modern love

If I were to eulogize myself, I believe that I would begin with; “I never really seemed to get out of my own way.”

For most of the people who read this, the same is true for them as well. The boon to this, is that once you realize who you are, truly, then a sort of calm comes over you and life begins to make sense.

I was looking over some of the old photographs I carry from when I was a child and the memories, although dusty and worn on the edges speak more of the truth than my mind ever would. But as I have said before, memories only see what they choose to see.

When I was young, I was a small fish in an even smaller pond. I interacted with a great many people and yet had very few friends. My life was spent on the periphery of living, only just so I could say I was a part of something that had some meaning at the time.

I never really joined in, or became part of something. I would just drift from acquaintance to acquaintance content to set on the sidelines dreaming of a better life, hoping to get the girl, desiring the adulation of others and fearing the spotlight that would come so close to the shadows I found myself so comfortable in.

I was for better or for worse the “beautiful loser.” I was willing and ready to come in second place, or worse. I was the guy who would never say no to anyone, for fear of being rejected and in that fear I became the one most laughed at.

Don’t get me wrong. I chose that path. I chose to be the guy who always made a fool of himself if only to have someone take notice. My shy and awkward life transformed me into a joke and I never really saw that in doing so, I was the ultimate punch line.

There were only five people in my life that I felt I could call friend. People who saw me as just a little more than that great buffoon, people who actually asked my opinion before we did the most stupid of things, and with them I had the time of my life.

Time flows on and forgets all the things that forge a man into what he becomes and the people lost along the way become legends to the mind’s eye. Good friends, lost loves and hands outstretched to lend aid all but forgotten save for this day and age.

Everyone I knew as friend has gone on without me. Their lives unfolding as I so often dreamed mine would. Buildings fall and the history of my life is being erased as I lumber through my days oblivious to the joy that others know.

While they walk hand in hand with brother time, I run at break neck speeds to avoid it, to beat it, to cheat the inevitable. I know I will fail, I know that I will achieve nothing of greatness with no progeny to immortalize the grandeur of my folly.

It’s all the things not said that prove the things that become reality. All the questions skirted or tossed aside, all the verbiage misconstrued and contorted by perception that leads to a night like that night.

I would like to start by making the statement that if one is able to admit that they are insane, they are by point of fact not, which I must confess is a conundrum that seems more liked to an oxymoron. I can confess easily that I have by no measure lost my grip on reality and yet I know that my actions are not the actions of a sane man. So I must ask rather than infer; “Have I gone mad?”

Before you try to answer me this, perhaps I should give you context to draw from before conclusions are made:

I met her when I was quite young. She was so beautiful and fresh and new to me, as new as the surroundings I found myself in. You see I was a big fish in a small pond that moved from my home to start out new in a much bigger pond. I knew nothing of the new pond or of life in the new pond and so I carried with me the naivety of my old life. You see, where I come from people are a little nicer, a lot closer to each other and therefore there are fewer secrets to keep. Don’t get me wrong, there are some dark places, even in a small town, but all in all it was a better place to be. It was selfish pride and wounded ego that made me leave and so it was the selfish pride and wounded ego that became the beginning of my corruption and eventual fall.

She was my boss at the first job I had in this new home. I was a fry cook in a burger joint, she had interviewed me and from the moment I saw her I knew she would be my wife. There was something, someone, some mystical force that spoke to me as clearly as I speak to you now that told me she was the one and from that moment my will was bent to her every whim.

I worked for her in the background for twelve days before I uttered a single word to her, the sound of her voice reminded me of a gentle autumn wind that blew across my skin and cooled any tempest that stormed within me. I remember thinking to myself that her voice could see through me, into the dark places of my soul and light the corners of my fears. Her presence in the room, simply standing there, gave me purpose. That in itself frightened me, for never in my life had I ever given my very essence to a woman who did not know, beyond my capacity, that I lived.

Needless to say the eventuality I had hoped for came to pass. We dated for two weeks before we moved into a small apartment. It was a hole in the wall kind of place that every new couple starts out in and all was fine.

As our relationship grew, I came to know her and she I. we seemed to be more alike than different and the darkness that drove me from my old home began to surface. Late nights out, missed calls and other tell tale signs that point to infidelity began to grow like weeds in our garden. I tried, I truly tried to allow them to pass as paranoia and simple folly but as time progressed and clues abounded, the fear I felt deep in the pit of my core became reality.

She had fallen into the arms of her former lover. I cannot describe the wound that left upon me. The closest metaphor is that there was a door locked in some hidden abscess very deep inside me and upon learning the truth, that door fractured and what spilled out can only be likened to the biblical beast of Armageddon.

It possessed me controlled me and obeyed my every command. We ruled, this unbridled hatred and I, a very dark and wicked game. For her transgressions on my charity the sentence would be pain, unimagined and insufferable anguish and for the good intentions I had began with, doubled and redoubled was my conviction to ruining her for all time.

She was not as frail as the others from my past. She was actually my equal in every way. For each offensive strike there was an equal and opposite reaction. For each humiliation another escalated humiliation was laid upon my door. And our love became a sickly tormented, petty beast. It had gone from the most glorious host to a dank abysmal little cave that drew in all light and hope and love as we sat on differing sides of the same shore throwing stones made from the lives of those we used to hurt each other, and the arsenals were large and pitiful.

Not for months, nor years, but for decades we flung our slings, for what must have been time immortal we pitched our arrows at each other daring, begging, pleading for the others surrender, until our love became a contest played by wounded children, both taunting and shouting for the other to say “uncle”.

This is the shame I bare for all time. My burden that I can never lay, the chains I have forged in this life, the nails in my palms…the lives I ruined to win a pointless contest that should never have begun in the first place.

There was an armistice and for a time peace. However, something had been awakened in me that would not slumber and for a time it waited. Waited for some small act of aggression, whispering its song in my ear, begging for freedom and knowing all the time I would not. Until…

She had slipped out for a few hours. She was gone and could not be reached and I knew that this would be the one time, that single moment my wicked brute ha begged for. I could feel in my spine the chain that leashed him inside snap with an audible crack and an electric shudder that made the earth tremble. He was free, I was free and we would finally have the last word.

The world was cold as night in mid October brought the changing of the leaves and the dampness of decay. We sat, my brute and I, in an open doorway swaying to the rhythm of the world as the bittersweet aroma of dying leaves filled out nostrils and fueled our purpose.

We sat and said nothing as she entered our home. We sat and watched the night progress as she came to us and sat beside us.

“Where have you been?” we asked.

“Driving.” She replied.

Our control was legendary. So much like a charmed viper we sat and looked into her eyes with all the falseness of a Judas and a gigolo. We held forth a kernel of seduction which was taken by a surprised and titillated dupe. The touch of her hand on my flesh repulsed me so that I could feel the earth shake and shriek in revulsion and still my brute and I held our composer.

We sat her and I and my brute in the doorway for a few moments until she stood and took my hand. She led us to the bedroom. I have to wonder if at any point she saw that each step she took brought her closer to her doom… no matter.

There was something about that night. Something about the air itself that brought out the deviant in everything, for as she stripped off her clothing and stood before me she smiled with an entertaining twinkle in her eye and asked, “You wanna tie me up?”

My brute climbed to the highest peak of my depravity and roared a beastly howl that echoes through me to this day. She handed my brute the keys to his kingdom and brute was well past ready to play.

There was trepidation at first, but brute was most insistent and so I slipped from the control and allowed it to take the reins as I bent to its suggestions. She loved every moment of what we were doing and we took our time.

The sexual encounter, I must admit was the greatest thing I had ever known as the climax faded into a still pool of contentment and wonder, I could feel the light of some celestial body touching my back.

I turned to see the moon hovering in the window, pale and silver and full of all that I was missing. I looked into her eyes. The eyes that had captured me so completely all those years ago and my heart began to beat in my ears. Her hair was soft and golden and her lips full and shimmering. For a moment I thought to let her go, it was then, at that moment brute clutched me its rage as brilliant and hot and evil and wonderful as the morning sun.

I heard it howl again and my back was set alight with a million needles as my hand slipped between the mattress and the springs. The knife gleamed for a second in the moonlight and then it went to work…

My hand fell upon her and it fell upon her and it fell upon her. Brute shrieked and my hand began to hammer on her again and again and then it began to dance left and right and to and fro and I tried to stop, I had to stop! I couldn’t be the person doing this, it has to stop!

It rained in our bedroom and as the rain fell I could smell the bittersweet perfume of decaying leaves on a rainy day as the sun began to fall over the dying landscape. I followed the scent outdoors and sat down in a yellow lawn chair to smoke a cigarette and enjoy the peace, the final peace of the rest of my life…

And so now you know the story. I am not insane. I am not mad, I found the love of my life and bent that love to a will of perversion and deprivation and in the end I reduced her body to a dripping pile of useless meat.

I…I did this and…and I cannot stop these eyes from seeing what I did, nor can I stop the chorus of memories inside my chest from stabbing and rending and tearing with their song of lament. All I can ask for is death, to end the torture I know here and begin my true sentence in the agony I know that awaits me.

So you see doctor, I do not want to be kept alive, nor do I wish to be fixed. There is nothing that can be done to repair the things that I have done to her. There is no going home, not for me. I want to feel the shroud of death fall over me so that this once she can be victorious and the game can come to an end. Please tell them I am sane. Please tell them to kill me.

He sat for a moment staring at me trying to take in my confession, trying in his simple little way to discern some measure of salvation for me and in the end I saw in his eye, no hope. He smiled slightly as he stood and put his hand on my shoulder. Then turned and walked to the door.

“Are you sorry?” He asked.

The only response I had for him was a single tear that ran down my cheek. He saw, for one brief moment, me. Not me and brute who now had my leash secure around my neck, but me, the man who found the one woman of his life who could have been the greatest asset to the man and who had destroyed her utterly. He knew my soul. He hung his head and closed the door behind him.

Upon leaving the room he found himself in another with a window and a woman standing there crying as she looked upon the creature the doctor had just left. She was beautiful with soft eyes and golden hair and skin as soft and glowing as when the world was new.

“I’m sorry. His paranoia has caused a complete mental collapse. I don’t think there is anything that can be done for him.”

“My god…” she choked. “Is that really what he believes?”

“I’m afraid so. He seems to have lived an entire life in only a few months. It is as real to him as this is to us. If you don’t mind, may I ask if any of this has any basis in fact?”

“I was gone for a few hours. I was buying him a birthday present. When I got home I found him in the back yard smoking, his arms were bleeding from where he had cut himself with the knife.”

“His chart did indicate severe abuse as a child and abandonment issues, but I just can’t fathom anything forcing such a severe collapse as this. I’m sorry I wish there was something I could do.”

As they turned to leave no one saw the reflection in the window watching them leave. The great brooding hulk in the pane holding a leash and snarling at them as the doctor turned out the lights. No one heard the excited howl of misery as the man setting in the chair looked down to the floor and collapsed misery, alone.