for A~

Oh! someday I know someone will look into my eyes
and say 'hello'
you are my very special one.
But if you close the door
I'll never have to see the day again.

~~~After Hours, Lou Reed


Life After Terri Begins

And then one day she isn't there. I come home after studying, her apartment has an empty feel, deserted, but . . . not quite. Nothing is missing, nothing out of place. Except, she's not there. There's no note. I don't know whether I should be worried. It isn't like her. It feels wrong. It's late. I get ready for bed, and go to bed and wait. It comes to me slowly, and I know. My heart starts pounding. I can't catch my breath. She's with Jack and she's a first-rate shit. It feels like my heart will blow itself to pieces, and I don't know whether it's shame I'm feeling, or hatred, or simply gut-wrenchingly grief. The walls and ceiling and floor of the apartment close in. I'm alone and shaking, in a panic. I know where she is, and I'm drawn, compelled, to confront her, but terrified that I'll find what I expect to find. I'm dizzy and disoriented and sick to my stomach. How could she? Why would she? I dress, and walk-run through the cold and wet night to third and Powell, and cut through an alley, to his apartment. I am shivering, crying, ashamed, sick, sad, embarrassed, afraid, alone, and the last thing I want to do is ring the buzzer, but I do. I know they're in there. No answer. I ring again. Then again and again. I ring a hundred times, and I know they're up there listening, sitting on the bed wondering what to do, and Terri's saying oh shit, and Jack—I don't know. I don't know him. I know Terri. She forgot about me for ten minutes, and Jack was there, and in her own, inimitable Terri way, did what came naturally. I know this as sure as if I had been in the room with them. They're sitting up there listening to me ring and ring and ring, and they're paralyzed, and I have nothing left. No shame. I go around to the back, pull down the fire escape ladder, climb to the third floor, and fucking go in through the open window. And I'm right. There they are, sitting on the bed staring at me, Jack with his idiot face and Terri just staring at me, as though she expected this. Fuck her. Fuck me. Now that I see them, now that I've humiliated myself, I wish I were anywhere else. My ears are ringing, I don't even know if I say anything, or if they say anything. I leave. By the front door. I go back to her apartment and gather what clothes I can, throw them in a couple paper bags, and walk back to my dorm room. Ten thousand thoughts and emotions are filling my head, but above all I'm embarrassed. I'm embarrassed to be me, to be in this situation. How could she do this? I know the last month has been rough, but . . . I'll never get over this. Seeing them, sitting there, side by side on the bed, just staring at me as I come through the window, god, how can I live with that image? I feel like I can't. I make my way back to the campus, up the stairs to my door room. I haven't been there in weeks, and even then it was only to get more clothes. It's been almost four months since I moved to Terri's, coming to campus only for classes, pick up my mail, use the library, and that's about it. I've lost track of my friends. I've been living a different life, and find myself, now, here, back, alone, my entire sense of self shattered in the space of a couple hours. Not to be dramatic, but I'm reeling. All I can think of is how I'm going to face my friends, what I'll tell them, and that I'll have to slink back to the dining hall, and there they'll be. I'll get my tray, and my eyes will dart around the hall looking for somewhere to hide. There will be no place to hide. I'll sit with them, and bit by bit it will come out, and they'll be sympathetic, and say bad things about Terri, and maybe it will make me feel better and maybe it won't, but I'll never be able to live this down. Weeks go by. I see Terri, but we don't speak, except she tells me I had no right to take the photograph of me from her apartment. With a couple weeks of school left before summer I start dating Robin. Not seriously, we sleep together but don't have sex. It feels good, at least a little bit, to have someone to care about. But every thought I have is about Terri. And every step I take takes me further away from her. I don't know how I can hate the person I love, and love the person I hate, but I do. If she begged me to come back I wouldn't, but she isn't going to. I'll never have the satisfaction of saying no. I'm a mess. Summer comes, I tell Robin that it will be great in fall when we get back, but I don't believe it. I feel nothing for her. At home, I'm less lost. At least I'm among my family and old friends, and they don't know, and it gets better, a little easier all the time, but still, I feel sick when I think about her. I write to Robin, but there's little to say. The letters aren't romantic, just chatty, and then I stop writing. Terri is beginning to seem distant, it's like waking from nightmare in a cold sweat, then the dream fades. Even the humiliation is fading. The whole thing is beginning to seem like a comic opera. Yes indeed, I played the fool. I embarrassed the hell out of myself, but at least I did something, at least I made them sit there and see my hurt and pain. I kidding myself. She crushed me. I'm broken. I hurt all over. I'm empty, a null set. I contact the Dean of Students office. I arrange to take a year off. I need to figure this out. "This" being my life. I can't go back in the fall feeling as I do. I have a summer, the same job I had the previous summer, teaching summer school. I have six girls for morning sessions. We have math and reading, go on nature walks, spend time at the library, do art projects. It was fun last year, but my heart isn't in it. I can't seem to connect with the kids. I can tell by the way my supervisor looks at me that she's thinking I'm not the same person I was. I'm not. I'm slack and tired. My eyes show it. I have an image of my heart with a big scar on it. It doesn't feel like my same old heart. It doesn't beat light and easy. Fourth of July comes and DeeDee and I get ahold of some mescaline and watch the fireworks and spend the night in my room listening to music and watching the wallpaper do strange things. In the morning we drive to the beach, the beach where I took Terri's picture, to watch the sunrise. It's beautiful. Every grain of sand is a boulder, every glinting facet reflects the light of the rising sun. I hate to come down, but I do, and the world is gray. My father helps me find a job for the fall, I'll be doing an internship for a medical illustrator. I've done a little of this before, I have the skill. It's a good job, I'll be with people all day, and that will be good. I'm not seeing anyone, but that's okay. I've written to Robin and explained the situation. We both say we'll pick up where we left off a year from now. I can't see that happening. She isn't Terri. I mean, I don't love her. I still love Terri, and I get a letter from her which breaks my heart all over again:

Dear Lynn,

I don't know if you can forgive me. I didn't mean this to happen, it just did. I'm sorry, and if you can't forgive me I understand. But I want you to remember that what we had was beautiful.

I'm writing this from jail.

Love,
Terri

I throw it in the trash. I don't even want to know. I start work in the fall. I'm content, though I wish I had someone to hold. It's hard being home. Most of my old friends are off at school. It's pretty lonely. My mom knows something bad happened. She asks if I got pregnant. She thinks maybe I had an abortion, that's why I'm so sad. I say no, and tell her the whole story. It has to come out sometime. I tell them both. My dad has a hard time with it. His strategy is to put if out of his mind. My mom, she's sort of great. She doesn't ask a lot of questions. She doesn't really act surprised. I mean, hasn't it been obvious? Mostly I'm pretty tired and sad, and don't feel much like dating. I'm kind of devastated. I'm kind of under water. I really miss Terri. I miss sort of everything about her, except the cheating on me part. The breaking my heart part. I miss her emotionally. I miss her physically. I miss kissing her. I miss feeling her weight on me. I miss her body, the tastes and smells and movement of it. I miss the way she would look at me from across the room. I miss her beautiful smile and her beautiful eyes. I miss her voice and her laugh. I miss the way she touched me. I miss touching her. I miss her companionship. I miss being comfortable in my own skin. I miss the familiarity of being myself. I miss being cocky, to us a malapropism. I don't know what to do about it other than what I'm doing. It makes me sad just thinking about it. But if she wrote to me and wanted to make up, I wouldn't. I don't know if that's because she hurt me too much, or if I never truly loved her. She must not have loved me. I don't know. I have a vague sense that true love, if there is such a thing, won't be so, I don't know—playful. So cat and mouse. And I guess she really didn't like girls after all, or maybe it was just me. At Christmas time Julie is home from school, and calls. We dated a little in high school. It wasn't physical. We sort of knew and sort of didn't. She's really sweet and smart, and it's fun being with her, and it helps a lot. We sort of have sex, but it's not the same. Then she goes back to school and I'm alone again, and it's worse. I keep thinking about Terri. I can't seem to stop myself. I can't see how this is going to resolve itself. I'll go back to school in a year, and the same old faces will be there, and I can't see ever fitting in with those people again. Not after all this. It seems like lonely is what I have, and lonely is what's ahead. If this were a movie, it would be a bad movie.




Poetry by one trick pony The PoetBay support member heart!
Read 667 times
Written on 2015-01-04 at 01:31

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Thanks for putting it back.
What a great story teller you are. Whether this is personal experience or not I won't guess, but I would say it is from the detail of the feelings.
You keep the reader glued to the story with the reality of what you are feeling. The story is good, compelling, rings of honesty and real pain, and many of us can relate to the feelings, whether they were hetero or homo sexual, it makes no difference. Your pain comes through so real. It is high time to talk about this kind of love, which is no different from any other kind. Love can be both painful and ecstatically good,
~Ashe
2015-01-04