nanowrimo madness

By the time redneckjerk and Sarah got up it was time for Eyvonne to go to work. She’d dropped off ten dollars for me to give redneckjerk so he could buy gas.
I was seething.
He was just standing out by his truck while Sarah was ditzing around in the house. I could hand her the money to give him, or I could give it to him myself and tell how I felt. No one could do that for us. I walked up and handed him the money.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“It’s ten bucks. Put it in your gas tank and go home.”
He blinked.
“You were only here by sufferance because Sarah wanted you here. You were not supposed to stay overnight last night, and you’re not staying overnight in the future. No one here respects you because of what you did to Sarah. You dishonored her and treated her without respect. The fact that I respect Sarah is the only reason you were allowed to come here yesterday,” I said. “If you want my respect back you’ll have to earn it by treating her right.”
The whole time I was talking every Q inside was cheering stuff like “Go Shel!!” “Yeah!” “You tell him boy!”
I think ‘rion and Keeper were hoping he’d take a swing at me so we could legally take him down.
Unbeknownst to me, Thunder and Sarah were also watching from the kitchen window.
I made sure I stayed more than an arm’s length away from him because the temptation to grip his scrawny little neck and whack his head against his truck window was high.
“What did I do?” redneckjerk whined, leaning backward as if he knew I might throttle him.
“If you don’t know, that’s your first f’ning problem. Figure it out.”
I walked away.
Sarah talked to him. When she came back in she was trying not to laugh.
“He’s afraid to even come back in to get his truck keys,” she said. “Is he allowed to come in and get something to eat before he leaves?”
“Sure,” I said. “But he goes home after that, and he doesn’t stay overnight again.”Sarah blinked.
“It’s because he treats you like crap Sarah, and you don’t need that. As far as I’m concerned he’s an abuser and I won’t shelter an abuser under my roof,” I said. “If you stay with him it’s likely to escalate to violence eventually.”
“Can I ask you what you said to him?”
I told her verbatim.
“That’s pretty much what he said you told him,” she said. “I told him you were just being a good parent, looking out for me.”
She grinned and threw her arms around my neck hugging me tight.
“Thank you for standing up for me,” she said. “Nobody’s ever done that before.”
The she asked, “He still has a chance right? I mean if he treats me right he can still earn your respect?”
“Clean slate if he’s capable of it. But I doubt he is,” I said.
Sarah laughed.
“Well, we’ll see,” she said. “I’m not taking any more crap from him that’s for sure.”
She went out the door. It took her a while to convince redneckjerk I wouldn’t actually hurt him.
“Do you think he’ll change?” Thunder asked.
“I dunno,” I said. “Maybe if more people intervened things would be different. I guess if it means enough to him he can still change. He’s young.”
Thunder laughed. “If he wants to keep dating Sarah he’d better change. God, what you did was awesome, standing up to him that way.”
“It was pure Shel mode,” I said somewhat sheepishly.
We both laughed. I never told him I shook for an hour afterward. Adrenaline rush.
I actually was pretty restrained compared to years past. Maybe I finally had grown up. I wasn’t 16 anymore. A few years ago I would have put his head through the window.
But somewhere along the line I realized when I did things like that, I wasn’t tough, I was just joining the other side. I felt a lot stronger not lashing out with violence.
But trust me, if he’d thrown a punch he’d have gone down. I had enough street fighting in my past to do it without reflection. It was automatic. Somewhere in New York City there’s a big Hispanic guy with crooked fingers who made the mistake of thinking what he saw was what he’d get. Sometimes being a guy in a female body isn’t so bad.
I’d resolved a portion of the conflict stressing me out. But I couldn’t quite shake the other stuff bugging me. I still couldn’t make a good thing out of my fear that our relationship with Eyvonne was in jeopardy. We’d been together almost a decade. It was never easy, but there was a lot of good too. There’s a lot of change going on in our lives right now, good and bad. Even good changes cause stress.
I know relationships go through seasons. And I certainly know they can end. I wasn’t sure what she wanted long term anymore.
I do know every Q in here loves her. I imagined us together always. But I’m not dumb enough to believe in happily ever after. I’ll be OK no matter what. Unhappy maybe but OK.
John Lennon said, “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans.”
Dr. Dwon was fond of saying, “Expect the best but plan for the worst.”
Somewhere between these two gurus of mine lies actuality.
Start with the worst-case scenario. Eyvonne leaves. Can you make plans about that? Can you make plans for a thousand year flood, the kind that computer models don’t have enough information to spit out a predication about? Eyvonne leaving would be a thousand year flood in my life. I can’t think of a single action to take in the case of either eventuality.
It’s like planning for the apocalypse. What do you do, stockpile food? Squirrel away money? We don’t have enough of either to last more than a week.
Remember all those people who bought generators to survive Y2K? I always wondered how they thought they were going to get the gas to run their generators if Y2K was the end of the civilized world. Didn’t they know widespread power failures would freeze the gas pumps at their local COGO? What did they think they were going to do with their generator anyway, run the dishwasher one more time?
With oil reserves predicted to run out in less than two decades, now would be a good time for our government to plan something more long term than killing Iraqis to get control of the last of their oil.
But this is supposed to be a plan for what we Qs would do if Eyvonne left.
Breath. We’d do that.
We could put reminders to eat on the computer monitor and the back door. But that wouldn’t guarantee we’d do anything about it. Eating is of marginal interest when we’re even mildly bummed.
We’d keep working. We always do that. We’ve met deadlines in the midst of gave illness and personal crisis. Being dissociative helps with stuff like that.
Did I mention breathing?
OK, so it’s a short and pathetic list.
I’d rather work on planning to stay together.
Oddly enough that list starts with: Improving Shel’s self-esteem.
Because maybe Owl is right and this is a lot about my trust issues and a little about Eyvonne blurting things out of her own fears.
Settling India and Taya into the system would help.
Almost everything else I can think of to do would require effort by Eyvonne and us Qs.
There are a lot of dust bunnies accumulated in our relationship that are gumming up the works. Some of it is classic guy stuff/girl stuff.
Like she does her hair and puts makeup on and I’m distracted and stressed so she waits and waits for me to notice. Finally she asks “Do I look pretty?”
It’s a no win question, because if a woman has to ask you’re already chalked up as an idiot. If you respond, “You always look beautiful to me” in her mind she’s gone to all that effort for no good reason. If you simply say, “Yes, you look beautiful” you’re doomed because she had to prompt you. Your credibility is marginal.
It doesn’t occur to me to ask if I look handsome. I might ask, “Are my clothes OK?” “Do I look dorky?” or something like that. el worries about colors because he’s pretty much colorblind but he solves that by choosing clothes in shades of gray and black that look good with anything. He doesn’t worry about looking handsome either.
It’s probably a good time to do some relationship housecleaning. Judging by this Thanksgiving we might better get it done before Christmas. There. That’s a plan.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot