“My knees don’t work like they used to. You just don’t think
about those things when your 19. You think you will be young forever. I never
had trouble in the Panama Canal.”
“About 20 years ago when I
was a scuba diver for the Navy. We were in the mines."
“A scuba diver for the Navy
for the Panama Canal? What were you diving for in the canal?"
“The mines.”
"The mines? Why
the canal?”
“Well WWI and WWII everyone
– the allies - kept stuff down there.”
I’m intrigued by the stuff everyone is keeping down there. This
old man in the plane seat next to me, he once was a 19 year old scuba diver.
And now he is an old businessman. He is not adventuring anymore. This is as
wild as it gets. He orders jack and soda water, please.
“My daughter’s 25. She’s a
psychologist. She can’t find anyone. She doesn’t trust anyone. She knows too
much about human nature and now she doesn’t trust anyone.”
“Oh...” The other business
man gives in grave whisper. “You know, the longer you wait the smaller the pool
of quality men gets. She better hurry up.” They erupt with laughter.
If the ex-scuba diver’s
daughter has studying the human psyche, and has determined this means she can
trust no one, do I want to know more of her conclusions? No. I put my earbuds
in. I drown out the old men talk.
I am in my early 30s.
Single. I am not a psychologist, but I trust no one. That developed after years
of trusting people, not reading lots of textbooks, not teaching people EFT.
I am leaving by plane from
my hometown to my new town. I have just spent the week in the wilderness with
no Wi-Fi. I actually had to feel all my feelings. It was a rough week. Drank
lots of wine. I’m breathing deeper on the flight back to my city apartment.
It’s dark on the plane but
the businessmen are loud so I can’t sleep. I think about the first few nights
in the cottage. It was so quiet. Too quiet to fall asleep so I read till 2am. I
am used to noise and babies crying and sirens. I remember when we met you
covered your ears whenever we heard sirens. Like they were telling you
something you didn’t want to hear. Reminding you of things you wanted to
forget. I didn’t understand what you were trying to forget until the night you
woke up next to me, eyes terrified, wide as quarters. You looked like you were
coming up for air but you were not underwater, just in my bed with me.
In the beginning I loved
the fact that I could make you moan. Since I knew there were very few things
that made a man such as yourself moan. One being love, two being war. I was
happy to be of the former category; I was happy to move you to shudder not due
to pain, but due to love. Or from your end I guess you’d call it lust.
I remember feeling your arm
draped over my skeletal frame. The fall had been hard on me and I had forgotten
how much I liked to eat. You didn’t seem to notice anyways so I never brought
this size change up. As long as I still had a C cup I knew I would keep your
attention.
I remember that night, the
moon coming through my blinds, stripes of stardust on our arms. I couldn’t
sleep with you around me. I kept tossing and turning until we took off all our
clothes. And as we were still catching our breath you suddenly burst out of the
bed saying, “I’m going home, I can’t sleep now.” I wanted you to take me with
you. Tuck me in the suitcase with your camera and cheer when I popped out of it
like a calendar girl from a birthday cake.
You did not want to sleep
with me. You wanted to keep a warm body close, have a someone to wake you from
your nightmares. You wanted someone to pull you away from yourself in the
middle of the night.
Christmas passed, the
lights came down and there were still no phone calls. I pretended you were a
pirate or soldier that was lost at sea and I would just have to wait for a
carrier pigeon to come to my lighthouse. Be patient, I told myself. He will
call, he will call.
There were never any calls.
Leaving in the middle of the night was your grand exit I just had no idea until
the curtains were up. The lights in my bedroom on, you gone. A disappearing
act; an illusion. The tickets are sold out , no refunds. The stale
popcorn on the floor is the only proof we have. The smallest filth is the
only proof we have that it happened. The stale popcorn kernels are the smell of
your sweater (greasy hair, sweat and overly priced cologne).
I order from the
stewardess. My body buzzes with tannins. My brain is a bit scrambled but a
steady idea is living there. I am finally realizing that your ghost has moved
out. I am finally realizing it did take the banana from the kitchen as I had
expected. I refuse to admit you left in the middle of the night because of me.
It was never me. It’s whatever you told me you left in the desert, something
you’ll never get back, yet you can’t stop thinking about it.
