Galley Tear Sheets

"Marriage does not complete you."-- my former glaucoma blind neighbor

 I had the poor bastard on his knees trying to console my inconsolable stream of tears for a domestic life I’ll never have.  (Though this more nuanced Molina love portrait will remain only a synopsis via second hand.) I did not intend to do that and did not turn and play aggressor in the process of his knee on my behalf, with a shrug, as I by mere happenstance remember this post, without enough context in it to recall the necessity of citing Alberto Moravia. Poor Shawn is out of his depth, and out of curiosity I said he could read my posts. And as you can read, he commented with a vernacular appreciation, and I do not care what he says, Joanne you’re not dead! Nor do I care what the crones of Visiting Nurses say about bringing me back. Frank was a living embodiment of what former neighbor Tom advised me in my mid-twenties. Frank was a lack of completion, more than that, an alienation. Shawn is not a completion either but for reasons unknown to me, our simulated intimacy whispers in my ear: this is what it means to be held, this is comfort in another’s strength, and he has to give me time to have my little whirlwind. I have had larger whirlwinds, even derived satisfaction from utilizing pity to manipulate men of more piercing temperament than he, but now I only feel chagrin at my power to bring a softer Hulk to marriage proposal position within the blink of an eye, a boy man who thinks my acquired culinary tastes are akin to sinking in quicksand, and makes me laugh, exclaiming, “I cannot eat this,” despite the fact that I thought seaweed snacks were a popular vogue. My past and present make rather strange bookends: Brandon was one Negro stereotype out of The Birth of A Nation, the aggressor whose lewd violence threatened white purity, and my life itself, and now I am distressing my caretaker of sweeter cocoa hue because I never made a good marriage. Without actually being able to petulantly stomp my foot and fracture solid concrete, my grief nevertheless stands in as a recipe substitution doing exactly that. Don’t I think other people suffer? Sure I do. Stephen Hawking bore his 24 hour maintenance with gentility, and Megan Crowley deserves President Trump’s attention, though I believe her father’s zealous determination to be misguided, which immediately places our relation to each other, corresponding points of impairments, in opposition with my arguments, but I’ll never have Gretchen’s pleasure, probable joy, in the sanctity of her union with Karl. I never wanted children, but the way Gretchen brings her little girl to life has its charm, and I will enjoy one day meeting her daughter, though my budget is momentarily too strained to return to the Virginias—but my point is, I begin to see why wives of such caliber celebrate family, and fear the lash upon lash which has fed a fury such as mine, defying online rules of engagement. I see what it is. When you lose the ability to utilize your toilet on demand because of a predatory mechanic you desperately begged for help, then get back to me, in my past sterile godsend that was September 2017.