A Month Later-2017
A little over a month later, the leaves are turning, millions every night go from green to red or orange, some even straight to brown. Instant ghosts, dropping and floating their slow-motion dance to the ground. Autumn weather is an unpredictable guessing game, where one day the sun floats humidity down like moist blanket and the next day the October wind bites bare legs that were fooled into wearing shorts just the day before. On Friday nights, marching bands stand in lines, blowing on cold fingers, cracking jokes to split the awkwardness of teenage sexuality in half, they bleat out pop hits, odes to the gridiron and dream of life after high school. Meanwhile young men slip on shoulder pads, long socks, form fitting pants with laces to make help tie in this perfect American male package and slap each other in locker rooms, waiting to smack another kid across the grass as bright lights illuminate the field. In kitchens, onions are diced carefully, to be added to simmering pots of chili. Young women take to stores of all types, Macy’s, boutiques, thrift stores, buying sweaters, scarves, leggings all for the coming months. We all prepare our nesting in certain ways.
Jenny used to decorate the apartment with whatever season or holiday it was, at Halloween she would tack up pictures of jack-o-lanterns, sinister witches and tape up the crinkly fallen leaves. It was not uncommon to come home in the early evening and be welcomed with a spinning Halloween record on the stereo blaring the spooky sounds of Halloween.
Insomnia has settled in my bed, a thin invisible itch that pesters while trying to drift off to sleep, and when slumber finally arrives, the itch comes back I am shaken awake only to face the dread of not being able to sleep. In some ways, due to the long-term nature of Jenny’s death, the grief process has happened by degrees over the years. As her alcoholism and mental illness carved out small parts of me with every crisis or every worry stacked upon another as if they were made of a million tongue depressors stacked on top of one another over a twenty-year period. Her life spread out over the years like a sinkhole, swallowing everybody who ever loved her, and if the hole could talk it would have been screaming with every inch it widened. She had become invisible in her own life, an apparition at the end where those of us who could still muster the energy to care for her, would huddle together outside of hospital rooms or over the phone and repeat the same script we had honed for years. “If only she got away from _____(insert any man she was currently living with), she could quit drinking”, “if only she’d quit drinking, then she could be herself again”, “if she could just stay in the nursing home, she could walk again” or “I can’t understand why she drinks like she does if she knows she’s going to die.” Although she had always drank, the only sober times she experienced was when she was in the hospital, jail or nursing homes—the reality of her mind was too much to handle without numbing it. Towards the end, these conversations came with the resignation someone feels after their football team went down by four touchdowns with seven minutes left, it was all over but the time ticking off the clock.
Numbness isn’t a feeling but a state, as is the resignation of being helpless as an event happens, no matter how long the event may last, whether it is the eventual separation of California from the west coast as the San Andres Fault finally, cracks, shivers and splits in two, or as quick as a glass of milk being spilt. Age tends to temper the feeling of invincibility, logic reminds a person of the interconnects of everything comes the realization that despite this truth it is also truer that one has very little control over anything, including thoughts, emotions, and triggers that are made bolder, scarier and taller by addiction. It is as if anxiety were a giant looming over a city, swooping in and smacking cars and punching holes in the asphalt of the mind.
Some are born more sensitive than others, the ability to feel, to feel alive or sad or dead is amplified into something grotesque or even sterling beauty. Leaving all the other mere humans, left to be enthralled or disgusted with mouth agape. We would talk long into the night, as the morning light peaked through windows covered with sheets, towels and tee-shirts, “I’m going to go to Italy in the spring whether you go with me or not, then I’m going to Spain and drink on the beach. You can go if you want or you can stay here.” Staring at the ceiling, playing all the scenarios in my mind, “of course she’s going to go, and of course she’s going to fuck some guy(s) over there, and of course she needs someone to babysit her…. And I’m really fucking sick of this shit.” Eventually, she did leave, multiple times she saved her money purchased a ticket and left for Europe. She always called me to help bail her out, one night sometime around 1992 I answered the phone. “Bela, listen I just left Jeff in Germany, he doesn’t drink, and I can’t stand it. Fucking people need to lighten up anyway, I needed to get away. I was mean to him, you know how I get. I feel bad but not really because I HAD. TO. GET. AWAY.” Even though I was 3,000 miles away she knew I was shaking my head, “Don’t shake your head at me, if you are going to be an asshole then I will just hang up and I won’t talk to you.” Even though she had called me, the emotional pull of her predicament overrode all semblance of logic, ‘who will fucking help her then” went the thought in my head, it might have well been on a lite up billboard, “Who Will Fucking Help Her?” “What the fuck do you want me to do?” and just a few inches from me, a voice from the other side of the bed whispered, “Bela who is on the phone, is everything ok?” “yeah, it’s Jenny calling from Germany….” The resigned woman breathed out, “of course it is.” They never knew that they got her in the bargain when they dated me.
“Here’s the thing, I met this guy in the Netherlands, at the Vero, this awesome bar–you’dloveit. We saw the Turks there, anyway he and I made out so I’m going to go stay with him. I met back up with the Mummies guys, they are really cool, and I’ll go with them to Belgium, then Peet will come and get me, his name is Peet, like Peter I always want to call him Uncle Peter and have to stop myself. Can you imagine if I said that shit while we were fucking?! Me screaming out “Fuck me Uncle Peter! Fuck Me! Hahahaha.” Her speech was rapid, one word sliding into another, almost lapping the word spoken before it, like they were racing one another Some people can stand rock solid while the winds of the hurricane swirls around them, the waves of life crashing against them, trying in vain to pull them into the murky depths of their own depths (or should that read deaths?), they appear to be oblivious to the violence that pounds every aspect of their lives. This was Jenny in Germany, and later in Spain where she had went on a whim and quickly ran out of money until she charmed a wealthy Spanish woman who took care of her for nearly two months until the woman, undoubtedly, exhausted by this funny and outlandish American from Ohio purchased her a plane ticket back. My head was heavy in my hands, the sheets bunched up around my thighs, I stared outside the bedroom window as the streetlight glowed yellow against the row of dormant cars—patiently waiting to be driven in a few hours, and replied,
“what do you want me to do? I have no money, what the fuck Jenny, why do you do this shit?!”
“I didn’t call you to be judged by you, you are always fucking judging me! Your life isn’t fucking perfect Bela, quit acting like it is. I thought you would want to know where I was, plus I told the guys from the Mummies about you, I knew you like them. They are really fucking funny. I told them they should come to Columbus and you could make it happen. But they stink, that shit they put on to play, it smells like ass.” She was off on a tangent.
One moment vindictive, and defensive the next excited about something that gushed out of one neuropathways in her ever-moving brain, “oh, cool” thinking to myself, “why would she mention me to the Mummies, just cause I like them?” although I was excited about maybe bringing them to Columbus to play.
“So, you are going to the Pits to meet some guy named Peet?” The woman got up from the other side of the bed, and crossed the room, I followed her hips as she walked out of the room, she was beautiful, my next thought, “god-damnit Jenny, don’t ruin this for me.”
“No, the Pits is in Belgium, I’m going to the Vera—that’s in Holland, you’d like those guys—the Turks loved it and they know Jerry Wick, I asked them if he was an asshole to them as well.” She cackled.
Yawning, “ok, great—be careful, let me know if you need anything when you get there. When are you coming back?”
“I dunno, soon, maybe call my mom and tell her I’m ok. Poor Jeff, I’m an asshole.” She hung up.
Sitting at the end of the bed, I stood up and looked out the window, the glowing red numbers on the digital clock read 2:20 a.m., and the ache in my stomach grew around the rest of me and settled in my head. “What did she want?” said my friend with the perfect hips and she climbed back into bed, “Ah, she left Jeff and is hanging out with Supercharger and the Mummies, she met some guy in Holland, I guess she’s going to go stay with him….” “Why are you friends with her, it seems like all you do is bail her out of trouble?” I didn’t turn around but felt my neck grow red, this was hard to explain, impossible even—why do people care for others when there appears little in return?
Choosing the words carefully, “I dunno, she’s really a terrific person. Oh well, there is nothing to be done now” I slide under the sheets as she allowed me to intertwine my legs with her, I pulled her close and let me self be held.
When the gray sky spits the first cold rain of the fall, and the wind touches through skin into a body’s bones, I am always transformed backwards, to 1991 or so. Maybe 1992, at this point these are just numbers, signposts on a backward highway that really leads to the abyss, fading into the vanishing point on our own inner canvasses. The memory is New Year’s Day, the night before I spent with another woman named Jennifer, and our friend Haynes. A farmhouse on the edge of Athens County, Ohio, the house straddled a hill, with a small winding road that curved up and around the old farm the house sat on. An old fence, faded from years of neglect was broken in spots, the wood an almost gray-black as the white paint had long been rained and burnt out by time, a small pond with a dilapidated dock half submerged in the brown water gave one the thought of a once more prosperous and happy time. It wasn’t used to grow anything anymore, just memories and junk in the yard, the land gone fallow with weeds sprouting around abandoned tires, an old truck sat bare in tall grass that was holding tight to the carcass as if the metal hulk was a savoir in a sea of desperation. It had once been a proud farm, and now it was a backdrop built for my faded memory. The night before we had listened to music on a small boombox, shuffling cassettes as the mood suggested, “Nevermind” had come out in the fall, and I was infatuated with “Loveless’ by My Bloody Valentine and Superchunk’s “No Pocky for Kitty” and as the new year turned over, I put on “Flyin’ Shoes” by Townes van Zandt whom they women had never heard. As we listened and relistend, I succumbed to the pressure of the wine bottle, having gone mostly four months without a drink the atmosphere of the evening called for it. At one point, I knew this would be my last night with Jennifer, I knew this was not going to work—we were too different, she was much more organic than me, more Athens county than I desired, she was a stark contrast to the cosmopolitan-New York Sharon, Jennifer wore poncho’s, sandals and oils—and while conversations went into the deepest part of the night, I felt no spark-I felt incapable of love in any sense. We made love that night, with me knowing this would be the last time and as we spoke in hushed tones afterwards, she confessed her love for me and my reply was silence, my skin getting hot as I knew I was incapable of the same. The next morning, I arose early, made coffee on the stove for all of us and ventured outside. It was New Year’s Day, and everything was fragile as I ventured across the road to a field that slopped down into a small thatch of woods. It was cold, with dried corn stalks crunching and snapping under leather boots, barren trees looking painted on against the forever gray sky. There was nothing there but thoughts and the wind, that was kept at bay by a thin brown jacket, a revelation happened as I walked along into the woods, listening to the crunch of my boots, that in the end I was destined to be alone regardless of what I had in my life, whether it was the bottle, friends or a lover. The thought wasn’t frightening, it was as if a riddle that had been clawing in the back of my mind had suddenly been solved—and it was ok.
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