Quasimodo, Or: The Futility of The Bomb

April 20, 2008

[...] So I'll leave out the cute stuff and keep the cleverness to a minimum...but Kubrick or someone sure had some foresight when they came up with this title:

Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb

Let me tell you about the past again... ("Bloody hell", she said becoming British.) ...When you told me your story I cried for you and loved you (aside from any funny feelings) and in an appropriate way. Though it probably didn't help that I had picked up some of our best friend's gaminess to toss into the mix — the mix that it seems I didn't end up doing a very good job of keeping unmixed. You gave me a hug the next time I saw you that let me know everything was perfect between us. 

Then I took care of your dog. I had no intention of being a snoop, but I did stumble across one thing ...oh, and I might have confirmed that the notorious, white, knitty bathing suit did indeed have a deceptively nude lining. ("Bloody hell......" —funny that I should be let loose in your house not so long after less than stellar behavior the night of Jimmy's wedding, but make a facetious Corona commercial about you and everything falls apart.) It was already fall. Another summer gone and I was a bit down on life. I was in the study with the pooch and I saw a camera on the desk. My camera had gone dysfunctional recently so I was in the market for a new one and wanted to check it out. Next thing I knew I was reviewing your pictures. 

There I was, "Hmmm...mmm...umhuh!" And there you were not long before sitting topless [though, strategically hidden] on the bed with your pooch. I thought, "This porn sucks. All the good bits are covered up". I turned to my charge, "Bad dog, first this, next thing you know you're doing full-frontal doggy porn." There weren't many pictures on there. By the numbers, many had been deleted. There was the prized shrimp dinner you made for your hubby of which the leftovers were bestowed upon me (that's not sarcasm, laying it on a bit thick, but true — and I think a portion was even thoughtfully set aside for me not merely left over). And even further back in time were you and I at a party posed cheek to cheek. 

All very nice to have a good friend like that, but I was starting to look at your pooch a little amorously that Saturday night. Not having succumbed to bestial urges (myself at least, don't want to speak for you and what went on off camera), some days later we had a nice time checking up on our friend post-op. Later that month I had some words for you about you having kids that I thought were helpful to you, though I suppose like all words they were an evaporating drop in the bucket. In the spirit of commiseration I put my own light words to my problem to share with you, but that mere sentence just seemed to make it more poignant. I wasn't thinking, "boohoo, I can't have so and so". I was thinking that I'd never find anyone. I'm sure you've heard that common tune before from girlfriends in the couple of months long midst between an ended relationship and the forthcoming one, but as you know I'm not in the midst and this was something much harder. In the midst of those thoughts the sentiment I later expressed in the "T-bomb" had already formed in me, and I was beginning to feel how very nice it really was to have a good friend like that — two even better.

Still, I wasn't used to telling others my problems. In some ways it made it worse, and worse for the two of you it probably had a lot to do with making me a dependant. I was distracted by a trip to my sister's, but on the return to my empty place I knew it would hit me pretty hard and though I rarely if ever asked, I wrote an email that night asking to hear from you two and I put out veiled signs of my trouble. A week later... well, you know the rest. After that things couldn't go right. If I tried for jovial jackass (or even if I didn't) I got asshole. If I tried to counter that with how much I cared I got obsessed. If I apologized I got nothing.

——

Now admittedly the T-bomb with all that t@!k of the t-word and my roof in need of repair metaphor and the effective warmth of my brand new dryer as an analogy of your friendship is a pretty strange brew. Still when I tried to think of your point of view all I could think was, how can she have a problem with knowing that her friendship has that good an effect? Just recently I did something I hadn't done before though. For the first time I thought about it as if I were the one receiving the emails and entreaties. I admit the idea made me smile it was so preposterous. I couldn't even begin to take an abstract female and flesh out a portrait that made Art the target of the bomb.

So I feel for you, but you know enough of me at least now to have some understanding of it...though, you probably still feel it wasn't a healthy relationship for me. It might have been an odd sentiment, but you weren't exactly conventional and I thought you had room for that. You have to understand that I had come down from the bell tower and come out the cathedral doors even if it was mostly only for spins on my bike down the Champs Elise. (Sorry for the new analogy—Quasimodo. Don't go analyzing the plot. I couldn't remember anything but an ogre and his hump when I thought of it). I was beginning to see that maybe my hump wasn't so bad after all, that it was operable or even figmental.

You can't imagine how important and necessary and healthy that effect was to me...

[...stuff questioning whether and how she had been talking about this to others...]

Oh well. One thing I miss most... We weren't even getting along all that well. Shortly after I heard some wild comment about you at the coffee shop, you walked up behind me and played with or fixed the tag that must have been sticking up out of my T-shirt. Silly, but it just seems nice to me.

--Art