tapestry

And here is where the precariously woven tapestry of my life inevitably starts to unravel....

I'm reluctantly, but fanatically updating my social networking site (which I adamantly insist is the devil), when I get a message saying that Chris, who let’s just say, might have been the love of my life, but who I totally gave the screw-over, has added me as a friend. Okay. I accept. In my mind, it’s a chance to reconnect—to apologize for past mistakes and rekindle a sense of connectedness between two people who once shared the most intimate of connections.

As I open his profile, what's the first picture that pops up on his page? A sickeningly sweet ultrasound of the lovechild of Chris and my former best girl friend, Rebecca.

When considering this joyous occasion last night, to put things in perspective, let me make clear two things: 1) I'm already nursing a sick, pathetic heart. My best guy friend is gone halfway around the globe, but--not only that--I don't know where our relationship is going. Purgatory is the world that comes to mind. 2) I want a child--there's no doubt about that. But, I don't just want one for the sake of having one, (perhaps I’ll divulge later my melodramatic views on the beauty of child-making and how it is the molecular binding of souls--)however, that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt like hell when someone I used to love is having one with another person I used to love.

Sleep is futile. Even the shadows playing peek-a-boo through the curtains recreate the black and white image of what should have been the consummation of my childhood love.

In the morning, I had banana bread and blueberries in memoriam. This was the breakfast I had last shared with my friend, Emile, before he trekked of to his new adventure for work overseas. I was feeling a bit better, despite the fact that I had another dreaded doctor's appointment. Somehow I drug my globetrotting best friend loving, baby less, tired ass out the door and went to see the doc.

In the exam room:

"So, how old are you?"
"Twenty-eight."
"Oooh..."
"What?"
"You plan on having kids?"
"My husband and I have been trying for years."
"Oh, that's right. Sorry. Well, here's the deal. I'm worried that these cells might be hiding deeper inside your cervix, and, if we find that's the case after today, then we'll need to do another surgery. It can have an effect on your fertility by making your cervix incompetent."
"Hmph."
"Well, maybe only slightly. But nonetheless, I have to let you know of the risk."

My inner dialogue sounded something more like this:

"So, how old are you?"
"Twenty-eight."
"Oooh..."
"What the hell does 'oooh' mean?"
"You plan on having kids?"
"I've told you every visit for the last three years what's been going on. But, thanks for bringing it up again, fucker. And, by the way, I’ve moved past having kids with my husband anyway. I've really just been holding out for my best friend’s sperm."
"Oh, that's right. Sorry. Well, here's the deal. I'm worried that these cells might be hiding deeper inside your cervix, and, if we find that's the case after today, then we'll need to do another surgery. It can have an effect on your fertility by making your cervix incompetent."
"Really? Personally, I think an incompetent cervix would fit just right into my picture. Incompetent brain, incompetent heart, incompetent relationships...bring in on, doc."
"Well, maybe only slightly. But nonetheless, I have to let you know of the risk."
"Thanks for that. So, what you're telling me is that I have to do the surgery or there is a risk of death or I can have the surgery and there is a risk of no kids. Wow. You really know how to turn a girl on."

After that, I somehow managed to stumble back downstairs, out the doors, and into the street to my car (unfortunately, without being struck by an oncoming vehicle), where I proceeded to sob incessantly the entire way home.

Here I am—pitifully in love with my childhood best friend who is halfway across the world in God knows where who may or may not be "in" love with me, but definitely "respects" me and even that may all change after he hits it big with his band (money is Lucifer paper-fied), living six-doors down from my last semester of college fling who wants to get a job where I work (more on that later), looking at pictures of my former love and his spawn, tirelessly campaigning against small-minded, small-town thinking and not able to get drunk enough to blot our the aforementioned love of the best friend. Did I mention my email isn't working today and I might have cancer that could lead to "cervical incompetence"?

I think I'm going to need some safety pins.

epiphanical email

“I’ve never wanted to kill someone that badly before…” his return email continued. “But I remember exactly how it felt to have you laying on me and for me to be touching you. It felt very much like being home... cliché as it may sound. It felt like honesty.”

I’d only brought the moment he was referring to up in my rambling letter to elucidate the fact that my feelings were not out of desperation. I had been desperate before, but I hadn’t run to him like an animal in heat looking for any old tramp in town. Instead, I had only lain softly in his lap one portentous January night, cloaked in the disgrace of a miscarried marriage and shacked up in a raunchy apartment with a kid who just happened to be an ace in the sack. Slightly muddled with rum, and trying fiercely to ignore the ramblings of my drunken adolescent chattel, I dwelt in a moment’s respite from the carnage that had been my romantic life up to this point. Just as it did for him, that evening’s modest moment held steadfast in my memory as the last time I had felt like I was home.

The moment ended abruptly. The kid (who, I should mention, was well over legal age, but unfortunately, there’s no way to gauge where someone ranks in mental maturity) had decided to do no less than piss all over me to mark his territory after that. He had no intention of allowing Emile to think anything other than that he and I would soon be wrapped up in post-coital bliss in the room next door, while Emile languished on the couch, no doubt humbled and in awe of this kid’s inconceivable studliness.

He left the following day, and we’d never spoken of it since. Until now. Almost four years after what could have been the night that altered the flow of the wind in my tattered sails, I had what some would call an epiphany.

A mutual friend of ours was having an art show in a town near where I now lived with my new husband (not the kid). Emile had plans to be in town on business, and it was a straight shot from my house to the cafe where his work was showing, so we decided that we’d both meet up there to catch up. Our visits since that night in my hell-hole of an apartment had been sparse, but just like for the last decade of our platonic friendship, we’d managed to keep in touch, and any encounter we had was just as if we had seen each other the previous day. Distance was never an obstacle.

Our friend, Nate, was wrapped up in the trappings of a struggling artist’s life; he flittered and fluttered around the tiny cafe like a hummingbird on crack, speaking indiscriminately to anyone who would listen, while Emile, my hub, and I sat at a worn table sipping Yuengling and trying to make meaning of his slightly kindergarten-esque masterpieces. I’m the first to appreciate modern art, but even I had to admit that Nate was grasping at coffee stirrers here.

A tall, lanky giraffe-looking fella who I gathered knew Emile from back in Boston came over and they chatted idly about Nate’s attempt at art, some music they’d both been listening to and the state of each others well-meaning and lovely, but completely ramshackle relationships. As I listened, I heard that Emile and his love of the moment, an aspiring actress named Manny, weren’t living together anymore. I was perturbed. Why hadn’t he told me this?

The rusty wheels and levers of my mind, which I assumed were frozen perpetually in time since my most recent marriage, were suddenly lubricated and hurled back into motion. He’d had broken relationships before; so had I. We’d been through this dizzying circle a million times together: I fail, he fails, I fail, he fails. That’s just us. However, not once in the array of our mutual botched intimacy had I considered him as a viable option to failure.

Suddenly, a sickening, abject, but altogether sublime feeling erupted in the pit of my stomach. A room showered in the song of bohemian existence, buzzing with conversations of beauty, music, sex, and booze, fell silent. The zoom lens of my life suddenly fell into sharp focus with one distinct object on the horizon.

It was at this point that I decided to compose the epiphanical email.