you are lucky you got away from me when you did

Triangle Path copyright @aladreth


I dreamed you and I were to star in a re-make of that famous film where the girl flies around with an umbrella and shoves medicine down unsuspecting children's throats with sweeties and the guy uses a horrible fake English accent and is covered in soot.

One day I sang to you from the movie and you screamed your S and M scene safe word out the window of the car as we traveled down the interstate.  I laughed so hard I peed in my black skirt and had to sit in urine on leather seats until we got to the next turn off.  We laughed a lot.

We followed some type of triangle path come to think of it.  At the one side I was so available and so needing you ... the next side of the triangle was when you needed me and I left, walking a different path to save my life.  I promised myself no more unrequited love at an Army base where the Buffalo Soldiers lived many years ago.

I communed with trees such as these in the Arizona December air and drew lots of aboriginal art on floors - some said ’Victory’ in hidden alien languages.  You had drove me crazy.  I was better though.  I was more interesting, I suppose.  I had faced demons and lived.

Every day I didn't chase you was a day I added to my ’Victory’ paintings.  Every day I didn't want to know what the hell was going on with you, you became a blur down the triangle path.

But, I always loved you.  I always knew you existed.  If I saw an accident on the TV, I had to know it wasn't you.  When I heard you had been diagnosed with high blood pressure, I was terrified.  When I went through medical issues, I was scared.  What if we never got to say we were sorry to each other.  What if we never got to touch again?  To touch the way we did the last morning we laid in a spoon shape with the sun shining in on our so imperfect lives and bodies?

I still believed when the tip of the triangle was completed we would both be available at the same time for each other.  I said it would be when you were 53.  I predicted we would be together again.  I wrote it on a very fancy girlie card.  You were so mad you crumpled it up and threatened to burn my things.  I didn't care what you did, I said, but I begged the moon and stars you would keep me close, keep my things close, read them again some day.  We both loved astronomy and Rufus and sunflowers.

I found a large manila envelope the other day in the back of a broken filing cabinet - more things I had forgot we shared together - a used box of liquor filled chocolates we ate under a Cactus in the desert, bottles of Opium perfume you had bought me and I had put away.  I never got rid of the sharp turquoise suit I wore that day we ate under a Cactus, but I never wore it again.

Pictures of us were too painful to look at.  I kept all of them but five I gave to you. Your daughter wrote me and said she didn't understand why there were  only five of me or of us together.  I couldn't answer her.

Maybe I wanted to be some fantastical thing in your scrapbook.  I didn't want you to be able to see me exactly the way I was because how could you love me that way? How did you ever love me was my question?  Maybe you did not ever love me.

In the envelope, I also found a "V" pass where we communicated from a tent in the middle of mounds of mud.  The pass still had your sweat on it.  All these years later I still smell you and I feel you in the March breezes of Arizona.

In the dream, I was given a blue box and you were given a pink one.  They had confused our gender once again.  I was the pushy, controlling, manipulative bastard male master and you, well, why do I need to tell you what you were.  You know.

I loved you like a child.  I grieved the day your favourite gay actor died.  You had sat next to him at a theater where a man did a monologue in the nude.  I don’t remember what it was about, but I remember this actor played a very convincing old Nazi who would dress up in Hitler’s uniform and then open the oven in the kitchen and scream obscenities about the Israelites.  I was scared of him.  I was scared you would leave me for him.  That’s how good you were - my fucking player roseshit goldenboy - you hated when I called you that, but you could never see how good you were, you could have easily been the "on call lover" and servant to this old wonderful gay actor.  I would have lost you to a beautiful academy award winning man and I would be nothing except fat and infamously infamous.

Everything fell in to your lap.  All our friends left me.  I didn't blame them later on because I knew you were the better one for them to chose.

I never handled things so well.  I needed you to help me to get over you.  You had everything and I cried because I was falling apart.  I cried when I saw your new home and car and your prestigious job.  Not because I was jealous but because it could have been me enjoying those things with you.  I wished I had taken all you offered when you offered it.  I should have.  I needed air conditioning in my car.

When I heard your voice for the first time in years, I had to run in the bathroom at work and cry.

You said to me, "You sound more gentle than I remember."  I had been broken, you know.  I had a slave’s heart you said.  I didn't agree.  I just wanted to hear you say like you did in an Olive Garden in Phoenix one time, "You look fucking fantastic."  I just wanted to see tears run down your face with love and gratitude at what we had, what we did together, the music you wrote for me, the books I wrote for you, I just wanted you to admit we did it together.

I wished I knew how not to be possessive of you.  I learned over time (I think) and I became a better partner and a better friend.

In my dream, you turned down the part in the movie.  You were afraid you would have to play the girl because of the pink box and you were all fixed up and pretty with perfect teeth.  Sugar is not good for teeth.  You didn't want to lose all you had. You were happy.   You had become everything I had wanted and I only wanted to know I had played a part in helping you get everything.

I tried to convince you the boxes were not important.  I told you important trivia how pink used to be for little boys and blue for little girls.  This was before some world war.  It was a very little known fact but I could prove it with Wikipedia and you would have to do this with me again.  You would have to stay and play the part.

But, we both know, don't we, that you are lucky you got away from me when you did.