|
The Goodbye
Call
Hello --- hello, Iris? No, I don’t expect you to answer. I planned to call when you
weren’t home so that I could talk to your machine. Why? Because I had a
bushel full of things to say and didn’t want to be interrupted – and you know
very well, Iris, that you would interrupt me. You never let me finish a
sentence without plunging in to tell me what you think.
Did I say “hello”? No, this definitely is not a hello call. If
anything,, it’s a “goodbye” call. What do I mean by that? I mean that our
relationship ---- or whatever you want to call it- – has come to a grinding
end. Let me say though that it was wonderful while it lasted. Wonderful but
somewhat bizarre. When I look back I find that we had a lot of sex, some
memorable dinners., a few good movies, and many unfinished arguments, and then
– puff –it all seems to have vanished in a cloud of smoke.
The trouble with me is that I’m too
sentimental, not tough like you. You’ll listen to this, bite your lips, pick up
the phone, call Jim or Bill and make a date for dinner this very evening. As
for me, it will take me weeks to get you out of my system.
That’s because of my vivid memory. I
seem to remember everything we did together, from the first day we met. That
was pretty funny since you were on your way to meet a date in the Village and
you got on the bus without exact change that I happened to have. So we got to
talking, somewhat casually, and when you reached your stop you said: “I’m not
getting off. Where are you going?” It was evident at the start that you were a
creature of impulses particularly later in my apartment, when you took your
clothes off in a hurry.
But you were fun. I recall one long
drive up the Taconic parkway during which I
put my hand between your legs while we were moving at sixty miles an
hour. “One handed driver,” you called me. We wound up in some roadside hotel
where you broke all records in getting out of your clothes. I don’t deny that it was good. Afterward, in
some dim-lit restaurant, we ate New York steaks just to remind ourselves where
we came from.
When I think of you I think of sex.
There was the time in the car when the policeman tapped on the window just as
we were on our way to the Garden of Eden. What a shame! It wasn’t all sex, of
course, but there was a great deal of it with you. I was working at some
tedious nine to five job and also trying to paint. Do you remember how I
dragged you to art galleries, museums, sculpture gardens so we could look at
art together?. But you had little patience with that. “Let’s go home.” you said
teasingly and I couldn’t resist. As soon as we came into the apartment, you
were naked and ready. It was good but I didn’t get much work done.
It’s all been interesting, exciting,
exhausting. But I didn’t realize how
much I needed my creative work. In the two years we’ve been together you
completely consumed it, you held me captive with your silken sex, and in so
doing you drugged my senses and muffled
my creative spirit. Yes, I had a good time, Iris. Too good a time.
That’s why I’m saying goodbye. Goodbye,
Iris, goodbye to everything between us, goodbye to those lovely evenings in my
apartment where you taught me new ways of making love, goodbye to our dinners
in little cafes, to our car trips to New Hampshire. I’m trying to reclaim
myself from you. And because I don’t want to argue, I’m saying goodbye through
an intermediary – your answering machine.
Last week I
met an old friend – I don’t know if you remember John Harmon --- we once
visited his studio in the West Village – I hadn’t seen him in some time `He
asked me how my painting was coming along and you know what – I lied. I told
him a goddam lie because I was too ashamed to say that I hadn’t touched a brush
in months. And then he told me that he was having a show next month in some
gallery in Chelsea –well, I confess, I was
jealous of him. I was also tremendously angry at you – you who seduced
me into not painting, into wasting my days and nights. Well – I shouldn’t say
“wasting”, they were wonderful nights, magical even. But not productive. They
came with a certain expense, a certain loss.
That’s why, Iris, I’m telling you that
whatever we had is over, finished, ended.. Don’t call me. Don’t send me
e-mails. I may go away, I may remain here. Don’t look for me . I will make
every effort to forget you. Maybe someday we’ll meet accidentally, like in the
subway, and if we do, I hope you wont talk to me but instead give me one of
your old seductive smiles, as if to say, “I know you. I recognize you.”
Si Wakesberg is a veteran journalist and writer who has had both fiction
and poetry published in print magazines and in electronic magazines.
E-mail Si Wakesberg
Return to Table of Contents
|