Black, belated valentines

Some awful boyfriends popped into my mind for some reason. Maybe because Patti started her blog writing about relationships, and I've been spellbound since I read it. Patti had me at her first story about how she and her friends had to find a murdered body in the swamp for the police when she was 10 years old, because they knew the police wouldn't be able to. Me and my cousins all encouraged her to write these stories down that she was telling us, but I feared much would be missed not hearing her in person bouncing off us and being hysterically funny. I think she feared that a little, too. But she writes even better.  She writes like her swamp world, where nothing is fully revealed, and just when you think the mysteries are explained, all fades into the mist again.  I'm left wanting so much more.  And she's fearless. Which is awe inspiring, at least it inspired my own memories to emerge into the light from their own murky depths.

Or maybe because I had a shock recently that sent me into a very black place, but then the universe righted itself so powerfully it changed me and my world somehow. My heart wasn't black any more. These awful memories suddenly seemed colorful, and healed of the trauma that had been in them.

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Hal:

Hal was from the post office days, late 60s. Everyone I worked with at the post office - young, old, every color - all partied together and were usually stoned. Hal was one of the group that never got stoned with us, and we would rib him for being square and straight laced.  He was very odd.  I saw him in the lunchroom once eating a sandwich covered with mold.  Ick!  He called me up one day and told me about a party or a dance or something. I was like "uh-huh..." waiting for him to get to the point. He just kept saying over and over "there's a ____" (whatever it was). I finally asked him if he was asking me on a date? He said yes. I said ok. The day of the date we first had dinner at one of our post office buddy's houses and then left for the thing.  He freaked out and wouldn't go.  He wanted to go home, so we got on the bus.  He wouldn't ride all the way home on the bus with me. He ran off at his stop. It was very late and I had a really long ride home through an awful neighborhood alone on the bus, and a long walk home from the bus stop, and I was terrified. When he didn't show up at work the next two days I went to his house to see if he was ok. The landlady answered the door and told me he had killed himself.

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Ed:

Ed was such a jerk his memory had just been so humiliating and embarrassing and painful.  Yeah, he was a jerk, but SUCH a good one! I basically enjoyed the services of a gigolo free for six months. Actually, he was more like a male geisha. He was cultured, educated and had great taste. His elegant home was filled with small sculptures he collected from around the world, and some of the music in his collection is still in mine today.

Ed was the head of the research department in a small scientific corporation where I worked. He had a window office, but he shared it with his two subordinates, so instead of a Wall Street vibe it had that university vibe. When I delivered my documents to his department I felt like I was entering the rarefied air of a dean's office where a frat party was always in progress. It wasn't long before my arrival typically brought ribald cheering, so that after a while I would just drop by to visit, especially if I hadn't gotten any documents from that department in a while.

In contrast, I worked in a large closet into which they stuffed a Vydec. I never understood the documents there. I think they were doing good work, but I really didn't have a clue. I had no idea what Alta Therapeutic Corporation did or produced, but they seemed to be a small, family-owned company. I befriended a lab technician about my age that worked with the rats who assured me they weren't abused. She probably explained to me what the rats were used for and I probably didn't understand. I just thought it was cool that she walked around in a lab coat. A very sweet, wonderful, tall man worked there. He was tall even for a tall person. He met his wife in a tall club, and they had two very tall sons who met their girlfriends in the tall club. Another guy there went to Chicago and brought back a dozen pizzas with him on the plane. He shared one at work, and that memory can still make my mouth water. But the documents were disgusting (one actually made me gag once), about blood and testing blood, and chemical equations and scientific charts I understood not a word of, but I made them look pretty. I made them oh so pretty that Ed began to admire my work oh so much. He was the only one that personally brought his work to my closet (rather than leaving it in the drop-box outside next to the drop box of blood samples). Ed was so cool.

But Ed in bed...there are no words currently in our language that can express that experience. Around 3 am one night, snuggled in his arms as we were falling asleep, I told him I loved him. He threw me out of bed, screaming, "Love me? You don't even know me!" He continued screaming in this fashion pulling me naked through his house and out the front door. He went and got my clothes and threw them out the door. I was naked. In the street. With my underwear being thrown at me.

My lab technician friend revealed to me that she had also "dated" him. She had apparently watched as he played me just as he had played her and there was really nothing she could do. But now she took the opportunity to ask me how I had enjoyed his wine collection. Regrettably, I didn't drink wine because it usually made me sick, which probably none of Ed's wine would have. I had lost a great opportunity to have been introduced to wine properly. Oh well.

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Mark:

Mark was the supervisor in a document center where I worked. He was a working supervisor, so we basically did the same thing all day at our respective stations across from each other. A third operator sat behind me that I shared a partial shift with when she came in at night.

Mark and I never crossed the professional line, but we were madly in love. He told me all about how he picked his wife really carefully and had 2 kids with her and someone like me wasn't supposed to come along. He never actually said that part about me aloud. But by the end of our time together he probably had told me his whole life, and I probably had told him mine. All very professionally. We never flirted. We didn't go flying passionately into each other's arms even when he told me about his vivid dreams about me at night. It was nice to know it wasn't just me having those dreams.  One gritty moment stands out in which he sat there gazing at me, and after a while bemoaned "I could never tell my wife about you."

I took a week off "sick" because I found my friend wandering the streets with no money and nowhere to go as he had just been banished from Mothership. I took him in and he lived with me until he figured his life out. When I was banished years later he did not return the favor. No hard feelings. Meanwhile, Mark apparently discovered that work was a lot less stressful with me gone, and called the temp agency to have me replaced. He called me at home to tell me personally that he had done that. I understood. No hard feelings. It was devastating and humiliating anyway. I was already working a second job at night so I needed another day job, which now that I think about it is probably how I ended up at Alta where I met Ed.

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Mark:

You tell me of war
And different kinds of bullets
And leveling jungles

But I could tell you the
battle behind your eyes
is not with guns
The bullet that leveled your jungle
was received in the gentlest of wars:

the battle between two songs that harmonize
the battle between two fingers of the same hand
the battle of one love in two hearts.

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More Mark

Next to any spot
where falls any foot
is a doorway to love
The amazement is not to glimpse it
but that we so rarely fall into it
oh, you lead-footed hulk!
You tripped me
I am lost on a pair of sure-footed feet.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~
Again Mark

I look up and see your soft gaze on me
oh, oh, oh, oh,
how it soothes and burns

I see you sit back
chin-on-hands
You look frustrated
or amused

Or you say . . .
(no I dare not think any longer
of your endearing poses
let’s talk of something else
something that does not send
shivers to my little toes)

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~
Prayer

Oh Morpheus
send back my sanity
I was once content
to lie in your arms alone
Why do you now require
two of us
before you grant your blessing?

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~
Mark’s Dreams

Yes, these are a lot of poems
No, I have not slept
You have not let me, wicked creature
plucking me from life, screaming
into your dreams
oh your delicious dreams oh
you are a kidnapper
and I,
content to be in your dream
instead of mine,
am a napping kid

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~
This chapter of my life
I call it Mark
it left it’s Mark
it will Mark me always
I am Marked
Upon my forehead
stamped on my heart
it says
“Mark lives here”


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Hakim:

Hakim was a brilliant poet that made killer edits to my writing. He called me at work one day, did not say hi, just recited this poem into the phone. I was already swooning when he added that I had inspired it. Really, I slid off my chair and landed under my desk. But when he knocked on my window around 2 am (remember, I worked two full-time jobs), agitated and weird and babbling about having been tied to a pole and beaten when he was 10 it really weirded me out. I tried to comfort him but he had gone to an unreachable place. I never saw him again and it still haunts me to think of what may have become of him. To this day I think this is the most beautiful poem I ever heard:

Of Angels

And if it were the end

and all the sunsets and soft stirrings

would now slip into nothing,

how much would you remember?

This racing background of life,

these clowns and jugglers

claiming to be friends?

The lonely pain

of hearing distant laughter?

I cannot think so.

The beating of your heart

would recall to you this moment

and

whispered kisses

beneath the stars.