Authors: Nate Allen
There is after all a reason they’re called feelings, because we FEEL them, in the pounding in our chest, the trembling of a hand, a quiver of the lips, the body becomes electric …they are not facts to be made sense of leading to a logical conclusion like some scripted connect the dots. Who in God’s name would want such a predicament for himself? He remembered having seen a phrase on a sorority girl’s Spring Formal t-shirt, it read:
“Le coeur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît point,”
which translated to “the heart has its reasons, which reason knows not at all.” The fact that it took a 17
th
century French mathematician, physicist and philosopher, Blaise Pascal, to say it so succinctly should emphasize the poignant irony of it all.
“
I love you too,
” she replied, as if a prepared statement of sorts because she had anticipated it at some point, recognizing she thought that he was a heart looking for a home, but she had no accommodations, no vacancy right now, and she continued, “
and part of me is really glad that you feel that way, yet another part worries that I may be a drag on you. I know I must sound happy and sad at the same time, don’t think I’m thrilled at the prospects of you seeing other women but you’re a lovely man with needs and I’m not going to be able to meet them all. Don’t let me get in the way of you enjoying yourself with other women. We’ll be friends as long as we care for each other’s well being.
”
He knew that everything before the word “but” in that statement didn’t matter, and as he lay atop her it came out as if it was meant to be of some assurance to her that he was continuing his life. She had made the rules, he was only playing by them, and with an uncharacteristic stupidity he volunteered how he had hooked up with Olivia just that past weekend.
He had not even gotten off the girl, when like some scene from a movie where the alarm goes off and doors start shutting and gates emerge, he recognized as soon as the words were past his lips that the bloom had fallen off that delicate rose, note to self he thought … “I just fucked my own goat.” She lay there beneath him with her gaze frozen and the faux plastic smile reminiscent of the first runner-up in the beauty pageant, and he immediately felt the air coming out of her like a life-size doll from
Adam & Eve
at the announcement, she herself, stunned at the terrible revelation that perhaps her prepared statement had lacked some truthfulness in its entirety. Just like that, he had gone from helping her dig a tunnel out of her sexual doldrums, to digging a hole for himself.
He bookmarked the moment because he didn’t want to repeat the mistake, but it was too late, it would come back to bite him in the ass. He had accidentally pulled a stick from Cupid’s bag instead of an arrow, and she was about to beat him mercilessly with it, even if she were unaware of it. He had unintentionally stolen her “feel good,” but stolen it nonetheless, the thing which he was the sole supplier of at the moment, the thing which had made him more than just a “fuck-buddy,” and she would recognize the dependency and remedy it in short fashion, alleviate his propriety of it, diminishing his significance in her extramarital life for a time, and precipitously relieving him of his “feel good” in the process …like a sexual pickpocket …payback was indeed a bitch, and a fool and his heart are soon parted…
.
She had developed
feelings
of love for the man, and had thought of leaving her husband, but Jake, being true to his conviction wouldn’t summon her out in an overtly divisive manner. She had crossed her own boundaries where the emotions were concerned and that realization scared her, especially when he was out there cattin’ around. That awareness, and her
aversion
to it, undoubtedly represented the milepost where the trouble began. They had collided in a very intense sexual, emotional, almost spiritual way, and that was not conducive to her situation, so like the kid who owns the basketball everyone on the playground is playing with, and things were taking a direction she didn’t like …she took her
ball
and went elsewhere. This was supposed to be all about her and she had felt a twinge of jealousy from Jake’s news of his encounter. And while she was relieved on some level to feel anything, as opposed to the comfortable numbness of her marriage, it was not the sort of feeling she was seeking here. It wasn’t really a sexual jealousy, but she found herself
unusually
sensitive to the idea that he may be experiencing the intimacy with someone else. Women are often more affected by the intangibles partnered with sex and
carnal
desire than the physical act itself …and often less forgiving. The implications for attractiveness, desirability, and appreciation of their “gift” are deeply rooted
yet
easily disturbed. And that
twinge
had its casualty, the “utopian” perfection of their relationship had lasted about as long as a soap bubble blown from a child’s plastic wand in a brier patch, and he seemed determined to reconstruct it …while she seemed intent on blowing some more.
In the meantime, there was actual life going on, Jake’s mother had apparently suffered a stroke. She had been residing in an assisted living community in Raleigh for several years now, close enough that they could visit her often while she was carefully looked after, now in her eighties, in need of constant attention. They’d taken her to the hospital for testing and the results came back confirming that she had, and almost immediately things took a downward turn. She returned to the facility under the care of hospice. But the stroke had affected her memory and she now seemed trapped in a time warp, unaware of who was living or dead, or how she had even gotten to this place she had called home for the past four and a half years.
Perhaps it was a gift of sorts he thought, not unlike the childhood amnesia of the first few years of life that Nature so kindly endowed us with, so that we don’t remember or bear the scars of that period of practice parenting, she was alleviated of the knowledge of her predicament it seemed. But he could tell she was frightened on a basic instinctual level, and he tried to comfort her as such. Who knows if in the end there is such a thing as
karma
, or just an individual’s gasping last breath fear of it, of heaven or hell? The proverbial white light nothing more than the mind’s screensaver, a product of untethered 1 & 0’s bouncing across the mind’s unconscious eye in random and meaningless order. No balancing of life’s accounts …and what if there were and you had lived your life in denial of its existence? He considered himself spiritual, but not religious, he believed there to be a higher power, he had looked at his son and thought how could there not be. Beyond that …he was uncertain of anything.
Ann Fowler Arnett would have been a pageant queen in a different life, a could-a-been pinup doll in her time. Dark hair, green eyes, hour-glass figure, in many ways if like the song says, “I want a girl just like the girl, that married dear old Dad,” she was a prototype for the women he was most attracted to,
minus
the neuroses. Life had treated her unkind as it often does, and in the process she had retreated from living a life to only living. Believing it seemed that if you did nothing, then nothing bad could happen. But that is never the case. You don’t need to actively seek heartache and pain, nor can you hide from them. They eventually find each of us in their own due time.
She loved Ray Arnett, even when less of him came back to her from Normandy than left, and Ray would always be indebted to her, even when other necessities and ingredients of the marriage became absent, for her loyalty, he remained loyal to her. They were a product of a different generation, one that understood commitment, sacrifice, and had an appreciation for what you had, rather than bitterness about what you didn’t, a “we” generation, not a “me” generation. It was also a harsh upbringing, and she would parent with that same degree of fear. As a child Jake had at times hated her, she could be mean, restrictive, and overprotective, while simultaneously neglectful. But as Jake had gotten older they had found the opportunity to enjoy a friendship, she had instilled in him a fierce loyalty and determination. And he would be there when she needed him, just as she had been for him, not always in the way he had hoped, but there nonetheless, irrespective of anything else going on between them.
Meanwhile Rae Anne was about to take a road trip. She had been asked to be the matron of honor in her cousin’s wedding in Beaufort, North Carolina, a beautiful, quaint, historic coastal town. It was a trip that she would make alone as Glen was preparing for the start of the Spring semester. She told him she needed a bit of space and perspective from the frenzy that had been the previous month, and this provided a nice escape. She had intended to make a mini-vacation of it, staying a few days after the event, and therefore unlike the rest of the wedding party, she retained a room by herself elsewhere. The children’s needs and business carefully arranged to be taken care of by her parents, Glen and Frank. It was a much needed and well-deserved break she professed, and Glen understood that it would be in his best interest to afford her the time. He might not have agreed with how she would spend it however.
She was going with the intention of having a fling while she was there. She would succeed. In the day or so following the wedding, when everyone else had gone back to their respective lives, she remained for a bit of rest and relaxation. She was feeling particularly stressed and needed time off from the constant demands of her life. Her husband agreed. She had thought for half a second to invite Jake, it presented a nice opportunity to have some fun without all the sneaking around, but that thought quickly vanished, as she reminded herself she needed a little diversity in her supplemental plan portfolio, it was too heavily invested in someone who had the ability to perhaps hurt her, and that was unacceptable.
She met Timothy at a seaside bar on a Sunday evening. He was there from out of town as well, a photographer and journalist from a travel magazine sent there to do a midwinter piece on the historic area. He was immediately attracted to her, and she to him. And after a couple of hours of verbal foreplay, making sure he wasn’t married …another disqualifier of hers, feeling him out for personal philosophies and how he might feel about her being married, he passed the entrance exam with flying colors. She would develop, or perhaps refine a sob story she had already perfected to the tune of “
I’m stuck in a marriage, my husband won’t touch me, I’m on fire, I’m just looking to have some fun and broaden my horizons, I think I’m desirable
…. ” (fishing for a compliment) “
Why do you think he doesn’t want to have sex with me?
” in that careful
southern twang
of hers. She knew she had the man on the hook an hour earlier, but she wanted to wrestle with him for a bit, reel him in, let him out, reel him back in so by the time they got back to his room he was ready to pounce. It was a delightful occasion, he was well equipped it would seem, and they spent the night together.
She had accomplished what she sought, gotten a bit of “strange,” no-strings attached, and they would exchange email addresses as a means of staying in touch. That was important for her, for it to be meaningful to her partner, for him to have some awareness of the gift she had given him in the opportunity. Jake provided her that in abundance, she would find others to be less impressed, and less interested beyond the immediate gratification of sex, she was married after all. That limits the opportunities for a relationship to grow, and most men are not interested in such difficulties.
After the incident where the police had been called to the house, Jake had helped her set up a free email account over the phone while he was sitting at his son’s basketball practice one evening, her husband was behaving understandably suspicious and she wanted a way to communicate with Jake openly, but without the worry, so he told her how. He had six different email addresses in fact, that was one way he segregated the women and his activities …he walked her through the steps until she was finished, she narrating as she completed each step. Jake had no idea at the time he was creating a pipeline for her to communicate with others as well.
She returned to Raleigh rested and rejuvenated, the attitude and appearance of someone who has just had an hour long deep-tissue massage, refreshed and relaxed. She had not had an orgasm, the familiarity with the man wasn’t there, and neither was the level of comfort she preferred. She enjoyed controlling the environment, which was why she had been so bold as to invite Jake to her home for their first get together, and this excursion didn’t allow her to do so. While she hadn’t gotten her “O,” she delighted in the fact she had given Timothy several, and in that there was an enormous affirmation for her, her desirability, her prowess, and it had scratched her itch. The spontaneity adding to the excitement, and it would become an aspect of her future outings. She called Jake and asked if he’d like to meet her for coffee the middle of the week, and as always, he arranged his schedule to accommodate her. It had been now three weeks since he had seen her, and he was anxious at the thought of how they’d left things last time, she seemed a little “deflated.”
He gave her a strong but gentle hug when she arrived, and a signature kiss on the neck, again it seemed appropriate for a public display of affection, however she was not quite as warm in her embrace. He would later begin to think of how she must dismiss Glen in such a way. It sucked. They each sat down and ordered a sandwich, he a cappuccino, and she a coffee, black, no sugar. They had not been there five minutes when she told him she had something she had been dying to tell him, almost giddy with it, her lip squinched up to her nose like Elizabeth Montgomery in
Bewitched
, (younger audience please check
TV Land
for times and listings) he perked up eager to hear what she had to share, it must be something good he thought.
And then she proceeded to tell him about the guy she had met, how she had seduced him in a fashion, going into great detail in some
uncomfortable
aspects for our man Jake, and she continued to the apparent point of the story, and their occasion for this meeting it would seem, as she announced with great pleasure how she had come to realize through the experience, that Jake was not the source of her “feel good,” that it wasn’t specific to him, and she did so with the coldest satisfaction, like one of those guests on
Maury Povich
where the patented response was “You are
NOT
the father,” …she had declared he was
NOT
the source of her recent happiness, and she couldn’t wait to tell him.
Ouch
, …that
kinda
hurt …unnecessarily so, and extremely uncalled for he thought silently, as he sat there across from her smiling, continuing his silent conversation with himself, “
That’s great, tell me all about it,
” he replied and proceeded to listen, only this time he had the frozen expression of a mannequin… “
Touché
Jake… I’ll see your bursting my little bubble, and beat you with this metaphoric club you provided me with,” …
or so it had to seem
.