A Portrait of Evasive Happiness
Written by: Stephen Keaton
Perched like a statuette that has found his peace with his new world, the passing life makes itself known; there is a lot of smiling, crying, screaming, and acceptance. I have come to love this drama, so perfectly portrayed on TV, yet now set before my eyes without shame. I mean, most of us live that way… I can hardly remember a heavily emotional moment not being affected by starving eye. The emotions just run through without control. It’s not always fun to bear witness, and often you beg for solitude, but the time and the place dictate whether you are allowed such a luxury.
You get a bit tired of witnessing the fights, the infidelity, and the abuse… It exists, nonetheless, and you must stomach it. Too many times I stood here in a few months’ span to smoke in witness of a very real falling out… Nothing nuclear, just wrong timing and a sheepish smile as you try to hide your presence in such a dark situation.
Lord knows, I have been there, scaling balconies and kicking doors in to catch the final act… It was never pretty. Neighbors play the audience and you could give a shit… The sweet rage of emotion with, “He is our guest, and a fucking degenerate at that, and you are about to fuck him on my bed?” definitely.
Those scenarios play out, and with endings that vary; maybe a quick drive up the mountain with a bottle of vodka clutched between your thighs to slalom back down with the hurt sounds of music screaming “Don’t go! Please, don’t go! Stay! Please, Stay!” Then, there is the option of the never desirable bloodbath… I always chose the former.
I can leave the violence.
Watching the known stranger scream, “You are a fucking whore! Go fuck your bitch!” just invites lost memories to resurface. I buried those with my life with a first wife… I had enough of the malaise, lack-lustering faux love to let it rest in peace. Yet, reminders like these just hash up the thoughts that you try to forget.
I made a clean break and am not a bit concerned about relationships that were never meant to be or ones piloted by self-loathing… Face it. That’s the overwhelming majority of unions and I have the divorce statistics to prove it. No, this was a break that left scars and damage, but released a life into the wild with a hope to heal… That is a happy ending, even if it’s my ending.
This rant leads to a sharp point that this heart is not breaking from said ex-wives, but of love that followed.
It was a certain Catherine that catched my heart, enough to the point that I was never married, or have ever loved before. It was that rebirth that I sought, and found at that opportune moment before I cashed in my chips… That is her.
Working my way backward through memory and experience, I answer the phone.
“Did I wake you?” Catherine asks.
“I was waiting for your call… and, yes, you woke me. But, you know I don’t care. I do have to be up in about an hour and I haven’t slept much recently, but you are always worth it,” I mumbled, trying to catch my bearings.
A love so in wanting and satisfied by even the sound of a voice. 2 insomniacs of sorts found life in the night… I can’t see her, but she is real. The sound of her breathing as she sleeps held in speakerphone on a pillow made more sense than the real girl. That was the salvation. Not the fighting I have known and witnessed. More than the complete and utter dysfunction around me. More than the disregard of love at your fingertips that often slips away because you never knew the beauty that you held… All in all, it’s sad.
Seeing young and lovely people screaming into a cell phone at CVS as I’m trying to buy the cheapest smokes in town, “You’re the fucking idiot! What do we need at the house? Whatever!” I don’t subscribe to that kind of relationship. I will leave that and prefer to be alone for the rest of my inglorious and self-destructive life than to live in the false comfort of being with somebody. It just doesn’t work.
“The song you sang on my voicemail made me cry. I thought it was beautiful,” Catherine says.
“I had to work hard for that moment to even get that right. It’s hard to find silence in this house. I ducked into my closet with a heat index of about 105, stripped down to the bear necessities, sipped Merlot, and tried my best. I am glad you liked it… I did practice it for about 2 hours before I had the guts to call. I wanted it to go straight to voicemail and I knew you would be sleeping,” I said.
And this is the way it would go, for years… Visitation and voice, almost conjugal in nature, yet nothing criminal. Just honest.
“You narrated over a song in the background. There was a perfect blend of heart-wrenching and longing, and newfound love… A voice of an angel, huh? You are too sweet,” Catherine says.
“Oh, mama! Don’t walk away. I’m a goddamn sore loser. I ain’t too proud to say. That I’m still thinking about you. That I’m so lonesome without you. That I can’t get you out of my mind,” I sang.
Now forever etched, maybe to the point of my demise, that song carries its weight in hurt, or Burn, as Ray would say… But, it’s become an anthem to truth and to what I find myself now stewing in. It’s just music binding and equal minds paying interest. And soon to come where other monuments and symbols, and everything that is a reminder in this world, waking or not, that there is no forgetting. You know. The phrases, the catch terms, the witticisms, and the undeniable look on a face that smiles in actual true happiness, even if it’s just for a moment, but it was meant for a moment… And that is what I live for.
