Because I Love You!

BECAUSE I LOVE YOU!

Hum Drum

In the darkness of the night, I wandered aimlessly. Hushed giggles of patient lovers; their lips tinged with sweet liqueur, their night is young. I am young…young and bold, but I am weak. My heart is broken, crushed into a million small fragments. Those fragments so small, the fix begs impossible. I can’t love you, she said. I am not your Juliet, your Scarlet or the one who can save you. To replay the line…her words sting my battered psyche without an apology.

The dampness in the air carries the fragrant smell of the forest in its generous palm. In the street, I tilted my head back to draw in every bit of the cool air, but I struggled to find my breath…to breathe. Around my neck, her hands choked the soul out of my dilapidated body in proxy. I wanted it gone; I wanted her gone, banished from my broken brain. Not liqueur nor lovers in excess could take those memories from my unforgiving recollection.

Why? I asked. Why are you running? Why are you doing this?" She said nothing…not a word. On her face, a stale, cold look captured the vacancy in her heart. I was already gone…kicked out and refused re-entry. The locks that I had so easily picked in the beginning were changed post-haste. I felt the deep distrust for my antiquated lines. Once again, they had once worked so wonderfully but were now useless and unwanted.

In a drunken stupor, I swirled down the old street with my arms outstretched. In my mind, I had hoped I could fly…I could zoom into the sky like a reckless superhero. From one place to the next, I wanted to jump. In each place, I would stand just for a moment, jumping again before her legacy could steal my breath again. The idea was far-fetched, but anything…any wild thought which could sway my attention far from the anchor that she had attached to my soul was better than facing reality. Maybe the Streets of Helena were my answer, my final stand in a bid to reclaim what I had left of the boy who wanted to be Ivan Boesky; the boy who never intended to be a degenerate criminal.

You see, I am an old man…well, at least I feel like an old man. My back hurts, and my bones crack when I crawl out of bed, like fragile twigs on forest floor being trampled upon. Maybe I am not that old. Is forty-six old? Well, I feel old and this crazy thirty year adventure hasn’t helped. I didn’t plan to live this life. I did…well sort of…okay, not really. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I am being evasive, but stories like mine are hard to tell. I don’t know even where to start or why I am even telling you.

I wasn’t a remarkable guy in high school. Not particularly handsome or blessed with the physique of a Greek god, but just a normal guy. I did my thing and tried not to draw attention to the fact I was smarter than most of my classmates. There wasn’t any football or a place in the glee club either. The Spanish club didn’t interest me nor did the high maintenance cheerleaders. I mean, I was girl crazy like the rest of the guys, but I was cool about it. For me, it was about staying as far and away from any sort of drama I could. Of course, I could have engaged in drunken, sexual debauchery, but that wasn’t me either.

There was nothing more I wanted than to be out of high school. High school was the bane of my existence. College was calling, and I wanted to be done with it too. It was the making money part of my life I wanted to get to and, the Porsches, houses on the beach, and gratuitous travel to exotic lands. High school and college were just a means to an end…my ode to the adolescence I couldn’t wait to shed. Though I knew I would get into a great college and inevitably find a six-figure job, first I had to cleanly put my senior year behind me.

I say cleanly because while most of my friends were doing stupid shit like cutting class and doing coke in the bathroom, I was figuring out how Ivan Boesky made his money selling junk bonds. There was no way I was going to blow my opportunity at making millions by stupidly smoking reefer under the bleachers. It wasn’t going to happen. Someday I planned to drive back to the silly town with all of the silly people in it in my ridiculously expensive and silly car. I wanted to have the opportunity to shove it all in their silly faces.

Looking back, I don’t quite know why I felt way the way I did. Maybe it was misguided teenage angst…I don’t know. The little town never did anything to me or for me. There wasn’t any guff given to the small town, obese sheriff by me or any reason to put me in the back of his cruiser. The teachers were nothing but good to me, and I had a solid home life. Maybe I just wanted more. My eye was on the prize, and all of the pomp and circumstance just seemed like a waste of my time. Sure, there were proms, homecomings, and an occasional party, but I really just kept my head low.

My parents were supportive, and I had a sister who was a few grades behind me. We all got along, and there were no Jerry Springer moments. Dad delivered the mail on the rural routes and mom worked in the library at the high school that I wanted so badly out of. They loved Julie…Jules for short, to no end and maybe unlike most families of my generation, we ate dinner together almost every night. Dad didn’t drink, although I think he had a penchant for weed after stressful days at the post office. In the garage, he had an old, red vinyl office chair. In the sixties, some Postmaster must have leaned back in the old chair for his afternoon naps.

I remember the chair sitting in the garage next to dad’s cluttered workbench. In the corner of the room, a dust-covered transistor radio played classic Moody Blues, Grateful Dead, and everything else that inspired his generation to grow their hair long and burn their bras. He partook and made no bones about it. Mom, on the other hand, was hewn from a different material.

She was straight-laced and incredibly smart. I won’t say that she sold herself short by becoming a librarian, but she could have done much more. The simple fact was, her mother was a librarian too and instilled an unquenchable passion for reading in her. For my mom, being a librarian was a noble job, and I never knocked her for it. Maybe she was the typical Suzy homemaker of our generation. Instead of bell bottom polyester pants and a loose shirt, she always wore a neatly pressed skirt and wool sweater. At home, life wasn’t much different. To this day, I have to believe that I had one of the most normal families of the generation.

Though I remember the chaos of the era, I remember the excitement of the time too. Vets were still getting spit on, sleeping on corners and looking for any way to put the stupid war behind them. Being too young to understand the implications of war and surviving it, the mental anguish was far beyond what my young mind could comprehend. As an adult, I wanted to know what it must have been like for those men and the men of all wars since then, but I can’t fathom what their pain must have been like.

I would like to think my life was simple. If it hadn’t been for Abby, I think my life would have been just as uncomplicated as that of my parents. As is stands, I may be in a recliner or maybe in my dad’s old vinyl chair listening to tunes as he did. Maybe I would be smoking weed in the basement while desperately trying to blow it out the window like my dad, too. Who knows, but what I do know is my journey to this point in my life had been interesting. It was fun, and I wouldn’t change it, although I would have liked to have been more stable.

Where did it all go wrong you ask? I would like to say nothing went wrong and my life worked out exactly as planned, but the truth is I can’t blame anything on anyone but myself. I am the master…the captain of my own vessel and solely responsible for the chart taken. Okay, back to my senior year and Abby.

WHERE IT BEGAN

Sometime during my senior year, in fact, I believe it was somewhere around Christmas. The weather was cold and wet. Though we hardly ever saw snow, there was a thin, white blanket on the ground. In the neatly cut grass of the quad, I remember watching the fragile flakes precariously land on the errant dandelions which had escaped the lawnmower. Though I did as little as I could in the way of extra-curricular activities, I was goaded into writing for the school paper. Not that I ever had plans to write professionally, but the insistent faculty told me that it would look good on my college application, so I wrote.

I had been given the assignment to cover an art exhibit the junior class was putting on. Blah! Blah! Blah! I thought I will just get through it and onto something more interesting like the group of seniors who called themselves, The Five. Okay…so I happened to be one of them and in my mind, turning penny stocks into cash was more important than playing with paint or sculpting abstract craziness…I was biased I guess.

In a large glass display cabinet, I walked from piece to piece, hesitantly staring at individual creations I could never understand. Only the artists knew what they were thinking when they took to brush. The concept of creating something from a place in my mind where I didn’t even want to go was a scary proposition. Some paintings were innocuous studies in landscape with brilliant colors added for appeal. Others were drenched in sadness and angst such as the self-portrait of a kid with large dark glasses. Below the rim of his glasses, a tear rolled down his cheek.

Recognizing the signature on the painting, I instantly understood why the kid painted what he did. He never deserved the relentless punishment the stronger kids gave to him, but he would have the last laugh later in life. By the time the pimple faced, obese boy was twenty-five, he was already a multi-millionaire. Allen never stood a chance as a young man, but as a college student, he invented some online dating site that allowed him to make up for lost time with the female gender as well as make millions encouraging others to join him in the adventure.

In the glass case, I stared at a bronze statue. The thin limbs of an ambiguous person stretched wildly in some pose that resembled the beginning of a cartwheel. I wanted to believe the artist possessed some gregarious spirit void of limitation or care. On the base, the artist had neatly carved, Transformation with the letters, Ab-e below it. On a small note card placed neatly in front of the sculpture, it read, Transformation - by Abby McClintock. I had no idea who she was. With hundreds of kids in the school and a strong desire not to become invested in any of their lives, she was just another name without a face. For all I knew, she could have been a lowly, indigent freshmen with one eye and a problem with drooling. I didn’t want to care who she was, but I had a story to write, and she was going to be the focus.

In the office, I explained to the ogre of an office aide why I needed to seek out Abby. Without hesitation, the clerk obliged my request, and I was sent to a classroom on the other side of the campus. Mentally, I remember preparing myself for the unexpected…for the aloof sophomore with pink hair or the nerdy girl with the cardigan and askew glasses. As I slowly opened the door, a sea of heads quickly turned toward me, the intruder. I recognized the skinny teacher with the unkempt mess of curls on his head. I had him for English a few years earlier, and for some reason he liked me.

In front of the classroom, he paused to take note of the stranger that had just entered his dank and depressing classroom. Can I help you? he asked. For some reason, the class broke into laughter and giggles. Maybe they knew what was coming, but I didn’t. Quickly and out of nowhere he whipped a yardstick form its perch on his large desk and began to yield it like a sword. Why must thou intrude upon my great castle? Semi-mortified at his display of poor acting, I solemnly replied, I am here to see Abby. Mr. Pearlman quickly puts his hands on his hips and responded in his best English accent, Fine sir! Should you desire to ask one of my fine maidens for a date in the future, I suggest you do that on your own time! The class once again broke into a roar of laughter. Scanning over the faces in the room, I silently asked for mercy. There was none. There was blood in the water, and they were like little sharks in a feeding frenzy.

Without notice, a tall, slender girl with short red hair stood up and walked toward me. An audible, Oooooh! washed over the classroom. I am here for a class project I explained to the teacher. With a solemn sweeping motion of his hand, he waved me out of the classroom. As Abby and I stepped out, she quickly grabbed my arm and began to write her phone number on it. Just call me tonight, and you can tell me what you need. I didn’t have time to say anything before she disappeared back into the classroom. I was left standing in the hall with Abby’s number scribbled hastily on my arm in blue ink.

Later that day as I sat at the little wooden desk in my room, I dialed Abby’s number. A gruff voice answered, Hello! Like any kid my age, that last thing we wanted was to be confronted by the voice of a father. Is Abby home? I asked. There was a slight pause before he responded, Yeah! Hold on.

This is Abby.

Hi! Abby, this is Jack. I need to interview with you…about your art.

Can you do me a favor? she asked.

Sure! I told her.

"I am not much of a phone person, can you come over to do whatever it is you need to do?

Looking back, I think this where my life changed. In the very moment, she asked me to come over, everything changed. It was a simple, innocent question with no ulterior motives, yet the ramifications and consequences would follow me throughout the rest of my life. At the same time, I wouldn’t change any of it. Life takes us on strange journeys and into the paths of those with whom we least expect to have anything in common. Abby was an enigma…just a face…an artist whom I chose to write an article about. Nothing more, nothing less. I wanted out of high school without the weight of a girlfriend and did all I could to avoid any situation that even resembled the word relationship.

As I pulled to curb of Abby’s house, I studied the large, modern, stucco home in awe. It was three times the size of the paltry home I lived in. You see, I came from the other side of the tracks where the neighborhoods were dotted with foreclosures…blue collar dwellings made