Day 2 of a Long Weekend

My mood changes, ostensibly. Green lights tell me everything is go. The streets are crowded once again. They're always so, but this time I just push my way through, past the nameless faces. None of them are you. Having taken something from the medicine cabinet, I don't know what it was, I feel like a wild thing, all on fire and ready to burn something. It's invigorating. This works for about an hour, but then I think how I would like to share this experience with you. You know, I believe, for a little while at least, that I am able to see everything more clearly. I realize I've been afraid to show you how I truly feel, and I want to admit I have made some terrible mistakes.
In my head I'm having this conversation with you, when for no good reason at all, out loud, I say, "You never had to doubt my feelings." A woman with a shopping bag looks at me as if I'm just another crazy man. I'm asking you to forget the reality of what happened. Let it go. Please. Forget what reason tells you, and feel what I feel in this moment. She doesn't know me. She doesn't know us. Shaking her head and tut-tutting, as if to wither me, she doesn't realize her actions cause me mixed emotions. I'm also sensing that I must have taken something left over from our college days of staying up all night to study. Remember when we used to pop a few No-Doze and drink liters of coke to cram? I know if you were here with me, you would find it amusing to see how it affects me now.

Day 1 of a Long Weekend

I didn't know what to do with myself. I walked through crowded city streets. Red lights everywhere told me to stop what I was doing. Go home. To what? Later, with a bowl of popcorn that tasted like chalk, I sat in front of the tube, and flipped the remote. What was happening on the box didn't catch my interest, but the dialogues reminded me of things we'd said. Like the times you asked me why I felt the need to smoke something before we went out with friends and I pretended not to hear you. I would ask you if you'd seen my black shoes, or if you knew where my jeans were. When the boyfriend in the sitcom played stupid, it was me I was seeing. When I thought back on what happened, you know, I realized I was thick-headed. I was blind to my own self-centeredness and to your needs. I thought I would be a fool to get so involved, to open up my heart and have it broken. Little did I know that the hurt experienced is the essence of being in love. All I expected was eventual jealousy and bitterness. I couldn't find the words to tell you and you probably wouldn't have believed me then if I had. I went to bed earlier than usual feeling as if I were the one who was hurt.

NLE at the POB

The job fizzled out and I did not even remark about it. I’m not suited to sitting in an office keeping track of other people’s numbers. Nobody, I am aware of, keeps track of mine. Two months ago I decided to treat myself to a cruise to the Mexican Riviera, had a blast escaping from the New York winter, but when I reluctantly returned I found only three pieces of junk mail in the mailbox. Two had Tom Lawrence’s name on them, and one was addressed to “Current Occupant.” That would be me.
I tried to write while I was onboard the ship, but the only thing I came up with, extensions to someone else’s story, went uncommented. I guess the writing was too much about me and the other person didn’t recognize herself, nor did anyone, it would appear.
Someone did sort of satellite position me and asked a friend if he were traveling incognito, but by the time he advised me, it no longer had the power to make me feel good. Oddly, upon observing my post, he told me he didn’t feel the need to comment either as he had been working toward the same end. I had to agree. He had started the tale which inspired the other writer, which inspired me… Perhaps I had taken too much liberty. We had only been acquaintances in a previous life, but I thought we had gotten to know each other enough to become friends. That might take another life. The whole thing was going in circles, not leading anywhere. Still, it’s there to be taken up at any time.
Jobless now, I think I will begin writing a novel. I don’t know enough about myself in a meaningful way. I feel like a tabla rasa, and that might be a good space to explore.

Symptomatic 6

I slept through the long bus ride north, having thought to map out my plan of action along the way, but quickly becoming overwhelmed by heat and exhaustion, then finding a comfortable reclining seat on the air-cooled bus, I gave in to sleep, which provided a pleasant dream of slow freefalling. In the morning, I was surprised to find Tuxtla much like Tapachula in tone and ambiance, having expected to find some dusty little pueblo because of my inexperience leading me to believe Mexico only had modern amenities in its resorts along the shorelines. I ate breakfast at a MacDonald’s, and after scoping out the place discovered there were plenty of little English schools where I might apply for a job with a promise to supply proper papers as soon as I could have them sent to me. I figured by the time I would actually have to deliver my documentation, I would be in a position financially to move on, and if I worked the situation out befittingly, I could be in Mexico City in about three months. Everything changed one afternoon three weeks on while I was relaxing at Starbucks enjoying a latte after successfully talking my way through a session with a group of teenagers eager to learn some American slang, when a familiar looking young woman passed by, and looking at me quizzically for a moment, said, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” Preposterously, I offered, “Why don’t you have a seat, and we can see if that is true?”

Symptomatic 5

As soon as I had a chance to look at a map and actually realized where I was, I quickly made a change in plans, and decided my itinerary must perforce take me through the state of Chiapas to its capitol Tuxtla Gutierrez. Mexico City would have to wait a while, and even at that, I figured I’d have to pick up a little work along the way if I wanted to survive. Little did I know there were few if any opportunities for an empty-headed stranger such as myself that would pay any kind of money I could live on. In my research, I’d come upon a memorable old black and whiter from the 1940s wherein a shady businessman on the lam pretended to be a teacher in order to hide out in a little town far away from the pursuit of his nemesis, a friend he had grown up with who had joined the police force, and I thought I could probably get away with something like that. Sure, he had the woman between them on his side alerting him to the cop’s progress over her radio show, and I didn’t even have anyone chasing me, yet, but I was up to a little subterfuge to add spice to my adventure, so it seemed like the way to go.

Symptomatic 4

Something Kafka once said about Truth being indivisible and not being able to recognize itself held sway over my decisions in the next few days. I wanted to maintain high ideals and believe I was in the right, to be an adventurer, to earn my stripes, to boldly go…blah, blah, blah, but I knew I was waffling, and would not admit to myself that I had just fucked up and could not bring myself around to rectifying. Like a cat that bumps into the furniture and then continues blithely across the room, I would say I wanted things to happen so. I was meeting my fate. Recalling both the film I had watched and my primo’s maxim, I wondered how difficult it might be to shimmy through the space between traveling without proper documentation and the pain of retribution if caught, and foolishly compared myself to all those poor farmers who creeped up North out of necessity, though I knew full well they did not begin their journeys from capacious Acapulco on a whim as I had.

Symptomatic 3

My curiosity got the better of me and I decided to cut out the middle-person, my lady friend in Amarillo, and rather too quickly arranged to fly down to the Mexican Riviera and take a cruise stopping at some of those southern ports. Acapulco struck me as similar to other places I had visited, flashy and touristy, but when I visited Tapachula, I was taken by the homey ambiance. I thought it felt like Queens, New York with a heavier touch of tropical design. Still hung over from the previous evening’s indulgence in a cantina near the beach, I found a quieter place, just to shave off the hair of the dog, but after several caguamas, and an interesting chat with a couple of locals, I unfortunately fell asleep at a corner table, then woke up to find my wallet gone, and that I had missed the ship’s sailing. I had tucked enough money into an inside pocket along with my passport and cards, so I was able to pay for all the beer, and could have arranged for a wire transfer to catch up with my passage in the next port, but optioned instead to strike out on my own, and travel to the capitol. The words of the one who robbed me (I believed it was José 2), echoed in my disappointment—en Mexico, primo, a man can do anything.

Symptomatic 2

After striking out on the live social scene, I returned to spending a couple of hours each night at my laptop, writing a little, chatting with people I had never sat next to, and checking out the news in English on Latin American countries, but especially Mexico because it was fresh in my mind. I learned the country was suffering a number of difficulties resulting from battles among drug families, and about a disused justice system presented in the dramatic documentary Presunto Culpable, but most of the news I could find concentrated on mishaps in the north of the nation. Very few newsworthy events outside of the education arena appeared to be happening in the south. Any discussion of the situation in 1994 had a historical flavor to it, as if the most recent revolutionary fervor had now joined its brethren on the shelf and in the books. Upon switching to travel guides and noting there was still a call out to come and enjoy “the best the country had to offer,” I started communicating with the woman in Texas, discussing the possibility of being in her area and seeing if we could meet and size each other up. She must have concluded I had formed Plan B because I could tell by the way she said it “might be nice” without conviction in the tone of her words that she was being duplicitous as I was and both of us were too shy to admit our possibilities had expired.

Snowblind

I was freezing and my planned cruise to Central American ports came at a good time, but it made the return to this Arctic more unbearable. For five days, I drifted in a paradise of idleness, which helped to unstiffen joints, while my brain produced static impulses. There was nothing I had to do, and now that I have to, I don’t want to. I am aware of animation that lies waiting under this icy white blanket, but long for the beauty that lies fully exposed under black pin-pricked skies and radiant tangerine politics shared by smilers who express little need for the tangibility of current events while inexorably donning their consequences. We all must move forward, but some, like certain crabs, have chosen to shift sideways, and still, it gets them there. I must get away more often, but timing is everything, and now I require hot coffee.

Symptomatic

Met two women last month while out having a drink or two one night, and I guess that means I still have it; only I didn’t get it. The first said her name was Beth, and that she had recently settled in New York after a long stint of teaching English in Mexico, and when it came down to it, she wasn’t really looking for companionship, but what she said in parting caused me to whither, and I was glad to see the last of her. A little while later, I shared a drink with a woman named Samantha, who was on a side trip to the east coast before heading on down to Mexico. I knew there was no future in chatting her up, but I did for a while, mostly because I was trying to find out what the big attraction was South of the Border. Last week I was reading through CraigsList and read an offer that titillated, but I didn’t respond because when it comes down to it, I am looking for companionship. I am acquainted with a couple of women, one who lives in Boston, and another who lives in Texas; both of whom in prior communiqués have invited me to come visit. I might just take up the offer of the lady in Amarillo because if reality doesn’t measure up to fantasy, I could easily move a little further south.