8:10 a.m. - 2005-07-01
Paradise Lost Rant
Why was it that I could not conceive of accomplishing my own dream? Why did I continually give to others the responsibility for my illusive imaginings? Rick and I, of course, never set sail for distant shores. Not for keeps, anyway. Oh, he tried as promised with schemes barely legal, but I proved to be the dead weight keeping us landlocked there in Van Nuys. Looking back, I think Rick tended to get what he wanted because he knew what he wanted, while I flirted with phantoms. He was willing to look reality starkly in the face, stare it down mad dog style. I tended to move in fits and starts, retreating to the safety of the known. And so, we stayed on there in the yard made of dirt and holes with Joe and the puppy girls and occasionally Tory and very often Lee, just for awhile. I remember the night. Something inside me grabbing at my voice. Compelling me to speak some unspeakable syllable, buried since childhood. Some primal moan, frightening even the devils assigned to our forgotten corner of the world. Alone on my bed on a Friday afternoon it overtook me, sudden as a comet. I waited for Rick to notice. To come with soothing words. Or, better still, a shout louder than the irresistible symphony of despair having its way in my mind. I expected him to somehow know. To tend to it with his bully bravado. To make it all go away by the sheer force of his will. He could discern the subtlest of rains, angel tears streaking silently in the hushed midnight. Why not this fearsome tumult? As I waited for him, the cacaphony increased. I felt that I would leave my very own skin for the safety of never. I heard him in the living room, sitting on that Salvation Army couch that would swallow you whole were it not for the plywood he had fixed just under the cushions, arguing with Joe over something Alex Trebec had said. Some Jeopardy stumper. They bickered in the dim light of the t.v. as I stirred in my own private hell. "Father Knows Best", repeated in my mind. Father always knows best. I envisioned Robert Young, tweed coat with elbow patches. Kitten. Princess. Bud. Margaret, of course, smiling condescendingly in her shirtwaist dress. The more I overheard their easy chatter, Rick and Joe, the angrier I became. The accumulated fury of the invisible finally demanding to be seen. Impotent, unable to articulate a need to save my life. The virtue of the timid I had purchased whole-cloth at the expense of my voice. I writhed unacknowledged there in my dingy sheets. Even Punky and Samantha knew to stay scarce. I heard the laughter very far away. By the time I emerged from the room, I am sure I looked haunted and wan. Wild. Startling. Rick and Joe looked away from the t.v. Saw me in my panic. Rick was uneasy, I could tell. Joe came forward, chanting me back with beer-scented breath and stolen roses from the neighbor's yard. And I was calm for the night, but nothing was ever the same. Shortly afterwards, Rick changed the locks while I was away at work, helping the men in pajamas make their beautiful ashtrays. He had closed our joint account, the one in which we were saving for our island. Bank tellers held my hand, tsk tsking what had been done. A firey angel complete with spinning sword, positioned just outside the yard with dirt and holes, allowed me entrance only to retrieve my few belongings. Looking back on Eden for one last glimpse of the puppy girls, I stuffed my meager treasures into my car and was off into the lonely night. Back to the paneled den in my parents' house. Unexpected. Uninvited. Welcome home.
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