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thehefner(EDIT: Ok, the first few paragraph were cut out by accident, but now they're back. Sorry for the confusion!)
Here it is. The final chapter of the first HEFNER MONOLOGUES book. This was one of the most difficult things I have ever written (not for school), but I think I pulled it off.
Please read and let me know your thoughts. I am hoping that I have a book here, a book that I can send to literary agents.
For those who haven't read the previous versions, you read them (in glorious unedited, typo-ridden format!) here: The Secret Origin of the Hefner Monologues, The Second Chapter That (Still) Doesn't Have A Title, and Worth It: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
HUGE thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kmousie for editing and reformatting this. You utterly rule, my dear.
There's a rather common belief that there are no such things as happy endings. Ray Bradbury took the idea a bit further when he said, "There are no such things as happy endings, but there's a hell of a lot of joy in being alive." Neither statement has been far from my mind at any given moment.
Because obviously, the only true ending is death. And no matter how noble or heroic or tender, death is always kind of a downer, isn't it? But not all stories end in death, that's the thing. No matter how hard some self-important budding writers in Freshman Creative Writing try to rebel and defy convention, there's kind of a set system to how these things work. There's the set up, the conflict, the development, the climax, and the resolution. Epilogue optional, but not necessary. Wrap it up and put a bow on it, that's the formula for a story. Stories which, I might add, don't all end in death, yet they end nonetheless, do they not?
But that still doesn't address the idea that there are no such things as happy endings. Happy endings are criticized as devices of fairy tales to make the audience feel all warm and fuzzy, a comforting escape from a cruel, indifferent reality where Prince Charming never rides in, the Cavalry doesn't arrive, Superman doesn't save the day, and love most definitely does not triumph over all.
Because here's the thing, when you really get to the heart of the matter: unless death is involved (and hell, sometimes even then), when is a story ever really over? When does anything ever truly end?
I had thought that with the card and the rose petals, by having the last word, that the story with Tammy would be over. The End. But life has a way of moving on, even if you yourself aren't going with it. Sometimes that means getting on with your life, no matter how firmly you wish to cling to your past. And sometimes it means that no matter how much you want to escape your present and move on, life demands that you must deal with your shit first, because if you don't, you ain't going nowhere.
Oedipus/Antigone had wrapped, and the summer of Tammy began. She would be on my mind every waking hour of every day for those next few months and even beyond, with seemingly every little thing reminding me of her. Even things that had nothing to do with Tammy reminded me of Tammy. It was like, "Hey, look. A screwdriver. OH, TAMMY! SOB!"
As I analytically observed my own misery, carefully taking down mental notes like Jane Goodall studying some particularly angst-filled ape, I was struck by one particular observation. I discovered that when you're heartbroken, the radio becomes hazardous material. Dare I say, radioactive. It became one of many metaphorical salts to my one great big open metaphorical wound, because suddenly, all the songs began to make sense! Horrible, horrible sense! And I mean all the songs. I'm not the only one who does this, right? I mean, you just sit there, listening to some song, sobbing and thinking, "Oh, god, it's true! It's all true! Oh Tammy! I want to be your sledgehammer! Why don't you call my name? Wahhhhh! *sniffle!* Sledgehammer!"
A lot of people eat when they're depressed, but me, I didn't want anything to do with food. During O/A, I couldn't even finish a frickin' taco. It was like, after a couple bites, my whole digestive tract all the way up to my throat seemed to shut down and say, "Sorry folks, we're closed, try again tomorrow. No promises, though." But I tried to reason it away, thinking, "Hey, at least maybe I'll actually lose some weight" but when I looked in the mirror, all I seemed to be losing was my hair.
I tried to focus my time and energy on work, maybe throw myself back in the Hefner Monologues, but couldn't bring myself to create anything. The Hefner Monologues, which had started out as a possible salvation, the only bright side of all the drama, now seemed like an impossibility. To even think about the wedding story, that absurd little moment, was almost too painful to bear. And worse, there was no way I would be in any mood or position to tell it, to perform it as I once had. The humor, the silliness, the romanticism, all of it was dashed and replaced by misery. For all I knew, the Hefner Monologues were dead. I needed a change. Or more specifically, I needed a life.
I landed a summer internship at the Studio Theatre, one of the most famous professional theatres in Washington, DC. As I was jobless for the summer anyway, I figured what better way to devote my time and energy of an entire lonesome summer getting a first-hand experience behind the scenes in the world of professional theatre? As a result, I would already well understand when, years later, I would learn that there's a little saying in the world of professional theatre in Washington: "Friends don't let friends work at Studio."
It should come as no surprise to those knowledgeable about internships to discover that I didn't spend quite as much time as I'd hoped I'd be doing. Which is to say, to learn the ins and outs of an industry where I, God willing, might one day earn my living. No, I was employed in all manner of tedious busywork, the kinds of jobs that they don't even pay people to do. Internships are the only form of slave labor that comes with college credit.
For eight hours, five days a week, I worked in the shop, hung lights, stuffed envelopes, scrubbed floors, lugged furniture, cut wood, cut steel, sanded down set pieces, set up set pieces, quite literally broke down set pieces, and scrubbed stray bits of paint off the theatre floors. I didn't mind that last task so much because I spent that time totally high from the fumes of the all-purpose goop-remover I had to use. It was a noxious liquid that came in a small industrial-type container with no label, just a serial number stenciled on the side. As I used it, I had to keep changing pairs of rubber gloves because within ten minutes the gloves would start to melt off.
My disinterest in the Hefner Monologues proved to be just as well, as the labor left me mentally and emotionally exhausted by the end of each day. That may not sound like much, but bear in mind that I am an artist, and therefore not cut out for real work. What was worse, my primary reasons for taking the "job," reasons beyond gaining experience as an actor, completely backfired. I was drained of all the energy to think about all the things that gave me pleasure, the amusing distractions that I used to get me through the tough times, stripping away everything and exposing the tender underbelly of all my dark, pained thoughts. Hell, maybe if that wasn't now my default mood, the pervading thoughts underneath everything else, maybe I actually might have been paying attention to the internship enough to get something out of it. Well, I mean something other than, "That stuff will eat into your skin if you don't wash it off right away. And even then, kiss those first two layers bye-bye."
It was a month into the internship that I decided to give the Hefner Monologues another shot. It occurred to me that, hey, maybe the reason I feel so lousy is actually because I haven't done the Hefner Monologues lately! Maybe it was exercise, that if you did it you felt great and if you stopped you felt lousy… and when you were feeling lousy, boy oh boy, it was the last thing you wanted to do. But maybe it was worth a shot. Especially since I think I had started to get a tolerance for the goop-off fumes.
Since everyone around me, including the Rudes and my parents, had already heard all the Hefner Monologues I had in my arsenal, I decided to find a fresh audience in my fellow interns. These were young men and women who, like me, were all of college age, there to gain experience and connections in the wide world of professional theatre. Unlike me, however, they were aspiring set designers, costume artists, lighting technicians, and so on—not a damn actor among them. They might as well have been taxidermists. I felt like I was at high school again, my prospective peers all nice enough and well-meaning kids with creative outlooks on life, fine for small talk and such, but not a single true connection among them.
One day's work had me sitting at a table with three of the other interns, all girls, as we stuffed envelopes for the theatre's mailing list. We were putting together the standard announcement packages for the new season, which is to say one booklet listing the upcoming shows and one flyer coolly and confidently asking the reader for money. We had a whole day's work ahead of us, which the girls predominantly spent talking about Friends and Will and Grace reruns. If I needed a final nudge to go for another shot, beyond just me seeking to exorcise my pain and maybe establishing a connection with these girls, then doing something to stop hearing about the latest gut-busting adventure of Joey and Rachel and company was bloody well it.
"Hey, so, I've got a story for you," I said. Ok, I admit, it wasn't the smoothest transition to an opening line in the world, but it seemed to do the trick. I'd made allusions to women before to these girls, an off-handed remark here or a "Well, I've been feeling better" there, but nothing explicit. In my swelled head of hopes, I had been banking that those little scraps that piqued their curiosity like teaser trailers for the big event that was finally, finally here.
"This has informally come to be known as 'The Wedding Story.'"
I tried to get back into the old flow again, 'in-character' if you will, just like it was back before my friends at the college cafeteria or in front of the Rudes seven months earlier just before Christmas. I had their initial interest, that was good, but if I could just get them into it, get them to hang on my every word just like the others used to, that's when I'd finally have it again. That bond between performer and audience would be mine once more and it would be my story, my life and my telling of it, which made it happen.
"This is her," I said, producing the 3x5 of Tammy and me from Birthday Ball. "It's the only picture I have of her. It doesn't really do her justice…"
"This?" one of the girls asked incredulously after I handed her the picture. She frowned with a touch of disappointment and some apathy before passing it around the table. The others echoed similar unimpressed sentiments. I don't know if I could read it in their faces or if I just imagined their thoughts, but they seemed to say, This is it? This is the reason this guy's always so depressed all the time? I don't know whom I should dislike more: the girl for what she did to him or John for going so crazy, all for just… just this!
"Um…" I said, uncomfortably trying to find the rhythm again. Or perhaps for the first time. "Her, uh, name was Tammy. And… uh, well, here was the thing about Tammy. She was engaged, you see. Well, not engaged. Engaged to be engaged was, uh, more like it. The guy's name was Bryan, and—"
"Wait," one of the girls interrupted, "She was engaged to another guy when she got involved with you?"
"W-well, yes, but—"
"Why the hell would you go for a girl like that?" another intern girl asked, squinting her eyes in disgust.
"Er… wuh… well, uh, hold on, I-I mean there's more to the story than just—"
"God, what a slut," the third girl said. The others chimed in with similar sentiments.
"Hey, now," I said, beads of sweat forming on my forehead, "That's not fair. You haven't even heard the whole story yet."
"Why are you defending her?" Intern Girl Three asked, her eyes narrowing now as well.
"I… look, there's more to the story if you'd just listen."
This hardly seemed to satisfy them, but they reluctantly let me continue with the story. I took a moment to collect myself, then pressed forward again. The girls didn't show much reaction beyond a polite humoring at best and befuddled frowns at worst. Still, the more I told, the more I dared not to stop. If I could just spin the story just right, get them into to tragic romanticism of the moment, then hit them with that punchline, then they'd get it, and they'd laugh and laugh, just like the others did.
"So there we were on the dance floor, somehow making a slow dance out of Guns 'N Roses' 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door,' which I guess works, it's just not a choice that usually comes to mind. We're there together, and it's beautiful. Simply beautiful. After a long, long moment has passed, I lean into her and I say what'd I'd been fighting back from saying for the past two weeks. I whispered, 'This is probably the worst thing to say right now, but… I do love you.'"
I took a beat for dramatic effect, but just as I was ready to say, "And her hands dug into my back and she buried her head in my shoulder…" as I always did, Intern Girl One exclaimed:
"Oh god, you told her you loved her?! You're right, that was the worst thing to say! Damn!"
Completely thrown, I couldn't even manage a response before Intern Girl Three chimed in with agreement: "Seriously! If that'd been me and someone told me they loved me, I'd have just been all, 'Ooo-kay! Moving over here now, thanks!'"
"But…" was all I could get out before Intern Girl Two interrupted me. It was just as well; even if they gave me the chance to talk, I don't know what I could have said.
"Oh, I know! That actually happened to me!"
"Oh gawd, really?"
"Yeah, seriously! There was this guy I'd been on, like, three dates with…"
And so they continued their discussions back and forth along those themes. Maybe one or two started sharing stories of their own, but I wasn't listening anymore. A few moments passed before I gave up and silently returned to stuffing envelopes while the girls talked and giggled and laughed.
I gave it one final, feeble shot at the day's end. As we were all packing up and getting ready to go, I turned to Intern Girl One and said, "There was actually more to the story than that. I didn't get to the punchline. It wasn't just all… angst and wallowing and… sentiment. Y'know? There was a point."
She wasn't interested, that was clear. But she was polite enough, as they were all polite enough and never really rude outright.
"Ok, what was it?" she said, and it sounded like a tired Queen granting a boon to a subject, giving me permission to go ahead and finish.
And right then I knew that it didn't matter. It couldn't be explained any more. Stories like that can't just be picked up and left off, but rather need to be experienced as a whole. Or not at all. The moment had passed, if it had even been there at all.
I left to walk to the bus station alone as I did every day. I never tried again with them, and the Hefner Monologues were dead. Dead as Good Friday. Of course, obviously they wouldn't be dead forever, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this right now. But at the time, it was The End for them. And really, when is anything trulyThe End, right?
I never again attempted to establish a rapport with my fellow intern lackey slaves at Studio. It would almost be like high school again, five days a week of politeness and small talk and busywork, all utterly insubstantial. When September would come, and it couldn't have come soon enough, I knew that we would never speak to one another again.
And what of the Rudes, my true friends? Even if they weren't totally busy with their production of Hamlet, the memories of what I went through during Oedipus/Antigone were still too fresh, the pain having left a kind of trauma stain upon them all. It wasn't just Tammy I missed; I wanted a connection and found one nowhere. Maybe because there was no one there. Or maybe because I was shutting out the world myself.
Yet all the while, I clung with the desperation of an addict to one thought above all others. You see, I had a plan. A goal I had established near the end of Oedipus, at the very worst of my maddening sorrow, the way I kept myself focused and maybe even kept myself sane. One thing to keep me looking ahead.
You see, while the internship hardly proved helpful or informative, I had a soft spot for Studio Theatre. Years before, back when I was in high school, Mom took me to see our favorite local actor in a Studio Theatre production. It was a show with which I fell absolutely, hopelessly in love, a role that I put at the top of my "roles to perform before I die," alongside Hamlet, Cyrano de Bergerac, and the Green Lantern. The play was a little-known Canadian pitch-black comedy called Vigil, by Morris Panych.
I don't know exactly what it was about that play that so appealed to me. Perhaps it was the main character—an awkward and decidedly not-masculine guy who was rendered caustic, sarcastic, deeply cynical and bitter-as-marmite after a lifetime of being rejected, overlooked, ignored, and forgotten.
Perhaps it was the evil, evil tone of the comedy, the vicious little soul-crushingly morbid twists, almost too horrible to be funny. Perhaps it was the overreaching theme of a man with so many issues, now finally meeting the last person with any ties to his painful past. A single person at whom he can lash out, on whom he can dump his pain, from whom he can seek explanations for all the questions of "why" he had been asking for all those years. And finally, perhaps, someone he can connect with for the first time in his miserable, wasted life. To connect with… or condemn… as he sees fit. This is assuming, of course, that he can survive his own short-sightedness and selfishness. Which is thus where the hi-larity comes in.
For all those reasons and more, I adored that role and that play. And after five years of planning and hoping, I would finally, finally get my chance to realize my dream. That approaching November, in the fall semester of my senior year at Washington College, I would be performing Vigil for my thesis.
And that, I told myself over and over again, is when it would happen if everything went to plan.
That was when I would see Tammy again.
Now I'm pretty sure many of you are thinking, "Oh god, what did he do this time?! Why couldn't he just let it go?!" Trust me, I hear you. You gotta understand, during the fallout of O/A, I didn't even try to talk to Tammy. I knew it'd be futile, resulting only in more pain and hurting the show as a result. But I wanted to, god, how I wanted to. Because it's one thing to "know" in your head that something is not going to work, but quite another to deal with that acid-burning want in your gut screaming "DO IT! DO SOMETHING, FOR GOD'S SAKE, I CAN'T TAKE ANOTHER MINUTE OF THIS!" But that's the thing, isn't it? We absolutely can take it, do take it. Sometimes we don't know what we'd do without it.
And all the while, there was Tammy. Physically, no more than fifty feet away. She might as well have been on Mars. Most of the Rudes advised me to leave her alone, to wait a little while before I tried to contact her. Some said wait a couple weeks for things to cool down. Others suggested a month or two. And though none had the nerve to say so outright to my face, I knew that more than a couple preferred that I never even tried at all. Mourn and move on, but never be fool enough to even attempt to exhume that grave. If you try, what do you think you're gonna find?
It was dead and gone. It was doomed, as Tammy used to say to me over and over again. Doomed. Doomed, doomed, curse you, Reed Richards, doomed. The inevitable end had finally come, run its course as nature decreed, and that was that. Hell, even I thought that at the time. The End, right?
But at the very same time, I couldn't even allow to believe in that concept. You have to understand, I wasn't exactly trying to figure out how to get Tammy back. No, I wasn't that foolish. No, what we had was over, I understood that. This was different.
You see, if there's anything that keeps me going, it's hope. I'm not an optimist; I rather prefer to consider myself a 'hopeful pessimist.' I see the glass as half empty, sure… but one day, it will be full. That hope had always been my driving force, the hope that even if the situation is dire now and even if the current endeavor is doomed, eventually things will get better. By God or by chaos, things always had a way of working themselves out in the end.
Well, whenever that was.
Now my hope, which had always been a positive force in my life, was driving me along like a speeding car with the brakes cut, and I couldn't Bring myself to bail out. That dramatic final gesture with the card and the rose petals gave me the last word, but I was still cut off from her, adrift, filled with unanswered questions and unconfirmed suspicions eating away at me every day. There were too many things I wanted to know, to hear, to say and be said.
As the months went by, I would spend hours on end fantasizing about what would happen if I ever got to see her again. I'd refine the questions and the order I'd ask them in, rehearsing every line, knowing when to pause for effect, anything that would get the best reaction. I came up with a rough mental list of everything I would ask and say, including—
1. Why did you leave Bryan when you said you never would?
2. And for that matter, why did you leave Bryan for Van Breeman and not ME?!
3. And hey! For THAT matter… what's he got that I ain't got? (Because apparently years of influence from Looney Tunes cartoons and movies from the 40s infiltrated even my romantic angst.)
4. Did you ever love me?
5. Do you still love me?
And at the end of things, when we'd part ways, never to see one another again, I would be absolutely certain to give her this last bit, making sure she heard it face to face.
6. You will never find a guy as good as me.
Which was a big fat total bluff, of course. Going just by the odds alone, not to mention her general desirability, Tammy could easily find better guys than me. But saying it would be one last little jab, a final word that would give me some semblance of pride even as I nailed myself to the cross.
Thus was my list, more or less. It varied in content and structure over the months, depending on my mood. Sometimes in my head they sounded as accusatory as a Nazi torture interrogator, and sometimes they sounded and broken and pleading as the tortured prisoner. Sometimes the questions became a well-organized list, while most other times they were all lost in a jumble, an emotional blender with little rhyme or reason or organization. There were times when I'd think that if I did see her, what would come out of my mouth would have been something like, "Oh god Tammy why'd you do it leave me ever love me why hurts left Bryan not me love me anymore Breeman sucks I love you me best guy ow!!!"
No matter what form they took, the questions consumed me every minute of every day. Or that's how it felt anyway, when chances are we often feel worse than we actually are. But for all that, I was in no hurry. I could give her all the time and space that she needed, just as long as I knew I would get all that I wanted eventually. So my rational side struck peace accord with my crazed angst-ing miserable side to just hold off its aggression until exactly one month before Vigil.
October 15th, I said to myself. That's when I'll invite her to VIGIL. Just an invitation, we'll see what happens. If nothing comes of it, nothing comes of it, life goes on. Just see what happens.
As if to solidify that plan in my head, I found a certain CD at my local used-book store. Mandy Patinkin's "Dress Casual," a collection of show-tunes, innocuous enough to your average bookworm (as well as, chances are, you who are reading this right now). Now, I loved Mandy for more than just his immortal Princess Bride role, but I knew that Tammy had a very personal connection to the singer and this album in particular. She used to tell me about how, when she was little, she would listen to that album all the time. Her father used to play it for her, and she'd tell me about how much it meant to her, how those songs had faded into distant memories over time, and how sad she was that she could never find it. Which always confused me, because she knew as well as I did that it was easily available off the internet, but whatever. Maybe it was just another instance where she, like me, loved the tragedy.
But now here it was, right in my hands. I imagined the look on her face as I gave it to her, how she would squeak with glee just like she used to… no, no, she wouldn't. No, this time she would be struck dumb with surprise, rendered silent, ooh, maybe with tears in her eyes, yes. Then she would jump up and embrace me in those small, soft arms of hers, and thank me, thank you, Heffie, thank you so much.
October, man, I told myself again. If you see her, give it to her. Call it a gift or maybe a peace offering, whatever sounds good. Maybe that'll soften her up or something. If nothing else, it'll make her smile one more time. God, just to make her smile… just one more time.
And what if she doesn't come? You have to be realistic. Well… then, I guess… I guess you've got yourself a new CD to keep. Hell, who needs closure when you've got Inigo Montoya singing "Ya Got Trouble (in River City)," am I right? Am I right?
I spent those three months in a near-constant black hole, occasionally moving up a couple shades to a brown hole and maybe a darkish green hole with blue accents. Y'know, if I was feeling particularly perky. As my parents saw me nearly daily, they certainly took note of my moods, to say the least.
My mother and father had divorced back in the late 80s, but still lived within a few miles of one another. So even though I lived with my mother, I still saw my father frequently. In fact, if I hadn't been doing slave labor for Studio or gotten my job back at the comic book store I had worked at during my pre-college years, I would have likely spent every day at my father's house, just as I spent every night at my mother's. As is so often the case with the rich tapestry of human events, that is another of many such stories for another time.
My mother never believed in talking about problems or listening to others. She never saw the point. Why complain about something if you can't do anything about it? And if you can do something about it, why are you wasting your time complaining and not solving the problem?! To Mom's mind, there was no point worrying about being late if you were stuck in traffic; you might as well sit back and relax, 'cause you'll get there when you get there, bucko. And if there was nothing that could be done about your son's depression, there sure was no point talking about it!
Over the course of the Tammy saga itself, those months leading up to that summer, I had become increasingly more open and explicit in the stuff I shared with her. Graphically so, at a couple points. Hell, she talked about much worse with me over the years, I figured, hey, no harm. During that summer, however, I talked about it less and less. She appreciated that, I knew. Like some of the Rudes, she grew more and more impatient with my misery, hoping that I'd snap out of it and bloody well get on with my life, no matter how she knew that wouldn't happen, just couldn't happen yet, because we're not wired that way.
At least, so I desperately hoped. I hoped beyond hope that I was reacting like any of them would in the same situation. The only thing worse than the notion of not getting that closure was the notion that I was overreacting . Ok, in fairness, I overreact to everything. I'm a drama queen, craving the attention and validation of all. There, I admit it. I guess what I better mean is I feared that I was being unreasonable and crazed. I was in so much pain, but god, what if my friends and those around me were looking down at me for being so miserable and not getting better more quickly? What if people don't want to be around this sad, miserable blob of a boy? It wasn't just closure I sought so fervently, it was… well, it was validation.
"You should go to the gym," was all Mom could offer, could think to offer, by way of advice. Exercise was an action, it was doing something, and she kept singing the praises of the healing power of endorphins. Also, I'd spent my whole life running the gamut from pudgy to chunky. I hadn't checked a scale for over a year, but I had been 210 at last count (which may have been during Blue Surge ; the only thing worse than a naked, singing, dancing John Hefner is a naked, singing, dancing John Hefner with jiggling man-boobs and a gut). Mom hated my weight, just as she hated her mother's weight and her own weight, and had tried everything to get me to work out from gentle pushing to outright badgering to telling me I'd never get laid if I didn't get a six pack (and if I didn't stop wearing Green Lantern t-shirts).
"Go to the gym," she said. But even if I didn't already detest exercise with the burning hatred of a thousand baked potatoes, I didn't want to go simply because doing so just might, might mean I would feel better. Because when you're depressed, you want to stay depressed to validate your own misery. You feel like nothing less that a total reversal of the thing that caused your depression in the first place is going to cure you. And even then, even if you achieved that often-impossible goal, I don't know if it'd work. If you asked me, I wasn't going to be like that. No, I didn't "want" to be depressed. I wasn't planning to sit and wallow, no, I was going to move on. Just as soon as November 12th rolled around.
Seeing Tammy again was the one thing, to my mind, that would pull me up out of this depression. And I think a part of me realized that if exercise actually did work, if it did make me feel better, then I wouldn't need to see Tammy anymore. So I stayed at home and I went to Studio and I thought and planned on everything I was going to ask her when I saw her in the fall.
If my dear mother offered any insight on the situation, it was to reiterate Josh's words from back in October, words which had been on her mind for all the months I was on my downward slope. "We all know she's poison," he said. Which was true, they all did. And what's more, so did I. I knew exactly was I was getting myself into, and as much as my mother felt for me, I feared that she was thinking exactly what I was fearing myself—I had no one to blame but myself.
And then there was my father. At that point, I hadn't told my father anything at all about Tammy. I didn't even realize that by that point, I hadn't really asked my father for advice on anything, much less women. And really, if there was anyone to ask about women, why not him? I decided what the hell, let's see what he makes of the situation. After that, of course, I remembered why, exactly, I didn't usually ask his advice on such maters.
"Oh-ho-ho, trust me, John, I know all about women. Do… do you have any idea how many women I've… I've…" he hesitated for a moment, as if to consider if I was still too young, then went ahead with a bitter chuckle, "Do you know how many women I've fucked ?" He always had a way of emphasizing his curse words, imbuing an extra venom that they had lost when they became as commonplace as please and thank you. "Do you, John?" he asked. "Your mother made me count one time back when we were married. Then she made me stop when I got to sixty-seven."
My father was the head of the music department at Catholic University for thirty-six years, as well as a concert oboist. He received the finest training in the world at the Curtis Institute, and might have become one of the greatest players in the world if he hadn't hated the stress. He told me once that a study showed that the stress of an oboe player in concert was equal to that of a war pilot in a dogfight. He was a masterful player, beloved and admired by his peers, respected even by his tyrannical mentor.
Now the gout in his hands rendered it impossible for him to play anymore, and he didn't miss it one bit. The music, like the women, was all behind him, and he would have had it any other way. And oh, there were the women, yes there were. He was dazzlingly handsome, wickedly charming, and entirely charismatic. He was a Hefner through-and-though.
Between my father and my famous cousin, I felt decidedly like the odd Hefner out. There I was, a 21-year-old virgin, going completely bonkers over just one girl, the first girl not to see me as the unattractive unthreatening big sister, and no better off in my love life as a result.
What the hell kind of Hefner was I?! Where were the legions of women, swooning at the hem of my velvet bathrobe? Where was my mighty mansion, filled to the brim with movies, video games, caves that became swimming pools and rocks that were also speakers?! When I died, what kind of legacy would I leave behind? The name Hefner would forever be synonymous with pipes, pussy, and PJs, and the man himself would for decades on be as iconic and recognizable as Bugs Bunny. What could I possibly offer to counter that? Could I just imagine, in the not-too-distant-future, guys going around with Green Lantern T-Shirts and great bushy muttonchops, flailing their arms fashionably and remarking to one another, "Ah, I see you're sporting 'The Hefner' too?"
My only similarity to Hugh, it seemed, was my overwhelming passion for movies, comics, cartoons, and pop culture. That's the thing I've always liked about him: no matter all the success and the women, he's still just a geek at heart. I imagined that if we ever got the chance to talk again, we'd spend hours just geeking it out together, talking about old movies and talking about men like Will Eisner, Jack Cole, and Harvey Kurtzman. But Hugh was one of the only people who seemed more distant than Tammy. Besides all that, I wasn't him, nor was I my father. The comfort of a woman's touch would prove ever elusive, and that summer, I never felt more alone.
One day, I was typing away at my blog, undoubtedly writing another sob story entry—or, if I were lazy, just posting Leonard Cohen lyrics—when an Instant Message popped up on the screen with a chime:
MissJulie: hi?
I smiled and felt an unusual warmth. I knew who that was, of course. Who else would create a screenname based on a Strindberg play? Eagerly, I typed back my reply:
Heffie: Hey, Misty! So good to hear from you! How was Cuba?
For the first month of summer vacation, from the last time Misty and I saw one another through Oedipus/Antigone and Studio and all that, Misty was out of reach, studying abroad in Cuba. I had completely forgotten she was back by then, and her presence, even as letters on a computer screen, was a mightily welcome one.
MissJulie: oh my god, it was soooo awesome. i can't wait to go back someday
Heffie: And now you're back in the land of beer and cheese?
Wisconsin— a single day's drive from Washington DC if you started way early and didn't stop for gas and food or bathroom breaks or… ok, there's no way in hell anyone could make it there in one day. It's a long-ass drive. And in this northern state I'd never even visited was a girl who had a crush on me. She had a crush on me . The thought hadn't really sunk in yet. She told me she liked me, and when she was topless, no less! Hugh would have been proud. From that point on, for the rest of the summer, we would talk via IM virtually every night.
We would chat and joke up to all hours. A typical conversation would consist of us going on about movies and actors…
MissJulie: have you seen The Dreamers?
Heffie: Is that the latest Bertolucci movie? No, not yet. Is it good?
MissJulie: it's so wonderful. it's one of my favorite movies ever. michael pitt is in it. oh my god, so hot.
Heffie: Do I know him?
MissJulie: um… maybe? he was tommy gnosis in hedwig and the angry inch
Heffie: Oh yeah, totally!
MissJulie: he actually reminds me of you
Heffie: Really?
MissJulie: a lot. yes
Heffie: Well. I'm flattered ;)
… and from there we'd shift to a bit of flirting…
Heffie: The Dreamers, that's the movie about movie geeks who have a threesome, right?
MissJulie: yeah, it's really hot
Heffie: If only being a movie geek in real life could have such perks.
MissJulie: totally, yeah
Heffie: you ever think about having a threesome?
MissJulie: oh yeah, sometimes
Heffie: with two guys or with another girl?
MissJulie: either way. i'm bi. it'd be totally hot either way
Heffie: That would be totally hot. ;)
… which would, in turn, quickly give way to our own neuroses…
Heffie: Except that I'm so insecure, I'm not sure if I could do a threesome. I think unless both of the girls were constantly lavishing attention on me, I'd start to feel neglected.
MissJulie: yeah, me too. i'd start wondering if the other person was getting more attention than me
Heffie: What if they got so interested in having sex with each other that they just decided to leave me out?
MissJulie: i'd certainly be worrying about that
Heffie: :(
… which, lest we get too insecure for the other person, we would turn back to our particular brand of flirty humor before it went too far.
Heffie: Wow. You're an insecure mess of neuroses just like me.
MissJulie: yeah, I know.
Heffie: Maybe we should have a threesome after all, just to have someone there to be our anchor, y'know? Someone to say, "Hey now guys, relax. It's all right. Nothing to worry about. Everything's going to be just fine. Now let's go back to shagging like crazed weasels."
MissJulie: LOL
MissJulie: i'm so adding that to my user profile
Heffie: ;)
MissJulie: <3
Oh, Instant Messenger. Such a staple of the short-attention-span pop youth culture, the kind of thing I had absolutely no use for, even looked down upon, for years there. And then I actually started making friends my own age and, damn it, you get sucked in! Soon you're throwing emoticons and things like "lol" around without irony, until you're forced to the grim realization that you've become a normal kid for someone your age. I probably would have hated myself if I weren't having such a great time talking to Misty.
Over all the conversations we had, we kept finding more bizarre kinships and shared interests, getting so similar at times to the point of eeriness. But, y'know, eerie in a good way. We would discuss the awesomeness of the director Werner Herzog, and of times like the infamous instance where Herzog and his mad star Klaus Kinski were, at one point on the set, actually plotting to kill one another. Or maybe we'd delve into discussion of symbolism and homoerotic subtext of Ravenous , which she had come to seriously adore since I showed it to her.
So it was between us over those months, talking and joking and occasionally flirting, insomuch as we were capable of suspending our mutual bashfulness to even attempt to flirt. I didn't realize it at the time, but if you were to just have looked at our IM conversations rather than seen me in person at any other point that summer, you never would have thought anything was wrong.
While I was so willing to spread my misery to my friends, my mother, even my father (since it seems to be a trait of actors in such situations to react by flinging one's arms open, getting up on stage, and exclaiming, "HEY! LOOK AT ME, WORLD! I'M IN PAIN! "), I never once told Misty what was going on in my heart, not even when she asked how I was. But then, most of us are lying when we we're asked how we are and we reply, "I'm fine," aren't we? Life is too complex to be boiled down to "fine," but then, they don't ask you because they actually want to hear about the shit in your life. So at most, I'd give her a brief, "eh, well, I've been better" during the preliminary greetings, but otherwise, I absolutely wanted to keep her out of that drama.
Part of it was because I genuinely enjoyed the repartee that Misty and I shared. Hell, I loved our conversations, which over those months quickly became much more active and social since our awkward first interactions back during that last week at college. Our conversations were the only reprieve I had from my own misery, the only times I wasn't thinking about everything I wanted to say to Tammy when… if… I saw her later that year. I wanted to keep Tammy firmly out of at least one place in my life.
But that wasn't all of it. I didn't want to tell Misty because I was afraid of scaring her off. Of revealing even a peek of my baggage and pain to this girl and freaking her out. I mean, my parents were stuck with me; I was in no danger of losing them, so I didn't bother to conceal my every waking second of misery. I tried to hold back some around my friends for similar reasons, but I was protected by the knowledge that they were friends before I even met Tammy, and even if they were sick of me now, my true friends would stick by me till I got over it ("get over it," oh, that hated phrase…). But Misty was something new, something different. I just didn't know what yet.
I didn't know if I was even attracted to her. I suppose that sounds strange… it really should just be a question of you either do or you don't, but I genuinely didn't know. My memory of her features began to fade almost as soon as we parted ways, and were further dulled as the stuff with Tammy finally crashed and burned. Was Misty pretty? Her hair was lovely, yes, I recalled that. But her face, her body, all impressions vanished away like wisps of smoke. It's hard to distinctly remember a person who lived their whole life like a ghost, as I would learn much later on.
Yet over the months that we talked during those long IM conversations (never on the phone, as normal people would; she claimed to stink at phone conversation, which was fine by me since I didn't want to pony up the long distance charges), we grew closer and closer. I never had a bond with anyone like that before, not with any of my closest friends in my life, not even with Dave. It seems almost absurd to try to put it into words even now.
After Misty and I first met, I told all my friends in the Rudes about her, mainly to share the absurd circumstances of the actual meeting. "A beautiful drunk topless girl told me she loved me!" Things like that just kinda beg to be shared, don't they? I still couldn't bring myself to entirely believe that this girl actually had a crush on me. I would tell them all with the insinuation that even though things with Tammy were doomed—that damned word again—there was hope on the horizon with this strange new Misty girl.
For a time, I thought she might actually be my first girlfriend. Not a lover, not an affair, not a "special friend" or any of that bullshit, but a real girlfriend. I couldn't even wrap my brain around the concept. The word was so foreign, "girlfriend," something I'd never known. All that I had known was friendship, that was all. Friendship and lust, occasionally at the same time, but I had no idea what I would have to feel to actually have a relationship with someone. I had no idea what I felt for this strange Aryan princess with whom I was facelessly and voicelessly communicating half a country away.
And besides all that, there was still Tammy. Still on my mind, still in my heart, still under my skin like a festering splinter. Tammy.
I didn't know if I was attracted to Misty or not. I didn't know if anything would come of the two of us in that way. Hell, I didn't know if she'd still be attracted to me once she got to really know me. What I did know is that, no matter what happened, I had a bond with this girl that I'd never had, and may never have again, with anyone else I'd ever known. I had a best friend for life.
And then, before I could realize it, September was around the corner. Senior year. To think it was already here. Seemed like SimFreshman was only yesterday. And it occurred to me, I never did give Jaki her 3-am-I'm-getting-a-blowjob call. I really should do that one of these days. I know she's still waiting.
I was at Studio, being Intern Lackey Boy for one of the last times when I pulled out my wallet to buy a bag of chips at the local 7-11 and noticed something was missing from amid the business and credit cards. After a bit of thought, I tracked down Intern Girl Three to talk with her privately.
Three was the most attractive of the Intern Girls, with long dark hair in a ponytail and a quiet, reserved look on her face at most times. This was the kind of girl who lives her life playing her cards close to her chest. She was smart, but didn't flaunt her intelligence, and—intentionally or not—did her best to disappear into the background whenever possible (in many ways like Misty, now that I think about it). Let the actors have the spotlight; she'll be perfectly content being the person standing behind, doing the shining and the sounds and the set and everything else. The actors may get the glory, but it's people like her who'll run the show. I don't even remember her name.
"Hey," I said, as politely neutral as I could manage, "May I have my picture back?"
"What?" she responded, noncommittally.
"The photo of me and Tammy. I want it back." She said nothing for a moment, and I said,
"I realized yesterday that I didn't have it anymore. You were the last person to have it when it was passed around the table. I never got it back. So may I have it back, please?"
She shot me a hard look for a long moment. I just looked back and waited patiently. She broke the stare, sighing and turning away as she reached into her pocket. She pulled the frayed 3x5 photo out of her wallet, nestled in between her cards like it was in mine, and grudgingly handed it back to me. I felt a brief and slight possessive tug when I took hold of it, then it was mine again.
"Thank you," I said.
"You shouldn't be carrying it," she said, quietly and sternly. "You should throw it out."
"Why didn't you throw it out yourself?"
"I don't know," she said, a strange guilt in her voice. "I should have. Guess I just forgot."
I considered this and nodded. "Well. I appreciate it. What you did, I mean. I do appreciate it."
Her mouth tightened a bit. Her eyes cast downward and she nodded. "Sure."
"Listen. I'll be all right. Really. I know what I'm doing."
Another little nod. Small and reserved.
"Sure."
To Be Continued...
Here it is. The final chapter of the first HEFNER MONOLOGUES book. This was one of the most difficult things I have ever written (not for school), but I think I pulled it off.
Please read and let me know your thoughts. I am hoping that I have a book here, a book that I can send to literary agents.
For those who haven't read the previous versions, you read them (in glorious unedited, typo-ridden format!) here: The Secret Origin of the Hefner Monologues, The Second Chapter That (Still) Doesn't Have A Title, and Worth It: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
HUGE thanks to
kmousie for editing and reformatting this. You utterly rule, my dear. There's a rather common belief that there are no such things as happy endings. Ray Bradbury took the idea a bit further when he said, "There are no such things as happy endings, but there's a hell of a lot of joy in being alive." Neither statement has been far from my mind at any given moment.
Because obviously, the only true ending is death. And no matter how noble or heroic or tender, death is always kind of a downer, isn't it? But not all stories end in death, that's the thing. No matter how hard some self-important budding writers in Freshman Creative Writing try to rebel and defy convention, there's kind of a set system to how these things work. There's the set up, the conflict, the development, the climax, and the resolution. Epilogue optional, but not necessary. Wrap it up and put a bow on it, that's the formula for a story. Stories which, I might add, don't all end in death, yet they end nonetheless, do they not?
But that still doesn't address the idea that there are no such things as happy endings. Happy endings are criticized as devices of fairy tales to make the audience feel all warm and fuzzy, a comforting escape from a cruel, indifferent reality where Prince Charming never rides in, the Cavalry doesn't arrive, Superman doesn't save the day, and love most definitely does not triumph over all.
Because here's the thing, when you really get to the heart of the matter: unless death is involved (and hell, sometimes even then), when is a story ever really over? When does anything ever truly end?
I had thought that with the card and the rose petals, by having the last word, that the story with Tammy would be over. The End. But life has a way of moving on, even if you yourself aren't going with it. Sometimes that means getting on with your life, no matter how firmly you wish to cling to your past. And sometimes it means that no matter how much you want to escape your present and move on, life demands that you must deal with your shit first, because if you don't, you ain't going nowhere.
Oedipus/Antigone had wrapped, and the summer of Tammy began. She would be on my mind every waking hour of every day for those next few months and even beyond, with seemingly every little thing reminding me of her. Even things that had nothing to do with Tammy reminded me of Tammy. It was like, "Hey, look. A screwdriver. OH, TAMMY! SOB!"
As I analytically observed my own misery, carefully taking down mental notes like Jane Goodall studying some particularly angst-filled ape, I was struck by one particular observation. I discovered that when you're heartbroken, the radio becomes hazardous material. Dare I say, radioactive. It became one of many metaphorical salts to my one great big open metaphorical wound, because suddenly, all the songs began to make sense! Horrible, horrible sense! And I mean all the songs. I'm not the only one who does this, right? I mean, you just sit there, listening to some song, sobbing and thinking, "Oh, god, it's true! It's all true! Oh Tammy! I want to be your sledgehammer! Why don't you call my name? Wahhhhh! *sniffle!* Sledgehammer!"
A lot of people eat when they're depressed, but me, I didn't want anything to do with food. During O/A, I couldn't even finish a frickin' taco. It was like, after a couple bites, my whole digestive tract all the way up to my throat seemed to shut down and say, "Sorry folks, we're closed, try again tomorrow. No promises, though." But I tried to reason it away, thinking, "Hey, at least maybe I'll actually lose some weight" but when I looked in the mirror, all I seemed to be losing was my hair.
I tried to focus my time and energy on work, maybe throw myself back in the Hefner Monologues, but couldn't bring myself to create anything. The Hefner Monologues, which had started out as a possible salvation, the only bright side of all the drama, now seemed like an impossibility. To even think about the wedding story, that absurd little moment, was almost too painful to bear. And worse, there was no way I would be in any mood or position to tell it, to perform it as I once had. The humor, the silliness, the romanticism, all of it was dashed and replaced by misery. For all I knew, the Hefner Monologues were dead. I needed a change. Or more specifically, I needed a life.
I landed a summer internship at the Studio Theatre, one of the most famous professional theatres in Washington, DC. As I was jobless for the summer anyway, I figured what better way to devote my time and energy of an entire lonesome summer getting a first-hand experience behind the scenes in the world of professional theatre? As a result, I would already well understand when, years later, I would learn that there's a little saying in the world of professional theatre in Washington: "Friends don't let friends work at Studio."
It should come as no surprise to those knowledgeable about internships to discover that I didn't spend quite as much time as I'd hoped I'd be doing. Which is to say, to learn the ins and outs of an industry where I, God willing, might one day earn my living. No, I was employed in all manner of tedious busywork, the kinds of jobs that they don't even pay people to do. Internships are the only form of slave labor that comes with college credit.
For eight hours, five days a week, I worked in the shop, hung lights, stuffed envelopes, scrubbed floors, lugged furniture, cut wood, cut steel, sanded down set pieces, set up set pieces, quite literally broke down set pieces, and scrubbed stray bits of paint off the theatre floors. I didn't mind that last task so much because I spent that time totally high from the fumes of the all-purpose goop-remover I had to use. It was a noxious liquid that came in a small industrial-type container with no label, just a serial number stenciled on the side. As I used it, I had to keep changing pairs of rubber gloves because within ten minutes the gloves would start to melt off.
My disinterest in the Hefner Monologues proved to be just as well, as the labor left me mentally and emotionally exhausted by the end of each day. That may not sound like much, but bear in mind that I am an artist, and therefore not cut out for real work. What was worse, my primary reasons for taking the "job," reasons beyond gaining experience as an actor, completely backfired. I was drained of all the energy to think about all the things that gave me pleasure, the amusing distractions that I used to get me through the tough times, stripping away everything and exposing the tender underbelly of all my dark, pained thoughts. Hell, maybe if that wasn't now my default mood, the pervading thoughts underneath everything else, maybe I actually might have been paying attention to the internship enough to get something out of it. Well, I mean something other than, "That stuff will eat into your skin if you don't wash it off right away. And even then, kiss those first two layers bye-bye."
It was a month into the internship that I decided to give the Hefner Monologues another shot. It occurred to me that, hey, maybe the reason I feel so lousy is actually because I haven't done the Hefner Monologues lately! Maybe it was exercise, that if you did it you felt great and if you stopped you felt lousy… and when you were feeling lousy, boy oh boy, it was the last thing you wanted to do. But maybe it was worth a shot. Especially since I think I had started to get a tolerance for the goop-off fumes.
Since everyone around me, including the Rudes and my parents, had already heard all the Hefner Monologues I had in my arsenal, I decided to find a fresh audience in my fellow interns. These were young men and women who, like me, were all of college age, there to gain experience and connections in the wide world of professional theatre. Unlike me, however, they were aspiring set designers, costume artists, lighting technicians, and so on—not a damn actor among them. They might as well have been taxidermists. I felt like I was at high school again, my prospective peers all nice enough and well-meaning kids with creative outlooks on life, fine for small talk and such, but not a single true connection among them.
One day's work had me sitting at a table with three of the other interns, all girls, as we stuffed envelopes for the theatre's mailing list. We were putting together the standard announcement packages for the new season, which is to say one booklet listing the upcoming shows and one flyer coolly and confidently asking the reader for money. We had a whole day's work ahead of us, which the girls predominantly spent talking about Friends and Will and Grace reruns. If I needed a final nudge to go for another shot, beyond just me seeking to exorcise my pain and maybe establishing a connection with these girls, then doing something to stop hearing about the latest gut-busting adventure of Joey and Rachel and company was bloody well it.
"Hey, so, I've got a story for you," I said. Ok, I admit, it wasn't the smoothest transition to an opening line in the world, but it seemed to do the trick. I'd made allusions to women before to these girls, an off-handed remark here or a "Well, I've been feeling better" there, but nothing explicit. In my swelled head of hopes, I had been banking that those little scraps that piqued their curiosity like teaser trailers for the big event that was finally, finally here.
"This has informally come to be known as 'The Wedding Story.'"
I tried to get back into the old flow again, 'in-character' if you will, just like it was back before my friends at the college cafeteria or in front of the Rudes seven months earlier just before Christmas. I had their initial interest, that was good, but if I could just get them into it, get them to hang on my every word just like the others used to, that's when I'd finally have it again. That bond between performer and audience would be mine once more and it would be my story, my life and my telling of it, which made it happen.
"This is her," I said, producing the 3x5 of Tammy and me from Birthday Ball. "It's the only picture I have of her. It doesn't really do her justice…"
"This?" one of the girls asked incredulously after I handed her the picture. She frowned with a touch of disappointment and some apathy before passing it around the table. The others echoed similar unimpressed sentiments. I don't know if I could read it in their faces or if I just imagined their thoughts, but they seemed to say, This is it? This is the reason this guy's always so depressed all the time? I don't know whom I should dislike more: the girl for what she did to him or John for going so crazy, all for just… just this!
"Um…" I said, uncomfortably trying to find the rhythm again. Or perhaps for the first time. "Her, uh, name was Tammy. And… uh, well, here was the thing about Tammy. She was engaged, you see. Well, not engaged. Engaged to be engaged was, uh, more like it. The guy's name was Bryan, and—"
"Wait," one of the girls interrupted, "She was engaged to another guy when she got involved with you?"
"W-well, yes, but—"
"Why the hell would you go for a girl like that?" another intern girl asked, squinting her eyes in disgust.
"Er… wuh… well, uh, hold on, I-I mean there's more to the story than just—"
"God, what a slut," the third girl said. The others chimed in with similar sentiments.
"Hey, now," I said, beads of sweat forming on my forehead, "That's not fair. You haven't even heard the whole story yet."
"Why are you defending her?" Intern Girl Three asked, her eyes narrowing now as well.
"I… look, there's more to the story if you'd just listen."
This hardly seemed to satisfy them, but they reluctantly let me continue with the story. I took a moment to collect myself, then pressed forward again. The girls didn't show much reaction beyond a polite humoring at best and befuddled frowns at worst. Still, the more I told, the more I dared not to stop. If I could just spin the story just right, get them into to tragic romanticism of the moment, then hit them with that punchline, then they'd get it, and they'd laugh and laugh, just like the others did.
"So there we were on the dance floor, somehow making a slow dance out of Guns 'N Roses' 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door,' which I guess works, it's just not a choice that usually comes to mind. We're there together, and it's beautiful. Simply beautiful. After a long, long moment has passed, I lean into her and I say what'd I'd been fighting back from saying for the past two weeks. I whispered, 'This is probably the worst thing to say right now, but… I do love you.'"
I took a beat for dramatic effect, but just as I was ready to say, "And her hands dug into my back and she buried her head in my shoulder…" as I always did, Intern Girl One exclaimed:
"Oh god, you told her you loved her?! You're right, that was the worst thing to say! Damn!"
Completely thrown, I couldn't even manage a response before Intern Girl Three chimed in with agreement: "Seriously! If that'd been me and someone told me they loved me, I'd have just been all, 'Ooo-kay! Moving over here now, thanks!'"
"But…" was all I could get out before Intern Girl Two interrupted me. It was just as well; even if they gave me the chance to talk, I don't know what I could have said.
"Oh, I know! That actually happened to me!"
"Oh gawd, really?"
"Yeah, seriously! There was this guy I'd been on, like, three dates with…"
And so they continued their discussions back and forth along those themes. Maybe one or two started sharing stories of their own, but I wasn't listening anymore. A few moments passed before I gave up and silently returned to stuffing envelopes while the girls talked and giggled and laughed.
I gave it one final, feeble shot at the day's end. As we were all packing up and getting ready to go, I turned to Intern Girl One and said, "There was actually more to the story than that. I didn't get to the punchline. It wasn't just all… angst and wallowing and… sentiment. Y'know? There was a point."
She wasn't interested, that was clear. But she was polite enough, as they were all polite enough and never really rude outright.
"Ok, what was it?" she said, and it sounded like a tired Queen granting a boon to a subject, giving me permission to go ahead and finish.
And right then I knew that it didn't matter. It couldn't be explained any more. Stories like that can't just be picked up and left off, but rather need to be experienced as a whole. Or not at all. The moment had passed, if it had even been there at all.
I left to walk to the bus station alone as I did every day. I never tried again with them, and the Hefner Monologues were dead. Dead as Good Friday. Of course, obviously they wouldn't be dead forever, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this right now. But at the time, it was The End for them. And really, when is anything trulyThe End, right?
I never again attempted to establish a rapport with my fellow intern lackey slaves at Studio. It would almost be like high school again, five days a week of politeness and small talk and busywork, all utterly insubstantial. When September would come, and it couldn't have come soon enough, I knew that we would never speak to one another again.
And what of the Rudes, my true friends? Even if they weren't totally busy with their production of Hamlet, the memories of what I went through during Oedipus/Antigone were still too fresh, the pain having left a kind of trauma stain upon them all. It wasn't just Tammy I missed; I wanted a connection and found one nowhere. Maybe because there was no one there. Or maybe because I was shutting out the world myself.
Yet all the while, I clung with the desperation of an addict to one thought above all others. You see, I had a plan. A goal I had established near the end of Oedipus, at the very worst of my maddening sorrow, the way I kept myself focused and maybe even kept myself sane. One thing to keep me looking ahead.
You see, while the internship hardly proved helpful or informative, I had a soft spot for Studio Theatre. Years before, back when I was in high school, Mom took me to see our favorite local actor in a Studio Theatre production. It was a show with which I fell absolutely, hopelessly in love, a role that I put at the top of my "roles to perform before I die," alongside Hamlet, Cyrano de Bergerac, and the Green Lantern. The play was a little-known Canadian pitch-black comedy called Vigil, by Morris Panych.
I don't know exactly what it was about that play that so appealed to me. Perhaps it was the main character—an awkward and decidedly not-masculine guy who was rendered caustic, sarcastic, deeply cynical and bitter-as-marmite after a lifetime of being rejected, overlooked, ignored, and forgotten.
Perhaps it was the evil, evil tone of the comedy, the vicious little soul-crushingly morbid twists, almost too horrible to be funny. Perhaps it was the overreaching theme of a man with so many issues, now finally meeting the last person with any ties to his painful past. A single person at whom he can lash out, on whom he can dump his pain, from whom he can seek explanations for all the questions of "why" he had been asking for all those years. And finally, perhaps, someone he can connect with for the first time in his miserable, wasted life. To connect with… or condemn… as he sees fit. This is assuming, of course, that he can survive his own short-sightedness and selfishness. Which is thus where the hi-larity comes in.
For all those reasons and more, I adored that role and that play. And after five years of planning and hoping, I would finally, finally get my chance to realize my dream. That approaching November, in the fall semester of my senior year at Washington College, I would be performing Vigil for my thesis.
And that, I told myself over and over again, is when it would happen if everything went to plan.
That was when I would see Tammy again.
Now I'm pretty sure many of you are thinking, "Oh god, what did he do this time?! Why couldn't he just let it go?!" Trust me, I hear you. You gotta understand, during the fallout of O/A, I didn't even try to talk to Tammy. I knew it'd be futile, resulting only in more pain and hurting the show as a result. But I wanted to, god, how I wanted to. Because it's one thing to "know" in your head that something is not going to work, but quite another to deal with that acid-burning want in your gut screaming "DO IT! DO SOMETHING, FOR GOD'S SAKE, I CAN'T TAKE ANOTHER MINUTE OF THIS!" But that's the thing, isn't it? We absolutely can take it, do take it. Sometimes we don't know what we'd do without it.
And all the while, there was Tammy. Physically, no more than fifty feet away. She might as well have been on Mars. Most of the Rudes advised me to leave her alone, to wait a little while before I tried to contact her. Some said wait a couple weeks for things to cool down. Others suggested a month or two. And though none had the nerve to say so outright to my face, I knew that more than a couple preferred that I never even tried at all. Mourn and move on, but never be fool enough to even attempt to exhume that grave. If you try, what do you think you're gonna find?
It was dead and gone. It was doomed, as Tammy used to say to me over and over again. Doomed. Doomed, doomed, curse you, Reed Richards, doomed. The inevitable end had finally come, run its course as nature decreed, and that was that. Hell, even I thought that at the time. The End, right?
But at the very same time, I couldn't even allow to believe in that concept. You have to understand, I wasn't exactly trying to figure out how to get Tammy back. No, I wasn't that foolish. No, what we had was over, I understood that. This was different.
You see, if there's anything that keeps me going, it's hope. I'm not an optimist; I rather prefer to consider myself a 'hopeful pessimist.' I see the glass as half empty, sure… but one day, it will be full. That hope had always been my driving force, the hope that even if the situation is dire now and even if the current endeavor is doomed, eventually things will get better. By God or by chaos, things always had a way of working themselves out in the end.
Well, whenever that was.
Now my hope, which had always been a positive force in my life, was driving me along like a speeding car with the brakes cut, and I couldn't Bring myself to bail out. That dramatic final gesture with the card and the rose petals gave me the last word, but I was still cut off from her, adrift, filled with unanswered questions and unconfirmed suspicions eating away at me every day. There were too many things I wanted to know, to hear, to say and be said.
As the months went by, I would spend hours on end fantasizing about what would happen if I ever got to see her again. I'd refine the questions and the order I'd ask them in, rehearsing every line, knowing when to pause for effect, anything that would get the best reaction. I came up with a rough mental list of everything I would ask and say, including—
1. Why did you leave Bryan when you said you never would?
2. And for that matter, why did you leave Bryan for Van Breeman and not ME?!
3. And hey! For THAT matter… what's he got that I ain't got? (Because apparently years of influence from Looney Tunes cartoons and movies from the 40s infiltrated even my romantic angst.)
4. Did you ever love me?
5. Do you still love me?
And at the end of things, when we'd part ways, never to see one another again, I would be absolutely certain to give her this last bit, making sure she heard it face to face.
6. You will never find a guy as good as me.
Which was a big fat total bluff, of course. Going just by the odds alone, not to mention her general desirability, Tammy could easily find better guys than me. But saying it would be one last little jab, a final word that would give me some semblance of pride even as I nailed myself to the cross.
Thus was my list, more or less. It varied in content and structure over the months, depending on my mood. Sometimes in my head they sounded as accusatory as a Nazi torture interrogator, and sometimes they sounded and broken and pleading as the tortured prisoner. Sometimes the questions became a well-organized list, while most other times they were all lost in a jumble, an emotional blender with little rhyme or reason or organization. There were times when I'd think that if I did see her, what would come out of my mouth would have been something like, "Oh god Tammy why'd you do it leave me ever love me why hurts left Bryan not me love me anymore Breeman sucks I love you me best guy ow!!!"
No matter what form they took, the questions consumed me every minute of every day. Or that's how it felt anyway, when chances are we often feel worse than we actually are. But for all that, I was in no hurry. I could give her all the time and space that she needed, just as long as I knew I would get all that I wanted eventually. So my rational side struck peace accord with my crazed angst-ing miserable side to just hold off its aggression until exactly one month before Vigil.
October 15th, I said to myself. That's when I'll invite her to VIGIL. Just an invitation, we'll see what happens. If nothing comes of it, nothing comes of it, life goes on. Just see what happens.
As if to solidify that plan in my head, I found a certain CD at my local used-book store. Mandy Patinkin's "Dress Casual," a collection of show-tunes, innocuous enough to your average bookworm (as well as, chances are, you who are reading this right now). Now, I loved Mandy for more than just his immortal Princess Bride role, but I knew that Tammy had a very personal connection to the singer and this album in particular. She used to tell me about how, when she was little, she would listen to that album all the time. Her father used to play it for her, and she'd tell me about how much it meant to her, how those songs had faded into distant memories over time, and how sad she was that she could never find it. Which always confused me, because she knew as well as I did that it was easily available off the internet, but whatever. Maybe it was just another instance where she, like me, loved the tragedy.
But now here it was, right in my hands. I imagined the look on her face as I gave it to her, how she would squeak with glee just like she used to… no, no, she wouldn't. No, this time she would be struck dumb with surprise, rendered silent, ooh, maybe with tears in her eyes, yes. Then she would jump up and embrace me in those small, soft arms of hers, and thank me, thank you, Heffie, thank you so much.
October, man, I told myself again. If you see her, give it to her. Call it a gift or maybe a peace offering, whatever sounds good. Maybe that'll soften her up or something. If nothing else, it'll make her smile one more time. God, just to make her smile… just one more time.
And what if she doesn't come? You have to be realistic. Well… then, I guess… I guess you've got yourself a new CD to keep. Hell, who needs closure when you've got Inigo Montoya singing "Ya Got Trouble (in River City)," am I right? Am I right?
I spent those three months in a near-constant black hole, occasionally moving up a couple shades to a brown hole and maybe a darkish green hole with blue accents. Y'know, if I was feeling particularly perky. As my parents saw me nearly daily, they certainly took note of my moods, to say the least.
My mother and father had divorced back in the late 80s, but still lived within a few miles of one another. So even though I lived with my mother, I still saw my father frequently. In fact, if I hadn't been doing slave labor for Studio or gotten my job back at the comic book store I had worked at during my pre-college years, I would have likely spent every day at my father's house, just as I spent every night at my mother's. As is so often the case with the rich tapestry of human events, that is another of many such stories for another time.
My mother never believed in talking about problems or listening to others. She never saw the point. Why complain about something if you can't do anything about it? And if you can do something about it, why are you wasting your time complaining and not solving the problem?! To Mom's mind, there was no point worrying about being late if you were stuck in traffic; you might as well sit back and relax, 'cause you'll get there when you get there, bucko. And if there was nothing that could be done about your son's depression, there sure was no point talking about it!
Over the course of the Tammy saga itself, those months leading up to that summer, I had become increasingly more open and explicit in the stuff I shared with her. Graphically so, at a couple points. Hell, she talked about much worse with me over the years, I figured, hey, no harm. During that summer, however, I talked about it less and less. She appreciated that, I knew. Like some of the Rudes, she grew more and more impatient with my misery, hoping that I'd snap out of it and bloody well get on with my life, no matter how she knew that wouldn't happen, just couldn't happen yet, because we're not wired that way.
At least, so I desperately hoped. I hoped beyond hope that I was reacting like any of them would in the same situation. The only thing worse than the notion of not getting that closure was the notion that I was overreacting . Ok, in fairness, I overreact to everything. I'm a drama queen, craving the attention and validation of all. There, I admit it. I guess what I better mean is I feared that I was being unreasonable and crazed. I was in so much pain, but god, what if my friends and those around me were looking down at me for being so miserable and not getting better more quickly? What if people don't want to be around this sad, miserable blob of a boy? It wasn't just closure I sought so fervently, it was… well, it was validation.
"You should go to the gym," was all Mom could offer, could think to offer, by way of advice. Exercise was an action, it was doing something, and she kept singing the praises of the healing power of endorphins. Also, I'd spent my whole life running the gamut from pudgy to chunky. I hadn't checked a scale for over a year, but I had been 210 at last count (which may have been during Blue Surge ; the only thing worse than a naked, singing, dancing John Hefner is a naked, singing, dancing John Hefner with jiggling man-boobs and a gut). Mom hated my weight, just as she hated her mother's weight and her own weight, and had tried everything to get me to work out from gentle pushing to outright badgering to telling me I'd never get laid if I didn't get a six pack (and if I didn't stop wearing Green Lantern t-shirts).
"Go to the gym," she said. But even if I didn't already detest exercise with the burning hatred of a thousand baked potatoes, I didn't want to go simply because doing so just might, might mean I would feel better. Because when you're depressed, you want to stay depressed to validate your own misery. You feel like nothing less that a total reversal of the thing that caused your depression in the first place is going to cure you. And even then, even if you achieved that often-impossible goal, I don't know if it'd work. If you asked me, I wasn't going to be like that. No, I didn't "want" to be depressed. I wasn't planning to sit and wallow, no, I was going to move on. Just as soon as November 12th rolled around.
Seeing Tammy again was the one thing, to my mind, that would pull me up out of this depression. And I think a part of me realized that if exercise actually did work, if it did make me feel better, then I wouldn't need to see Tammy anymore. So I stayed at home and I went to Studio and I thought and planned on everything I was going to ask her when I saw her in the fall.
If my dear mother offered any insight on the situation, it was to reiterate Josh's words from back in October, words which had been on her mind for all the months I was on my downward slope. "We all know she's poison," he said. Which was true, they all did. And what's more, so did I. I knew exactly was I was getting myself into, and as much as my mother felt for me, I feared that she was thinking exactly what I was fearing myself—I had no one to blame but myself.
And then there was my father. At that point, I hadn't told my father anything at all about Tammy. I didn't even realize that by that point, I hadn't really asked my father for advice on anything, much less women. And really, if there was anyone to ask about women, why not him? I decided what the hell, let's see what he makes of the situation. After that, of course, I remembered why, exactly, I didn't usually ask his advice on such maters.
"Oh-ho-ho, trust me, John, I know all about women. Do… do you have any idea how many women I've… I've…" he hesitated for a moment, as if to consider if I was still too young, then went ahead with a bitter chuckle, "Do you know how many women I've fucked ?" He always had a way of emphasizing his curse words, imbuing an extra venom that they had lost when they became as commonplace as please and thank you. "Do you, John?" he asked. "Your mother made me count one time back when we were married. Then she made me stop when I got to sixty-seven."
My father was the head of the music department at Catholic University for thirty-six years, as well as a concert oboist. He received the finest training in the world at the Curtis Institute, and might have become one of the greatest players in the world if he hadn't hated the stress. He told me once that a study showed that the stress of an oboe player in concert was equal to that of a war pilot in a dogfight. He was a masterful player, beloved and admired by his peers, respected even by his tyrannical mentor.
Now the gout in his hands rendered it impossible for him to play anymore, and he didn't miss it one bit. The music, like the women, was all behind him, and he would have had it any other way. And oh, there were the women, yes there were. He was dazzlingly handsome, wickedly charming, and entirely charismatic. He was a Hefner through-and-though.
Between my father and my famous cousin, I felt decidedly like the odd Hefner out. There I was, a 21-year-old virgin, going completely bonkers over just one girl, the first girl not to see me as the unattractive unthreatening big sister, and no better off in my love life as a result.
What the hell kind of Hefner was I?! Where were the legions of women, swooning at the hem of my velvet bathrobe? Where was my mighty mansion, filled to the brim with movies, video games, caves that became swimming pools and rocks that were also speakers?! When I died, what kind of legacy would I leave behind? The name Hefner would forever be synonymous with pipes, pussy, and PJs, and the man himself would for decades on be as iconic and recognizable as Bugs Bunny. What could I possibly offer to counter that? Could I just imagine, in the not-too-distant-future, guys going around with Green Lantern T-Shirts and great bushy muttonchops, flailing their arms fashionably and remarking to one another, "Ah, I see you're sporting 'The Hefner' too?"
My only similarity to Hugh, it seemed, was my overwhelming passion for movies, comics, cartoons, and pop culture. That's the thing I've always liked about him: no matter all the success and the women, he's still just a geek at heart. I imagined that if we ever got the chance to talk again, we'd spend hours just geeking it out together, talking about old movies and talking about men like Will Eisner, Jack Cole, and Harvey Kurtzman. But Hugh was one of the only people who seemed more distant than Tammy. Besides all that, I wasn't him, nor was I my father. The comfort of a woman's touch would prove ever elusive, and that summer, I never felt more alone.
One day, I was typing away at my blog, undoubtedly writing another sob story entry—or, if I were lazy, just posting Leonard Cohen lyrics—when an Instant Message popped up on the screen with a chime:
MissJulie: hi?
I smiled and felt an unusual warmth. I knew who that was, of course. Who else would create a screenname based on a Strindberg play? Eagerly, I typed back my reply:
Heffie: Hey, Misty! So good to hear from you! How was Cuba?
For the first month of summer vacation, from the last time Misty and I saw one another through Oedipus/Antigone and Studio and all that, Misty was out of reach, studying abroad in Cuba. I had completely forgotten she was back by then, and her presence, even as letters on a computer screen, was a mightily welcome one.
MissJulie: oh my god, it was soooo awesome. i can't wait to go back someday
Heffie: And now you're back in the land of beer and cheese?
Wisconsin— a single day's drive from Washington DC if you started way early and didn't stop for gas and food or bathroom breaks or… ok, there's no way in hell anyone could make it there in one day. It's a long-ass drive. And in this northern state I'd never even visited was a girl who had a crush on me. She had a crush on me . The thought hadn't really sunk in yet. She told me she liked me, and when she was topless, no less! Hugh would have been proud. From that point on, for the rest of the summer, we would talk via IM virtually every night.
We would chat and joke up to all hours. A typical conversation would consist of us going on about movies and actors…
MissJulie: have you seen The Dreamers?
Heffie: Is that the latest Bertolucci movie? No, not yet. Is it good?
MissJulie: it's so wonderful. it's one of my favorite movies ever. michael pitt is in it. oh my god, so hot.
Heffie: Do I know him?
MissJulie: um… maybe? he was tommy gnosis in hedwig and the angry inch
Heffie: Oh yeah, totally!
MissJulie: he actually reminds me of you
Heffie: Really?
MissJulie: a lot. yes
Heffie: Well. I'm flattered ;)
… and from there we'd shift to a bit of flirting…
Heffie: The Dreamers, that's the movie about movie geeks who have a threesome, right?
MissJulie: yeah, it's really hot
Heffie: If only being a movie geek in real life could have such perks.
MissJulie: totally, yeah
Heffie: you ever think about having a threesome?
MissJulie: oh yeah, sometimes
Heffie: with two guys or with another girl?
MissJulie: either way. i'm bi. it'd be totally hot either way
Heffie: That would be totally hot. ;)
… which would, in turn, quickly give way to our own neuroses…
Heffie: Except that I'm so insecure, I'm not sure if I could do a threesome. I think unless both of the girls were constantly lavishing attention on me, I'd start to feel neglected.
MissJulie: yeah, me too. i'd start wondering if the other person was getting more attention than me
Heffie: What if they got so interested in having sex with each other that they just decided to leave me out?
MissJulie: i'd certainly be worrying about that
Heffie: :(
… which, lest we get too insecure for the other person, we would turn back to our particular brand of flirty humor before it went too far.
Heffie: Wow. You're an insecure mess of neuroses just like me.
MissJulie: yeah, I know.
Heffie: Maybe we should have a threesome after all, just to have someone there to be our anchor, y'know? Someone to say, "Hey now guys, relax. It's all right. Nothing to worry about. Everything's going to be just fine. Now let's go back to shagging like crazed weasels."
MissJulie: LOL
MissJulie: i'm so adding that to my user profile
Heffie: ;)
MissJulie: <3
Oh, Instant Messenger. Such a staple of the short-attention-span pop youth culture, the kind of thing I had absolutely no use for, even looked down upon, for years there. And then I actually started making friends my own age and, damn it, you get sucked in! Soon you're throwing emoticons and things like "lol" around without irony, until you're forced to the grim realization that you've become a normal kid for someone your age. I probably would have hated myself if I weren't having such a great time talking to Misty.
Over all the conversations we had, we kept finding more bizarre kinships and shared interests, getting so similar at times to the point of eeriness. But, y'know, eerie in a good way. We would discuss the awesomeness of the director Werner Herzog, and of times like the infamous instance where Herzog and his mad star Klaus Kinski were, at one point on the set, actually plotting to kill one another. Or maybe we'd delve into discussion of symbolism and homoerotic subtext of Ravenous , which she had come to seriously adore since I showed it to her.
So it was between us over those months, talking and joking and occasionally flirting, insomuch as we were capable of suspending our mutual bashfulness to even attempt to flirt. I didn't realize it at the time, but if you were to just have looked at our IM conversations rather than seen me in person at any other point that summer, you never would have thought anything was wrong.
While I was so willing to spread my misery to my friends, my mother, even my father (since it seems to be a trait of actors in such situations to react by flinging one's arms open, getting up on stage, and exclaiming, "HEY! LOOK AT ME, WORLD! I'M IN PAIN! "), I never once told Misty what was going on in my heart, not even when she asked how I was. But then, most of us are lying when we we're asked how we are and we reply, "I'm fine," aren't we? Life is too complex to be boiled down to "fine," but then, they don't ask you because they actually want to hear about the shit in your life. So at most, I'd give her a brief, "eh, well, I've been better" during the preliminary greetings, but otherwise, I absolutely wanted to keep her out of that drama.
Part of it was because I genuinely enjoyed the repartee that Misty and I shared. Hell, I loved our conversations, which over those months quickly became much more active and social since our awkward first interactions back during that last week at college. Our conversations were the only reprieve I had from my own misery, the only times I wasn't thinking about everything I wanted to say to Tammy when… if… I saw her later that year. I wanted to keep Tammy firmly out of at least one place in my life.
But that wasn't all of it. I didn't want to tell Misty because I was afraid of scaring her off. Of revealing even a peek of my baggage and pain to this girl and freaking her out. I mean, my parents were stuck with me; I was in no danger of losing them, so I didn't bother to conceal my every waking second of misery. I tried to hold back some around my friends for similar reasons, but I was protected by the knowledge that they were friends before I even met Tammy, and even if they were sick of me now, my true friends would stick by me till I got over it ("get over it," oh, that hated phrase…). But Misty was something new, something different. I just didn't know what yet.
I didn't know if I was even attracted to her. I suppose that sounds strange… it really should just be a question of you either do or you don't, but I genuinely didn't know. My memory of her features began to fade almost as soon as we parted ways, and were further dulled as the stuff with Tammy finally crashed and burned. Was Misty pretty? Her hair was lovely, yes, I recalled that. But her face, her body, all impressions vanished away like wisps of smoke. It's hard to distinctly remember a person who lived their whole life like a ghost, as I would learn much later on.
Yet over the months that we talked during those long IM conversations (never on the phone, as normal people would; she claimed to stink at phone conversation, which was fine by me since I didn't want to pony up the long distance charges), we grew closer and closer. I never had a bond with anyone like that before, not with any of my closest friends in my life, not even with Dave. It seems almost absurd to try to put it into words even now.
After Misty and I first met, I told all my friends in the Rudes about her, mainly to share the absurd circumstances of the actual meeting. "A beautiful drunk topless girl told me she loved me!" Things like that just kinda beg to be shared, don't they? I still couldn't bring myself to entirely believe that this girl actually had a crush on me. I would tell them all with the insinuation that even though things with Tammy were doomed—that damned word again—there was hope on the horizon with this strange new Misty girl.
For a time, I thought she might actually be my first girlfriend. Not a lover, not an affair, not a "special friend" or any of that bullshit, but a real girlfriend. I couldn't even wrap my brain around the concept. The word was so foreign, "girlfriend," something I'd never known. All that I had known was friendship, that was all. Friendship and lust, occasionally at the same time, but I had no idea what I would have to feel to actually have a relationship with someone. I had no idea what I felt for this strange Aryan princess with whom I was facelessly and voicelessly communicating half a country away.
And besides all that, there was still Tammy. Still on my mind, still in my heart, still under my skin like a festering splinter. Tammy.
I didn't know if I was attracted to Misty or not. I didn't know if anything would come of the two of us in that way. Hell, I didn't know if she'd still be attracted to me once she got to really know me. What I did know is that, no matter what happened, I had a bond with this girl that I'd never had, and may never have again, with anyone else I'd ever known. I had a best friend for life.
And then, before I could realize it, September was around the corner. Senior year. To think it was already here. Seemed like SimFreshman was only yesterday. And it occurred to me, I never did give Jaki her 3-am-I'm-getting-a-blowjob call. I really should do that one of these days. I know she's still waiting.
I was at Studio, being Intern Lackey Boy for one of the last times when I pulled out my wallet to buy a bag of chips at the local 7-11 and noticed something was missing from amid the business and credit cards. After a bit of thought, I tracked down Intern Girl Three to talk with her privately.
Three was the most attractive of the Intern Girls, with long dark hair in a ponytail and a quiet, reserved look on her face at most times. This was the kind of girl who lives her life playing her cards close to her chest. She was smart, but didn't flaunt her intelligence, and—intentionally or not—did her best to disappear into the background whenever possible (in many ways like Misty, now that I think about it). Let the actors have the spotlight; she'll be perfectly content being the person standing behind, doing the shining and the sounds and the set and everything else. The actors may get the glory, but it's people like her who'll run the show. I don't even remember her name.
"Hey," I said, as politely neutral as I could manage, "May I have my picture back?"
"What?" she responded, noncommittally.
"The photo of me and Tammy. I want it back." She said nothing for a moment, and I said,
"I realized yesterday that I didn't have it anymore. You were the last person to have it when it was passed around the table. I never got it back. So may I have it back, please?"
She shot me a hard look for a long moment. I just looked back and waited patiently. She broke the stare, sighing and turning away as she reached into her pocket. She pulled the frayed 3x5 photo out of her wallet, nestled in between her cards like it was in mine, and grudgingly handed it back to me. I felt a brief and slight possessive tug when I took hold of it, then it was mine again.
"Thank you," I said.
"You shouldn't be carrying it," she said, quietly and sternly. "You should throw it out."
"Why didn't you throw it out yourself?"
"I don't know," she said, a strange guilt in her voice. "I should have. Guess I just forgot."
I considered this and nodded. "Well. I appreciate it. What you did, I mean. I do appreciate it."
Her mouth tightened a bit. Her eyes cast downward and she nodded. "Sure."
"Listen. I'll be all right. Really. I know what I'm doing."
Another little nod. Small and reserved.
"Sure."
To Be Continued...
