This Is An Exercise In Words – ReubenRock.com

We fell short of nine. Ten would have been a stretch. Had we made it this far, there wouldn’t have been much left.

It’s better this way, right? To have run up against a wall so quickly that we didn’t have time to process the loss? No, there would have been very shallow waters for us to drown in if we dragged it out another twelve months. We would have been forced to hold each other’s heads below the waves. Force ourselves to swallow those last days. Fill our lungs with the muddy river.

Drift south. Maybe to the levy. Where we drank our drive-thru margaritas and felt the warmth of summer. The thick humidity moistening our skin.

You made it out alive. I hear bits and pieces from those friends we called mutual. It’s surprising – you would be proud – but I rarely ask anymore. There’s this assumption in my chest, down to the bottom of my stomach, that you’re doing fine. That you found some chunk of life that you never had under my watch, in the shadow I cast over you for years until you found your own bragging rights. Your own devoted crowd.

Ten years would have been too much. But I’ll share this secret with you: every sip seems to bring you closer. Back to me. Coursing through my veins, slowing down my overactive mind, comforting my body. Just an old friend that knows how to halt the world.

“I’m reaching for the phone to call at 9:16, and on your machine I slur a plea for you to come home.”

But those old digits don’t work anymore. I don’t know the person on the other end of the line.

76.

Looks like I’m celebrating in the truest form – the most true-to-life form. The side of you I didn’t know until you were gone. It seems treacherous to bring it up now. The murmurs seemed to say I was something like you. Something more than what I believed was in you. There was a legitimacy I saw in you. I didn’t want to believe the rest was there. But obviously I learned first hand. Not from the movies like the other kids.

Let’s remove all that. There was so much about being a responsible, truthful man that I learned from you firsthand. You gained wisdom with age. And you passed it to me quickly… like it would run through your fingers if you didn’t splash it on my life immediately. I followed along. I was diligent.

There must have been some part of me that sensed it was over. Because I fucked up.

It’s like there was some premonition. But I couldn’t have prepared for the basement scenery where I first looked across a room and didn’t recognize your body.

More than a year later, I know what you must have gone through from the beginning. I’m at the start of it. The forefront of loneliness that you probably experienced for years. That’s the advice I wish you had given me. How to get through it.

Dad, I need you. Maybe you didn’t make the decisions you wished you would have – but that’s exactly what I need to hear.  I need to know what choices to stick to, what alleys I closed when I should have kept them open, what destructive maneuvers I’m making just to get by another night.

Tell me stories of the Bear and his tail. Tell me why I shouldn’t swim in certain lakes around White Earth. Jesus, tell me where we spread your ashes.

I’ve forgotten my culture. My land. Are you in Ponsford? Near Park Rapids? That’s where I last saw grandma. I left you in Waubun. Actually it was Fargo. But Waubun was home for you. Mahnomen county – Mahnomen means “rice.” I know. We abandoned Pine Point. Grandma was honored there. But there was so little honor in the tradition that we tried to carry forth in that small gymnasium. We laid Bob there first. It should have been obvious that, despite the spirits of ancestors, there was nothing there for us. I miss my brother. The White Earth Veterans and Honor Guard were there for you. And I felt detached. She left that day. I think you knew it. Losing both of you in one day. It killed me.

I don’t know where you are. Except the bits and pieces that I have with me.

I’m trying to do better.

25.

I was wondering today if I would even know you anymore… if somehow your essential being had changed. The best I can figure is that it hasn’t. Odds are you’ve carried forward brilliantly in whatever way does the most good for the world – for strangers, for friends, and maybe even for yourself. I’ve never known you to do anything else.

After all, we never really change. Just move down paths as we march toward the horizon. It looks like higher ground up ahead. Like we might be bigger and better people when we get there. But we really just learn as we stumble on broken cobblestones and try not to fumble whatever cargo we’ve accumulated.

It may be a matter of time. Days or weeks maybe. But I think as paths diverge and intersect, somewhere your way will meet with mine.

Then we’ll know – do the years make a difference? Does the conversation pick up where it left off? Shaky at first. Tempted to flee in the first direction we point our feet. But instincts will keep us planted in that moment, trying to soak in the details of each other that aged, or altered, or became obscured.

I’m confident of this.

Tonight, allow me to imagine that nine six eleven is better than nine six ten. And fantasize that since eight six, nobody has known you better than I still do.

The weather is cool. The day was clear. And it was all for you.

God sometimes I can’t stand it. I feel like an amputee. Paraplegic even.

Do you remember the Venn diagram? Do you remember how we overlapped? There was so little outside our shared experience. And it was all dashed away in a vile morning. The culmination of my self destruction. It eclipsed what we built. An entire city, an empire… demolished. No time to save the women… and the children we never had.

What happened to those experiences? The ability to share, to collectively recollect, to relish in our history… that responsibility fell upon us individually. And it’s too much for me to bear on these weakened shoulders. Ninety percent of my life is stored somewhere inaccessible. I’ve tried. I know you have, too. It’s like swallowing fire.

So what’s left? A sliver. A nail trimming of experience that didn’t include you – not directly, at least. It isn’t enough to convince anyone that I have a story. I’ve been trying to build something new. And it’s terror after terror. A nightmarish world of women with empty skin. Images that keep me up at night.

Last night I awoke next to a corpse. Later, I was visited by a woman who haunted the edge of the bed.

I remember how you used to wrap me up, bring me back to reality, calming the cries from time to time. It wasn’t a duty you expected when you partnered with me. But I thank you for spending those nights defending me from the shadows.

Neither of us could have known at the time that these images foreshadowed the afterlife. The time that would follow our life. What is supposed to become known as my life.

I anticipate a lot of nights like this. I’ve had more than 365 since we last shared a warm bed, let alone a common roof. The evening closes. The relics of my ancestors and my sins inch closer. You’re out there, and I’m left to fend for myself.

So I find a liquid cure. Something to shut down the senses and obscure the details surrounding everything. But there are details that can’t be rubbed out and forgotten.

Stormy eyes could glare a hole through anything. I saw ships wrecked in those waters. Blonde hair was thin as a newborn’s. White follicles camouflaged in the front lines. Fingers and toes that have no twins in this world. The symmetry of your face – every dot perfectly duplicated on the opposite side. Feet turned in on each other. How your hips managed that stance, I’ll never understand. Freckles that I’m sure nobody else has ever noticed. As if they only appeared to me. Scars and imperfections that humanized you beyond perfection. Words are insufficient. I’d suffer through 25 more years to know that I could feel your soft breath against my chest for a moment.

But you don’t deserve me, or the bad dreams that come with me. And I don’t deserve you.

If I give it a rest, how long will we retain this radio silence? How long will I wait for a phone call I’ll never receive? These are questions I likely don’t want an answer to, but I’m asking despite the uncertainty.

To be perfectly honest, I jumped the gun. That much is clear to me. The rest is a haze.

But I suppose after 10 years of failure, I can wait a while longer before testing someone else’s merits, running them through the paces, the routine of it all…

Find me in the waiting room. I’ll be the well-dressed “gentleman” drunk in public.

“When was the last time I held you all through the night? Never a worry would run through my heart like a knife. Tomorrow is much too late.” ~ Saves the Day

It’s not that I’m impatient. It’s that I have insecurities. And they wear on me quickly. I can stand it for about an hour before I have to extinguish them with some poor decision, some conversation, some distraction. Some slight deposit into my ego. Intimate currency.

I hold the patent on this maneuver.

While in limbo, I’ll prowl. I’ll stick to the shadows. I’ll comb the shallows. Whatever mangled mess washes ashore in the mornings, I will look at it with disgust and pretend not to recognize the handiwork. It’s a victimless crime really.

Just know that it’s all stimulus and response. With the right stimulus, you’ll elicit the response you’re looking for. So send the signal. My receptors are waiting.

Simply because of my uncertainties, this next week is a toss up. Anyone’s game. Win or lose. Probably lose.

Open your arms – I’ll be there.

Long brown hair, I love it.

Checking in to your hips. My mother loves it.

A body long enough to hold its own. To make me feel as protected as you do. Perfection.

Grazing your back with my fingertips, watching the storm roll in over your complex, cozying up on that couch you reluctantly told me about (as if you had anything to be embarrassed of), the scent of you, plotting to commandeer a toothbrush at your place, hitting snooze despite being perfectly awake and enjoying every minute of your embrace, wishing I had a classier life story to relay to you, wanting nothing more than to say nothing but share everything, hoping that you’re in this as much as I am…

Well. I suppose some things happen when least expected. And it can be a rough transition. So uncertainties shouldn’t mean much other than I’ve been let down before. And I’m betting you have, too.

Admittedly, I’ve been less than stellar lately. Not as a person, not as a potential boyfriend, not as anything. This has been my first true summer of self discovery. The casualties have been numerous. They’re only outnumbered by the beers and embarrassing mornings after. When clarity finally hits home, leaving me grasping for excuses and explanations, I almost find perspective… but I lose it as quickly as 5pm comes.

“It’s my first time being single. I should act like this.”

“I’m not usually so aggressive.”

“She’s a one and done. That’s the only time it will ever happen.”

But the truth is, I wake up every day and carry on a real career. I pay those bills so I can count on shelter. I have hobbies. I have friends.

The only need that seems unfulfilled: morality. Stability is a close relative. Commitment probably exists in this realm, too.

Honesty was not anything I aimed for in these warm summer months. Everyone is anyone, right? Well that’s easier on paper. Eventually anyone can become someone. And once you distinguish yourself as an individual – a living, breathing, thinking, caring individual – it gets harder to treat you like number XX in the slew of slaughters. That simple comment: “I really enjoy being with you,” a flash of pretty, wet eyes, anything like that… it humanizes you, and it makes the kill harder to deal with.

What’s even more difficult to deal with? Suddenly materializing the finish line in front of contestants who may not have realized they were competing. Racers without an end game. Participants caught up in the weekly schedule… looking for a prize, or not… they get run over. A winner is chosen out of nowhere. Because she is sweet. Maybe she fits in arms more favorably. It’s a subjective measure of a woman. But the “feel” is right. And that’s what sticks with me when I sense the autumn months on the horizon.

There are no more points to argue. Put down your phones. Sign off from your social networks. You don’t have to close communications completely. Just know you performed well – every one of you. Consider yourself a learning experience. And maybe next summer you’ll be running the show. You’ll have an audience of your own. You can be the grand prize.

This is where legitimacy meets a year-long train wreck. We’ve reached the climax of it all. Settle in and enjoy the come down. Sometimes drifting off is better than getting off.

I suppose this is as good a time/place as any to say, “I’m sorry.”

When it comes right down to it, I wanted you in my life. You should have been here the last 7 years. But circumstance ravaged any possibility of maintaining a comfortable proximity. We both wed, fled, and found exactly what we weren’t looking for.

So needless to say, when those years disappeared – when you reappeared – it was a shock to the senses. A startling reintroduction into that world we inhabited for a few short months several years ago. When you were a new woman, and I was discovering what it is to be a man. Your eyes shined the same this time. Your hair was thick as ever. We fell into that routine we used to know. And it would have been easy to dive in head first. But we would have drowned. We would have swallowed water until our bodies went limp.

It isn’t that the timing is wrong. It’s that I am simply unwilling for now. Which leads me back a few months. When we reunited, staying with you that first night was the wrong thing to do. Spending countless days together was not okay. Driving to the coast to soak in the scent of saltwater – it was unfair to you. I built a case for our coexistence, while arguing for our freedoms. When I chose that freedom, I’m afraid I broke you again.

You said you understood. Goddammit. You shot me those looks – where your enormous eyes swallowed me whole. I took deep breaths and assured you that we would make it out alive. But I wasn’t so sure myself.

Here we are in flames. Drowning may have been the better option. But we chose the fire. The heat was seductive. The lick and arch of each flame as it reforms into further devastation… this is where our affection will always reside.

Please don’t take this as an affront. I don’t intend to be cross.

If nothing else, at least I’ve broken hearts in the most honest way possible this time. Fully disclosed, completely unclothed, and under cover of casual relations. You became a casualty of casual. And I am sorry. Let’s not wait 7 years to repair the damage this time. Our ship can float again. But it has to fly under a different flag. We’ll sleep in separate quarters. And that will have to be enough for the both of us.

They stalked their prey with the confidence of professional killers, but lost their vantage point out of impudence. I watched as all parties were closing in, and knew she was relishing in the sport of it. But I grew disgusted by the brutality. And bored with the monotony. This is a ritual we have all come to understand. Something we have all participated in from time to time, some more than others. It’s a careless and shameless struggle for trophies – something to stuff.

Some of us cast aside our brotherhood during the hunt, like beasts. Forget our loyalties. Some of us carry a distaste for the victims. Others do care, despite advertising the complete opposite. Why did I ever volunteer for this tournament?

I set down the pale pint of medicine I had been nursing, turned away from the struggle, and turned in for the night.