“I don’t think this will work,” came part of the answer to my early Monday morning pillow inquiry from Jon. “I’ve been in two long-distance cross-border relationships already and neither turned out well,”
To tell the truth, I probably shouldn’t be using quotation marks here as my memories of precisely what was said and by whom are clouded by a sea of thunderous collisions of conflicting statements, thoughts and feelings of three blissfully happy days all taking place concurrently in my mind.
Where, just hours before, I’d drifted away on a cloud of images of my heart and mind peacefully and joyously dancing the night away, there was now a scene straight out of a science fiction fantasy of a pigtailed little fourteen year-old steadfastly supporting her horrified intellectual companion as he knelt helplessly before an array of synapses rapidly firing explosively all about them.
Jon was speaking, I could see and hear that, and yet his words did not seem to register in my mind as contiguous thoughts. It was as if I was only capable of understanding some of the words but none of the context.
I remember him saying something about the trauma of his previous divorce, and something about a commitment to pursue his engineering certification that was somehow mixed up with his power lifting and training. It was all jumble and registered in my mind as something akin to “it’s not you, your’e a great guy. It’s me.”
I struggled throughout our conversation to make sense of the things he was saying while, at the same time, trying not to appear as dazed and confused as I felt.
I don’t think I did a very good job of it.
After an equally confusing breakfast conversation where Brain and I tried vainly to ascertain what had gone wrong and why the sudden change in Jon’s demeanor, it came time for him to leave.
“Alright Mister, I can’t wait to read the story,” Jonny said to me standing in the doorway of what had been our–and was now about to become my–hotel room. “Make sure you send it to me.”
“I just need to know,” I said, choking back a torrent of emotion while standing in front of the man who just hours earlier had filled my life with more joy and happiness than I can ever remember experiencing, “and you don’t have to tell me this minute, if it’s the end of the story or the beginning of the next chapter, whatever that may turn out to be.”
He inhaled slowly, his eyes now no longer sparkling as they had for all of that weekend, looked down into mine from their perch above. “Alright,” he said quickly whipping up a faint smile and then added. “I’ll let you know when I get in safely.”
And with that he was gone, I was alone, and never felt emptier.
For a while it was like the day I was fired at Dirty Rotten Bastard Insurance, I was stunned, I couldn’t seem to feel anything. This time, however, it was more from a sense of not being able to process anything that had just occurred.
The remarkable sense of well-being, brought on by the three days of happiness and joy I had experienced, remained within me and yet at the same time there was a swirling maelstrom of conflicting data gnawing away at it.
The closest thing I can liken it to would be some of the experiences shared by survivors of the Titanic. At first there was a shudder, barely perceptible by some, throughout the great ship. So caught off guard by the sudden and soon to be disastrous event that had just taken place, many of the passengers and even some of the crew refused to accept that anything had happened that could or would interrupt what up until that time had been the voyage of a lifetime.
Brain was beside himself trying to make sense of a series of racing, raging illogical thoughts threatening to overwhelm the three of us, while at the same time desperately trying to find something–anything–in the way of a distraction to keep us from going to pieces right there in a Toronto hotel room.
Much to my amazement, Griselda, the embodiment of my heart and soul and the part of me I most expected any moment to shatter into pieces, was the calmest of the three of us. She said little other than to quietly suggest things that would keep Brain at least partially distracted from collapsing into a pit of recursive thinking that would doom us to a zombie-like state of rumination thousands of miles away from home.
I discovered a large section of the lobby cordoned off by police tape, an officer was standing by to keep the curious at bay and there was a large pool of blood [cropped] on the floor.
On my way from the bar to the elevators, I discovered a large section of the lobby cordoned off by police tape, an officer was standing by to keep the curious at bay and there was a large pool of blood on the floor.
All I could think of was that someone else was also having a rough time of visiting Toronto.
When I returned to my room, there, as promised, was a message from Jonny saying he had safely arrived home and would chat with me more later.
“Chat?” Brain, Griselda and I thought. What the hell does he want to chat about?
“Perhaps he wants to rub salt in the wound,” Brain said snidely.
By ten that evening, the wine consumed followed by a goodly number of Ibuprofen capsules, I finally feel asleep.
Instead a sign, indicating a seven minute walk (it lied) directed me down four flights of stairs and dozens of yards away from the main terminal…
When anything calamitous happens, I’ve always been the one in my family to go into crisis control mode. Regardless of how serious the circumstances, I remain relatively calm and take charge of seeing to the needs of those around me. A side effect, I assume, of my childhood caretaker roll.
I awoke Tuesday morning and, realizing I could not spend 14 hours traveling reduced to a sniveling mess, I went into full crisis control mode determined to hold together whatever emotional storm might be brewing within me until I was out of the public eye.
My travel karma, like my joyous weekend, was gone as well. My Star Alliance member airline insisted I use their new all electronic, no human-intervention-required check-in system, which, of course, promptly rejected my discount travel package much to the chagrin of three staffers who could not or would not accept the fact that my reservations required checking in with a real live ticketing agent.
There would be no luxurious wide-bodied nonstop flight to California either. Instead a sign, indicating a seven minute walk (it lied) directed me down four flights of stairs and dozens of yards away from the main terminal to an ancient tarmac level satellite departure gate where I was to board a no frills small commuter jet bound for Denver.
While waiting in a cramped, tiny boarding area to board the first of my two flights home I received yet another text from Jonny. Not as upbeat and jovial as most of our chats usually were, nevertheless he seemed genuinely concerned about my getting home safely.
“Guilty conscience,” Brain and Griselda said in unison.
I snapped a selfie of what I hoped would be my strongest expression of disbelief at his seemingly genuine concern about my well-being, and then chickened out by adding a comment about how ancient and far removed from the main terminal this part of the airport was.
Once in Denver, following a two-and-a-half hour layover, I caught another flying tin can for Palm Springs.
It was twilight when I landed in Palm Springs and the temperature was in the low 100s. I threw my computer bag over my shoulder, grabbed the handle of my rolling bag, and prepared to schlep the blocks-long walk back to my apartment.
I spent the remainder of the evening unpacking and drinking. Mentally, as well as physically exhausted, I was in bed and asleep well before ten that evening. I was so tired I didn’t even respond to the message chimes on my iPhone.
It was twilight when I landed in Palm Springs…
Edited by
Kenneth Larsen
Next Up: Night On Bald Mountain
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Another great installment Chuck … Thanks!