I am sick and tired of being poor, of being pushed around, of being sorry for myself.
I am sick and tired of the inconsequential things that are happening around me and to me.
I am sick and tired of hearing about the breaks my friends and some other people I know are getting all the time.
And they are beginning to be sorry for me too. The only breaks I get are the kind that hurts: heartbreaks, a break in the bone in my left leg that confined me to bed for nine months in a free ward in the orthopedic hospital across the road and only a stone’s throw from the psychopathic hospital, and a break on the head I incurred in a brawl with an unpublished poet who also knew how to employ an empty beer bottle in the art of self-defense.
My friends, who also know a little about the craft of writing who have more time than I do to indulge in it because they do not have to work and to loaf and to examine their souls and feel sorry for themselves, have been winning awards, fellowships, travel grants, or at least kudos; others have been offered high positions in government officialdom and in big business establishments.
And you, the woman I almost thought was in love with me for what I was and what I stood for instead of what promises I had made, said, What are you doing about yourself? Has it ever occurred to you that you are being left far behind, that as you are now you are too old to start from the bottom, that soon enough you, will be four feet underground?
“Six feet,” I corrected her, “is the standard depth, my lover.”
“We can’t afford that deep, lover,” she said. That was what we called each other—lover—when we got sick and tired and were about to jump at each other’s throat.
“Come to think of it, lover,” I said through my clenched teeth, “you are very cruel, to me. Gahdehmet.”
“The trouble with you, gahdahmet,” she said—we also called each other that--gahdahmet—when we were about to stick an icepick in each other’s back—”is that the only thing you are tops in is in the art of self-pity.”
“In the first place,“ I said, “I am not too old to start all over again. I can do almost anything if I wanted to, or it I were properly inspired. I may have a few grey hairs, but that is because I think too much and too deeply. Why, I am only 33.”
“At your age Christ died on the Cross,” she said, perhaps to remind me of my religion and soften my heart.
“Look,” I said, ”I have no ambition of dying on a cross, or in an electric chair, or by a goon’s or a cop’s bullet. Why do you always remind me of death, huh, lover?”
“I am sick and tired of waiting,” she said. “Always waiting for a better life. And all the time we are getting old. And you seem to take everything in your leisurely stride, complacently. While your friends, who must be looking down on you now, are making good. I just read in the papers that one of them was awarded a literary fellowship by a cigarette factory.”
“It may hurt you more to know, lover,” I said, “that several of my friends have also received literary awards from a gin factory. One of these days a conscience-smitten dope pusher might give me a literary award and a travel grant to where the poppies grow. Don’t worry, lover, I will take you along, and together we will enjoy the sights and the poppies.”
“That’s what you always say, but you don’t do anything about it.”
“What do you want me to do, gahdehmet?”
“Do something! Write a masterpiece! Win an award!”
“Ssssh… Quiet, lover. You are waking up the neighborhood.”
“Do you know what the neighbors say about you? Do you think it does not hurt me to hear them whisper unsavory things about you? They call you a laggard, a frustrated …”
“Shut up!” I shouted, not at her but in the general direction of my nearest neighbors. But only their dogs heard me and they started barking.
You know how it is when a dog starts barking, especially when he doesn’t see what he is barking at. There is a suspicious and apprehensive quality to his barking, which the other dogs are quick to catch even in their nap, and they start barking, too, suspiciously, apprehensively, until the whole community is full of the consternation of canine alarm. Soon their masters and mistresses are awakened and catch from their pets and friends the quality of suspicion, apprehension, and alarm. They get their guns from under their pillows and with trembling hands put on all the lights in their houses and inspect their doors and windows. And the next morning they will tell their neighbors how they chased the prowlers away.
....
“Marcos San Pablo,” she glared at me fiercely as she stood up and loomed over me where I sat on the soapbox. “Never even dream of interfering with my stereophonic, I tell you. You have nothing to do with it. It is mine. It is a gift from an admirer, and it has sentimental value. I need it for my singing practice. If you are thinking of selling anything that is yours, I may suggest your typewriter.”
“For your information,” I said, “that’s what I am planning to do first thing in the morning. Sell my typewriter, quit my job, and with what capital it may fetch me I shall start some business.”
“I think I can sleep now,” she said.
“I think I can resume my deep contemplation of life,” I said.
“I think I am leaving you, Marcos,” she said. “I cannot stand, it anymore.”
“Goodbye,” I said.
In the morning when I awoke, the cot, an army surplus, on which she had been asleep the last time I saw her, was empty. It was unusual for her to rise ahead of me, for she almost always slept late. Even when she came home early she would not be able to sleep before midnight out of habit perhaps. She would play on the phonograph some song hits sung by popular American singers, and she would try to imitate them, over and over again, and it was impossible for me not to be disturbed, not to be distracted from my thoughts, which explains why I cannot even write a poem with punctuation marks.
She was nowhere to be found in the little downstairs apartment we had been sharing for the past four or five months. She did not leave any note, not even a mark of her lips on my cheek. There was no touch of her in the house to make it seem like a home, no touch of her that might remind me of having lived with her in a fragment of my life.
I knew she was never coming back because the phonograph was gone along with her clothes and her costume jewelry.
If I knew she really meant it when she told me that she was leaving me, I would have gone ahead of her. And she would have known that I was never coming back because my typewriter would be gone along with my clothes and a pair of cuff links from Thailand.
It may be that I am missing her and her singing practice along with the echolalia of the recorded songs. I am missing our quarrels. How quiet it is in the night without her. Or maybe I am just lonely, as everybody else upon the earth may now and then be lonely.
I am also sick and tired of being lonely.
[ web page - thanks, ian casocot. :-) ]
¶ 7/30/2004 04:28:00 PM
