::Rupture

I’m down the block this time, sitting on the crumbling brick wall that overlooks the cliffs.  I’m slugging straight from the bottle and wincing every time.  The whisky burns from where I’ve bitten my tongue.  I’m not looking when you come up behind me; instead I’m just staring outward, burning my eyes out on the sunset.  My hair is a mess.  I haven’t shaved.  I stink of blood and alcohol and wherever I’ve been sleeping.  My cheeks are sunburned.

When you get close, I hear your feet on the gravel.  I throw the bottle over the cliffside, the grunt of sudden effort making it plain that I’m still upset.  You can see me tilting my head, listening for the tinkle-crash, but it never comes.  The wind steals it away, reaches up and asks if I want to fly, too.  But I’m too heavy.  I know better. 

When you lay your hand on my shoulder in concern, I quiver like a newborn colt and shy away.  My muscles are cable-tight.  Wincing against a sudden cramp, I lever myself up from the bricks and wheel away down the street.  I’m not looking at you.  My movements are jerky and erratic.  I won’t make eye contact.

But you keep asking.  Teeth and tongue and lips and air.  Magic words:  What’s wrong? 

I had a birthday, I say, busily trying to look everywhere but at your face.  I know what eye contact does at a time like this.  But I’m tall and defiant and there’s a sunset to sear myself on, and I’ll keep staring until my grey eyes turn black.  Instead, you shuffle your feet, clever-like, and we begin to walk.  I fall into step like a herdbeast, head hung down in an invisible yoke, looking at the scarred leather of my old workboots.  My shit-kickers, the steel toes, the ones I wear when I’m expecting trouble or intend on walking through muck and mire.

Most people like their birthdays, I mumble.  But this is the worst one I ever had.  She ruined it.  Barred the doors and boarded the windows and burned it down around my ears.  I thought it was over, I thought I was going to be one of Them and my son was going to grow up in a broken home and nothing was ever going to get better.

It was going to be this grand thing, you know.  I had it all worked out.  She let me plan whatever I wanted.  And I didn’t want much, you know.  Just the things that I’m lacking.  Nothing extravagant.  A little flirtation.  A little playfulness.  Affection.  I wanted to take her out, play dress-up.  Pick out some outfits that make her look good enough to eat, and tease and flirt the whole time.  Dress her up from the inside out.  Go to lunch somewhere familiar.  Then come home, peel it all off layer by layer and (this might have been the selfish part) have some sex that was all about Me Me Me Me.  Play to my fetishes.  

So that came tumbling down, afire like Skylab, first thing in the morning.  I think I have a yeast infection, so no naked stuff today, she said, while i was still blinking away sleep.  And my insomnia was back last night, so I haven’t slept in three days.  But I took a sleeping pill, so I’m groggy.  My mom will be here to watch the baby in an hour.  Get up and figure out something else for us to do.

I tell you how the morning unpeeled like a newspaper left out in the rain, all blotted and smeared.  The remnants of the hurricane left us with drear, heavy, grey skies full of humid malaise.  I was feeling askew and astray and she was going downhill all through the AM, from groggy to grouchy to straight-up mean.  And she insisted that we go out to do something.  Pressured me to have a backup plan.  When all I wanted was flirt-tease-stroke-play-kiss.  I got grouch-bitch-grump-hiss-growl.  And growly cat insisted I put her in the car and take her somewhere interesting.

Most awkward car ride in human history, I proclaim.  I’m sniffling every few words at this point and my lip quivers just a little bit.  She was cold, I say.  Not like ice.  More like outer space.  Just sucking it all away.  I thought my eyes were going to pop.  She was breaking my heart every time she opened her mouth.

We ended up going to the fucking grocery store.  Adventure.  Excitement.  I just wanted the day over.

And when we got back, her mom was chatty and baked me a delicious chocolate cake, proving that no day is a total loss.  And I think K felt bad and knew I was miserable, and tried to salvage things by dragging me into the bedroom and offering me, well, manual stimulation – to put it delicately.  

Mind you, this had none of the flirt-tease-loving-joy to it.  All business.  No eye contact.  Don’t touch my tits.  Stop squirming.  Don’t make noise, my mom will hear you.  I could have gotten better if I’d just paid for it.

And then she started crying halfway through.  Nothing makes you feel more like a giant lump of shit than when a woman is trying to work your genitalia through a haze of tears.

So she starts going on about how I don’t talk to her.  How she’s just tits-and-ass and how I don’t care about anything but sex and why do I grab her body every time we hug or kiss and why why why why why

fuck it

so I laid it out.

You act like you don’t love me, I said.  When I kiss you, you pull away.  You frown.  When I try and hug you, you don’t hug back.  You don’t scratch my back or lean up against me or hold my hand when we walk.  I know we’re not twenty anymore and not newlyweds — but goddammit woman, if I didn’t know where you were every second of the day, I’d be dead on convinced that you were in love with someone else, and just tolerating me because I’m the father of your child.  I touch your tits when we kiss because you were my first lover.  I never had empty, casual sex – it was always associated with love.  With YOU.  I stroke your ass when I walk past you to express that I fucking love you and am still attracted to you, you cold-hearted fucker.  Act flattered once in a while instead of pulling away like I disgust you.  If I disgust you when I touch you, then you don’t love me.  And if you don’t love me then you want a divorce.  I don’t talk to you because you’re always tired, always grouchy, always sarcastic and mean and rotten and nagging and jumping on me.  And I miss the old you that liked it when I gave you a big sloppy kiss and ran my hands along the side of your breasts, down your ribs and the curve of your perfect hips and slid my fingers under the cheeks of your bottom and pulled you in bone-crushingly close for a hug that lasted forever.  instead I get this.  This.

Do you want a divorce? I said.  I had to ask that on my birthday.  On my goddam birthday.  While my naked cock shrivelled up in fear and my heart broke and I go

t goosebumps and the bottom dropped out of my guts and I thought I was going to die.  BECAUSE I THOUGHT SHE WAS GOING TO SAY YES.  She hesitated.  She thought about it.  And that second or two was like digging bullets out of a wound.  No anesthesia, no cure, and stitches yet to come.

So that’s how my birthday was murdered, I say.  You can see I’m trying not to blubber.  It still hurts, and I don’t know if it’s going to get better.  The bullets are out but I’m not sure if the bleeding is going to stop.  I’m still not sure if it’s over or if I’m going to be shot again.  I’m still not sure whether or not she loves me anymore.  She said the right things afterward and tried to make it better.  Tried.

But in the mean time I’m out here, drunk and staring over the clifftop and wishing the wind would pick me up and carry me off to Faraway.  Where I could slay dragons in peace and figure out the difference between love and sex on my off days.  Because, seriously, fuck all of this noise.

I’m feeling lonelier than I have since I was a teenager.  And old and fat and ugly and unwanted.   And I just want to cuddle and grope and maybe have a quiet little cry. 

No, a big one, I think.  Red cheeks and leaky nose and coughing sobs so bad I’m sore after.

edit:  something i forgot to mention.  i sold a piece of fiction.  it belongs to someone else now, but i’m going to post it Friends-Only sometime this week.  because that’s kosher.  it’s not public that way.  anyhow.  if you want to read it and you’re not sure if you’re on my friends list, leave me a note and i’ll make it so.