Applied Archaeology has never been my strong point, at least in practice. I am the Theorist, usually. Applied Archaeology is tedious, and sometimes you hafta come face to face with Bones, which are scary.
The whole Point of this latest exorcise has been to get to the Bottom, and clear it out. I have grown epically Tired of the Epic Sadness; tired of the Rut…especially since I didn’t even know what it was all about. The Subconscious is an amazing place.
Memories of Feelings that were too painful to bear, were subsumed, in a Deluge..of beer, wine and Forgetting.
I remember, now…when it began. The first, at the pool, at Her mom’s house, waiting on my ride to ‘finish’ with the object of my desire.
Second, in Nanduhirion…the Deep Woods behind Presley’s, on a hill, under a large oak, where the Camp was. Her, off in the woods, with that same buddy…me, by the Fire, drinking Mad Dog 20/20…these were the first times I drank to forget.
How many times did this situation repeat, with so many women?
It is as if She engraved “Sucker/Knight Errant” on my forehead.
Sigh.
I don’t ‘blame’ Her, I understand where She was, where She had come from…I think that Understanding, when combined with Betrayal, produced a kind of Break….the two could not be reconciled….and I spent the next 10 years(20?) trying to kill myself, however passively.
I was not, in any way, prepared for this stuff…I ‘learned’ about “Love,etc” from books…Arthur and Guinnyfar,or worse, the “Snows of Kilimanjaro”….( I intend to enlighten my boys, however I can) So, I had an actual Girlfriend,”P”…and I really loved her(still do)…she was good for me. We had a good time of it(I really don’t know how long…years)…but I ended it, badly.(I guess I knew, at some level , that I had fucked up…’cause I kept trying to get back w/ P…to no avail.)
The Romantic Annihilation swept me up…and, coupled with the whole Cops vs. Me-thing, the Outlaw/Pariah situation(which, again, started with Her, even if they were not Her doing!)…and I went looking for Errantry. At the time, I didn’t know what I was doing…, my Wild Years were the Natural Thing to Do…a Ritual Immolation….Cosmically Symbolic…and Totally Unconscious.
I bounced between Tomball, Magfuckingnolia and Huntsville for a while…then added Louisiana, and the Deep South…I lived in cars…then a Puke Green VW Van. But as far as I went, I was still in Orbit around Tomball. It flabbergasted me, that I couldn’t seem to leave…I didn’t know what I was looking for…there were no goals, aside from the next party, alone or with other fucked up folks..I played Blues…became the Bluesman…the Wild Man. Beerjoints, Barlights, Cops after me…I learned to sneak in and out of town…I knew all the back roads.I bathed in muddy creeks, camped in Wild Places…worked, just off and on…I, in retrospect, ceased to give a damn. Shallow ‘relationships’, even shallower ‘affairs’…
…Then I had the Wreck, and stopped for several months. This gave some musicians I had Jammed with a chance to nail me down (I couldn’t walk), and Birdhouse was formed. First Gigs were with me, the front man, in a wheelchair…and there was free beer! I started back to the local college, but it didn’t last…I descended, once again. Fights in the Band, and me running around looking for Something….it all fell apart, again. DWI, despondency, despair…
In that time, a long string of one night stands…and I fell in Love, at the drop of the skirt.
I must stress, I had no idea…indeed, I often wondered at the insanity of it all…the Motto, if there ever was one, was “Further!”, snatched from Ken Kesey, and Neil Cassady(Dean Moriarty)…
I ended up back in school …
Finally back in Huntsville, while the Road kept pulling me back…tugging me…saying,”Au Deamus!”…I (kinda) resisted, for a time. There were still many failed love affairs….and a lot of drink/drugs…but I was serious about school, for the only time in my life.I first lived with my brother, and we quickly formed a Band, Hot Wired Dumptrucks…did a lot of our own material (esp. my stuff)…and drank, drank, drank…until I crashed and burned, flew away to Greenbriar where P was living…just disappeared for a week or so.
I got an apartment…famous, now, for it’s Wall Art, and it’s Wild, Multicultural Strangeness….and Shroomsicles! I met K when she was living on my couch…along with J and Sh, who were also surfing… it was the same Rescuing a Damsel Business…I adopted her, as one would a Pet. I really loved her, and I think she really loved me…but it was always a weird mixture of Pet/Master, Crazy Person/ Sane Codependent….and , for once, I got to play the Sane One.
The school tried to fuck me with a fine print dildo, and I gave in, weary of the chase for something I didn’t really believe in(Degree…Career…). The Band was no more…and I was itching for Art, for an escape from Shitkicker University.
K fancied herself an artist, as well…(and I came to believe it)…so off we went. Sold the van for a Toyota, and went. The Cops were noticing me, too…so it was high time.
Austin Texas…after the Armadillo, and at the beginnings of it’s Yuppie Invasion. Timing is, indeed, everything.
My last paycheck from H-Ville bounced…but only after we had written checks for rent, groceries, electricity,…Catastrophic “Theft By Check”. We lost the apartment(and the Monster Set of Encyclopedia Britannica), and moved into a series of Roach Motels, and Public Parks. Then we moved in with “Ze Little Black Boy”, in Queerville, next to Jimmy the Queen…and then we got married.
I had been attempting, for these 2 years, to leave the Road behind. In Austin, I was trying to be respectable, keep a job…I had hoped that Austin would , finally, be the place I would Fit….that would Fit me. This was not to be. My Mom helped us buy a trailer house…cheaper than rent…then I got arrested. A $20 check had been overlooked, and the Law was after me, again. We were still reeling from the whole Bouncing Paycheck-thing, and the added costs of restitution, lawyer, fines…then the Parking Tickets…then the towing…then the repossession of the car….and on top of all that, K was a Stray Magnet…more aptitude even than me for attracting the Dregs and Flotsam of society. The trailer Park, and our house, became a waystation for whole herds of Freaks, Geeks and Drifters…basket cases, all. There were ordinary trailer trash, hippies, street people, a Roofer, Lost Children (all over 18, thankfully), Cab Mike, Couch Phil, and on and on. I was the Chairman to this Circus(legs), just watching the Crazy like it was a TV movie. Sex, Drugs, Drink, a Quiet Madness settled over me.
On the rare night when nothing was ‘happening’, we’d lie there with the windows open, and listen to the sound of sirens. K, being from Southern California, identified it as “Sweeps”…cops, going through neighborhoods, looking for Gangbangers.
For me, the Walls closed in. Agoraphobia, that I’ve suffered from ever since, set in. I was drinking, a lot…and both me and K were fucking around…
The opportunity came to move everything out to Mason…and, after a time of finagling, I won out, and we went.
K lasted a year, out here on the Fringes of the world. I was, as far as I knew then, Fully Off the Road. She couldn’t handle it…tried to start up the whole Trailer Park Scene…and I finally let her go. She likely still hates me for this.
Buddy M, who had been having his own psychological issues, had been staying with us for a while; working on the Farm…trying to repair his Soul with work and isolation. I was fully into my Bi Period…K didn’t seem to mind, as she had her share(and came out as a Lesbian, after the divorce!)..Buddy was my sometimes thing, and Just like with the whole Knight Errant Bit, I now…with hindsight…see this in context with all the rest. I was tired of wimmenfolk, and had always been open to ‘outside the box sexuality. So we attempted to “be Gay”…for about a month. I found that I couldn’t cuddle with someone with facial hair….I was only interested in one part of him.lol.And preferred Woman Parts. So he moved on…and I quickly found more Damsels to Rescue. More Drink, More Drugs, More Driving all night on Endless Highways…never enough money…and always too much Loneliness and Heartbreak.
RB was the last Damnsel…and she was a doozy. Used me up…Hooked me…I almost didn’t survive her….the Cops, the crazy violent boyfriends,the Wildness was over the top, even for me. (I had ‘forgotten’…more like Fully Suppressed…Her…She was lost, out there in the World , somewhere).
Then I met my Final Wife,(touch wood), and immediately realized she was different. T wasn’t so obviously Crazy, for one.(everyone has their demons).We’ve been married for nigh on 13 years, with 2 boys…and, although we will probably always be Po Folk, I am Happy, with her.
It hasn’t been easy. My Past, it seems, still had Invisible Hooks and Tentacles embedded in me. Since my Disability,(is it really 6+ years?...) I’ve been studying…Everything….including Psychology, especially Jung…and trying to Kill Off the Wild Years…the drink…(drugs were never my real problem…it was the drink)
….And I couldn’t.
There was something I was overlooking….we tried everything…
Then, a year ago, I found Her, online.
The trip to Dallas to meet Her…and especially the return trip…was an Epiphany in the Making….I told T the whole sordid tale…the Memory Blocks dissolved…and it was Epic. T said it was ‘like a movie’…
I have thought, just a little more often, about Her in the year since…and 2 weeks ago, the last bit of Wall crumbled in place. I remembered the betrayal, in Surround Sound, 3 D…with such Clarity…it was like being there, in CH’s car…or under the Oak in Nanduhirion…or in Wimberly with L…or a hundred other betrayals, or perceived betrayals…with a hundred other women…all of them made possible by Me…or at least my Subconscious.
I wrote it down, the Beginning…Principiis Obsta;Caveat Ruinam!
A Most Terrible Love….
And drank a gallon of peasant wine, 3 days later.
I listened to all the Forbidden Songs…Vomited my Psychosis all over the world wide web…and, hopefully for the last time, blew out the candle, put Her to Bed…
Heartless Hangover, and although I was ashamed of my Spectacle, I found that I could Remember Her…without the Pain I had carried around all this time, wondering what that Great Weight was…..
De Omnibus Dubitandum, and all… I cannot rest on a bed of Ivy…it is Habit, this Nihilistic Jekyll/Hyde-ism…and will take a lot more “Dealing” with…
But it feels like I may have found the Key.
I have hardly spoken(written..) to Her, since Dallas. Seems She’s worse than me at correspondence…I did manage to go off on Her, incoherently, in a drunken rage…to no good end…just a diffuse madness, directed in Her general direction, without telling Her why…or even knowing, myself…
You see…for all these years, I still don’t know if She ever really Knew how I felt, back then….Too, there was No Closure…She just disappeared….and then , so did I.
As I keep repeating, I do not Blame Her…I understand where She was At…somewhat, then; with Clarity, Now. All these years, when I would pause, and remember Her, think about Her, I would stop before I got to the Painful Parts…as I said, She was the voice in my head…mostly Figuratively, but sometimes in actual fact…
She became the Archetypal “Woman”, a female Elijah, that one habitually sets a place for…the Fons et Origo…and all the Pain and Anger that went with Her came out in Music, Poetry and the Highest Form of Art, the Arc of One’s Life…
My patient Wife know about all this…puts up with my seemingly endless self-psychoanalysis…her first reaction: “Go to Her”.
…Which is completely missing the Point!!!
If She showed up with a million bucks and a 100’ sailboat, I wouldn’t go.
What I am after, here, is Peace. I’d like to get over it, at long last.
I’m hopeful, in fact, that we, She and I, can keep in touch, Platonically. As far as it goes, I genuinely wish Her a Good Life…. It would be wrong of me to lay it all at Her feet.
This Exorcism is about Me…about getting at the Roots of my myriad Psychoses. It wasn’t what She did, after all…rather, it was how I saw it…which I admit, now, was utterly delusional. Although She could have been more clear, and not led me on, I understand. We were Kids…living in Fucked Up circumstances. It feels somewhat crazy to want to Forgive someone who, really, did no wrong…but there it is.
I must Forgive Her, so that I may Forgive myself.
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