imanant :: look at me go.

Monday, December 26, 2005
Chapter "Four" retelling the fuckup and eventual salvation of Patrick Midleton

[find "chapters" 1,2, and 3 below, on earlier days.]

"Chapter" Four

Five-thirty in the morning and I'm in Robyn's bed, but I don't really
know that. I forgot. I'm in a place my body never forgot. I'm warm,
I'm safe, it's like the moment right before a star goes nova. My eyes
are closed and the light on my lids could be from a sun or a oncoming
train, the Dali Llama has nothing on my calm. The sun's resting it's
chin on the horizon and the birds are still whispering to each other
as not to wake the squirrels. I unfurl my toes, take in bits of
jersey sheet and then let go. I may never move again. Languid orange
cream sunlight warms the modestly furnished bedroom. A long since
abandoned high heeled yellow converse props open one of the room's two
windows, letting spring air plump with dew drift in, lightly twisting
the bucktooth window blinds on it's way past. The other yellow
converse hangs from a dusty ceiling fan by it's laces. Adjacent to
the window is a bookshelf swollen with used paperbacks, old textbooks,
and magazines. On the other side of the bed is a blue, 4-shelved
wooden dresser with socks springing from the second shelf and a cotton
bra strap dangling from the first. Outside, although some dirty and
stubborn snow still crowds corners and edges around town, it's spring
in upstate NY. Excluding those in the great leak states, no one in
the lower 48 appreciates spring more than land locked upstaters.

I lay there, preoccupied and oblivious, her back to my shoulder, I
might as well have been asleep. I might as well have been dead.

Before there was Jamie, Robyn Harte and I spent three unusually steady
years together. Our families put odds on who'd propose first.
Mornings like this were the norm. I was content. A physical
therapist, Robyn knew what moved me. A writer, I knew what words
stirred her. Her previous boyfriends left her nervous, quick to
judge, and "estranged from inner-self". I was safe, fresh out of the
gate, with only one serious girlfriend before her. I listened, I felt
her pain. I was an emotional sponge. Half the time I had no idea was
going on, but I had stamina by the bucket and she just needed an ear.
I needed to feel like I was important to someone. An ideal
arrangement.

Outside Robyn's window, the occasional car passes or door slams and
some unfortunate soul slogs off to work. I pay no mind. Robyn could
sleep through a fire; she hasn't moved since she fell asleep. That
girl and me, two peas in a fuzzy pod of exhausted passion. There is
noting more comfortable than being wrapped in sheets warm from a
night's worth of body heat. Something vaguely embryonic about it. I
was set, ready for the day and I hadn't even gotten out of bed yet. I
hadn't had a morning like this in a long time.

One wanderlust summer many summer's ago while I was still in college,
my bed was an old couch on a friend's balcony. My alarm clock was the
sun rising from the roof line. I've never slept so well. Suddenly
fresh air wasn't just a sign of the oncoming day, it was my morning
wine. My technicolor visions of oxygen molecules flowing from trees
into my lungs felt like prophecy. This was perhaps, also, the closet
I've ever come to religion. Even during the accident, I never called
out for god, never begged for intervention. When I finally understood
the red in Jamie's hair and the rouge in her cheeks was blood, the
infinite never crossed my mind. The mornings I woke on that mold
green, rotten pumpkin orange and piss yellow knit couch, left me with
no questions about an infinite because it was right there in front of
me – all around me; me. Oxygen I couldn't see fed from nearby trees,
nurtured my body and a star some thousand light years away kept me
warm and woke me up. To say I was an element of the infinite would
predefine boundaries. Everything is in flux and for a little while,
some particles had a party and formed my body. Soon, they'd disperse
and start other subatomic parties. This was before I'd known anyone
who died.

That morning, between the time I lay half awake until I dashed for the
door, I was flush with the same naïve comfort. Everything smelled
like Robyn, smelled of life. In one nostril and out the other. My
Mother Earth, the sun shined and the tides changed at her behest.
Planets revolve in sequence to hum her name. The galaxy spread itself
out until it reached nothingness to preach of her being. Literally,
nothing else in the entire world mattered for those few minutes. I
thought about love, children, death, honeymoons, the time we did this
and that, and a photo of her looking up at me like we were meant to
be. I thought about crunchy leaves, crunchy snow, kites, picnics, and
every other cute couple day trip we never took. I remembered the
first time we had sex. I remembered the last time we had sex, only a
couple hours before. I wondered which was better. I remembered how
brilliantly blunt we'd become with each other, like two appendages of
the same organism communicating with one another. I remembered all
this and I was happy. I was never leaving that bed again. What a
fool I'd been.

I rolled to my side and threw an arm over her. She moaned lightly,
nudging back against me. Patrick and Robyn, the natural way. The sun
woke me up in a warm bed I knew so well, couldn't remembered why I'd
left, and for a moment I forgot I'd known someone who died. Someone
close to me. Someone…someone…

Then, with the efficacy of a car crash, I remembered everything.
Feelings of being pent up, finding nothing in common aside from our
corresponding neediness, and the memory of the other guy, that son of
a bitch fuck she slept with. Some guy was fucking someone I love. I
was angry, depressed, confused. My moment was up, the only good day
dream I'd ever had was over.

So I left, or more properly, ran. I'm not proud. I didn't say a word
to her. I snuck out of bed, put on my clothes, and left the apartment
like a thief, like a victim. The worst of it was, If I wanted to come
back that night, I knew I could.

posted by ezruh sellof at 12:21 AM 0 comments

0 Comments: