Title: Coffee and Cigarettes
Live, long and prosper time which we’d both known from go was coming and I’d felt a little badly at first because I just plain didn’t miss him. Which I had noticed when his gay, but not at all merry, brother had taken J out west for a happy graduation trip. When J got back I had figured ‘he’s here for a few more weeks no need to hurt him‘- in other words attempted to take teh chicken shit route out. Then with passport in hand J left for good, for months or possibly years, nice and tidy exit no muss or fuss, which had been part of the initial appeal - he'll leave soon. Which he did.
I got postcards of course and then was suddenly at a loss as to what to do with him when he arrived on my doorstep a few weeks later. Literally ON my doorstep in the morning; I was a waitress, a night server, not morning person but
SURPRISE
“I had Dad bring me straight from the airport.”
I stood on my own door step shocked and really quite confused because this guy J was supposed to be gone, overseas for months, years. He was supposed to be in Germany but he wasn’t in Germany he was standing on my doorstep saying: “ I missed you“ .subtext: love me.
Cue: embrace
No call to say I’m coming back, no - no. Just surprise- I know you thought I was gone but -I’ve decided to come back -and we are going to be together - I am yours and you are mine.
My brain was spinning: ‘don’t want to hurt his feelings’
“J-”
“I love you”
“I love you too,” and I did, I really cared about him - I really, really did but I wasn’t in love with him and he wasn’t in love with me, we'd been strictly short term infatuation, I knew that - but he didn’t, or maybe that isn’t where he was at.
“Your Dad” I said thinking ‘he must be waiting because he must, he must be waiting - outside where J would be going soon- but no J’s walking in-’
“your Dad-”
“What about my Dad?”
“He must be waiting- ”
“No, I sent him home-”
‘what
the fuck is going
on, coffee, coffee, I need
coffee- a cigarette.
I need coffee and a cigarette’
“How are you going to get home?” I asked genuinely perplexed, utterly perplexed, in shock and slowly coming to realize that no I was not dreaming this, this was actually happening.
“I figured you could drive me.”
J deciding me for me- yep standard issue. The guy was certainly back and in his mind we were a couple, we were still a couple. He came bearing gifts a Hermes box I sat there - ahh god it was awful: A guy I planned on never seeing again from the start was back and I didn’t want him back and worse he’s giving me something with a nautical theme.
“I remembered you said,” J beamed at me, beseeching eyes-
‘Oh god this is just awful- what did I say? What did I say- hand painted silk - nice nobody does that anymore
“I got it at the duty free shop”
‘Oh - , navy- pain in the ass color when you’re a woman and he keeps giving me things in Navy- NAVY’
.
I begin to unfurl it, nice, a really nice gesture…completely inappro- Oh no I think this might be nautic---oh no its a boat, it’s a ship- oh man-which always reminds me of-’
“Don’t you like it?”
“Yes-It’s beautiful “ which technically it was ‘except I’m sitting here thinking of somebody else- we had a few weeks together, he left and I was in physical pain for missing him - and you, you J who I didn’t miss and at that point was glad would be leaving -$200 scarf.
“J I don’t understand what you’re doing here”
“I missed you,” he said though over the next few days - well I still don’t know why exactly he had to leave Germany, something about paperwork and contracts which seemed highly unlikely since his brother had helped set this up with a business owner he knew personally. Why J had to leave Germany I don’t expect to know and I don’t want to know. I didn’t at the time and now I had a problem.
Over the coming weeks I tried breaking it off gently but he wouldn’t accept it. I had the “we’ll be seeing other people talk” his reply “well you can but I know what I want and won’t be seeing anyone else”, that had been the initial negotiation point from my introducing the idea that “maybe we should just be friends“. “See other people” or “let’s just be friends” much less the combination usually took and takes care of everybody getting on the same page - but not with this guy.
At least I would and did start seeing someone else immediately if only for the reason to keep sending the message: I don’t feel that way about you, I don’t want this relationship - let’s just be friends. That’s what I wanted, that’s how I felt and that was not the issue, none of that was relevant to J because he had decided what he wanted and I was: it.
“I’m a patient man, when you change your mind I’ll be here” J said confident that I would because: we are going to be together -I‘m not really going to let you break up with me- until I‘ve decided I‘m done with you and I’m not and until I am - I am yours and you are mine - and no it won‘t matter how many times you say you don‘t feel that way about me because I like being with you and -I‘ve decided that‘s how it‘s going to be”
He could be as patient as he wanted and everybody at the restaurant could say whatever they wanted about him there was no fucking way. Then another morning of someone banging me awake, somebody else wanted my attention. The phone rang across the bedroom, I crawled to the phone, resting my cheek on the stubbly carpet and noticing the clock said - ‘What- who would be calling me I just got out of the restaurant a few’
“Hello,” I said eyes still closed and ready to get back in bed.
“This is Kathy, your aunt Kathy,” and I suddenly felt more awake, Kathy wouldn’t know any better than to call in the morning.
“Your mother’s missing,” she said and time slowed to a
Stop
…police…looking
…bloodhounds… lots of rain …dogs couldn’t track the scent. She’d call back when she knew more.
I went to work just numb I don’t know that I told anyone at that point though I may. What I remember was standing behind the brick balancing the options of what would be worse? Suicide or dealing with this for next few decades which side of that inner argument I came out on neither time or therapy got me over or past that - that took amnesia. For me it felt like, as if in thinking it- not that one thing had or could have anything to do with another she was already dead at that point they just hadn‘t found the body yet. And unbeknownst to me she’d left notes. Not that I knew that at the time and not that mattered when I did, I literally had to forget everything so I could remember this right.
Intellectually, and intellect doesn’t apply when the person who gave birth to you hangs herself in the woods. Knowing that it had already happened later wouldn’t help, nothing helped. I was wrecked for a good five years.
What I’ve become reacquainted with? Though I don’t remember it from before but as -well I’ve noticed, even people who are professionals jar a bit, or flinch or their eyes well up but it gets a reaction and me just like then I’m trying to manage everybody else’s reaction to my mother‘s suicide. The stigma is gone but it’s something that if you mention the other person reacts, I don’t know - it’s still hard.
I’d made a decision a year earlier regarding my mother, several which at first was simply out of - well I’d decided that no at twenty three I could not commit to being my mother’s guardian and for first time in my life I instituted boundaries with my mother: a first. And maintained them.
I had been her emotional caretaker since I was ten if not before, ever vigilante on suicide prevention and had figured incorrectly that nearly a dozen adults could do the job for a change because I literally could not do it anymore. Over the coming weeks and months I’d find out just how wrong I was. For me it had become a matter of emotional, psychological and finally physical survival and at that point I did what no one would have seen coming and something I‘d never done before: I chose me.
For me, the letter, the funeral - everything translated into: the last time I put my needs, what I knew to be true- the last I chose that someone died.
Once the body was found, I called everyone I could think of and eventually there was J to whom my mother’s suicide was and would be an opportunity. He offered to take me to his parents’ house.
What would love or even friendship be in such a situation where we have person A and person B.
Person A has over several weeks made it clear what person A does and does not want regarding Person B. Person B has decided what Person B wants and that is Person A regardless of how Person A . Person A suffers a tragedy that insures pain for which there are few equals . Person A certainly needs love and support in such a situation but Person B -well what does Person B do?
Does Person B give love and support in the form best for Person A or does Person B maneuver so as to obtain Person A? Parental suicide is no position to be in an intimate relationship with anyone particularly someone Person A has already rejected?
Anything Person B did during that period could have taken place without him simultaneously trying to get back into Person A‘s bed, my bed. That wasn’t Person B’s only plan, no person B smelled not only the thing he wanted but a means to get other things he wanted he was like a shark to blood in the water.
The greatest comfort and relief I found was not J, J can and only does take care of J. The comfort was found in a very small house, in a very small town via the best person in his family. I am only grateful for J in that I was able to meet and be around the comfort of his mother who sat with me, and let me talk and kept telling me I must eat something with plates of food I could barely look at. Who made sure I got my mail and that I had clean clothes to wear and was kind and comforting not because of what she hoped to take, or gain as a result.
I hadn’t asked J to come to Minneapolis with me no he decided who would be coming with me, I had been thinking about asking Al which would have been better for me oh so many ways it would be hard to quantify. J announced that he’d make the plane reservations .
“I’m coming with you,“ J said, as he was taking charge. To this day I’m sure in his mind this was nothing but help; but help doesn’t have other agendas and J had several.
No J didn’t ask, now J had the upper hand, now got to tell me what was going to happen and he did, he’d make the arrangements, he’d decide. Because who I wanted, what I did and didn’t want were of no importance that had been the case for weeks already- why should suicide change his trajectory? Then it would be for the months and years him impermeable to even the notion that what I wanted or needed were or could be anything other than those he’d assign for “us”, for himself -what he wanted, what was best for J.
When J booked the hotel what did he think he chose?
Separate rooms?
No.
Separate but adjoining rooms?
No.
One room with separate beds?
No
J and I were a couple again just like he wanted.
“The how” of that happening oh he had no moral hang ups with that because “we are together and…you break up with me? No- feelings aren’t important - well yours at least- and those arguments of yours oh they’ll be easy for me to keep winning because you’re in too much pain to fend anything off and I’m not done with you yet and until I am - I’ll wear you down- until -and no it won‘t matter how many times you say this hurts or please or listen - I won’t because you are the thing I want and now you have monetary value as well and if getting what I want means climbing over a dead body is the best way to get it-that‘s fine by me.”
Of course I am paraphrasing.
The insidious little corrections that had me so glad he’d left became a constant reschooling of what to say, what not say, how to say it, what to and what not to do, how to see, who to see and what to feel for certainly I must feel the same. And where to go and where not to go, what to wear, what to eat, what to drink and who to trust and a line, a single line like a bit of programming said on demand as though it was or ever could be the words that were said. Sometimes words don’t mean what they say, just like Jack’s tattoo doesn’t mean what it says, just like J’s parrot lines:
“Who loves you baby?”
There was an answer I supposed to recite.
“Who loves you baby?“ he’d prompt again.
And if I still didn’t answer?
Oh sometimes he‘d stop the car- sometimes he‘d stop everything.
“Come on- who loves you,” he’d prompt again.
He wouldn’t stop, over and over and over again until he got the answer he wanted, true or false but that wasn’t the point of the exercise.
“Who loves you baby?” the prompt.
Silence.
“Come on -Who loves you?”
Silence.
“I said - who loves you?” with a tone that said: you’re mine now say your fucking line.
Sigh
“You do.”
“Who does?”
Silence
“J does”
“That’s right,” J’d say, to him love mean(s/t) power and control- so for him, oh’ this was love.
“who loves you baby?” Yes, just like a Sinatra except I didn’t say it like Sammy. I’d begun saying it like a kid who knows better but recites the line one would and does for and to a sick parent who mistakenly calls abuse love or a lover who never having experienced passion himself figures the girl must really mean bruises.
“Who loves you baby?“
Maybe, neither of us was really paying attention to the delivery of the line or so I‘d like to rewrite that history but no he knew, that had become part of the appeal. He cared only that it was delivered upon request and that when he looked at me he could still see an invisible stamp reading: MINE.
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