Sins of the flesh April 15, 1985
Monday, drizzle
Pauly and I got drunk last night and talked.
For some reason, Pauly decided he needed to confide in me
rather than his oldest friend, Garrick, who I later learned abdicated the honor
saying he didn’t want to hear any more of that “bullshit,” a somewhat callous remark
since the two have known each other since before high school, when they lived
near each other along McBride Avenue, Pauly in West Paterson and Garrick across
the imaginary border in Paterson itself.
“The biggest mistake I ever made was letting Pauly move in
with me,” Garrick told me the other night.
Last night, Pauly claimed Garrick had had a tough life,
after that break up from Jeanne more than a decade ago when Garrick went into a
deep depression. Pauly believes that moving in with Garrick back then and
since, he had helped save Garrick’s life.
“God knows what would have happened if I wasn’t there with
him,” Pauly said.
Oddly, the two of them seem to have reversed roles, what
Garrick was back then – wounded to the soul by a broken heart – Pauly is now.
This is something none of us ever thought possible, this out-of-control
Pauly, who moans about his lost love like a love-sick teenager, caught in a
queer depression he can’t seem to climb out of.
He wants what Garrick wanted back then, although unlike
Garrick, Pauly isn’t going to Jessica’s house late and night drunk and slamming
down trash cans with the way Garrick did with Jeanne.
Garrick lived with Jeanne for four years; Pauly’s barely
known Jessica for four months, and still pines over something that is not
possible, perhaps never was possible except in his imagination.
Pauly tells me Jessica confused him, and then calls her a
bitch.
“The jokes on me,” he mumbles as he pours another glass of
wine, and goes on talking, wasting time I should be using in front of my typewriter,
pecking out the next stage of my artist life.
Earlier in the day I convinced Pauly to come to a poetry
reading with me and (showing just how depressed and desperate he had become) he
came with me.
We’ve spent the whole day wasting time, going off or part of
the day to see poetry in action at Dey Mansion where a poet named Janean
complained about how primitive my underground newspaper was, with me paying
more attention to the rain outside than to her, rain that had come later than
predicted yet put me in the mood rain always inspires in me.
Michael read. Then others. And then some old lady who looked
a lot like a professor I’d had in college read a bunch of bawdry poems from
when she was locked up in a madhouse.
Janean read some slick romantic stuff, which reminded me of
some of the stuff Michael sometimes writes, but never reads out, reserving those
for when his girlfriend, Dorothy is around.
Some pudgy gay man, whose love poem didn’t make sense until
the last line, offended Janean, who despite her liberal tendency, seem to be
disgusted when someone like him wrote poetry for someone of the same gender.
Had I still been in Dr. Thomas class, I might have given
this a Freudian interpretation.
Then we all made our way to Anthony Wayne restaurant in
Wayne where Janean took offense when Michael threw a paper cup and plate at
Pauly, claiming this kind of behavior was better suited to a barn yard rather
than civilized society. Terri Mates made
faces at me, making me wish I could take her to bed. Janean seemed interested
in the same thing with Pauly, making me a little uncomfortable since Pauly
professes to still be in love with Jessica, yet has slept with crazy Jenette,
and seems on the verge of spreading his seed to Janean in something I found a
bit vulgar and wondered why the first names of all these women in his life
these days because with the letter J.
Living next door to Pauly, I had to sit through the early stages
of his romance with crazy Jeanette, as if their foreplay was a kind of save to
treat the wounds Jessica (or maybe more importantly Jane) left him with. But real
love is the real cure, and this flesh on flesh with this woman a poor band aid.
“I know I’ve been acting wimpy,” Pauly says as he drinks his
wine.
He’s trying to find someway to justify it all, and wants to
stop thinking about it, stop talking about it, but can’t.
And I sit, get drunk with him, trying desperately not to
show my own pain and my longing over my lost love, as if it is important for
one of us to maintain our sanity through all of this.
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