The Greatest Lover of Last Tuesday

by Neil McKinnon

  Prana looked shocked. “Are you sure? I also was sent to the lecture by Professor Aguilar. She said I would find the man I was looking for — someone with few thoughts of his own. She has schemed and not told us the full content of her scheming.”

  “I concur,” I said. “I feel that I have been manipulated.”

  Prana laughed. “We both were,” she said, “and my psychic intuition tells me that you are ready to be manipulated again.”

  Once more we shed the confines of our bodies and thrust beyond the world of senses, until like shooting stars merge into atmosphere, we came — together as one — back to where we started, prepared to soar again.

  Adriana shoved herself into my story. “So you found your dream woman,” she said, “someone compatible with yourself. Tell me about your relationship, oh wrinkled astral body. Did it last? Was it as fulfilling as you wished?”

  Adriana has a habit of demanding more details than is allowed by the pace of my story … and then she sometimes pushes right into the story itself. I refused her request. At my age it’s not easy to get back to the exact point where my train of thought has been derailed. “You’ll find out in good time, old woman,” I said.

  Prana and I became lovers, but I could not shake the nagging feeling that the very quality that allowed us to meet was the same quality that permitted her to fall in love with me. In other words, the aspect of her character that made her find me attractive was the same one described by Professor Aguilar — gullibility.

  She said that her goals in life were simple: to find the meaning of human existence, to discover the basic nature of mankind, to penetrate the source of all knowledge and, above all, to experience genuine intimacy.

  My nagging feeling was reinforced when she began to attend more of Dr. Farsante’s seminars. She urged me to go as well. When I refused, she carefully elaborated a number of Dr. Farsante’s more positive characteristics, many of which I did not possess. Gradually, comparisons between my psychic abilities and those of Dr. Farsante became the overriding theme of our relationship. Slowly I came to realize that there is no short cut, no switch to turn love on or off. Rather, it moves through stages. Much as flour does on its way to becoming fresh-baked bread, love must be massaged and kept at the right temperature lest it become a cold grey lump of dough.

  Consequently I again visited Professor Aguilar. “Your strategy has worked,” I told her. “I have found a companion who fulfills my desires, but I have the troublesome notion that she is not attracted to me for my best qualities, and that may be the crack in the foundation that will cause the whole edifice of our relationship to crumble, similar to the way the carefully constructed face of a lady disintegrates in the rain.”

  The professor smiled. “Of course she isn’t attracted to you for your best qualities,” she said. “Your best qualities are as well hidden as flaws in a starlet’s complexion. What she sees in you is a reflection of herself.”

  “But will that not keep us from equally enjoying our relationship, and will not the one who enjoys it least cause tiny seeds of discontent to germinate?”

  “Let me explain something,” Professor Aguilar said. “Two cars travelling side by side will register the same velocity. But if one is in high gear and the other in low the motors will be racing at different rates. You and Prana may be like those cars. You both could be moving at the same speed in your relationship, but perhaps your motor is a bit sluggish compared to hers.”

  “I don’t think my motor is sluggish,” I said. “I understand what you’re saying, yet I still have a concern. Prana spends every waking moment and all of her energy searching for something else in life. She looks for answers to great problems in an irrational manner. My concern is not that our motors run at different speeds but that we are driving in the same direction. I say this because I believe she has a secret and unhealthy fixation on Dr. Farsante.”

  “Why do you think that?” Professor Aguilar asked.

  “Her quest is to find true intimacy and she thinks it resides in Dr. Farsante’s teaching. She knows that she can transform her life by altering her attitude and behaviour, yet it is my attitude and behaviour she endeavours to change. I find this difficult as the part of me she wishes to modify varies from moment to moment. Ironically, her search for intimacy is preventing us from finding it.”

  “But it takes two,” Professor Aguilar said. “Do you think Dr. Farsante is also interested in Prana?”

  “Yes I do. She is to attend a private workshop with him where he will probe her capacity for a close relationship. The workshop, for which she will pay a large fee, is to be conducted at his seaside villa. I am not invited. She is to bring only herself, an open attitude, and exotic lingerie.”

  My tale was stopped by a burst of mirth from Adriana. “It sounds like Dr. Farsante was not the naïve side of the triangle. Did it happen? Did Prana accompany him to his home at the beach?”

  “Yes she did, and she never returned. She stayed with him until he spied the next set of curves on his personal highway. Later she started a Utopian community somewhere in the mountains. I did not see her for years … but recently I was able to locate her as part of my research into my own life.”

  “Tell me about her,” Adriana demanded. “Was she still interested in quick and simple fixes to age-old problems?”

  “She is like most who look for easy answers,” I said. “They search until they die or alternatively, they grow cynical because of the lack of meaning in what they find. Prana has not escaped that fate.”

  She swept into Don Emilio’s restaurant accompanied by a man who looked familiar. At first glance it seemed she had not aged but as she came closer I realized that she had travelled a number of routes on her journey to her current appearance. An attempt had been made to remove facial wrinkles and it had left her skin stretched so that blood vessels made blue, spider-like patterns, which she had attempted to hide by liberally applying makeup. Unfortunately the motion required by speech had caused the makeup to crack so that it resembled pavement after an earthquake. Below the boundary of her latest alteration, the folds on her neck resembled pleats on a Scottish kilt and bore the same mixture of colours. Her breasts had been adjusted so that they acted as signposts to two ancient realms — the right pointed toward heaven and the left waved at the underworld. Her lips had been expanded to the extent that they had lost symmetry and now served the same function as a billboard by drawing attention away from the surrounding landscape. Each of her fingers was weighted by rings, and her earrings — which were the colour, shape, and size of a large pizza — pulled her earlobes below her shoulders. Her purple dress was clearly designed to repel wild animals.

  Her companion was greying and prematurely bald with skin the colour of stale bread. I stood as they approached and this diverted his attention from the task of reining in his abdomen. He exhaled and an apron of flab unrolled over his belt, much the way a tarpaulin is set free to keep a baseball diamond dry. His jowls jiggled and his breath came in loud rasps as if he had just run a five kilometre race.

  They sat and he began tossing taco chips and salsa into his mouth faster than he could swallow. The excess soon dribbled from his chin to be absorbed by the table cloth. I recognized Raoul.

  “The last time I saw you was during an emergency in Professor Aguilar’s office,” I said.

  “Yes,” he answered, wiping his chin with the back of his hand. “I was employed by Professor Aguilar to be on standby in case of emergencies. I earned my salary. Coping with as many as four emergencies a day was strenuous.”

  I found it difficult to reminisce with Prana while Raoul held her hand and grinned at me with salsa running over his chin. So I enquired about people we both knew. “Whatever became of the professor?” I asked. “Her office has been closed for years. Did she move from the city?”

  “Yes, she did,” Prana replied. “You are out of touch. Do you not know that she and Dr. Farsante were married? Both left their respective professions to become born aga
in radio evangelists. Every Sunday they heal sick and maimed people who call in to their radio show and describe various afflictions. Such is their skill, that from hundreds of kilometres away, they have been known to make a crippled man walk or hemorrhoids disappear. They are so popular that their phone lines are frequently jammed. Occasionally the telephone operator becomes confused and they heal the wrong affliction. Once I heard them help a baby girl who was suffering from an enlarged prostate … and just last week they mistakenly treated a blind man for impotence. The poor man was gracious, though. He said that although he remained unable to see, he no longer needed a white cane to poke in front of him as he walked.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “Tell me, have you managed to find the true intimacy you were seeking?”

  “Intimacy is just another word for honesty,” she said. “It must come from both parties. That’s why I left, although it wasn’t your fault. It was me who wasn’t honest. I wanted you to be my conduit to a metaphysical understanding of the universe, which I thought I needed in order to experience love. When I discovered that the metaphysics of a doughnut was beyond your capability, I had to leave.”

  “I don’t understand … the metaphysics of a doughnut?”

  “Exactly! I will give you credit, however. All of my previous lovers treated intimacy like a contagious disease, but you weren’t afraid. You were just driving in a different direction.”

  “What do you mean, a different direction?”

  “Don’t get me wrong. You were visibly normal, you were clean, you wore good, though outdated clothes, and you had a few social skills. It was simply a case of too much and too little. I had too much hope and you had too little promise. You didn’t recognize my need … and not recognizing it meant that you could not fill it.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” I said. “Did you ever find the intimacy you sought?”

  “In a way,” she said. “Sexuality is an exalted place where intimacy sometimes hides. Raoul helps me look for it.” She patted his hand. “Don’t you, snuggle cheeks?”

  Raoul chuckled, prompting more food to seek safety on the table cloth. Prana leaned over, kissed him and began licking the salsa from his chin. Both became so engrossed in this activity that they didn’t notice when I called for the bill.

  At the door I glanced back. She was feeding him the taco chips, one-by-one, carefully inserting them so that the salsa stayed on the chip and his chin remained dry.

  Adriana snorted. “You’re slower than a slumbering sloth,” she said. “You lost before the game started, my dried-up doughnut friend. When Prana said that you didn’t recognize her need, she meant that you didn’t listen. Listening isn’t just for ears. There must be action. A need exists only if it’s not met, just as I feel the need to sleep only when I’m not sleeping … or when I listen to you.”

  I poured another drink and dialed my listening down to monitor.

  “Intimacy is never repellent like warm is never cold,” she continued. “A couple not only must trust each other enough to tell everything, each must trust enough to listen. Effort is required. That’s why intimate relationships are fragile and that’s why most marital alliances are not filled with ecstasy and happiness. They take too much work.”

  She leaned back, held up her glass and gazed through it. “Quite apart from all that,” she said, “you might have found everlasting love if only you had learned to talk with your mouth full. Nevertheless, my crumbling taco chip, I think you were lucky that Prana left you. You could have spent the rest of your life having your chin licked.”

  I took a sip of brandy and changed the subject. “It’s amazing how Professor Aguilar and Dr. Farsante ended up together when they started so far apart.”

  Adriana sniffed. “They didn’t go half a block. The overlap between what a professional counsellor doesn’t know and what a phoney healer doesn’t know is quite large. So is the intersection of what they both will refuse to admit they don’t know. They have more in common than they are generally given credit for.”

  “You must explain yourself,” I said.

  She sniffed again. “Think of it this way. If love, happiness, or prosperity can be gained by anyone who believes in the ability of a therapist, isn’t lack of any of those things the fault of the sufferer for not having a strong enough belief? This is the fallacy perpetrated by all charlatans.”

  Later, I made my way home to bed. Adriana is right about one thing. I had been lucky. If she is also right about another then I am destined to end my days outside of an intimate relationship. Work of any kind has never been my strong suit.

  Adriana’s Story

  I BELIEVE PERSONAL STORIES ARE LIKE LEVERS. We use them to pry our lives into alignment with the world’s expectations. We all need stories. Can you feature a person without one? She would have no identity — no face to show the world.

  Adriana’s story reveals many faces. In the time that we have been neighbours she has confided numerous details of her life although she wishes them kept private. I will now pass them to you exactly as she told them to me.

  Although she is not as old as I, Adriana too would face severe drought if the only water left was that yet to flow under her bridge. She began life in an itinerant fashion, born into a carnival family where her father was a trick rider and her mother a tamer of big cats. She has carried the characteristics of these parental occupations into later life. Much of her time is spent trying to either trick or tame me.

  Her childhood and youth were spent performing for audiences in every part of the country. While her parents were fine citizens they had little time for her as she was growing up. Sideshow performers became her family and her teachers. She has fond memories of Esmeralda, the two-headed lady who kept her extra head and the mirrors that went with it stored in a box under her trailer. “Each of her heads had different personalities,” Adriana recalls. “When I was small I marvelled at how unalike they were. The head in the box was pale with yellow teeth and mousy grey hair. It wore no makeup and never spoke. When performing it sipped water from a glass while Esmeralda’s other head, covered in rouge and bright lipstick, smoked cigarettes and talked to the audience. That head was loud, swore a lot, and frequently drank whiskey.”

  Esmeralda taught Adriana that life is illusion. “We damn well don’t know anything for sure,” she said. “Maybe it’s all a dream and we don’t really exist. I think, therefore I am, is meaningless. It depends on which head I am using. Many of my best ideas originate in the box under my trailer.”

  A recent disagreement illustrates a further aspect of Adriana’s early education. I am not a good looking man and the Lord has not blessed me with a pleasing personality. Adriana says I am difficult and bad tempered and she frequently comments on my appearance. “If handsome is as handsome does then you should be an inert object,” she crows. Once she told me that if good looks came in limousines then I would have arrived on a burro.

  “Life is compensation,” I told her. “I have been able to offset my lack of looks and personality by developing an impeccable moral nature and a set of ethical principles which are pure and which remain as fresh and uncontaminated as if they had been purchased yesterday. It’s a credit to my upright temperament that I have lived by these principles for most of my adult life with only occasional slippage.”

  “You must be thinking with Esmeralda’s second head,” she replied. “Morality and principles should be like a pair of shoes … they should fit the same way every day.”

  “Not so,” I said. “I have observed that principles and morality are primarily products of circumstance and that circumstance is generally within our control although, occasionally, fate or the Lord may prescribe some condition that necessitates bending our actions in unanticipated directions, causing compensating twists to both principles and morality. It is precisely this moral flexibility that has made me a superior lover, allowed me the latitude I needed to perfect the romantic art, and given me the ability to adapt to my partner’s expe
ctations in much the same manner that a chameleon changes colour. It has always set me apart.”

  “Nonsense!” she said. “Morals and principles should be rigid and unbending as if written in stone. If the Lord meant principles to be pliable he would have given Moses ten suggestions, and He would have written them in chalk … on a slate.”

  It should come as no surprise to learn that Adriana received many of her early lessons from an old carnival performer named Brittle Man who used to stiffen his body between two chairs while weights were placed on his stomach. “He never even bent,” she said.

  “That’s because too little weight was applied, my decorous dumbbell. More pounds and he would have been called Elastic Man.

  Travelling did not allow for formal education and Adriana has never attended school. All of her knowledge is the result of hearsay and therefore inadmissible when we argue, although she says that by the time of her middle teens she had completed degrees in fire-eating, juggling, clowning, and trapeze artisting.

  These first steps toward an independent nature were already complete when she fell into a severe emotional crisis. An adolescent crush proved tragic. She had been learning the intricacies of sword swallowing from a veteran performer when, quite by accident, she found herself in love with her teacher. More often than not an infatuation at her age would have passed in the normal fashion but the situation was complicated. The sword swallower’s name was Alana and, when not swallowing swords, she doubled as the carnival’s bearded lady.

  Unsure of what an estrogen-based relationship might mean in terms of her gender role, Adriana became host to a giant identity battle. Alana was tall, full figured, and had a luxuriant growth of red facial hair. Her image dominated Adriana’s thoughts, causing an internal storm of such intensity that it came near to capsizing her mental stability. Fortunately, the situation resolved itself when the carnival was raided by the police. Many of the midway performers were charged with fraud and it was revealed that Alana, the bearded lady, was actually Alan, the bearded man. At first Adriana felt only relief. The issue of her sexual preference was resolved. However, Alan was forced to flee to avoid incarceration. She never saw him again, but to this day she has a soft spot for individuals of either sex who contend with the world from the backside of a bewhiskered countenance.