Rejecting them first August 22, 1985

  

I saw Fran here two days ago. It was quite a shock, her familiar car moving along the all too familiar road, while I sat in my fishbowl, glass enclosed Fotomat booth.

She even waved after I leaped out of the booth to wave at her.

I suppose she still have feelings for me; one does not get over a relationship three years in only a few days or weeks or even months.

Still things have been quiet with her as opposed to the dynamics I’ve had with past relationships, not to say that I loved Fran less.

Meanwhile, Safire is still as wild as a stallion, savagely desperate for affection. That’s just not enough to base a future relationship on, and she needs to understand I’m not going to change. I know this may sound cruel and selfish; but I’m determined to maintain my own space.

Good ole Dr. Thomas would call this self-destructive; typical behavior of most men or so I’ve heard.

It just seems foolish to me to base my own life on what might well turn out to be temporary feelings.

Safire also scares me at time, so full or rage and bitterness, I’m uncertain as to when she might turn that rage on me.

And so, the struggle goes on and I’m really free – or at least as free as I wish to be.

I get out of one entanglement only to get caught up in another.

It is difficult to be the subject of other people’s affection when I don’t exactly feel the same way back.

Fran wanted to possess me, and I always felt smothered when with her.

I’m inclined to being alone, distant, sometimes angry, often lonely, but free, rather than get too tied down in anyone’s embrace.

I’m not right in this thing with Safire, since I’ve allowed myself to take pleasure in her company, and then pull away from that pleasure threatens to evolve into something more substantial. I’m a sneak thief, taking what I need – even from Mary Jane.

Sometimes I’ve even had to buy love, from that night long ago when I felt the need to steal money from my uncle’s safe so as not to show up at Louise’s doorstep in Colorado empty handed.

Even before that, when I stole money from my uncles, I contemplated bribing the doctors and guards at the mental hospital to get her released – I was nine years old at the time.

Yet older now, I have generally given into these women, giving them what they want in order that they for the most part leave me alone.

It is the path of least resistance I take when it comes to Pauly’s demands as well. Give them something of what they want and maybe if I’m lucky they won’t want my soul.

All this has to do with being rejected so, I make a point of rejecting other people preemptively.

Safire wants a full-time relationship with me and I know she’d move in if I said so, but at what cost?

There is no way I could survive it, no way I would not resent her for intruding on that other part of me, that part of me that aches to retain independence, even when the cost ultimately is intense loneliness.

 

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