so very alone…

There are those who have speculated that perhaps Jane is my sexual partner. It’s very important to me to make it perfectly clear that Jane and I are not having sex.

Also, I am not having sex with a man. Nor an animal. Nor an inanimate object.

Let’s just say that I am having sex on a frequent basis, and that it is with a woman of consenting age.

Here are some additional details. She is caucasian. She is shorter than I am. She shaves her pubic area. And she has larger than average breasts, one of which is approximately 7% smaller than the other.

But even the smaller one is larger than average.

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I miss Celexa. I know that it was augmenting my self-destructive inclinations, but at least I felt like I was going somewhere. Where? I didn’t know. But "somewhere," even an unknown somewhere, feels more purposeful than just idling the engine.

What the hell am I even talking about? That paragraph didn’t make any sense at all. I’m going to leave it there, though, because it illustrates my point.

No, it doesn’t illustrate a point. For a minute I thought it illustrated my point, but I look back now and can see that so far, I’m three paragraphs into a post that starts nowhere, doesn’t know where it wants to go, and doesn’t realize when it’s gotten there. I’m like a blind dog: I’d chase my tail, but I don’t even know where that is.

I think maybe I should just stick to just telling a simple story right now. I think I can hold a story together, as long as I just keep the chronology correct.

Mary and I had lunch yesterday, for the first time in about three weeks. I’ve been canceling the lunches, saying I have a lot of work to do, but yesterday Mary said she needed to talk.

So we went to a Thai place. I got chicken mussaman curry (their "one-star" version, which means it’s supposed to be mild, but it still makes my forehead sweat) with sticky rice.

She got something else. I can’t even remember what exactly it was, except the English translation for it was ridiculous. Something like, "Eggplant Delight." But I don’t think it’s important what she ate, to tell the truth.

Anyway, we spent the first five minutes talking about how I’m different (again) somehow. Like I’m less angry, but also like I’m not happy.

"Find me one happy person in the world. One." That’s what I should have said, but it didn’t occur to me until just now. Besides, what good would it have done? It’s not like Mary was trying to prove to me that there are a lot of happy people in the world.

Ha. Far from it.

Mary told me that one of the Sales guys in our company, let’s call him Joe, was making her life miserable. He’s one of the worst kind of people, she said: someone who’s good at detecting gay people, and is also homophobic.

No, homophobic isn’t the right word. Homophobics are the ones who are afraid of homos. Joe isn’t afraid of homos, he just hates them. Homo-hating. I’m sure there’s a word for it, but I can’t remember what it is. I should look it up. Later, maybe.

Anyway, Joe constantly teases Mary with references to gayness and hypocrisy and whether when the little Dutch boy who put his finger in the dike (dyke, get it? Ha ha) it (she) had wished for a little Dutch girl instead.

As Mary’s face got redder and redder, I had the most peculiar sensation: the awareness that I ought to feel something, but didn’t. So I faked it. I’ve been faking a lot of things lately.

I don’t think Mary expected me to do anything about Joe. She knows what a fantastic brawler I am (ha), and she knows that I’m not going to confront Joe, so really I think she just wanted to vent a little bit.

But here’s what Mary doesn’t know. Or maybe she does know and just didn’t let on, in which case she’s more devious than I would have suspected. Shit, where was I? Oh yeah: What Mary doesn’t (or does) know is that I actually have both motive, means, and opportunity to more than get back at him for what Mary’s done.

Here’s why. Devin (my boss) has emailed me about three times in the past two weeks, wondering whether there’s anybody abusing Internet access at the company. I think he’s looking for a reason to fire someone, because money’s tight. It’s easier to fire someone who deserves it.

Joe, like just about everyone in the company, surfs the web just about nonstop, looking at stuff that has nothing to do with what we sell. In Joe’s case, it’s all about politics. He goes to all the conservative sites, then to the liberal sites to troll them.

To tell the truth, though, Joe’s web surfing patterns are a lot less nasty than Mary’s. So he deserves to be fired, but she deserves it more.

But Mary’s my "friend," I guess. And I can make my life easier, Mary’s life easier, and Devin’s life easier if I out Joe.

Joe’s life, of course, will get harder. But he’s in sales, he’ll find another job soon. Maybe selling cars or real estate or something.

I’ve thought about this as much as I can for right now. I’ll think about it more over the weekend. I already know, though. Joe is toast.

I’m going home. now. I hope my sexual partner will let me just watch TV tonight in peace.

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Up until a few months ago, when I was sitting home alone in my condo on any random evening, I would wonder how many people in my neighborhood – or city, or county, or state – were having sex at that moment. The thought of all the happy people out their sharing their love with each other filled me with envy and remorse.

I don’t feel that way anymore. Sex is a drag.

At least it has been recently. For one thing, there’s no emotional bond. Based on previous encounters with Bertha, it seems like I should be feeling heightened affection for my partner — maybe even disproportionate affection. Instead, I feel empty, like I’m passing the time in a waiting room, only I don’t have an appointment.

An even greater problem is the physical act itself. It’s just not working. When I try to build up to orgasm, I remain flatlined. I grunt and thrust and push, faster and faster, and all of that effort just makes me sweat harder. My partner tries to say sexy things to help me out, but it all sounds ridiculously unerotic. “Yeah, baby, more, more.”

I just want to tell her to shut up and leave me alone.

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When I said in my last post that “I agreed to go see a real doctor so Jane would shut up about it,” I was just joking around. Jane has been an incredibly supportive and positive influence on me during what would have otherwise been an almost insurmountably difficult time.

Many of you have wondered what I was doing while I took a little break (was it really a month? I must have slept more than I thought) from blogging. The truth is, I’m not ready to go into it too deeply, though I plan to at some point.

Let’s just say, for now, that I now realize that my mother is alive, but that our relationship would be better if she weren’t.

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Jane convinced me to get medication from a real doctor. Actually, a better way of saying it is that I agreed to go see a real doctor so that she would shut up about it.

News flash — the board-approved doctor doesn’t think it’s a good idea for one to medicate oneself with drugs that one purchases from Mexico. I have to admit that part of me agrees with the smug ninny. While the drug cocktail I was taking made some of the pain go away, the pills took over in an unexpected way.

Now I’m on Paxil. Just Paxil. Oh, and some prescription-strength ibuprofen for my hand. I feel mellow.

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Not too long ago, I realized it isn’t necessary to separate whites and colors, especially if you don’t have any red clothes. I don’t have red clothes, so instead of carefully separating the socks from the t-shirts like some obsessive-compulsive wretch, I just throw in a load of clothes and get on with my day.

There are exceptions. I got barbecue sauce on a white collar once, and my urine-soaked white slacks needed to be washed with bleach in hot water. So that’s all fine and good.

The really odd thing is that every now and again, I pull a bunch of clothes out of the dryer that I don’t recognize.

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Why bother?

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Last night a friend left my condo. I should have been in a perfectly good mood. Instead, something shifted in my outlook, and it seemed like I slid into an alternate reality. The world lost all its color.

I cared about nothing.

In this black frame of mind, if I found out a meteor were headed towards the earth, I would sit slumped in my papasan chair and maybe say, “Eh.” If I had been on a plane and a bunch of hijackers started whooping and spraying pepper spray, I’d just stay put in my seat, staring straight ahead at the back of the seat in front of me. If I saw a baby carriage careening down a flight of stairs, I’d just watch it pass by.

This horrible black cloud hung over me for what seemed like hours, making me feel like I had been cast into an unspeakable prison, alone. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t make sense of television. I woke up this morning next to the washing machine, with no memory of how I got there.

I think I need to increase my medication.

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I really thought that the visit with my sister last weekend was going to be great. After all, I’ve fixed what I considered to be one of her major grievances with me: I went and got myself all medicated so I wouldn’t be so shy / withdrawn.

So I made the 3-hour (more or less) drive to her house, and find, to my relief, that her husband is gone for the weekend.

I do not mention my relief at her husband being gone, because I am certain that if I had mentioned it, she would have taken offense. Still, I can’t help being relieved. I know for sure he would have been cracking jokes about my "happy pills" and asking if I’m still a virgin.

Although, to be honest, part of me was looking forward to letting it slip that I’m not a virgin anymore. Also, that same part of me would have given itself license to be creative with my description of Bertha.

And here’s the thing: he shouldn’t have even known I was a virgin. It’s not like I told my sister she could go sharing that information with people. I don’t care if he’s her husband; that’s not information you share.

I’m getting off track here.

Everything was going OK with my sister. I made a point of being jokey and rambunctious with the kids (something I have never done before, and which may have terrified my sister a little). I told funny anecdotes about Mary, Bertha, and Richard. I told her that Jane and I are seeing each other, and that I am doing well in a racquetball tournament (by doing well, I mean that I have signed up, but I didn’t tell my sister that).

After the kids were in bed, we talked a while and I said, without really thinking why, "I miss mom."

OK, that’s not completely true. I knew where this remark would head, but I’ve never had the courage to go down this path until now. Anyway, my sister said, sarcastically, "So go see her."

I kept the high road. "No, cemeteries creep me out. I’d rather remember her the way she was."

And that’s when my sister flipped out.

"I cannot believe you are still pretending she’s dead, Harlan!" she screamed. And I’m being totally literal about saying "she screamed." It was incredibly loud and high-pitched. It gave me an instant headache, and it engaged my fight-or-flight impulse.

I tried to stay calm. For both of us.

"If she’s alive, how come neither of us has seen her in ten years? How come there’s a headstone with her name on it in [name of town where my mom’s buried]. How come she had a funeral which you still feel guilty about for not attending?"

Seriously, my sister should be the one taking meds, not me. But she screeched back (and I’m being literal about the screeching, too), "There was no funeral! You went to a funeral for another woman of the same name. They made you leave. That headstone is not our mother’s."

In my sister’s defense (although she is insane and wrong), we do have a common last name, and my mother had a common first name. But that was my mother’s funeral, and that is her gravesite. "When’s the last time you saw her?" I asked. My trump card.

"Just because she doesn’t stay in touch doesn’t mean she’s dead!" My sister replied, hysterical.

"Yeah, she’s just kind of too busy to let us know where she’s living, what her phone number is, or anything else." I shouldn’t have been sarcastic, because my sister is clearly not stable. But it’s not like she had been being sunshine and roses to me, either.

"Maybe she just doesn’t want to see you."

That was enough. I went up to the guest bedroom, grabbed my duffel, and got out. I went home, though not directly. First I stopped at the cemetery and paid my respects. Definitely my mom.

I have no idea how to get my sister the help she needs. Not that she’d ever accept it from me.

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Things are going well for me. I no longer feel crippled by solitude. It seems like only a few months ago when I wasn’t able to talk to strangers — or to friends for that matter, especially because I had no friends.

When I did happen to say something, I went over the conversation in my mind for hours or days afterwards. That was torture in some cases, especially when I had lashed out.

The more people you talk to, the less significant each encounter becomes.

I’m not saying things are going perfectly. There was the restaurant encounter. By the way, I have to confess that I wasn’t really kicked out of the restaurant. I liked the idea of being kicked out of the restaurant for getting angry, but I only made a couple of snide remarks to the hostess, who didn’t understand me anyway. And then I threw down my paper napkin and stormed out. Oh, and I waited a long time for Richard and his stiff manservant. That much was true.

And then there was the encounter at the ATM. An older woman decided to take care of all her banking at the ATM. She was signing checks and filling out various deposit forms while a line formed behind her. I decided that instead of either being silent or blowing up, I would be politely assertive. Like a normal person.

“Excuse me, lady. Would you mind stepping aside and letting us go through while you apply for a mortgage elsewhere?”

“Lady? Did you just call me lady? Thank for you taking away my sexuality.”

I honestly have no idea what she meant by that. So I clammed up.

Of course, the fact that I’m writing about an encounter at the ATM instead of what happened at my sister’s last weekend probably tells you something about how well that trip went.

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