“You all know of course that one of the best places for contemplation is while sitting on a toilet,” said Kitty. “So, in a nutshell here it is: measured time is the destroyer of the spirit and youth; youth is forever because when you’re an infant you’re not aware of time; when we buy watches to keep time we quickly begin to grow old; do not try to measure time and you shall fearlessly cross the valley of darkness, says our Sharon.”
“Oh, shut up, Kitty,” said Robin who once again was overwhelmed with empathy for the living and the dead and was now crying huge drops of tears, all her defences finally having caved in.
“Is everything all right here?” It was Gianni. “Is there something else I can get for you, ladies?”
Sharon meekly sat down in her chair and most properly crossed her legs under the table. Crossing her legs did feel a form of reality for her. “Yes, Gianni, you may bring us another bottle of this excellent Bordeaux,” she said.
They still hadn’t finished the previous bottle so Gianni poured it for them and off he went to get another bottle of the red Bordeaux to everybody’s great satisfaction.
It was time to re-establish the devotional connection to the true Bordeaux that had nothing to do with Jesus’ blood. Back to rich normal, they drank and ate the bread, and happily skipping on church pieties; they smiled and forked the salad and feta cheese and drank, and they poured more of the Bordeaux, empty as they drank that too, while waiting for the next fine bottle of robust red Bordeaux.
“He has another wife,” out of nowhere blurted out Robin, no longer able to contain her bitterness. “My husband, fucked up David, the first who had me, the bastard bank president, thanks to my kindness, that thousands of people are entrusting their savings and futures, has ruined my life. The ungrateful bastard has another wife and a fourteen year old son by her.”
There, it was out; amazing histories that only the rich can so easily write.
“Vice Presidents of Human Resources, dear,” reminded Kitty.
“You get no pity from me,” said Sharon.
Not the real truth about hated husband Dave, nor the truth that might have included her own indiscretions as a bad girl while with husband David, and others, not so long ago, and not to the many other inappropriate debaucheries whose vivid recollection had almost burst her psyche during all the talk of Jesus. The cuckolded wife was a good substitute story, but quite remote from her pretended unselfishness, concocted in the nick of time to protect the private memory of her vigorous love affair, for a skinny Ethiopian, from spurting out under the pressure of the wine. It was a lie she told about her David, aimed at the soul of her now defunct husband. Ingenuously she had sought applause for her forbearance with an unkind man, and kindly asking sympathy from her friends, or from anyone who could empathize with her wounded, never to be healed, broken heart. The tears were leniency intended to relieve the awful pain in her soul that betrayed all that she ever loved, all for her daddy’s duteous approval. Once again she had caught herself, saved herself, just in time, from the painful truth of having betrayed her once happily anticipated future for a honky-tonk jerk like David Calder. She knew that one day, but not now, she would have to honestly confess to a priest or psychiatrist the haunting feelings of her sorry heart, or else go mad.
During moments of warm bouts of the sweet wine of sisterhood, the mind’s unconscious gates stream open to flush out the painful little libidinous secrets that perversely prevent us enjoying our life. Infinite firings rush in sublimated confessions of love, or sadness, or desire. Words become insufficient to catch the meaning of the flow, and the ear gives way to feelings. The storm unfolds cataracts of meaningless chatter, but nothing matters because we rarely feel the emotion behind the words. It’s then that the miracle of the little white lies occurs. At first they’re little rivulets of white lies, but wanting to win our friends with our love, the little lies expand into bigger and bigger lies and all the time we invent more lies to feed our friends: it’s all out of love. But then, unconsciously, guilt muddles our subliminal thoughts on our desires and we rationalize that in the heavens of infancy, all lies, like all truths, dissolve into nothingness, and this thought then becomes the feed of our corporeal brains. It is possible that all human beings live on lies, during a whole lifetime. They tread on bullshit from morning till night and never smell the stench they talk and walk on. Human beings, then, love their lies which they conveniently call shooting the bull. It’s not a lie, then, for even such faultless human beings as Sharon, and Robin, and Kitty, so close to beauty, as is the rose, as is the truth, to dwell on such wicked little white lies whose marvellous purpose is to mask the monotonous realm of not always knowing if that’s all there is. Not flushing out the repressed truth with a little spicy lying is boring and not believable.
Robin quietly hid the Ethiopian ghosts residing beyond the reach of the crowd with her bastard husband lie. Not an easy thing to make a false confession about your husband, while your most persistent secret remained buried in your soul. But without confession, there can be no communion and without communion no salvation. Before all this gooey stuff a little white lie is nothing.
“Robin, are you doing a Sharon?” said Kitty feeling left out.
“Robin, I’m so sorry,” said Sharon.
More white lies.
“He said it was time that I knew and that we should also tell our Justine and Meredith, since they were getting into an age when they, unaware of the relationship, might unknowingly have sexual intercourse with their half-brother Lyndon, who’s David’s bastard son,” she teared.
“You’ve had too much wine, Robin. Justine and Meredith are Myrna’s daughters, not yours and David’s,” said Kitty. “What you’re afraid is that David and not some imaginary Lyndon is going to have sex with Justine and Meredith.”
“David is fucking Justine?” said an astounded Sharon.
“Not yet, dear,” said Kitty.
“Well, for your information little Kitty Kat, you little pussy, David and I are going to adopt the girls, and Myrna’s ok with that,” lied Robin coming out of her funky mood.
“I don’t know what to say,” said Sharon.
Kitty wasn’t stunned. She knew that Robin even when stewed could make up stories. But Sharon was speechless for a change. Robin’s confession was a heavier load than she had bargained. You think you know somebody, somebody who’s your best friend, and after one quick revelation, they become strangers. Though she loved Robin very much, she honestly had never been party to such debilitating outpouring like today. Normally, in the past, during silly torrents of soul-baring sessions, one girl would try to outdo the other’s true confession by telling stories more outrageous than the previous ones. But each knew that these were in fact simple little lies, intended to titillate the fantasies since they usually revolved around remote sexual misadventures, more like dirty jokes. They were innocent little jibes that shielded their fanciful lives and diverted them away from the depressing reality of their nowhere, boring, opulent existence.
“What a miserable son of a bitch,” said Sharon.
“Oh, how I hate that miserable son-of-a-bitch who has made my life so painful. Ever since Peace Corps I’ve hated that son-of-a-bitch so much I could easily bludgeon him with a hammer. And my poor little step-daughters, how can I tell them that their loving step-father is a vicious adulterer, a monster who all these years has hugged and kissed them, after fornicating in sin with some hag or other? Forgive me my little girls, forgive me.”
More uncontrollable not so little white lies spewed into her pink linen handkerchief.
“Well, Robin, at least you know that your Justine and Meredith are adopted children and no incest can occur with Lyndon, unless they too are David’s,” said Kitty, feeding the bullshit with more Bordeaux.
“This is all bullshit, Robin. I don’t believe a word of it,” said Sharon with great relief. “Anyway, even if true, it’s not
all that tragic. It’s in the nature of men to be adulterous. But I still can’t see David with Justine.”
“How long have you known, Robin?” asked Kitty, more to cut off Sharon than to get to the facts of the story which she too did not believe one word of it.
“Oh, fuck you Kitty,” said Robin.
She lifted her newly filled glass of red Bordeaux and finished it in one luxurious gulp. Screw the lasting friendship. She really didn’t care what Kitty and Sharon had to say or what they might have been thinking of her. She especially didn’t give a shit about Sharon who had dingle berries for brains, anyway.
There was renewed silence. The silence was intellectually welcomed, for after all, it isn’t every day that one hears these kinds of disjointed true confessions, even among best friends. Maybe Myrna, or a psychiatrist, or a priest could have dealt with Robin’s sad and pathetic marriage, but Sharon and Kitty were brand new to this kind of buried in your basement excess baggage rot.
“You must forgive him, Robin, rot or otherwise,” rushed in Sharon thinking of her own pathetic marriage. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing. You must forgive him and help him with all your love. Help him and show him the way to find the Lord.”
“Sharon, that last remark shows that you’ve lost it girl, that you are crazy?” calmly said Kitty. “Don’t listen to her, Robin. She’s been spending too much time with the Lord and not enough with Hank. You go straight to the police, Robin. Put that bastard away where he belongs. Bigamy is punishable by death in California. Take the son-of-a-bitch for all he’s worth, and then blow him and that other bitch of his away.”
Robin laughed because Kitty was right on.
Sharon felt nervous at Kitty’s words. Killing Hank was not in her agenda.
“You gotta draw the line somewhere, nice Sharon! Would you forgive Hank if you found out that he’s been humping some bitch?” asked an unyielding Kitty.
“Or you Kitty, if you knew that Claudio was being unfaithful?” said Robin.
“Kitty, it’s her money and not his for her to take him for all he’s worth. Whatever he’s worth is all hers, anyway,” said an uneasy Sharon trying to seek some way easy out. Anyway, she didn’t care who Hank was humping because he’d been doing it for a long time now.
Robin had another glass of the robust Bordeaux. As she drank it, she thought Sharon correct in ordering the red that day. The headache had already begun but she didn’t care. It would be a familiar, long hangover.
“Listen to me, Robin. My husband, idiot Hank, has been screwing bimbo waitresses for as long as I’ve been married to him. Screwing everyone but me. He’s also told me, but I don’t believe him, that he’s also screwing our friend Myrna.”
Aghast, aghast! More heavy stuff! In truth there’s wine!
“Sharon, honey, screw Hank,” said Robin who felt the luncheon turning vicious.
“But not in the way you’d like,” giggled Kitty, to Sharon.
“All men are stupid,” said Robin, as if to wash away all evil.
“But, do you see me angry? No. It’s true I don’t love him anymore, never had, but I have long ago forgiven him. So, what’s the big deal? So he screws other bimbos, including Myrna. You think that’s going to upset me? You think that’s going to make me sick? Not in this life! That bastard will never touch my ass again. So, here, let’s have another glass. We’re running late here. It’s after three already. Tomorrow’s another day. For your and Justine’s sake, forgive the bastard, let bygones be bygones, and maybe then Dave will realize the immensity of his sins,” said Sharon who was babbling again.
She was scared because she was now running on empty. The brain was sliding, and wasn’t firing the way she would have liked. Everything had been excessive for Sharon that day.
“It’s all right for you to say that, Sharon. The good thing is your husband is screwing bimbos for the fuck of it and not to get heirs. Just thank your lucky stars that you don’t have any sons to count the many bimbos in their future,” mumbled Robin, tired of being nice.
“He has an heir,” said Sharon almost inaudibly.
“It’s not because I don’t want to have children, Sharon. God knows I do. And although my husband screws me in more ways than yours does you, emotionally at least, I have been left a stinking virgin whore. I hate myself and I hate him and I must confess I could kill him, God forgive me, just as easily as you could kill your husband.”
The atmosphere was becoming absurdly morbid with magic and deception, above all murderous, thanks to the wine and the long litanies of guilt, regret, and vengeance. Another red was called for, but somebody said “no more.”
A watery glaze now neatly dampened all their eyes. In spite of the wine, all the funny little lies had left them feeling cold. The luncheon was turning out to be a miserable snivelling affair full of heart-felt distortions, even with Jesus present.
“There was this boy, long ago, his name was …,” Sharon’s voice and face happily traipsed of in the memory of her boy-love. She wanted to tell the world how much she has regretted that that boy didn’t fuck her that day when she was first in love. Wistfully, she gently pushed her breasts up as if to catch a grape and continued in reminiscence of her childhood love affair. “… how sad… I cannot for the life of me remember his name. Maybe I never really knew his name… Anyway, I dream about him all the time. Isn’t that silly! I want to have babies by him, as weird as that might sound, and the only way I can have babies with him is if I kill Hank. When I dream of my secret love, my breasts become hot, and God forgive me, as they are now.”
She was aglow, smiling pensively, and bringing sunshine to the table.
It was the clue that Kitty had been waiting for. It was back to true confessions time. Easy to cope with shared secrets meant to pleasure the soul, and make a girl giggle that eternally practiced laughter that all girls are born with.
“For a moment there, I thought we’d never get to enlarged breasts and hung penises,” heartily laughed Kitty now on familiar, chatty solid pleasurable ground.
“Well you happy virgins, I guess we’re all out of our minds,” Robin was now beginning to slur her in vinous words. “We are the bearers of the seed, and the offspring of our wombs are the universe of every season, and time immemorial, for all time to come, for all ages and all ages, right Sharon?”
“Just you and me Robin,” said Sharon.
Robin and Sharon shared a good laugh making Kitty feel left out as she looked down at her shoes.
“That’s right, Kitty,” said Sharon, smartly. “Don’t tell me you and Claudio, the gigolo, hot Dago, don’t fuck around when you take your separate long vacations?”
“It’s the only time Claudio and Kitty aren’t apart. At least it’s the only time that virgin Kitty gets corked,” roared Robin as she poured more wine.
“Well, ok, it’s my turn,” admitted good-natured Kitty. “Here it is: Claudio is impotent. I didn’t know it when I met him, but he had syphilis. He didn’t know it either. It wasn’t till a few years after he came to the States and after we got married that he was diagnosed with syphilis. One day his dick was dripping puss; guess who else got the syphilis? Thank God it wasn’t AIDS. Anyway, that left a bad taste in my mouth … don’t laugh … and we haven’t made love in years. We’re like strangers in our own house … and I have a son who would rather stick his arms up cows’ vaginas, instead of women’s. What of it? It happens to many people but for sure I’m not going to leave my husband. He goes his way and enjoys his Southern Comfort and I go my way and enjoy my variety of comforts. As for my son, I love him in spite of his bestial preferences and I’m sure one of these years he will find his way back to human vaginas.”
They were the best of friends and what the hell, they could say anything to each other; knowing they could keep a secret. And they did: Robin confessing she was worried about her husband’s illusory bastard son erroneously screw
ing her fantasy adopted daughters, and Sharon sharing that Hank was screwing one of her best friends, Myrna, and having had a son with some bimbo. And now syphilis.
“Trust me, Kitty, Claudio is not impotent,” said Sharon. “I hope he’s syphilis free.”
“Sharon, don’t say another word,” said Kitty.
“I’d say the boy’s in trouble if he don’t know the difference between a woman and a cow,” Robin tried to cover the stinking shit that Sharon might step in.
“Kitty, you didn’t have to admit your private affairs to us,” giggled Sharon, and once again she drained into her glass the last drop of the excellent bottle of expensive Bordeaux.
“Well, you guys confessed harsher things than I did,” said Kitty.
“No we didn’t,” retracted Robin. “All that stuff that I said about my husband, David, was made up, to liven up a boring lunch of stinking Roka leaves. My Dave blows a trumpet straight and thick, if you know what I mean.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said Sharon. “And my Hank is the finest man around, and I hold him in high veneration, even though he can’t…”
“Stop it, Sharon,” said Robin. “I can’t take this shit anymore. We’re beginning to sound like Myrna just before her collapse.”
“Is it true, Robin, that there’s no fountain of youth?” asked Sharon.
“We’re all inanimate objects, Sharon, like the Bible says, made out of mud, and for one second, like a tiny glowing ember, we beautifully glow among the spent ashes and we think we own the universe,” said Robin to her friend, not knowing whether she said it out of meanness or out of love.
“Is it just that, Robin? Just one moment’s sparkle?”
“Yes! Just one moment’s sparkle, never to repeat again; just like the ember glows for a second and then dies, returns to ashes, to mud, never the sparkle to return again,” said Robin.
“But sometimes there is a second flare, a spark, a delayed glitter,” said Kitty.
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