Folie à Deux (21 page)

One morning, mid-November the year that I am seventeen years old, I dutifully walk into her room carrying the normal amount of tension from the previous night’s argument. Neither of us ever remembers the minutia that causes our squabbles from one day to the next. I know that I’m mad and that I should be mad but the source of my anger is beyond my intellect.

She grabs her keys and says, “Come with me, please.”

She’s cold and although I feel like I tug her control away at times, the power she exerts at this moment is palpable. We walk abreast without a word spoken. She leads us into the dark auditorium, illuminated by two amber glowing spot lights on the left side of the stage. Her heels are loud on the wooden steps that lead us in front of our phantom audience, announcing our entrance into this large space.

As I hit the top step, the phrase, “Throw her a bone,” echoes in my head. She stops at the risers and sits. She doesn’t invite me and doesn’t wait for me to join her before speaking. I’ve become adept at ignoring the inane babble of her love declarations so as usual, I check out.

I’m awoken, however to hearing, “So is this what you really want?” Her voice somehow different, missing desperation, detached from the typical brooding.

“Is what what I want?” I ask, bewildered.

“Do you really want to be done with me?”

The magnitude of that question and this moment are placed squarely on my shoulders and I feel as though a strap is being tightened around my chest. I know what I want to say but simply cannot articulate the thought. My pause lasts long enough that I begin concentrating on the length of my silence instead of an answer.

I heave the word, “Yeah,” quickly and quietly so she’ll ask me to repeat it. Based on her speculative reaction I may renegotiate a new answer.

She responds unimaginably, “Well then, you have your walking papers.”

In spinning our severance as abandoning me, she steals the last shred of my self-respect. Her release ignores my unsuccessful attempts, insures that the drama of our final act is written as a termination from my job as her boyfriend. The last clear reminder that this always was a power imbalance.

No feeling before and none after can prepare me for the swirling chaos that stems from her dissolution. I want to speak but can’t, want to run but want to hug her for giving me the gift of my life back. I think I can gauge the look on my face but also
think I have no idea what I portray. She doesn’t look at me, only stares at a piece of paper in her hand appearing as though she wants me to reject her offer. However, her body slightly turned away creates the characteristic enigma.

I can’t walk past her down the stairs because this moment is surreal; I still may be imagining it. Is this a delusion of reprieve? I can’t walk to other steps, they’re too far. I might not make it before I’m pulled back. I walk to the edge of the stage and leap down to the orchestra pit stopping one more time to look back. A condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be pardoned at the very last minute. I’ll see her in two periods, in her classroom but that’s different. This is the last time I will see her as a daunting figure in my present. The next time I see her she will only be my French teacher not my captor.

She must know I’m staring at her but refuses to look. Does she feel the part of me left there on the stage, a part I never really new? I walk up the aisle to the exit and open one of the double doors. I stand immobile while my eyes adjust to the fluorescent light of the hallway. It hurts because the auditorium behind me was so dark. I also use the moment to adjust to the novelty of what just occurred. The temptation to walk back and apologize grips like the belt again. I feel the need to return out of obligation.

She is and always will be a part of me to which I will remain loyal. We are inseparable on more levels than I’m even aware exist. Some of them wonderful qualities that will make me a man people gravitate toward.

Not until someone walks past the open door and snaps me out of the daze am I able to think. “Is everything ok?” an
underclassman from my study hall asks in a soft, sweet voice. Everything is not ok, but things could be if I walk forward, out of the darkness.

“Yeah, I’m fine, thanks for asking.”

I leave the auditorium thinking the worst is over.

Imagine opening a bottle of seltzer. The hiss, the impending overflow. Quickly, tighten the cap. Wait a few seconds, try again and hope the pressure equalizes. Sometimes the cap can be cracked a half turn at a time to slowly release all of the pent up force. It takes time, it takes patience but it can be safely opened.

Imagine now, no equalization. Imagine the frustration when every time, no matter how long the wait, the tiniest twist of the cap causes continued effervescence. The anger of the futility is only outweighed by the realization that it’s forever impossible. Next fear takes hold; maybe the bottle will never be opened, followed by confusion. Finally, choices must be made that are unwanted, unwarranted and based on no set of previous experiences.

Whether opening quickly or slowly a mess is inevitable.

This chaos is what becomes of my day to day existence because I never had the time, knowledge or ability to equalize the forced pressure in me. I was shook like the bland bottle of seltzer, in all directions, in multiple, unforeseeable ways and then left with everything contained in an undersized and ill-equipped package. Shaken over the course of years and for the next fifteen, I tried opening up a little at a time.

Life was thrust upon me. Other girlfriends my own age, college, marriage, a child, another child, a house and a third child. Each one brought hope that they might bring relief. But after each, the horrible hiss and the burden.

I can feel the bottle, painfully tight against my hand able to burst anytime. And when everything finally erupts there is no
doubt that everyone around me that I love, now or in the future, will be covered in a wet sticky mess. I’m unable to protect the people so dear to me as much as they were unable to prevent this for my life.

The remainder of my time in high school is spent pining to leave out as though imprisoned. I graduate college after declaring my major in the only thing I could, French. Still absent the ability to think for myself I make a sickening variety of decisions based continuously on what I think Carla would want. I try to please her and preempt her fickle fancies now without daily contact. She evolves into a different type of ghost. I compile the endless possibilities of what she would want but am able to vary the degree of depravity I attach to her indirect decisions.

After graduating with a degree in French Translation my twenties go by in a fog. Because of this haze, a decade of my life where I watch my peers gain awareness passes in a flash. This is different from the typical way that people reflect on the passage of time. For me it seems vaporized into a vacuum where everything is a void. This vapid feeling allows most things that would be considered watershed to become bland.

Occasions that transpire are in fact, life-changing but looking back, I have the feeling once again of watching from afar without control. Carry-over dissociation from not having felt anything for so long; an unshakeable residual numbness. I wish to God I felt the things I pretend I do. I wish I remembered and enjoyed these milestones accompanied by loved-ones but it’s hard to feel any kind of happiness. The man who blossoms from that murky boy is malformed.

I need to be wanted, need to be perceived as desirable. It’s a common modicum that people who worship money are never able to find enough. People who pursue power can never satiate
that hunger. Those sorts of ideas are usually the thesis of a sermon or a motivational speech where the warning is to value the truly important things in life. I’ve heard those platitudes and can easily quell material temptations. However, I’m subconsciously driven by the need to be sought after by other human beings.

My obsession pervades my every action yet its persistent presence is conveniently ignored. I crave the attention of people around me, needing to know they want me. I like feeling eyes on me, suspecting that someone is thinking about me with impure thoughts. I act in subtle, sometimes unnoticeable ways to cast my spell, shades of invitation that sit on just the right side of my subconscious. The reality is that nobody misreads my signals. I’m good at sending them without full grasp of what they actually are.

Such is my game and it’s a game of conflict. I work tirelessly to have a perfect body yet cover it with baggy clothes leaving only suspicion of what’s underneath. I perfect the habit of self-flagellation in many ways. My legs cut up and bruised from Mountain Biking, hands calloused from any kind of work I can find. My arms are sinewy and tight from weightlifting to draw attention to them yet require a second look and maybe repulsion from their abuse. I am and have been tied to one woman and one woman at a time since I was fifteen to add to the allure of prohibition.

I like the look of being clean shaven yet only reduce stubble when a five o’clock shadow grows into unkempt. It’s all a dichotomy and all defines me as what is wanted but can’t be had. Feel it but don’t allow it to be felt. It starts and ends with me and causes wonderment and second guessing. I bring the constant war with myself to your front door. Neither of us can easily discern our feelings and thoughts. Don’t think you know me because knowing the real me is impossible.

I’m the je ne sais quoi that eludes explanation.

I make myself a sex object in every way I know. The psychological parts are much more complex and harder to detect but the physical is just under the surface for everyone to glimpse. Being a sex object creates the illusion of control. I may possess power over a conversation or even an entire friendship because I can speak a certain way or make too much or not enough eye contact. I would like to be comfortable enough with myself to not attach such value to my desirability but I’m far from there. If I can’t trust that people want me and want to have sex with me, I’m not sure on what I will subsist. I only feel alive when I flirt, when I risk.

Mr. Cunneely stands in front of the class. Like every person, at every moment of their lives I am the culmination of all my experiences and decisions. The difference is my individual parts are disjointed. Sometimes I don’t know from where certain aspects of my personality come and what degree of normalcy they contain.

However, like a beacon guiding my every action I’m overly aware of my sexuality at all times. I know how to stand and how to sit, distinguishing when to put my hands in my pockets. I choose carefully when to pause while speaking, not because I’m collecting my thoughts but because I feel as though it gives me the pensive air that the females will find coy, if not rakish.

I’m a paradox. Underneath the oversized clothes, lies a body that is desirable. I work hard for the wiry, ripped arms and the barreled chest hidden under a dress shirt two sizes too large. I squat over four hundred pounds to add mass to my quadriceps and do calf raises until they cramp but my dress pants are too baggy to ever allude to their texture. Maybe, sometimes on a Casual Friday, I wear something uncharacteristically form-fitting to make the other four days curiously tantalizing.