Reveal

I must write this all tonight while it is fresh and horrible and wonderful.  It is true, but is it real?

I am on the verge of revealing myself, of throwing away this mask of anonymity, for there is so much that I cannot tell this way.  I am handcuffed and chained.  What do I dare?

I am recently "divorced" without having been married.  The end of a seven year affair.  I don't wish to speak of that now, though.  It is merely ancillary to what I wish to tell.  There are other things, too, that should be said, but perhaps they will become apparent in the telling without the explicit confessions.  I don't know, for I have not written as myself for many years now.  That is what happens in a relationship.  You cut yourself off from others, and then yourself.  No, that is what happens to me.  But the tale.

I left work early today in spite of the fact that I have just been reprimanded for the hours I keep (or don't) by my new supervisor.  I am in trouble but do not wish to dwell on that just now.  I left because I was supposed to meet two women at my studio for "a shoot" (I must create a new vocabulary for I hate such sleazy phrases).  But at the eleventh hour, I got a text.  Cancelled.  It happens often, about fifty percent of the time.  C'est la vie.  I wanted to go to the gym anyway, so I was only mildly irritated.  After the gym, I went to Whole Foods and bought nothing but the best instant foods--natural, organic, steroid and antibiotic free.  It is an expensive joke, of course, but I play along and feel better about it.  And so the quick dinner and organic sorghum beer in front of the television watching that hideous Chris Matthews for a bit.  And then the inevitable whiskey.  Finished with dinner, I turned off the television, put on a jazz station, sat down with some Ben and Jerry's chocolate ice cream and a white shirt, and began to scan the millions and millions of Polaroids that I haven't gotten to yet.  Hundreds and hundreds anyway.  And after a while, there was a knock on the door.  Unusual, really, for I am living like a hermit right now and no one ever comes to see me.

Now I digress to tell you that I have given up hope of finding new love.  It is true.  I hope, like many others, but I know that hope is a folly, and I do not wish to court despair.  No Hope, No Fear.  A good motto I try to follow.  But even in the most ardent hearts, hope creeps in from time to time, and mine is that someone will show up at my door just for me.

Scoff if you will, but it has happened before.  Now I tell you this in full honesty and sincerity--I have never asked anyone on a date in my life.  You may think that is vain bragging, but I have had very few dates, so there is a correlation, I think.  Those I've had, though, were with girls who thought that they liked me enough to make the suggestion.  And I have liked them immediately for that.  I was once married (the mask begins to fall), and after my wife left, my life was a bit of a carnival.  It was only that I let it happen and nothing else.  Sometime I will tell you about it, if you are still coming around.  For now, however. . . we will skip ahead, skip ahead, skip ahead.

I had been in love after my marriage with a much younger woman, and, perhaps, she with me.  Maybe I should ask her now that she is older and very successful (she is an editor for a very major magazine that you probably have in your house from time to time).  Much older now.  She is thirty.  And when I tell you the circumstances surrounding all of that, you will shun me completely.  But not now.  Not yet.

After we parted company, I was the most blue I have ever been in my life.  Still, I do not know if it was her or the departure of my wife who was only twenty-nine at that time and much younger than I was, too (of course you are already psychoanalyzing me and everything is changing).  But I was blue and lonesome and sure that I would never have anyone pretty who I absolutely adored in my life again.

Skip ahead.

One night, I was lying on my couch on a Friday in what passes for my pajamas, watching something on television and drinking scotch, when there was a knock at my door.  Odd, as no one came around then. I opened the door and there was a young girl smiling at me.

"I work for your tenant," she said, "and she asked me to get something out of the apartment.  She said you would let me in."

Wry smile, me.  "Really?"  Some inanities that I thought were cute passed between us.  "O.K., here," I said and I gave her the key.  "I'll leave the door open. Just come in when you are finished."  And I went back to my scotch and whatever I was watching.

When she came back to give me the key, I asked her if she would like a something to drink.  To my very big surprise, she smiled and said yes.  I hadn't counted on this.

And so we talked and drank.  She was a student at the Country Club College and a violinist with the big symphony orchestra in town.  Talk talk talk, talk talk talk.  She stayed much longer than I would have guessed.  She had her violin in the car, and I asked her to get it so she might play something.  And she did.  Where there had been empty loneliness in my house, there was now classical music played on a very expensive violin that surely had to stir the heavens--as they say.   And when she left and I walked her to her car, I said, "Look, I won't ask for you number, but if you want to, you can call me."

And she did.  About ten minutes later.  She said she was busy the next night, but would like to go out after that.

We dated for three years.

All that by way of saying--it can happen.

Holy Jesus, I am far away from the story I intended to tell, and now it is late.  Perhaps I should quit and delete all this.  Or, perhaps, I should continue this later.  That, I think, would be the advisable thing to do.  But I will tell you about the knock at my door tonight, I think, eventually, and the hope it engendered here.  By then, though, it will already be false hope and this missive will fall to pieces.  No matter.  I will stop for now.  I've had too many whiskeys to continue with anything resembling coherency and sense.