Prison cells of our own making September 23, 1985

  

There’s always a twist to these things, a nasty back-biting bug at nips you at times like these, old green eyed monster, only It’s not my monster, it’s Safire’s.

There is some justification. I have done a few things lately that would inspire mistrust, including a trip passed an old girlfriend’s house, perhaps designed to shake her confidence in me as a potential partner so I get on with my self-destructive binge.

I delude myself with thoughts of freedom, even manufacture arguments who have spent their lives free of the shackles of women.

Man (humanity) is a sexual being even when culturally, we have told ourselves otherwise.

Men (males) desperately try to be stolic, but it is a front that hides guilt, pain and sensitivity.

I am at my best creatively when I am in romantic pain, when I am struggling against the potential for a mundane life.

Safire senses this, which is why I think she’s setting up an alternative life in Baltimore, just in case.

This idea hurts and yet at the same time is a relief. I ache for her to leave, knowing it will notch up the level of pain.

Another mistake I made with Safire was my talking to her about my ex-wife, about the letter I’d received, about the lump in her breast.

The timing was all wrong for such a discussion. To begin with Safire was drunk, and came in wearing outrage on her shoulders, maybe looking for an excuse to finally break with me and joint her husband in the south.

She’s used to the prison of a relationship and sees  freedom as waywardness, causing her anxiety.

But I was so desperate to talk with someone about Louise and my fear that she might allow herself to die of cancer rather than get cut up, I talked about it anyway. I needed some perspective on it other than my own.

Safire was rude, telling me she didn’t want to hear about it, telling me how much she has given up to be with me. She thinks my ex-girl friend and my ex-wife are plotting behind the scenes to get me back.

This was the alcohol talking. In the back of my head there was the vague wish that it might be true, when I know it isn’t.

Both of those women have lives of their own that have nothing to do with me, other lovers they embrace at night, thinking of me in the past tense if they think of me at all.

In her drunken state, Safire confessed she has stopped taking the pill, hinting she would like to get pregnant, with me seeing that a prison cell.

And yet, I just can’t send her away.

 

 1985 Menu


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