my road rain and love

Fade in, a crowded bar.  It is still dark outside.  The snow has changed again, where before it was light and fluffy, now it seems more dense, it clings to the window only for a moment and then begins to drop leaving a trail like a frozen tear.

“The morning comes on fast.  Too soon I will have to finish my story.  It’s starting to rain now outside, the snow and the rain mixing together to make the world like a giant snow cone, flavored with dirt and oils.

“At one point in time I decided I would write a diary book on self-improvement.  Uneducated, a layman's guide to some spiritual mumbo-jumbo leadership.  And yet there are hints to a deeper, more researched approach that reflects my wasted years of study of the subject.  For how can I use the wisdom of Ghandi when I cannot show the same character that he had?  His willingness to be beaten rather than result to useless force which might justify the beating.

How can I allow him to teach me not to be cowardly so I can live a virtuous life, so I can achieve right in my lifetime, not for recognition, but only for the virtue of having achieved that level of enlightenment.

It started to rain constantly as it does in that part of the world.  The rain brought and held me to one of the most lasting days we had together.  It rained the entire day that we first made love, so that forever now the rain will remind me of that day and of her.  We did make love on this later occasion, and for a long time.  But what I remember is all the time we spent sitting together and fucking together as the rain fell heavy outside the whole day.  There was no need to think past each other’s presence because we were totally satisfied where we were.  Intellectually we had much to discuss, as friends we talked of old times and old friends.  Occasionally we would go out despite the rain and the possibility of thunder and swim in the mansion’s pool which was empty of others to relax and stretch languidly our muscles so that even exercise was taken care of, as if we needed exercise.  As lovers, on that rainy week, when we tired of speech we had each other and, for me at least, there was nothing more that I could want in a lover.  I had lost my ability to be satisfied sexually by anyone else.  That is not as final as it sounds, I could still be attracted to another woman, could imagine making love to women I met through work, saw as I moved around from day to day or to whom I was married.  But it was only as a fantasy that they were attractive to me.  When the opportunity came up, as inevitably it does for me, I was not interested in following through to a conclusion.

Conceit you say?  Hardly.  The best company in the world, at least for a moments diversion is the high functioning narcissists.  We are clever and very engaged with our audience.  If you cannot find one of us in your social circle, find a comedy club or a theater.  Those people trying their hardest, those are the narcissists on the stage.  As such, when I found myself in the presence of women, without the least effort I was charming, attentive and alluring.  They would all, eventually, married or single, beautiful or plain, old or young eventually start to envision me as a sexual partner.  My intimate way with all people, whether sexual or not I enjoyed human contact and athletic physical interaction, only encouraged feelings that might otherwise be fleeting sparks, quick to be extinguished.  But not, I found my ability to reciprocate severely strained.  It was not that I did not want to make love to all those people with whom I was in contact or that I wasn’t flattered by their attention, it is the easiest thing in the world to flatter a narcissist; but the closer we go, the more naked we found ourselves together, the more I thought about her and the more I imagined our lives together.

I wanted to marry her.  I wanted to have children with her.  I wanted to be so enlightened and successful that I could be with her and not feel inadequate.  I wanted to share the dark things which made me up with her and have her accept them and thereby cure me of them.

“If I am to remember you in book, how much of it must be factual and how much can be represented in spirit?  It seems unfair for it to be informal, but isn’t it unfair to use you to achieve my own immortality which I am not enough to do so on my own.  Or perhaps I should let you write your story in which I will be nothing more than a footnote, not the co-author I would like to be.”

She does not see my tears.  She does not hear me cry out for her.  She looks at the letters I write for her and does not realize that each one holds an infinite wait of desire for her presence, her touch, or a few kind words that I needed so much, but would never hear, “we will get through this.”