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.
Saturday, February 25, 2017
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.
Thursday, February 2, 2017
The Last Time
The Last Time
The last time that we spoke, you called me on the phone
This isn't how our story's meant to end
But sometimes something special just ain't over
Until you cut the cord and do a drastic thing
You gotta lash right out and sometimes you gotta scream
We've grown apart it's so cliche
But cliche's happen that's why they're cliches
The last time we embraced, you met me at a bar
It was a place by your favorite comic store
You didn't have to meet me but you knew I'd be there
And you couldn't help yourself from being polite
You were always so kind - kindness was your middle name
You cared about people, you cared about the earth
I don't really think that has changed
But I had to make you stop caring about me
So I had to lash out and show you crazy
This isn't how our story's meant to end
But sometimes something special just ain't over
Until you cut the cord and do a drastic thing
You gotta lash right out and sometimes you gotta scream
And take your time away to heal and grow new limbs
Shed those weak old branches, get over him
But what hurts most (is this)
I never got to say good-bye the right way
So here's to saying hi again someday
We've grown apart it's so cliche
But cliche's happen that's why they're cliche's
The last time I dreamed of you
The last time that we spoke, you called me on the phone
It was Christmas Eve, and I was all alone
You had another girl, and she didn't know you cared about me still
So I spared no unkind words to your good will
And we never spoke again
This isn't how our story's meant to end
But sometimes something special just ain't over
Until you cut the cord and do a drastic thing
You gotta lash right out and sometimes you gotta scream
And take your time away to heal and grow new limbs
Shed those weak old branches, get over him
But what hurts most (is this)
I never got to say good-bye the right way
So here's to saying hi again somedayWe've grown apart it's so cliche
But cliche's happen that's why they're cliches
The last time we embraced, you met me at a bar
It was a place by your favorite comic store
You didn't have to meet me but you knew I'd be there
And you couldn't help yourself from being polite
You were always so kind - kindness was your middle name
You cared about people, you cared about the earth
I don't really think that has changed
But I had to make you stop caring about me
So I had to lash out and show you crazy
But sometimes something special just ain't over
Until you cut the cord and do a drastic thing
You gotta lash right out and sometimes you gotta scream
And take your time away to heal and grow new limbs
Shed those weak old branches, get over him
But what hurts most (is this)
I never got to say good-bye the right way
So here's to saying hi again someday
We've grown apart it's so cliche
But cliche's happen that's why they're cliche's
The last time I dreamed of you
You were walking toward me
You were smiling like I'd never seen you smile
The past was behind us, we were new people now
I hope that day comes soon.
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