Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
Sometimes a world crumples, sometimes a marriage ends and sometimes it's the same thing. Second of four parts.
Mar 20, 2001 |
March 22, 1999, 9:16 a.m. This is my assignment from our therapist. Write down everything that I like about you. Not everything that I love about you, because apparently the two are different. OK, here goes: You think certain combinations of numbers have magical connotations. You believe in omens. You drink your morning tea with an ice cube and a lemon. I like the way you smell after you take a shower. I like dancing with you. I like your brown eyes and your brown hair; they seem to be a perfect match. I like, and I've said this before, the sight of you in white underwear and white socks. I like your taste in clothes. I like, although sometimes I love, the sound of your voice. I like walking the dog with you, sorting laundry and reading the Sunday paper. That's it. Everything else I either hate or love. But that's another story, isn't it? It's actually not easy to think of things that I like about you. I don't know what this exercise is supposed to prove, but I suppose it's a way back to the beginning of our relationship, when we liked everything about each other. You liked me so much, you wrapped the ribbons from my hair around the gearshift of your 1979 Volkswagen bus, and there they remained until the bus caught fire.
I like to remember the first time we made love. It was our first date, sipping wine at a bar by the ocean. A full moon hung in the air, and I was impatient to get you down to the water, to the beach, so I could kiss you in private. Sufficiently lubricated after two glasses of wine, I finally suggested a stroll by the ocean. Not stupid, then or now, you agreed. I was surprised that the moment we got down to the water, you took off your clothes and dove in, wearing only your polyester beige bikini underwear. I knew that sharks feed at night and swim close to shore, but I kept my mouth shut and joined you. We kissed in the salty, sexy ocean for the first time and I knew that I loved you. Later, you dropped me off at my car, at the university parking lot, where I was a graduate student in comparative literature. I was studying Chaucer and reading the Canterbury Tales in Middle English. I like to remember going to class the next day, the salt from the ocean and your mouth still lingering on my skin.
When we were dating, I liked the way you showed up at my apartment, late at night after work. My long blond hair was still wet from my shower. You wore brown corduroy pants that I liked to unzip the minute you walked in the door. I didn't own a brassiere because my tits were so small and I liked the way you pushed your hands inside my T-shirt and grabbed my nipples. That was how you said hello to me. I liked that. One night you came over with a bottle of scotch and we drank half of it. Then I took you up to the roof of my apartment and danced naked for you. That same full moon hanging in the sky, smiling down upon us. I liked the way your eyes lit up, like the moon, the way they followed my every move. I liked how sexy and desirable I felt. Your eyes were glued to every inch of my body, smooth and naked and whitely shining on the roof at midnight. I like remembering all these things. It gives me pleasure, even now, 10 years later. But is it enough? Is love enough? I read somewhere that every seven years our skin has replaced every single one of its cells, so much so that we are practically different people. So the skin you kissed 10 years ago theoretically doesn't even exist anymore.
March 24, 1999, 2 p.m. On the train home this afternoon I sat next to an old woman, and I could not keep my eyes off her hands. They looked like the skin of an onion, papery, dry, mottled with dark spots, and gnarled like the roots of a tree. I couldn't take my eyes off them because I thought they were beautiful. I thought she was beautiful. The scuffed orthopedic shoes, the 1940s overcoat, the silver hair tightly curled.
Earlier, when I got to your office, they said you had gone to lunch. So I thought it would be nice to surprise you at the restaurant. I found you sitting next to a very young woman, a proprietary hand draped across her chair. I knew that you were not sleeping with her. No, no, no. Nothing as crass as that. But I knew immediately that you desired her. And when she excused herself to go to the ladies room, I could see why. She was wearing skintight cutoffs, and her thighs were taut and muscled, the tendons undulating as she crossed away from me. You couldn't keep your eyes off her legs and neither could I. They were simply beautiful, sexy, young. Ripe with possibilities. Taut with mystery, with fire.
And I realize now why I was so transfixed with the old woman's hands. They burned too, but they burned with history, with stories upon stories, like the rings of a tree, of a life passionately lived. I see myself, quite clearly, somewhere in between. I believe I will go on to have other lovers. I believe that my breasts will be cupped and kissed, that my thighs will be caressed and that I will be entered, made love to. But I know that my hands have also begun to burn with history, with pages from my own life, some as brittle as an onion skin.
It was painful to watch you watch her walk back to the table, her lips freshly made up, her chestnut hair brushed and shining. I could smell the smoke of your mutual attraction. And I am very sorry to have seen it, to have smelled it, because it was as real and as palpable as my hands writing these words. I don't begrudge you your passions, your attractions or your fantasies. I don't. I have them, too. Again, I am only sorry to have witnessed yours so cleanly and so clearly.
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