drinking.
When we argued it
was only when we were sober. I'd go after him only verbally, but with
the accuracy of a peregrine falcon diving after it's prey. I'd use
such intentional effort to strike with accuracy, a target which was
somewhat already dead. Geoff never wanted to argue. He would sit
motionless and silent, save for apologizing for whatever he did or
did not do wrong, until my rant was over.
Geoff never
reciprocated a provocative word to me in all our decade together. He
did frown upon spending money on groceries. Beer and eventually lemon vodka became a daily necessity for Geoff. Comic books and Magic the Gathering cards became a weekly expense. Geoff liked to spend money but our fridge was always bare.
But Geoff had a way of soothing me, making me feel like everything would be okay, even when I sensed it wasn't. He offered foot rubs almost daily. Alcohol calmed me, too.
But Geoff had a way of soothing me, making me feel like everything would be okay, even when I sensed it wasn't. He offered foot rubs almost daily. Alcohol calmed me, too.
But my resentments built up over the years. Day by day, little by little, comments would escape my lips until it became a daily ritual to emasculate him verbally.
Until one day I
arrived at the point of forgetting who it was that I fell in love
with in the beginning. I found myself at a somewhat literal dead-end road of feelings. And so I ran away.
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