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Sparkle (0)
I'm in bed with a fever of 104. I know I'm not sick –- not in the conventional sense. It's my body, fighting itself, breaking down walls and defenses that have taken me months to build. The defragmentation of my heart is in full progress and I stand at the threshold with intent, a document open before me on my computer filled with pieces of Tristan and me. Text messages, status updates, lyrics and other bits of us, bits we sent off into so many cold winter nights.
The task of weaving them together, from strings into a cloth, fell to the writer, and she attempted to execute it with precision. I may be dedicated to my craft, but the writer inhabits the same body as the woman, and the woman instinctively rebelled against the dangerous act of digging up memory to mulch the blinking cursor.
As the fever soared, I imaged the woman and the writer fighting, each convinced that victory was necessary for the survival of the whole. To write you must feel, after all. And to feel you need to demolish the barriers between you and experience. But to feel, to be up that close against that experience is to welcome a debilitating pain that may not allow you to do anything at all. You must protect yourself somehow. There will always be things to write about –- do we need a sacrifice?
The battle raged and the room –- the mess of paint tubes, canvases, books and piles of clothes –- came in and out of focus. With my defenses engaged elsewhere, the memories began to rise.
“I just want you to know, you're fucking brilliant.” Those were the first words he ever said to me. I was at the Thompson Beverly Hills, having a drink with someone else. He'd come up to us, excused himself for interrupting, and told me he read my writing. He apologized again, looking at the man in whose company I found myself, then turned over a menu and written his number on it.
I didn't intend to ever phone him, though I slipped that drink menu into my purse when my date wasn't looking.
Fast forward three months, he and I sat facing each at a Portuguese brasserie.
“I can't do this to you,” he said.
“Do what?”
“I can't ... ” he paused. “I can't let you live a life where you don't get everything. You deserve everything. Everything I am. It's not fair.”
“Do you want to end it?” I asked him.
“That seems the most logical thing.”
“Given what I know of your inability to end things, I can't tell if you mean that sincerely and regret it but really care more for me than yourself or if you can't find the courage to end things because you no longer care to be involved.”
“Why would you say that?” he asked, looking wounded.
“Because we need truth now more than ever,” I replied, coldly.
He said nothing.
“All right,” I said. “It might be suspicious if you unfriend me on Facebook right now because she is watching everything you do, but you can unfollow me on Twitter right away. In a week, you can go ahead and unfriend me. And stop looking. You can't quit something slowly. It's gotta be cold turkey.”
That "she" being his wife. For a woman who knows what supplementing a relationship entails, for a woman who is intelligent –- if amoral, considering the situation –- I had failed terribly at the details. It's true that I have said you can account for much in an affair and ensure you're never discovered. But I had never dealt with an equation that involved love.
And love –- well, Plato didn't call “divine madness” for nothing.
“We have to cut off contact on all social networks,” I told him.
“I won't do that.”
“So what then? We don't speak to one another, but we continue looking into each others' lives, sending out missives we hope the other will read? No, Tristan. No! It's everything or nothing.”
“I DON'T KNOW HOW TO QUIT YOU!" he said, his eyes filling with tears. "I don't need anyone else or care for anyone else. You fill me in every way. There is nothing I could want for with you. I don't just like being inside you, I like being in you, with you, beside you. I like everything that is you.”
“You're going to make me cry in public. I don't ... like that.”
“When you don't tweet, I stay up
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