“I don’t think I can take much more of this,” I said to Griselda one hot August evening, a glass of wine before me on the small hightop cocktail table at the edge of my tiny balcony following my return from the Grand Canyon.
“Much more of what?” she replied in a surprisingly inquisitive way.
“THIS!” I said gesturing to the feeling of a gnawing, gaping hole in the center of my chest. “And the constant return to his,” this time motioning to Brain, “refusal to do anything but think about where he went wrong and what you and I did to bring this all-consuming angst upon us.
“And, I just can’t stop thinking about him.”
“Give it time,” Griselda said reassuringly. “Everything will work out the way it’s supposed to.”
“I’m too old for this,” I protested. “This is the kind of heartache teenagers are supposed to endure, not sixty-something retirees. I’m supposed to be sitting on a bar stool drinking the rest of my life away, slurring snide comments about how the younger generation is frittering away their lives.”
“Drama much?” she asked pulling my wine glass to her side of the tiny cocktail table.
“All I’m trying to say is,” I continued valiantly if not vainly, “I don’t think I can do this much longer. Brain has a point, Jonny and I connected. I know we did. I could feel it. He felt it and so did you. It was real and now it’s gone and we’re sitting here feeling miserable.”
“And feeling more than just a bit sorry for yourself,” she added, then, as she got up from the table, added. “Don’t forget…” I cut her off before she could finish.
“Don’t you dare say, ‘He’s just like us.’” I snapped.
“No,” she said softly. “Don’t forget you’re meeting George at the airport tomorrow for the beginning of his visit.”
“Oh, this oughta be fun,” I said sarcastically to myself as she faded from view.
George’s visit, with the exception of a day spent at Disneyland, was a virtual repeat of the tour I’d given Jonny just two months earlier.
I was right. George’s visit was fun. It just wasn’t the kind of fun one is eager to experience.
George’s plane arrived at PSP and after about ten minutes of joking about what it was like to experience desert temps for the first time… “I kept thinking I must be experiencing some sort of back draft from the jet engines,” George marveled. “Then I realized I’d been walking away from the plane and it was yards behind me and I was still feeling blasted by the heat,” we settled into small talk.
There was absolutely no way to hide or disguise my dower mood from my youngest brother. Even making jokes at our middle brother Marty’s expense could not keep either a smile or even a neutral expression on my face for more than a few brief moments.
Finally, as we settled in on the sofa in my apartment I gave up and said, “There’s something you should know.”
I recounted the entire affair from it’s earliest beginnings on a hookup app to that weekend in Toronto. Thus began a week of cognitive therapy with my baby brother, who, by the way, was 52 at the time, taking on the roll of counselor.
George’s willingness to hear me out, call me on my bullshit, and offer me the benefit of his experience was more than comforting. Ours has never been what you would call a close-knit family, what with alcohol and mental illness taking center stage throughout our childhood and adolescent years.
It was also nice to have a shoulder to lean on as George’s visit, with the exception of a day spent at Disneyland, was a virtual repeat of the tour I’d given Jonny just two months earlier. The hardest part being spending the better part of a day touring Joshua Tree National Park complete with a stop at that same rest area I’d taken the picture of a shirtless Jonny gazing up at the sun.
“As I see it,” George said the night before I was to take him to the airport for the return flight to Colorado, “you’ve got two choices. You can end this thing neatly yourself, break off all social media connections and just walk away.”
“Or,” he continued, “you can face him, tell him that your feelings haven’t changed, you believe he still has feelings for you and that you need him to decide to either break things off completely or begin rebuilding what you had.”
“Can’t I choose door number three?” I asked sheepishly.
As was my habit, I’d posted pictures of our day at Disneyland and sightseeing around the Coachella Valley with George on Facebook, which is why the opening of the lengthy text message that greeted me the Sunday morning after George’s departure came as no surprise.
The hardest part being spending the better part of a day touring Joshua Tree National Park complete with a stop at that same rest area I’d taken the picture of a shirtless Jonny gazing up at the sun.
Hi Chuck,
Looks like you had a great time touring around with your brother. I’m happy to see the pics, and hope that it was a lovely visit from him. A few more tours like that and you’ll become a pro tour guide of PS and the valley.
Its been a week since you sent your message, I know. I’d like to thank you for sending it. I appreciate what you said and can understand the point that you were making. I’m absolutely flattered that it was, apparently, the happiest four days of your life. That’s quite the statement of fact. And though it isn’t said to flatter, well, all I can say is that it comes off partly in that manner. I wasn’t trying to impress, I was simply having fun and enjoying the weekend…
It was another six paragraphs of going on about my character, which he seemed to approve of, his character, which he didn’t feel had room for anything other completing his current goals, before he got to the following.
I love you as a person, and friend…
I could feel the dagger slipping in between my ribs on its way to my heart.
“Well at least I won’t have to insist he make a clean break of it as George suggested,” I thought to myself and then I kept reading.
Going forward, i am happy to keep in touch as friends, and if you came back to Toronto you’d be welcome to spend time with Brodie and I. But I am not going to pursue an intimate relationship. I broke up with a man back in early February because of the long distance, and it broke my own heart too. I simply can not allow myself to invest into that again, even for someone I love, because the travel and the expanses of time being separated drains everything out of me and leaves me paralyzed, alone, and depressed at home where i’m NOT with that person.
Brain replayed a scene from the pilot episode of The Beverly Hillbillies in which an astonished Pearl upon discovering her cousin Jed is a millionaire calls out, “Granny fetch the jug.”
Griselda, however, was smiling beatifically.
“At last,” she said gazing at the message as if committing it to memory, “we’ve got the affirmation we need to move forward.”
I looked at Brain in astonishment, he looked at me just as astonished. It didn’t matter, before either of us could ask precisely what she was so pleased about, the pain and despair the text message had released washed over me like a tsunami of grief.
Once again I was down for the count.
Edited by
Kenneth Larsen
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