Alone

Alone 
@aladreth antionette brown copyright 2013

I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness—I myself am the enemy who must be loved—Carl Jung





It was years ago.

I suppose I don't go off now anywhere alone. I like to be with someone.  I pretty much always have someone around me. I don't like being alone.

But, it was years ago.

I was dreaming of you then on the river walk, during historic home tours and walking in the sweltering humidity of nature.

I dreamed of you even in the scary stories the cab drivers would tell, "Now, you would think you could take a short cut through that park there, but I wouldn't advise it.  Someone was killed just last week."

"Oh, really? Tell me about it," I would ask details, trying to prolong my time with them - almost wanting to say, "Can you just drive me all around the city and be my personal tour guide and then could we spend the night together?"

I wonder how many taxi drivers have had that proposition before?

I'm not sure what stopped me because sex has always been highly important to me.  It is nothing for me to have sex every day and want more.  Well, actually I do know what stopped me.  They weren't my 'type.' For my 'type', I will do anything.  I will move a mountain for my 'type.' And I just wasn't finding a taxi driver who was my 'type.'

I went to "the oldest" this and "the oldest" that. I love old things.  I always have.

I thought of you even those years ago as I stuck my fingers in flour made at the oldest mill.  I thought of you as I ran my hand down the smooth banister of the oldest stairway in a Victorian home.  I thought of you as I stirred water in creeks with sticks pretending I was working a cauldron.  I thought of you as I investigated long deserted cabins once used by Boy Scouts.

I thought of you as I entered sacred ground.

There was a sign on the door of that place.  I suppose it's been nearly 25 years. I am not sure if that sign is even still there.

It read, "Out of respect for the many lives lost at this site, we ask you to remain silent after you open the doors and enter in."

Those doors.  They were double medieval to me, so heavy, so full of wear and blood and pain. I pushed them open and entered quietly and quickly, so not to let in the outside sounds of traffic, boom boxes and arguments between lovers.

I took a breath.  Looked around at the expanse - the open floor plan.  The tourists gathered around the side walls reading framed letters and such.

I felt I must hold my breath.  All of a sudden I was needing to speak, needing to say something.

To be told not to speak had thrown me off and I had to calm my heart and mind.  I felt I might hyperventilate.

So, I took another deep breath and I started searching for souls I might see, some spiritual experience to gain.

No death here.  Was it all a lie?  It was so peaceful.  Could this really be the spot of such devastation?

I pondered, "How will I ever be able to experience all life has to offer?"

***

That night, I thought of you again.  Thought of you in the future.  I didn't even know you existed.  I thought of how you would be.

Randy had sneaked in to my room that early evening and left a note on my pillow.  I pretended he wasn't married.  It wouldn't have stopped me back then, but, I pretended he was mine, all mine.

"Where are you? Come join us in the courtyard for a beer," he had written.   Wendy had let him in to my hotel room. I smelled the note.  I smell every note anyone leaves me, for the smell of chemistry.

If there isn't chemistry, people will leave you.  It might be exciting to begin with, but scientifically, it only lasts 18 months, then the true test begins.  Do you still love them after 18 months?  Then it is real.  True chemistry.

There's your "science porn" for the day.

I smelled Randy's note and I smelled him.  I thought of being with him.

I was alone, though and even though quite the sex addict, I was also prone to alcohol and food addiction.  I raided the mini-bar.  I could not believe how expensive everything was, but I figured they would never know what I had taken.  How naive I was.  Alone in a big city.  Alone and not even knowing how they handle a mini-bar in a fancy hotel. Not even knowing that they would know.

Everyone would know how much I had drank and ate alone in my hotel room.

I couldn't handle drinking or eating alone in a restaurant, though.  And truthfully if Randy and I weren't going to end up back in one of our respective hotel rooms that night doing the dirty, I didn't want to make the effort to go to the courtyard for a beer with him and all the others.  I needed a guarantee that night for some reason.  So, after raiding the mini-bar and flipping through yellow pages full of escorts, I went out to walk along the river.

I saw flamenco dancers - they were about to put on a show.  Hundreds of people gathered to watch them on cement steps facing their stage in front of the water.   Maybe I was the only one alone there.  It  sure felt like it. I kept pretending someone would join me, "Oh, my husband just went to go get drinks and a popcorn, he'll be right back," I played these silly fantasies and tried to bore them into the head of the folks who would look at me; a young, well dressed woman on her own on a Friday night.

There was no husband.  There was no one coming with drinks and popcorn.  I looked at families with theirs and wanted.  Part of me desired to slap them - awaken their senses to be happy.  Part of me desired to cry, pout, "Fucking hell, I'm alone! Can't you see?"

I prayed it would rain.  Oh, I loved the dancers.  I just wanted to see them drenched.  I wanted to see their hair fall and their colourful skirts plaster to their dark skin.  I wanted to see the drops from the sky fall on the river and make beautiful ripples - like a woman's breast heavy with ache for a man's suckle, I wanted to see it rain.

On another day, I went to the ocean alone.  I wore a lightweight skirt and blouse.   The skirt went past my knees. The blouse was buttoned low, showing some of my bra and cleavage.  I took my sandals off the second my feet hit the sand and I sat down on the beach to watch the ocean.  I wasn't alone long, before a man came up to me.  He was a weird man.  I seem to attract the weird ones.

I don't have to be wearing a swim suit on the beach to get attention, obviously.  It may not be the right attention, but it's attention.  I learned this a long time ago, for it has happened over and over again in my life. Now older, I know these things happen for a reason and people are drawn to us for certain necessity and there are always good reasons, no matter what comes of it in the end.

Weird or not, he was quite good looking and asked if he could sit down next to me.   We talked and I liked him alright.  He smelled good and that is important to me, as you have heard. He did most of the talking while I watched the ocean, every so often glancing his way to notice his five o'clock shadow.  I like that shadow.

When it got close to be 530pm, he said he needed to walk down to where the pier was, pointing to it in the distance.  The pier was littered with buildings and lots of people.

"Come with me," he nearly begged.

"What for?" I asked.

"I have to go to an AA meeting. Come with me."

There was the clincher.  He was a drunk.  But, no, he wasn't a drunk. He wasn't drunk right then, now, was he?  He was being a "good" boy.  I thought, "Hey, he's really committed to getting well, isn't he?"

I answered his plea, "Oh, I don't think I'd fit in too well, hon."

The begging went on for a bit.  It became not so much I didn't want to go, because I drank all the time myself and would feel so out of place at an AA meeting, but because I felt he was pushing it too hard.  I remembered that 'warning' to women about never letting anyone take you to a second location.  As a woman we constantly live in fear.  Constantly have to have our guards up, constantly have to follow our intuition.

Especially with men who approach you when you are alone.

I had said, "No," too many times.

Finally he gave up and left because I wasn't about to get my big ass up and go anywhere.

The ocean was my lover that day.

But, I thought of you as the tide was coming in.  As my feet began to get wet I thought of you.

I thought of you as the wind came up and tangled my long hair in knots.

The you I never knew back then, the you who would tell me you had missed me when you didn't see me, the you who would say I was the greatest lover you had ever been with, the you who was so well read, knowledgeable, wise, and oh, so clever.  The you who could twist my hair around your hand and make me love everything about you.

The you.

The you I knew even back when I was alone.

When later I would become a perfume, when I would become an old crone goddess, I would know I had gathered it from my want, my need to not be alone. It would be like some Greek tragedy. Minding my own business in the mundane world, you would come and drag me down to your filthy, raw ways and I would submit because I am pure and innocent and know nothing really of the world.

Oh, sure I play the game, I pretend to be smart and clever.  But I know nothing.

One day you said to me, "You know nothing about being alone."

I thought, "I will show him.  I do so know about being alone!!!"  I planned then how I would list all the times I had been alone.  I would show him I knew all about it.

But, you are right.  I know nothing about being alone.  I know nothing.