Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Evidence Mounts
Evidence is mounting that our ‘newbie’ is swiping time on a regular basis. Thunder called this morning to say his car won’t start again. Since we couldn’t afford to keep up his Triple A membership I needed to go sit with the car. His college is 42 miles away. This threw a spanner in the works for my day.
Eyvonne, a late riser, had just gotten up while I’d been up long enough to get some work accomplished. We were both eating. It was breakfast for her, second breakfast for me (maybe I am a hobbit) so I assumed it was about 10:30.
“I have a commitment at 3:30 in Shurdue,” Eyvonne said. Shurdue is nine miles in the opposite direction from Thunder’s school.
“What time is it now?” I asked. “12:30,” she said. My fork stopped halfway between my plate and my mouth. “12:30?” She nodded.
It was lunchtime. I’d missed second breakfast completely. All the time between cookies for breakfast at 6 a.m. and now was AWOL. Suddenly I remembered the strange dream I’d had just before waking.
Eyvonne and I were in a huge glassed in room like a solarium or greenhouse. It was very old and we were there because we were instrumental to restoring it. It was like two stories high, all very old windows, with a concrete floor. The floor was cracked and broken in places. The end of the building had a very large door, which was open. Dried leaves were blowing about here and there. This man who looks almost exactly like me was with us.
He was a bit heavier, more muscled up than I am. He said I needed to dance with him. I thought it was a joke but he remained very serious. Eyvonne watched as I went into his arms. Music started and we danced. He held me very close.
I felt awkward at first, then relaxed, almost laughed. Eyvonne was obviously trying not to laugh. It was like I was dancing with my own mirror image. But I felt smaller, somehow rather frail compared to him, as if my masculinity were not as robust. He led as we danced and I was content to follow. In fact I was rather enjoying myself. We danced out the door. Outside people were parking their cars and going into the building the greenhouse was attached to, or enjoying its park like surroundings with antique wrought iron fences. This was either a public place, or soon to be a place the public would enjoy. People who saw us dancing smiled.
When I woke the dream hung with me. All day the strangeness of it haunted me. I know when a dream does that it’s important. But I felt foolish asking Eyvonne to dreamsay (interpret) it or even just listen to it. I felt silly about dancing with a guy, especially a guy who looked so much like me. Eyvonne is great at dreamsaying. She has a natural knack for the work. She is my partner. There is very little I cannot just say to her. It bothered me that I was reluctant to talk to her about this dream. Which made me very aware the dream’s message might be one I didn’t want to hear, especially in light of the fact that losing a few hours brought it back in detail. “What’s up honey?” Eyvonne asked.
I was blinking back tears. I hate crying. She came around table and put her hand on my arm, which made me feel even more like crying.
“Lost most of the morning,” I said. “I’m sorry you’re having a hard time,” she said. Sympathy is tough for me. I swallowed hard.
“You noticed anything unusual? Anything that doesn’t seem like one of us?” She shook her head. “No.”
“Stay alert OK?”
“Sure,” she said. I applied myself to finishing a piece of chocolate cake with an inch of icing and sprinkles. It made my sore tooth hurt like hell. Which kind of jolted me. That damn tooth. Normally I don’t even notice if it hurts. We’d completed root canal on it two months ago. The dentist declared it ‘finished’ even though it still hurt at the time.
What I think he meant was he was finished with it as he’d been working on it off and on for six months and wanted the second half of his money. When we’d started the whole root canal thing he’d said it would take two visits. We were on about the fourteenth when he declared it done. “But it still hurts,” I said.
“It will hurt for a while,” he said.
He didn’t say what constituted a while. It hurt a week later. It hurt a month later. It was annoying so I turned the pain off. After that the only one who could tell us how badly it really hurt was Ian, who can always feel pain even when the rest of us are clueless.
I knew if I tried chewing on that side of my mouth I did feel something uncomfortable. Ian said it hurt like a sonofabitch. So I stopped chewing on that side. But I wondered what purpose having root canal served if the tooth still hurt as bad as the first time we saw the dentist for it.
I suppose a normal person wouldn’t have lasted a week before they called the dentist to complain. But we were programmed in early childhood never to complain.
If the dentist says it will hurt a while then tough it out and don’t bother the man. Don’t even dream of mentioning the $300 we paid him to not make our tooth feel better. It’s a dissociative pattern. It’s a microcosmic look at why we ended up in so many awful relationships and then stayed in those awful relationships.
Although I believe we now live our life from the perspective not of victim, but of survivor, in fact beyond survivor, we still have those early tracks laid down to derail us.
It doesn’t really hurt, or at least not enough to bother anyone about. He didn’t really hurt you. Why did you make him mad? Maybe you ought to look at your behavior, what did you do to provoke him? Lie still it will be over in a minute. This won’t hurt. Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.
Anyone see the progression here? Oprah, you of all people should get it.
We drove to Thunder’s college and tried to start his car. It made weird clicking sounds but didn’t start. We called Triple A. While waiting for the tow truck we messed about with the car and it started. We turned it off and restarted it. We did this four times. The tow truck arrived and we were all standing around sort of sheepishly.
“What was wrong?” the driver asked.
We explained what had happened and he was nice enough to do some troubleshooting. “Turn it off and we’ll see if it restarts,” he said.
He seemed to grasp that the car was Thunder’s even though I’d made the call for roadside service. He would have been blind if he’d failed to notice it looked suspiciously like a rez car parked among all those brand new Yuppie kid cars.
“What year is this Cougar?” he asked.
Thunder grinned. “1988 .”
It was guy bonding.
After the car started one more time we all deemed it best I drive it to the garage near our home. The tow truck guy waved on his way out of the parking lot. I hugged Thunder. College security drove up, perhaps sent to investigate a possible Indian uprising. Thunder explained and Eyvonne waved.
“See you Saturday,” I hollered.
Saturday there was yet another college band concert where we would probably see the bell of the tuba, and if we were lucky, Thunder’s forehead. But the music was always grand.
As I drove the Cougar home I remembered how much I loved the car. It has this big roomy luxury feel to it that not even an SUV has today. It’s low to the road and has way too much power. The temptation to let it out was high but Eyvonne was right behind me.
I relaxed and just drove with the radio blasting and window down, enjoying the unexpectedly warm afternoon. Indian summer. Why the hell is it called Indian summer anyway? Probably something derogatory.
I remember at one point being very aware someone was up with me. Although I thought so at first, it wasn’t Keeper. In some ways it felt very much like him, male, tough guy kind of presentation. Maybe the car had drawn our newbie up. I stayed real calm and low key, just let it happen like I didn't notice anything. I didn’t want to scare this one back into hiding.
I was reminded of my dream. I noticed as I relaxed he was more present. I felt him settle into ops and take the wheel. But he didn’t lock me out. We just shared loving driving this car. I let it be all the way up the highway. I noticed how he sat, a bit more open than I do when I drive. He was a bit heavier than me, more muscled up. I noticed his hands in particular as he held the wheel. They were bigger than mine and rougher, calloused. Working man’s hands. He bailed as we approached the garage.
That wasn’t half bad, I thought. If he loves this car how bad can he be? I would have bet anything he likes Guinness too.
Then I pondered what an experienced a driver he was. He’d either driven before or he was the quickest learner I’d ever encountered. Again I thought about my dream. Were we dancing yet? I was really glad there were no hostile overtones. Somehow thinking of hostility brought Keeper to mind. I reached inside to brush him with the faintest mindtouch. I couldn’t find him anywhere.
I turned the car off, let it sit a minute and then tried to restart it. Nothing. No matter what I tried it wouldn’t start. Eyvonne sat waiting patiently. To her it was immaterial whether it started or not, we’d accomplished what we set out to do.
I was rattled and restless. I’d nicknamed our newbie Pleiades. The closer I got to him the less I understood. Eyvonne and I talked about what to do if Thunder’s car cost too much to fix. Sarah’s car had problems too.
We were already almost broke and I couldn’t even bill my clients for another couple weeks, then it would take a week or two for them to pay me. Money makes me cranky. Maybe that’s why Eyvonne and I ended up fighting which is a rarity for us. I was driving out our own driveway enroute to her appointment in Suredue to fix a friend’s computer problem. We were down and dirty in a blink.
I felt unreasonably angry with her and she responded by yelling at me to stop driving like a dickhead or she was getting out of the car. I stopped the car when I realized she already had the door open and her leg out. This was not the best moment in my life. We resolved things although I was compelled to bitch for several miles about her poor judgment in trying to exit a moving vehicle.
“This was about control Eyvonne! I don’t want to be controlled by you or anybody else!”
“It was not about control,” she said.
We were silent for a few miles and then just started talking randomly about something else. For Eyvonne the fight was like a summer storm, fast, furious and over. Now the sun was out again. For me it lingered.
The flashpoint of my anger seemed low even given the number of triggers. I still felt residual anger. Mindless, undirected hostility.
“It’s lack of sex,” Eyvonne said.
“Yeah,” I said wistfully. She was at least partly right.
We call our kids the Sex Police. It was uncanny how seldom we had the chance to be alone. If we were by some miracle alone for an evening and even thought about a romantic interlude one of them called or came home unexpectedly.
The computer problem we expected to take an hour to fix took three. When we finally got home there were four cars in the driveway and all the lights in the house were on.
“You thought about sex didn’t you?” Eyvonne said.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot
Eyvonne, a late riser, had just gotten up while I’d been up long enough to get some work accomplished. We were both eating. It was breakfast for her, second breakfast for me (maybe I am a hobbit) so I assumed it was about 10:30.
“I have a commitment at 3:30 in Shurdue,” Eyvonne said. Shurdue is nine miles in the opposite direction from Thunder’s school.
“What time is it now?” I asked. “12:30,” she said. My fork stopped halfway between my plate and my mouth. “12:30?” She nodded.
It was lunchtime. I’d missed second breakfast completely. All the time between cookies for breakfast at 6 a.m. and now was AWOL. Suddenly I remembered the strange dream I’d had just before waking.
Eyvonne and I were in a huge glassed in room like a solarium or greenhouse. It was very old and we were there because we were instrumental to restoring it. It was like two stories high, all very old windows, with a concrete floor. The floor was cracked and broken in places. The end of the building had a very large door, which was open. Dried leaves were blowing about here and there. This man who looks almost exactly like me was with us.
He was a bit heavier, more muscled up than I am. He said I needed to dance with him. I thought it was a joke but he remained very serious. Eyvonne watched as I went into his arms. Music started and we danced. He held me very close.
I felt awkward at first, then relaxed, almost laughed. Eyvonne was obviously trying not to laugh. It was like I was dancing with my own mirror image. But I felt smaller, somehow rather frail compared to him, as if my masculinity were not as robust. He led as we danced and I was content to follow. In fact I was rather enjoying myself. We danced out the door. Outside people were parking their cars and going into the building the greenhouse was attached to, or enjoying its park like surroundings with antique wrought iron fences. This was either a public place, or soon to be a place the public would enjoy. People who saw us dancing smiled.
When I woke the dream hung with me. All day the strangeness of it haunted me. I know when a dream does that it’s important. But I felt foolish asking Eyvonne to dreamsay (interpret) it or even just listen to it. I felt silly about dancing with a guy, especially a guy who looked so much like me. Eyvonne is great at dreamsaying. She has a natural knack for the work. She is my partner. There is very little I cannot just say to her. It bothered me that I was reluctant to talk to her about this dream. Which made me very aware the dream’s message might be one I didn’t want to hear, especially in light of the fact that losing a few hours brought it back in detail. “What’s up honey?” Eyvonne asked.
I was blinking back tears. I hate crying. She came around table and put her hand on my arm, which made me feel even more like crying.
“Lost most of the morning,” I said. “I’m sorry you’re having a hard time,” she said. Sympathy is tough for me. I swallowed hard.
“You noticed anything unusual? Anything that doesn’t seem like one of us?” She shook her head. “No.”
“Stay alert OK?”
“Sure,” she said. I applied myself to finishing a piece of chocolate cake with an inch of icing and sprinkles. It made my sore tooth hurt like hell. Which kind of jolted me. That damn tooth. Normally I don’t even notice if it hurts. We’d completed root canal on it two months ago. The dentist declared it ‘finished’ even though it still hurt at the time.
What I think he meant was he was finished with it as he’d been working on it off and on for six months and wanted the second half of his money. When we’d started the whole root canal thing he’d said it would take two visits. We were on about the fourteenth when he declared it done. “But it still hurts,” I said.
“It will hurt for a while,” he said.
He didn’t say what constituted a while. It hurt a week later. It hurt a month later. It was annoying so I turned the pain off. After that the only one who could tell us how badly it really hurt was Ian, who can always feel pain even when the rest of us are clueless.
I knew if I tried chewing on that side of my mouth I did feel something uncomfortable. Ian said it hurt like a sonofabitch. So I stopped chewing on that side. But I wondered what purpose having root canal served if the tooth still hurt as bad as the first time we saw the dentist for it.
I suppose a normal person wouldn’t have lasted a week before they called the dentist to complain. But we were programmed in early childhood never to complain.
If the dentist says it will hurt a while then tough it out and don’t bother the man. Don’t even dream of mentioning the $300 we paid him to not make our tooth feel better. It’s a dissociative pattern. It’s a microcosmic look at why we ended up in so many awful relationships and then stayed in those awful relationships.
Although I believe we now live our life from the perspective not of victim, but of survivor, in fact beyond survivor, we still have those early tracks laid down to derail us.
It doesn’t really hurt, or at least not enough to bother anyone about. He didn’t really hurt you. Why did you make him mad? Maybe you ought to look at your behavior, what did you do to provoke him? Lie still it will be over in a minute. This won’t hurt. Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.
Anyone see the progression here? Oprah, you of all people should get it.
We drove to Thunder’s college and tried to start his car. It made weird clicking sounds but didn’t start. We called Triple A. While waiting for the tow truck we messed about with the car and it started. We turned it off and restarted it. We did this four times. The tow truck arrived and we were all standing around sort of sheepishly.
“What was wrong?” the driver asked.
We explained what had happened and he was nice enough to do some troubleshooting. “Turn it off and we’ll see if it restarts,” he said.
He seemed to grasp that the car was Thunder’s even though I’d made the call for roadside service. He would have been blind if he’d failed to notice it looked suspiciously like a rez car parked among all those brand new Yuppie kid cars.
“What year is this Cougar?” he asked.
Thunder grinned. “1988 .”
It was guy bonding.
After the car started one more time we all deemed it best I drive it to the garage near our home. The tow truck guy waved on his way out of the parking lot. I hugged Thunder. College security drove up, perhaps sent to investigate a possible Indian uprising. Thunder explained and Eyvonne waved.
“See you Saturday,” I hollered.
Saturday there was yet another college band concert where we would probably see the bell of the tuba, and if we were lucky, Thunder’s forehead. But the music was always grand.
As I drove the Cougar home I remembered how much I loved the car. It has this big roomy luxury feel to it that not even an SUV has today. It’s low to the road and has way too much power. The temptation to let it out was high but Eyvonne was right behind me.
I relaxed and just drove with the radio blasting and window down, enjoying the unexpectedly warm afternoon. Indian summer. Why the hell is it called Indian summer anyway? Probably something derogatory.
I remember at one point being very aware someone was up with me. Although I thought so at first, it wasn’t Keeper. In some ways it felt very much like him, male, tough guy kind of presentation. Maybe the car had drawn our newbie up. I stayed real calm and low key, just let it happen like I didn't notice anything. I didn’t want to scare this one back into hiding.
I was reminded of my dream. I noticed as I relaxed he was more present. I felt him settle into ops and take the wheel. But he didn’t lock me out. We just shared loving driving this car. I let it be all the way up the highway. I noticed how he sat, a bit more open than I do when I drive. He was a bit heavier than me, more muscled up. I noticed his hands in particular as he held the wheel. They were bigger than mine and rougher, calloused. Working man’s hands. He bailed as we approached the garage.
That wasn’t half bad, I thought. If he loves this car how bad can he be? I would have bet anything he likes Guinness too.
Then I pondered what an experienced a driver he was. He’d either driven before or he was the quickest learner I’d ever encountered. Again I thought about my dream. Were we dancing yet? I was really glad there were no hostile overtones. Somehow thinking of hostility brought Keeper to mind. I reached inside to brush him with the faintest mindtouch. I couldn’t find him anywhere.
I turned the car off, let it sit a minute and then tried to restart it. Nothing. No matter what I tried it wouldn’t start. Eyvonne sat waiting patiently. To her it was immaterial whether it started or not, we’d accomplished what we set out to do.
I was rattled and restless. I’d nicknamed our newbie Pleiades. The closer I got to him the less I understood. Eyvonne and I talked about what to do if Thunder’s car cost too much to fix. Sarah’s car had problems too.
We were already almost broke and I couldn’t even bill my clients for another couple weeks, then it would take a week or two for them to pay me. Money makes me cranky. Maybe that’s why Eyvonne and I ended up fighting which is a rarity for us. I was driving out our own driveway enroute to her appointment in Suredue to fix a friend’s computer problem. We were down and dirty in a blink.
I felt unreasonably angry with her and she responded by yelling at me to stop driving like a dickhead or she was getting out of the car. I stopped the car when I realized she already had the door open and her leg out. This was not the best moment in my life. We resolved things although I was compelled to bitch for several miles about her poor judgment in trying to exit a moving vehicle.
“This was about control Eyvonne! I don’t want to be controlled by you or anybody else!”
“It was not about control,” she said.
We were silent for a few miles and then just started talking randomly about something else. For Eyvonne the fight was like a summer storm, fast, furious and over. Now the sun was out again. For me it lingered.
The flashpoint of my anger seemed low even given the number of triggers. I still felt residual anger. Mindless, undirected hostility.
“It’s lack of sex,” Eyvonne said.
“Yeah,” I said wistfully. She was at least partly right.
We call our kids the Sex Police. It was uncanny how seldom we had the chance to be alone. If we were by some miracle alone for an evening and even thought about a romantic interlude one of them called or came home unexpectedly.
The computer problem we expected to take an hour to fix took three. When we finally got home there were four cars in the driveway and all the lights in the house were on.
“You thought about sex didn’t you?” Eyvonne said.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot
