old-blogs/George-Gets-Married/The Halloween Entry.txt

Date: 30 Oct 2011 21:47
Topic: The Halloween Entry
Modified: 31 Oct 2011 02:05

For what it’s worth, this has nothing to do with Halloween.

This is  a tough blog to write for. On the one hand, I have all this stuff I want to say. Stuff I want to say to someone. Want to say to someone who understands it, and will learn from it, and will gain value from it -- and will appreciate my struggle. On the other hand, it’s nobody’s business what I do with my life. It’s private stuff. CJ hates that I’m talking publicly about this. The more public I make it, the more our relationship becomes everyone’s relationship. The more I share, the less that belongs to us. I don’t know if there’s enough savings in the bank for that. 

The older I get, the further away from the origins of this transformation I get, the more I forget. The less I am able to explain the transformation. The less I am able to accurately portray the emotions. The less and less relevant it feels anymore. I want to say something important. But what’s so important about what I am doing? What is the point of what I am doing? My mind is drifting. I can’t concentrate with all the noise. It’s not the noise. I’m distracted for some reason. I’m blaming it on the music in the shop. Blaming it on the people outside the window. I’m blaming. Stop blaming. Why am I resisting? I haven’t written anything for the blog in a whole month.

Learning a new skill takes hours. Lots of hours. Hours spent in repetition and practice. Hours spent focused on that skill. Focused on that repetition and that practice. My mind. It wanders everywhere. One minute on history, the next on my coffee, the next on the chill in the air, the next on my harris tweed jacket. I can’t focus anymore. Yes I can. I am struggling to focus. I’m not sure why. I want to write something. I want to post a good update to the blog. My relationship with charlotte. OUR relationship together. 

Two old men sit at the table in front of me. One wears a smug, critical, half-smile, eyebrows elevated as if he’s surprised by everything. But the smug expression says he’s surprised by nothing. His incessant condescending barking keeps drawing my attention away from my love for CJ.  A woman on the street walks by, she bears the same soft, friendly face, open stance, and round body CJ has. I feel a wave of longing. I think of her. I want to hug her. Kiss her. Stroke her face. See her smile. A flock of pigeons circles Bartel-Pritchard square. They’re looking for scraps of food. It’s too late for that. Tomorrow November begins, and already snow is on the ground. 

My coffee has grown cold and bitter now. I never want to grow cold and bitter. I once believed I would. I once believed my life would end before ever having a chance to feel love. To feel joy. Joy of the kind I feel with CJ. She has changed everything. I have changed everything. I am not the same man who was waiting to grow cold and bitter. I am the man who fights against that now. I am the man who does not have to fight against it. It has gone away on its own. The cold and bitter future has become the fiction. The warm and joyous and passionate future has become the reality. Love is not just a movie theme. It’s not just a story. The world is a very different place than it was five years ago. I made that world. It is my world. I live in it. I do not live in the world I left behind. It is still there waiting for me to return. I never will. I know the path back, but I no longer have the means or the desire to return to it. My ship is sailing elsewhere. The wind no longer will let me return to that continent. 

I am the slowest goddamned writer on earth. If I was doing this for a living, I’d starve to death. 

My history with the opposite sex is not an easy one to talk about. As you can see from my previous post, my starting position was anger, resentment, and deep suspicion. I was unable to form any deep friendships at all as a youth, but the potential for friendship with females was especially poisoned by my parents. To succumb to the desire for commerce with girls, was to fall prey to my parents, and the evil they represented in my mind. I was never going to allow myself to lose this war. 

So I looked askance at all girls. I focused on my feelings. I identified them, isolated them, trapped them, and subjected them to interrogation and torture. Never, would they be allowed a moment of unguarded escape. This was my general demeanor. Suspicion. Fear. Cynicism. Disgust. Contempt. As far back as I can remember, I never so much as looked a girl in the face, let alone spoke to them, unless I was in a situation in which the alternative was far, far worse. This strategy carried me entirely through grade school, and high school. I never let my guard down for a moment. Ever. 

That’s not true. I did let it down twice. Once in 7th grade. Once in 8th. 

The 7th grade story went like this:

As I sat minding my own business in Social Studies class, working on some catchup reading before class began, a fellow classmate approached me. He told me that one of the girls in the class wanted to talk to me, but I’d have to meet him after school, in an exit hallway on the far end of the school. I was deeply suspicious, but also extremely curious. I knew this was going to end badly, but I just couldn’t help myself. I had to know what it was they had in store for me. I agreed to meet. 

The end of the day came, and I made my way to the exit hall, and stood at the double-doors waiting. This hallway was relatively isolated. Nobody used it, because it emptied into a fallow field, which was typically muddy. A former farmer’s field that now belonged to the district. They fought for years over what to put on the property. Anyway, there I stood for about 10 or 12 minutes. Just before giving up, I heard a noise coming down the hallway ‘round the corner.  Scuffling, and some yelling. A female voice. I recognized it as one of the girls in Social Studies. I was confused, and a little fearful. Why the yelling? I found out.

What rounded the corner, was a mass of bodies. Four boys, each grasping a limb of the horizontal girl, who was by now howling and cursing, demanding to be let go. They dragged her down the hallway toward me, laughing and cackling. I stood at the double-doors, frozen. Stunned. I’d never seen anything like this. I was speechless. 

After some struggle, the group had finally reached me, and the girl managed to wrestle her way free, and scramble to her feet, howling curses the entire time. She dusted herself off, turned and stomped away. There was a pause. The boys turned and looked at me.

I waited a few seconds. My mind was blank. I felt rage and terror. I felt disgust and horror. Finally, I spoke.

“Are you quite done, then?” I said, in the best William Buckley matter-of-fact tone I could muster, under the circumstances.

They all looked at me quizzically, but said nothing. 

I turned toward the doors, pushed the handle and stepped out into the field, leaving them behind. 

I walked home that day, through the field, and out onto the highway leading home. It wasn’t a long walk. Perhaps an hour door-to-door.  I walked because the bus had already left. But also because I didn’t want to see, hear, or even sense another human being. I wanted to be away from human beings, as far as I could get. I didn’t belong with them. I was in a different category. I didn’t know what category, but whatever it was, it wasn’t what those four boys were or that girl was. It was something better. Something purer. Something harder. Something more solid and more self-sufficient.  I felt vindicated in my attitude. I felt sad and disappointed to be vindicated. I felt angry and proud. I was right, and I wanted to be right. I loved being right. But I was lonely in my certitude. Lonely in my awareness of my singular stature. More committed than ever, to living  a life of loneliness. 

It’s interesting, looking back, to see how willing my peers were at helping me learn to isolate myself. I don’t blame them for their actions, or for my isolation. But I do find it fascinating just how easily we fall into our respective roles as children. They were to be the judges. I was to be the judged. It could not have been any other way. When their judgement was finished, the roles reversed, and I became the judge, and they the judged.