Tag: betrayal

something new to learn on piano [bravery takes many shapes]


the bird and the bee – polite dance song, directed by Eric Wareheim of Tim & Eric.

[…] Since I’m asking so nice
Would you just entertain
There’s nothing left to hide you away
Just show a little bit of brain

Yes that is what I mean
That’s the nail that I hit
I try to be as coy as I can
But I wanna see your naughty bit […]

-::-

We fall asleep facing our laptops; two beds, eight hours away. I have practice at this, at living far away, at being untouchable, unreachable, lonely yet loved.

The first person I had such a thing with lives here in England. He’s the reason I have the eight hour time difference from Vancouver to London permanently memorized. Our correspondence set the foundation for this place. Years of it, years of talking late at night, of mornings together, of chats and distance. There are hundreds of letters from him in my folders. Hundreds of pictures. He kept me writing, coaxed me into taking pictures. In many ways, he changed me from writing to being a writer, kicked it off, back when this journal was almost new. Back when I believed people who said nice things to me.

I was only a few years older when he hurt me, sliced his way through my center, sliced until I bled, and worse, then put me in a book full of sex that opened yet another crooked little vein. (This starts the part that’s never been public). Perhaps it was meant as a surprise? A surprise like the awful things I found out about him, how he used people; a surprise that sent everything sour.

With the open eyes of an adult, I can see that I was prey, but it took many emotional years, and many, many others to come forward with similar admissions. Women in pain have reached out to me from New York, London, San Francisco, Berlin, Toronto… We’re in so many places! There’s so many of us we might need a name. I collect them, now, his talented discarded. We are a small network, but we’ve started keeping track of the others and making friends. He has excellent taste.

I never asked him why I had a starring role in his first book, our relationship was already critically wounded and we had almost bled out by the time it was published. Was I the first? It seems too unlikely to be true, even though it’s what he said at the time. I’ve also never asked the other woman named in the novel if she had been consulted or what her place in the mess might be. Her name was easier to spot, the public attention must have been massive. (A mutual friend told me that she wasn’t, so I’ve filed her under “One Of Us (potential)” and crossed my fingers that she’s been okay.)

But I have been considering it lately. Now that I’m living just outside London, I’m only an hour’s drive away from his house. Two if I take transit, not even as long as a film. (Closure is such a pretty word. Sound it out! It’s beautiful.) Maybe I should reach out to her, the way the others have reached out to me. Break the silence, try not to fumble, and then, perhaps, ask him for tea.

It has been a long time, but I’ll bet his phone number is the same.

a year and a day

Sometimes it is barely possible to believe how hurtful other people can be.

I did a terrifying thing. It was scary and hard, but I thought, well, perhaps this time will be different. Perhaps this time I will find kindness. I doubted, but I put aside my doubt. I thought myself broken for doubting. To stop trusting is to let them win, the people who hurt, the people who value selfishness over compassion, the cowards and killers of small mercies. So I put aside my doubt, I did the hardest thing I know to do, and I reached out to a friend and stepped forward into the darkness. And, for a moment, the world was gentle; they took my outstretched hand. It was going to be okay. This, the worst, the scariest, was going to be okay. It was both wonderful and astonishing. Where one fails, two can create light.

Then, as if it the most casual thing, they recanted. So now I’m not even back to how badly I was before, but worse, because I dared to step forward, I dared trust, and there is no redemption in this solitary darkness. And there are no bread crumbs, no small pebbles left for me to follow back out, no kindness in it. Betrayal contains no sympathy or compassion. They left me with the most cruel of possible stories. Worse, they knew, going in, that they would abandon me, but they walked me there anyway, stringing me along as far in as they could manage before having to tell me they were already gone.

The honey in the lion is a lie.

EDIT: And then, plot twist! It worked out, actually. They stepped up. Just last night. Three in the morning, they showed up at my door. My writing made something better. They came back for me. Their care for my well-being finally trumped their fear. I am.. absolutely floored. I can’t remember the last time I felt so much relief. I feel better today than I have in a very, very long time. And because it was such a success, today I ended up sending one of the scariest letters I’ve ever sent, asking for similar redemption for the worst of my hurt, from the only person who could make it better, belly bared to his teeth. Fingers crossed, dear ones. Fingers and toes.

That which the inferno does not consume, it forges.

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” ~ Maya Angelou

“What are you doing, can I help?” I murmured, softly pulled from sleep by the man who was quietly getting ready to leave for work. It was the day before my birthday. He had been very careful, but the sound of a suitcase zipper had been enough to wake me. He chuckled and sat down on the hotel bed beside me, his weight creating a curve in the mattress that pulled my body to his. I gratefully curled against his broad torso like a cat to warmth in the winter. “You sweet girl,” he said, “how delicious of you. I can think of a way.” He reached out and stroked my hair, then leaned down and tilted my face to meet his. I was sleepy and soft. His hand was gentle on my face, as were his lips on mine. It was perfect.

(Writing this is difficult.)

Another hotel, another man, someone I used to love. We unexpectedly tumbled into each other years after we had last been close, a surprise coda to an awful time, and after I remarked on how strange a beast memory can be. “This.” I said, pressing my hand against his shoulder for emphasis. “I remembered exactly how your hands fit with mine, the geometry of your fingers, but this, how the length of my arm is precisely the width of your shoulders when you cradle in my grasp, this I had forgotten. I still know you while I do not. It surprises me.” He smiled wryly, “You’re not writing about us in your head again, are you? Writers. Incorrigible.” But I hadn’t been. I had lost the knack when I lost my heart. Yet now I am, months and months later. My time since has opened the gate.

(Writing that was easier.)

Neither of these men are people I could claim as mine, but they were, just as I was theirs. How near we all are to disaster at all times. I’m starting to type this from a plane, finding comfort in the turbulence that is distressing the other passengers. To such tolerances airplanes are made! With such cleverness and scientific understanding! The wings flex even as the snout pushes forward through the air unconcerned, the shaking accounted for, the math figured. This is not how airline disasters are made. Each engineered piece interlocks to create a miraculous whole. The more we jostle, the safer I feel.

If only it were so in relationships.

My heart, lightly returning to me, feels haunted. I shuffle through our time together, examining every interaction and conversation like tarot cards for clues. I find nothing. He was honest in every particular, but one. His family.

-::-

I met him on the dance-floor at a conference, completely unexpected. (The odds are good there, but the goods odd.) I wasn’t certain our first few dates. I was hesitant to kiss him goodbye, hesitant to start something long-distance again, yet we found magic writing together on-line. He was well read, political, and his sharp wit inspired me. He was smart, funny, and harassed me without mercy. Eventually I point-blank asked what the catch was, “How is it that you’re single?” He explained that he travels too much for work, the same problem that plagues plenty of my more interesting friends. I felt encouraged, cared for, and delighted, enough that I shelved my long-distance relationship concerns and replied, “I can live with that.” “I hoped so.” It was two in the morning. He got us a hotel room. We had a pillow fight. It was on.

We were meant to have another night together for my birthday, I was going to ditch Vancouver to travel down to see him, but he had to cancel. Work scheduled him away that week. This was not unexpected, this was part of the engagement, so I told him I understood and expressed the appropriate California-envy. Fourty-eight hours later, he proposed flying me down with some of his endless air-miles. If I could find somewhere to stay after he head home to Seattle, he told me, I could stay as long as I like.

I stumbled, but I recovered. Gladly, gratefully. And blind. I didn’t know where we were staying or when I was flying out. I knew nothing. Eventually it was puzzled that my flight left on a Tuesday, but I didn’t have an itinerary until 4:30 Monday morning. And that was fine. It’s was trust exercise. It was fun. I was happy.

He picked me up at the airport, checked us into a hotel in San Jose, and kissed me like I had been missing for years. Once his work-trip was done, we moved into my ex’s flat in the Castro in San Francisco.

I was smitten. I hesitate to speak for him, but he seemed equally so. He met my friends, we went on little exploratory ventures, he sang flawless, soul-shattering, classically trained opera in the shower. Everything was all splendid. He was incredible. We, together, were marvelous. We get on so well it was improbable. He was generous, kind, and effortlessly carried me up a tall flight of stairs when my ankle gave out like I was stuffed full of feathers instead of chagrin and admiration. I felt blessed and adored and adored him in turn. We didn’t sleep at night. He smiled all the time. I blossomed.

-::-

My urge to write about us is basic. I can’t not. He’s not mine, but he was. And he risked his entire personal life to be. It is sad and tragic and hurts, yet I respect how much that’s worth. I want to write about everything. Honor his indisputably stupid sacrifice by capturing every moment of our time together in amber, sweetly displayed in this glass screened case as an exhibit of That Time. “This is what he risked his world for. It was not small, nor tawdry.” We felt lucky, we found joy, what we made together was satisfying and darling. Was it worth it? It’s not for me to say, but I would guess no, not for him.

He didn’t betray me, but himself. The tragedy isn’t mine, but his and theirs.

-::-

He left after a week, singing so loudly out the window of the rental car that I could hear him from a block away. Even as he left, he made sure I was alright. Then I moved in with Heather for a bonus week full of good people and happenings. It was an enriching time. There were long walks through new places, a cocktail party, a rooftop BBQ, a rave in an abandoned train station, time with new friends and with people I already love. Then I flew back to Seattle for more fun and good people. I went dancing, I made new connections, I had a tai chi lesson on a roof downtown in the sunshine. Life was good. My sweetheart was in Colorado for work, but I was looking forward to seeing him the next time I could.

Then I went for lunch with a friend who I met through the same conference, though years ago. New information. To say I was suddenly having a bad day is an understatement. We were hopeful, there was a lot of benefit of the doubt, but then the phone numbers matched. The phone number of my sweetheart and “my friend of ten years whose wife is…” Oh. Pregnant. Not with their first child.

Our relationship was obviously not a thought out decision. Aside from the deletion of his family and claiming to be single, he didn’t hide a thing. Everything else he told me checked out.

-::-

I was in Vancouver less than 48 hours once I came back from Seattle. Time enough to put my passport in for renewal, basically, then repack and head to an airport to sleep, so I could head back east to visit Toronto and Montreal for Recon.

My plans shivered a bit once I was out there, and I ended up spending more time than expected in Waterloo with one of my best friends, Ian, his charming wife, and two lively children. We all spent one warm night in his back yard, their daughter cuddled against my body, our feet in the pool while Ian dove and twisted like an otter through the water. We lay on our backs and watched the sky. I pointed out the International Space Station as it drifted overhead. Their daughter sighed and lay her head on my shoulder, asked about the stars as I explained constellations. His wife’s laughter was just beautiful as the heavens.

Is this what my lover had balanced me against? This sort of home? This ease and grace and care and trust? I’ve never had anything so honeyed as this small slice of family. No one has ever tried to build so much with me. How divine it seemed! I wondered what my presence could have pumped through his veins. How much did his heart race? There are easier ways to find adrenaline. Lying there, surrounded by their life, I didn’t feel worthy of the sacrifice. I was grateful the darkness meant that no one could see me cry.

-::-

I was attacked the morning of my birthday on my way to the Facebook campus for lunch. Pedestrian sexual street harassment that I stood up against until he escalated too far, until I had to run. Eventually I fled along a train from car to car, concerned for my physical safety, desperately searching for a conductor while a stranger stalked after me shouting awful things, “Cunt, whore, I’m going to break you.”

He was thrown off the train, but it rattled my entire day, threw me off my stride.

My lover salvaged even that. He arrived too late to join the hot-tub evening, I was being kicked out for the night when he came to the gate, but he was late because he’d brought a surprise. We sat at an iron table outside my friend’s apartment, (an anonymous place in a terrible suburb of anonymous buildings and fussy street security), while he produced a tub of ice-cream from a bag, then a package of candles that spelled H-A-P-P-Y B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y, and a birthday card and a lighter.

No one sang and I forgot to make a wish, but I felt more cared for in that gesture of grace than I had in a very long time. It was darling and sweet. “I understand it’s late,” he said with some satisfaction, “but we had to celebrate!”

My distress fell away. I may have been attacked, but I was in California, swathed in adventure, and this man had sent for me, flown me down for a romantic birthday get-away, to be embraced in his care. This man, this thoughtful, considerate, and brilliant man, he liked me back. The world was unexpected, but finally benevolent. It was the best birthday I’ve ever had.

-::-

(Have mercy on me, even knowing the truth, I do miss him.)

-::-

Everyone else who knows is furious, but I have a lot of hope for him. For his relationship, for his family. (He’s a good communicator. I don’t know anything about her as a person, past her name, but if they’re together, I expect she must be excellent as well.) It’s going to hurt, it’s going to be hard. As it should be. I am sorry that his choices led him to test his home in this fashion, but I don’t hate him, I’m not angry, and I’m not bitter. I feel for him, even. How afraid and sad he must be.

I’m down a relationship that was gracious, compassionate, and loving, and a friend, but it was a new thing. I’m just abruptly single again. New things fail all the time. He may have lost something much greater.

So that’s that. I am disappointed, but mostly I am sorry for his partner. I’ve been somewhat in her position, though certainly never to such an extreme. I wonder what will happen. If it has happened before. If this will be the end of either his affair(s?) or their relationship.

I wonder and I wait and I know, soon, we will again say hello. It took a few weeks, but he finally reached out and replied to one of my messages while I was in Toronto. I’m leaving for Seattle today for ToorCamp. He has asked to meet up to talk as soon as our schedules can allow. I gratefully said yes. He is cancelling travel in order to make it right away. We should be in the same place at the same time next week.

I can barely wait to find out what he has to say.

he came closer while I was being pushed away

I am left by the side of the road, a fugitive leaning silently against a wall as I listen to his truck drive away. I’m tired, he said, of being the one who always has to be strong, and in that moment it was like he had wrapped me the most beautiful gift even as I crumpled, destroyed by the echo of those words leaving my own mouth, over and over again. I wanted wings, then, to furl around him, great feathery things, mythical and incredible, powerful enough to erase pain, the better to protect him from the world. Pinions that scraped the ceiling. Instead my arms found him, found him and held him, while a part of me shattered, horrified, against the promise that I would never be that person, as I resisted the sour memory of times that should never have been.

And so, standing in the street, solitude, the desire to howl down the moon. Anger at myself, at the past that robbed me of what this could be. Such a gift should mean more to me, I should be thrilled, yet here I am, incapable of carrying it, too weak to shout, too weak to even speak, too beaten down. Years of inequality choking me, I rest against the wet cement blocks of an anonymous warehouse office and try not to hate. If such a treasure had been presented to me a few months ago, I would have been beyond grateful, filled to the edges with joy, a flower in bloom. It was the only thing I wanted, just for myself. I would have been able to cradle it, this admired jewel made of fire, but now feels too late. Instead I have been broken. The devastating distance I tried so hard to survive has finally claimed me for its own.

something I don’t know if we share

He stands apart from me, the placement of his body the only visible part of the topography we once created, who kissed who and when. Deer in the headlights, sweet as burned sugar. His gestures are shy, terrified. I wonder, when I remember, if he is happy. (If he still thinks about his decisions.) His hair still smells like heartbreak.

the evolution of hindsight

I saw him in a photograph today, handed casually to me across a table. Part of my heart remembered and died, the rest of me got caught in the night captured. Shane was on stage that night, in a way he never had been before. We were there, this place, but across the room. It was this person, and my person, and Him. We sat bunched up on benches, layered like only the most comfortable friends can be. One in front of the other. I could lean back and taste happiness with my skin. I did. I could lean forward and see god on stage, orating. I cried. Later became one of our own little secrets. The image of him waiting outside, “I thought you would never leave.” It was too cold, we said, we thought. It would have been perfect. A silence held between the bare space between our bones, the breath that never came after the knife slid in. I don’t love anyone else, they’ve been pushed out, replaced by this one terrible figure. This creature that drives me to need blood, to need touch, to need… to need at all. I didn’t know how before. I haven’t drawn breath since he left. I haven’t drawn breath since he returned.

I should have pressed harder when I knew something wasn’t right.

This is the oldest story. My name is Psyche. It is widow. It is dust. I am a woman and my love has left me. Thrown me over without word, fled in the night when the candle was lit, but without a stanchion of rules for me to lean against. Fled uselessly, as I have no way to find him. History says I may get over it. That is all history says. It makes no promises for having a future that is not bereft of happiness. It is more honest than that, for all that it was written by man.

He called today, maybe while I was being handed his graven image. My vulnerability flared bright, limning my walls with pain, then flickered out. Flame requires oxygen and I have none. My blood is cold, sluggish and heavy, the same as my hands dripping letters upon these keys. I love him. I finally understand an aspect of religion I never did before, the desire to have protocol, to be able to hide behind ceremony. My child inside has revealed itself to be a newly lonely thing, unholy and made of roses. Petals are falling, He loves me, he certainly loves me not at all. Maybe he did once, but he forgot. He spent too much time as a bear instead of a mouse. Living in the skin of an animal, it’s said you lose your way. I’m uncertain if allowing such creatures into the home is a good idea. They make messes, they desecrate the sacred places. He used to sleep in this bed. We used to sleep in this bed. I remember being touched, being touched without crying.

When he left, I wandered the airport, refusing to leave without finding myself a memento, a tiny piece of sadness to carry as a solid thing. You’re like a dream, what if one day I’ll wake up? My eyes grazed over tables for silver and found nothing until the very last shop. There, on a shelf, a necklace of glittering red crystals that looked like a slashed throat set in victorian pewter. I put it on before I left the building and I have yet to take it off for more than one day or one night. It carried the promise of his reality with it, holding my neck where he kissed it, where he touched me goodbye so sweetly that a porter smiled into his sleeve at us like in an old-fashioned movie. I took a picture of myself on the bus back into town, trying to see what it looked like. I tried to smile, thinking how stupid bravery is, how I wanted to cry. Black and white and read all over, that’s me, I thought. He’ll call when he lands, he’ll call and I’ll tell him about this and he’ll laugh.

I feel better that I didn’t believe him when he said he was writing about me.