Demons of the unconscious December 1, 1985

 

Safire is quite out of her mind – a special kind of madness that comes as a result of too much pressure.

My friend, Mary Ann had this, too, from coming to a point in which she had to make up her mind about the direction of her life.

Impossible decisions often create explosive emotional responses.

Safire, who is in her late 30s, has led a tough life, abandoned by her community – the suicide of her mother leaving her and her siblings to fend for themselves.

My ex, Louise, went through something similar, even though her parents remained alive, they were so remote they might have not existed.

These things leave wounds on the subconscious that never heal. These things come out at strange times in strange ways, often with rage.

 I’m sure some self-important psychologist someday will come up with a list of all the possible reactions we can expect from the psychically wounded.

Or try to sell the old feminist gag that such women deliberately surrender their freedom and talents for the security of being owned by some man.

So, people like Safire are constantly waiting for some white knight to come to rescue them.

I keep thinking of Kathy from five years ago who tried to commit suicide at college because the radical professor with whom she was sleeping did not love her – a sad tale of a 1960s radical who took all the sex he could get from as many of the coeds he could find, each of them surrendering to him because of how cool he was or how enlightened, each overly impressed by the Marxist ideology he used to seduce them.

Mary Ann was more savvy than those naïve kids, partly because she’s my age and made all her mistakes early, and was so beautiful rich men stumbled behind her as if she was the pied piper, giving her anything and everything she desired without her needing to ask—until that point when she ached to find real love, and found too many men to choose from, in particular, two men, both of whom held claim on her heart, and yet required her to decide between them.

Some may believe she picked the wrong man.

Poor Kathy – once eradicated from the grip of the radical professor – found herself a sensible man, a conservative man, a former military man, as if desperate to find the exact opposite kind of man from what the professor was.

My ex, Louise, keeps looking for greener pastures, falling in love with any man with a good line, then abandoning them when they can’t live up to the line they fed her, and she finds another man with another line, eventually to abandon that man, too.

Mary Ann, unfortunately, sees me as her white knight, even though I tell her I’m not, enjoying sex with her, but then I also like having sex with her best friend as well. Mary Ann is still married. Her best friend is not, but she is engaged. Mary Ann wants to give up her husband to live with me. Her best friend just comes to my place to have sex, while she goes on to plan her wedding for some point next year.

Mary Ann has come to hate her best friend, and is suspicious of what goes on, blaming her best friend for stealing me away, when was never Mary Ann’s in the first place.

And the more this goes on, the more desperate Mary Ann is to leave her husband, the angrier she gets at both me and her best friend, as if we are to blame for her being trapped in her own life.

Mary Ann calls me to accuse me of “being with someone,” by whom she means her best friend, and then gets hurt when I won’t deny it.

Sometimes, when she calls, she sounds drunk. Perhaps she is. But she is also in pain.

 

1985 Menu


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