1/12/05
Deej,
I never want to go to Chicago--or that tiny suburb outside of the city, for that matter--ever again.
This past holiday was the 2nd time I felt strange boarding a train with Jessy to go and visit her family out in Illinois. They look at me so strange when I walk through the front door. Her father's smile was a little wider this time and her mother automatically accepts me as an uncomfortable fact of life, like hungry kids in Sudan. The first visit wasn't disastrous, but there were those long silences and all. No one spoke that much to me. I was dying for their acceptance. Now I'm not so sure anymore.
Mostly, it's her brother Jason who's become the biggest obstacle. Jessy tells me that he's pretty self-righteous anyway, mostly because he's an ex-junky who just found God. According to her, he's always been a dictator--only more so now because of his new found faith. Before it was bullying them into giving him cash so he could shoot up with his girlfriend at that time. I owe her, that girl whose name I keep forgetting: if it weren't for the travails she visited upon that family by keeping Jason's monkey happy, Jessy wouldn't have found her way into my arms. Lately, I'm having second thoughts--but more on that later...
While Jessy and I were out in her town doing some shopping, her father had their Uncle Augie, a family friend, over to watch football. I met Augie and he's very down to earth--probably the only person I met who didn't look at me as if I was out to ruin that family. So it's Jessy's Dad, Augie and Jason sitting around watching the game. I guess Augie is a bit of a drinker and Jessy's Dad can hold his own (I'll never forget his "my daughter is my life" speech he gave me after knocking back most of a case of Golden Anniversary), but Jason's throwing a fit that there's drinking and disrespecting because Augie threw out the F-word without apology once or twice. We get back and all I know is Augie is sitting in his pickup dejected with Jessy's Dad trying to make him feel better. Meanwhile, Jason was rummaging around the house piling up all the beer and alcohol on a pile in the kitchen. He was saying to her that Augie was a poisonous presence in the house and he remembered how he gave him his first drink and all this other crap. Jessy tears into him and says that Augie had nothing to do with it that it was some kid they all used to know who was in the Army now anyway and he shouldn't blame it all on Augie. Jason's not hearing any of this and he piles all the booze in a plastic bag and starts hauling it out towards the front door.
This guy's a complete dummy because he threw it all in this plastic bag and the shit just rips right through it. It's just too heavy. Next thing you know the bottles and the cans hit the carpet. 1 bottle of Wild Turkey lands on a Jim Beam and ShaBASH!—glass and booze all over the carpet that was just shampooed the other day.
Asshole turns to me and says "Aren't you going to help me?" Before I can tell him that he's a psycho, Jessy looks at me wanting me to go and help her brother clean up.
I know there are worse holiday stories out there: there's always some poor slob who gets shot by a family member or friend. But Jason's freakout was comparable. I can see why Jessy's so nervous now about so much. She just drinks and drinks and doesn't want to think about a thing. Just let the whiskey burn it out of her memory cells. Coming in, there was all this snow already on the ground and all I could think of was it figures that she drinks as much as she does: if the snow began as soon as we got here, I would get drunk just to cope with being stranded.
After the booze-covered carpet was sopped up with her mother's finest towels, she calmed Jason down. He invited us to a service at his church, but I wanted to decline willing to stay at home and try to see if I could charm the trust into her mother. Jessy figures this would be a good time to try and understand her brother better. That's her thing for next year, as she told me: I'm going to learn how to love my family again. She moved all the way out East to escape them, and here and there she's been hinting about how much she misses it out in Illinois.
She convinces me that this is a good thing, but at this time, I'm thinking what a bloody shame that I would have to miss out on getting loaded with her father with what he was able to salvage from his son's purge. At one point, he took me aside and asked if he should convince Jessy that it wasn't a good idea. I told him I agreed but there would be no deterring Jessy's mission.
"Maybe there is such a thing as loving too much," he said to me. But he went no further and went to pop another Golden Anniversary and lose himself in the game. I'm still trying to figure out what this means but I'm just happy that he said something deep and potentially meaningful to me. It would be my only totem through being with her during that horrid weekend.
Over a chicken dinner (they really laid on the poultry that weekend), Jason's blathering about how the two of us are accompanying him to an Xmas eve service. How this night would be a meaningful one in the history of their family. Jessy's mom seemed happy that we were doing this. Her father kept insisting that we were tired (and I kept yawning), that the best thing would be for us just to take it easy. We could watch some movies. Jessy's mom seemed happier about this, but Jason kept on about how the doors of the church were open for those who wanted to see their family's in paradise or something. I briefly wondered if Jason had joined Al-Qaeda and just threw the name of Jesus around just to keep the trail cold. Jessy said it would be like the old days when they would go to their local church and her and Jason would be in their pajamas and sleep through it. Somehow Jason took offense and said that the service was never boring at his church.
"If you don't want to go, why not just say it?" he said.
I was about to answer when Jessy said: "You didn't hear me right. I was saying how when we were kids we would sleep at the service."
Her father corroborated this, but Jason jumped on it. "It's not like that church. That was some garbage church and they don't understand the Gospel anyway.”
Jessy's mom was about to reply to that when her husband sliced the air, signaling for her to cut it out now.
Finally, Jessy agreed for the both of us to go to the service. Her father didn’t seem pleased, probably sad that he wouldn’t have a late-night drinking buddy to await the arrival of Santa.
1/13/2005
What happened to you and me, Deej? I know that it’s the obvious reasons: our time was up and our lives were moving in different directions. Still, I can’t help but wonder: if after all this time that now we find ourselves friends and have put the past behind us, why couldn’t we make it another go? I know, you’re married and with Whosis, living in a spacious home with your two Weimaraners and I am cramped in an apartment trying to figure out how to make child support payments.
And then as I consider what I have just written about a life that seems to be steadily hell-bound, I decide that maybe I’d be a toxic influence on you. An act of loving-kindness would be for me to not to force the damage of this life on you. I hope that you can read this all with a sense of humor, assured that I won’t try and steal you away from the life you have now.
I guess it’s that Jessy and I have arrived at an impasse—and you remember how I raved about her at the time: she’s beautiful and funny and mellow and we have such a great time. I wish you weren’t happy for me. I wish you told me that this would be a bad thing, especially after the collapse of my marriage to Indira. I appreciated your concern as I was degenerating into a total wreck. I still have feelings for her, but it wasn’t the same after awhile. You’d think that having a baby would make all the difference, that it would be part of the natural progression of a relationship that was evolving toward a better place.
Remind me to send you the latest picture of Amy. She’s such a cutey in this one.
In one of your last letters, you told me that I should have tried marriage counseling—I still don’t know what that would have accomplished? We couldn’t stand each other. I think we’re much better now than we were after Amy was born.
Incidentally, I still hate that we call her Amy. I would have been happy with something less… I don’t know… less American—NOT that I married Indira out of exoticism or anything like that. But Jesus Kay Rice she and her family were so determined to be Americans they registered as Republicans just as soon as they became citizens. I told her that surely it would be better in England. She actually said, yeah once the Liberals are out.
But I was telling you about Jessy and Jason and Christmas and all that. For the most part, the service was uneventful. In fact, it was so low-key I began to drift off into sleep. Jason, who I happened to be sitting next to kept nudging me awake. When the service was over and he drove us home, he didn’t ask us how we liked it. Jessy was too tired to say much, and I just kept looking out thinking about all those snow banks, wondering what it would be like to be stuck in 1 of them.
The next morning, Jason wasn’t talking to anyone. The whole time the family was opening up their gifts, he just sat back and had a glass of milk and wouldn’t even look at me. Midway through, he left and went up to his room—probably to hang out in an AA chat room or something. Jessy went after him then returned looking peeved. She took me aside and asked me if I had said anything to him at the service. I told him I couldn’t even speak. “You didn’t say ‘this is stupid?’” No, I didn’t. What may have happened is that murmuring I do in my sleep. I may have said something that he misunderstood as “This is stupid,” when in fact it was probably “Hissis whosis.” Jason was feeling rejected. He mentioned something about the persecution of early Christians and left it at that for her.
The rest of the day was spent watching football with her dad or helping her mother get dinner ready. I did enjoy the typical aspects of their holiday but there was still that tension. They know that I have a child and am edging towards a divorce. Her mother especially seems as if she wants to ask me about Amy--and Jessy will even mention how good I am with her—but that only brings that weird smile to her mother’s face. “It’s good to love your children,” her mother said.
I don’t know what the hell is with these people and “loving,” but they think on the matter more than Erich Fromm.
Whatever their deal may be, I’m definitely going to do some soul-searching on this. I anticipate New Years in NY State to be a drunken debacle. A last hurrah, if you will. Then by end of January, maybe I’ll be on to something else, like snowboarding or skeet shooting. I wish you’d come out this way—not Chicago, Hammernack of course. I’m surprised I don’t see your mother around since your whole family would head out here for dinners. You are terribly missed though. I wish you could walk with me in my shoes—I guess they’d be our shoes in that case.
Ignore any of my begging and pleading. But do one thing. Write back. It is a loving act to write me back. Tell me about the holidays and all. I hope yours are less volatile than mine.
Pace,
Rooj
