Guilty pleasures July 21, 1985

  

Mary Ann hasn’t written yet, perhaps upset about the story I sent her, and perhaps the fact we did our anti-Bible issue of the zine.

Mary Ann never was one for realism. She likes things romantic, and after having decided the direction of her life, she buried her head in her faith, punishing herself for past sins like flagellants, although her mortification is of the spirit rather than the beaten flesh.

In many ways, she’s become symbolic of our generation that has gone too far to excess and now must atone for its guilty pleasures, purifying their souls through austerity we all found unpleasant when we grew up with it as kids.

For all the years in-between, she has struggled with her religion, a jet set kid with a Catholic school conscience, a dual existence she somehow maintained until she decided to take the deeper plunge and found God again.

She rode the fast lane, but kept looking back, while the rest of us – too cowardly to go as far as she did – looked on with envy.

This is the problem with the story I sent, hinting at her conversion and my own attraction to her, as if I hated her surrendering it before I got to taste the forbidden fruit.

Maybe I’m lucky. Maybe I would have ended up as road kill like a number of her ex-lovers did, wounded people who took the ride and got pushed out of the car while it still traveled at high speed, and by the time she slowed down it was too late to rescue them, only live with the regret of having wounded them so deeply.

I always played the safe man in her life, the one she could trust not to hit on her, and to whom she could share her deepest secrets without judgement, when in fact I ached to be to her what the other men were, keeping my distance only because I feared ending up like them – or maybe didn’t want to lose what I had with her, even if it did not go as far as I wanted.

The story dispels that, giving insight into what I was thinking at that moment when we got stranded together and had to share a model bed overnight until the car could get fixed the next day.

She seemed unaware of the agony of being so close and yet so far away, and the struggle going on inside of me to take a step I knew almost certainly would lead to doom.

She was aware of the other men, especially the macho cowboy who came to her assistance in an attempt to fix the car for her – as shown in the story, someone who would not have hesitated an instant if he could have switched places with me in the bed later that night.

She thought it funny that she had slept with me and not had sex, calling it innocent, when it hardly was, something the story made all too clear.

At the time, she also struggled because she had to choose between two men to spend the rest of her life with (neither one of whom was me) and perhaps was too focused on that to examine what went on between us too closely.

She has still not resolved that conflict (which would have been made worse had we actually gotten involved). Her whole trip west with the one she chose was partly an attempt to escape from that other choice that still haunted her, and to save the man she did choose from a dark life he had led for years here in the east.

She would also get to raise their child in an environment free of those same temptations, the needle and the damage done.

But I think she still thinks she made the wrong choice in men, but by this time could not back out of it without completely alienating her other friends and her family, who had condemned her for the choice she made in the first place and came around only because she stoutheartedly pressed on. How could she go back and choose the other after twisting so many arms to make them love the man she picked in the first place?

In that regard, I’m the only one who hadn’t opposed her choice, even though I secretly thought she had chosen wrong – and perhaps, deep down I envied both of them, wishing I might have been one of the two, and could never be.

Although not articulated as blatantly as that in the story, Mary Ann is smart enough to pick up on it, and perhaps this explains her silence.

 

 

 1985 Menu


email to Al Sullivan

 

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An old nemesis December 11, 1985

Image
    Surisky hated me from early on in grammar school, although “hate” may be too strong a word to describe his reaction to me. I was simply available to him for abuse, Third grade was pivotal for both of us. Prior to that, we were simply feeling our way through Catholic School routine, emerging eventually as whole personalities from the muck of early childhood. He came across as a thug, trying to convey the image of a tough guy. He wore a leather jacket and spiked boots, and snuck into see James Dean movies. Third grade was tough on everybody, including the teachers, who considered us the worst class in the history of the school – even in the safe grades of Kindergarten, First and Second. Two of the three nuns retired after passing us on. But it was in the third grade that we began to work our magic, driving even the stout-hearted nuns crazy. Later, the nuns tried to break our spirit. But we fully represented our age and had the full impact of the 1960s behind us. So,
Read more

Pauly leaves Passaic for the final time July 24, 1985

Image
    Pauly is leaving Passaic again. This comes after two years of us rubbing shoulders after he had been cast out of paradise in Towaco, after his goddess, Jane, went and married that man Pauly calls “a bum.” This has been a tough two years, filled with Pauly’s typical manipulation, his usual shaping of reality to his own needs often at other people’s (mine) expense. When Pauly first came I had Fran’s cultist brother as a temporary guest and Pauly spent most of his time trying to push me into getting that guest out. A few months later – in November – Fran got the ax from her ex and changed her mind about moving in with me after I had committed the spare room to Pauly. He assumed she meant more to me than he did and was already packing when I told Fran no. She had no place to go except for her father’s house, a father she had a love/hate relationship with, and she held it against me, even though we continued to see each other romantically. Pauly being Pauly drove me out of
Read more

The clock is ticking July 18, 1985

Image
  We’re talking love here – silly fictional love with all the connotations of disaster. I seem to be on the meat chopping block with Safire looking for qualities in me that are lacking in her husband. The fact that there is a husband in the first place greatly disturbs me. All this said, I’m uncertain as to why I haven’t ended this already, except to know she is too much like my ex-wife to pass up without a closer examination. Even the way she thinks: slow, methodical, going from point A to point B. It has only been a week since she blurted out drunk that she wanted me in bed. It seems like much longer. And she hints of something more permanent, suggesting that I might fill in for her husband for a much longer duration. The night before last she suggested I come see her in her trailer, as if she is legally separated from her husband, when in fact she is supposed to be biding time until he finds them both a place to live in Baltimore. This is the same kind of smoke and mir
Read more