Don't You Panic

We’re fighting. We fought. The words don’t taste so good down in my throat. I think I might want to spit them back out again. A screech of a tire. A window breaking. Isn’t that enough? Somewhere somebody in a white hospital is fighting for their life. The word is beginning to sound a little better, it’s giving me some ground. Who gets mad because somebody is too apologetic, too meek? I didn’t. But it sounds good if you say that I did, right? That’s looking at the world with one set of blind-folders on.

I got a cold feeling inside, like a frozen tire. He told me I was making him feel like a cocker spaniel. So I swallowed, a little swallow, and I felt hollow inside. I had to do the right thing.

“Nobody should be made to feel like that,” I said. I hung up. I was gone. No more relationship or bogus love. It was him that went on about love, anyway, not me. No more whatever he said it was.

A different day, if he had told me I made him feel like he was a cocker spaniel, I would have cracked up. It would have been the wrong response, but maybe it would have been better than this. My seriousness. It's like a cancer he doesn't know how to look at.

He keeps calling back. But I won’t pick up. I don’t like his apologies. He is always saying “I don’t want to make you mad so I won’t tell you this” or “I don’t want to make you mad but you said you want the truth so..” He’s always making it about what I said I wanted and adapting it to the next day. And when I’m quiet about what I want? It throws his world upside down. He wants, oh so bad, to make me feel good. I don’t always feel good, it’s not natural. I’ve gotten over that, so why can’t he? I was stressed this morning, a lot on my plate that I had to say and I felt like I was going to a trial. So he was angry with me for having a life that I must engage with. His is so bare, he leaves it behind all the time without thinking. He has no idea what it must feel like to be so connected you can’t look back. So he can connect to me and my world feeling lighter than a feather. The only thing he holds on to is me. But he isn’t prepared to see what I see. Nobody could be.

I got annoyed with him. But he couldn’t get anything right. I said ten-thirty, and he doesn’t show up.

“Well, truthfully I didn’t know what kind of mood you’de be in, and gaging from this morning, I know I told you I had to go to this appointment I’d forgotten, but I also wanted to get away…”

Then go. You now see I would have been happy to see you, but it’s too late. I’m in a bad mood again, so I better hang up the phone. Only the bright side to you. Nice end. No end.

He doesn’t like my “truth at all costs.” He doesn’t like my arrogance. “Well, somebody needs to act without thinking,” I say. I ask him what I said. He doesn’t know. His three favorite words.

I finally call him on my terms. Everything is always on my terms. I told him this the second day, when he was falling hard for me. But did he listen? No. Anyway, the phone didn't pick up. He can get a hold of me, but I can hardly ever get a hold of him. He shares a phone with a huge apartment full of drug-using hillbilly beatniks downtown with security that makes me wait outside the door, away from the comfy lobby on a windy day until he gets downstairs. Somebody has to pick up the phone, and then travel to the fifth floor to see if he is there. As a result, everybody ignores the phone because they know it's not going to be for them. Sometimes somebody offers to give him my message and I'm relieved. Mostly, they don't.