A Matter of Love in da Bronx

by Paul Argentini

  With their first full glass of champagne, each touched the others'. Sam paused for just a moment. --I use Lou's toast: To us!

  Standing on the sidewalk outside the bar, Sam shook the soldier's hand, kissed Louisa and Mary, and left.

  He had arranged everything as best as he knew, understood and felt about Lou.

  Now, Sam had to tend to Sam.

  Until he could ride it no more, he rode and rode and rode the ferry.

  CHAPTER 44

  Monday evening

  MY SWEETHEART, DEAREST MARY: How are you? Really, how are you? Tell me. I ask unspurred by polite hypocrisy, as you must know. I ask because I want to hear you say you feel terrible. Awful. Depressed. Full of misery. I want to hear you're in the worst possible state you can be in because, in this fantasy of mine, I want to arrive in this marvelous light dispelling the gloom, and make you to feel the princess you are. For that, I want you to look at me with stars in your eyes; to adore me; to see me as your champion. I want you to feel secure, safe. To look down from your throne of the purest Carrerra marble, taken even deeper from that of the Pieta, and see that I have enshrined you in the Paradise you deserve where no want nor wish is but a want or wish away. How incredible to have you say how vital and exciting is your life, and how you would want it to remain just so all the days you have. What is it I ask in return? There's much to consider. That you, say...just look upon me. Perhaps, smile at me. Oh! Gracious! that you would hold my hand. God! that you would have our child! What a miracle, blessed a billion times! But, no. I ask for nothing. Really. Don't you see, I offer you the purest of love directed to the purest being taken into my heart? You are so sweet, so precious, so beautiful. My adoration holds no bounds. Be sure I'm no lovesick puppy; no lovesick psychotic; no lovesick lover, disinterested in all outside himself--sadist, masochist, unkissed. Because the essence is you, I make no slight request for myself. I want to be allowed merely to love you. But, because I must acknowledge, human that I am, being one that loves, I want to win your admiration. To find myself needed in your presence. To be a vital essence in your life! I want to be loved by you! And not just on the level of the ideal...so far, so high, so elusive. Really, I don't know what that means. I'm not a woman, so how do I answer the question of whether or not man and woman love the same? I know the ideal: it is that we do indeed love the same. We must. We derive not of separate entitietial equations. So, if not, then we are split amidst, half for her, half for him, and together, greater than the whole. This is the combustion of life. This is the heat of it. This is the crucible. And in here with it, combined, is a love limned, unslagged, pured, forged, sparked, understructured, elevated and commenced. We must love the same or we would not fit as key and lock. It is here where we must anchor our dreams, in the ideal love in its purest form, that it is the complete giving of oneself to the other with no recompense in thought, hope or promise. A total irretrieveable, unreclaimable, free-will impartment to the other of love, life, lodestar. This is it. This is essense to its pale. To love less than the ideal is an exercise in idiocy. The product of platonicy is auto-eroticism, and the product of jerking off is dissatisfaction. So, to know of the ideal is to also know of the unideal, or there would be no parameter. So, in any ideal love, there must be the fuck. There must be that physical unioncombined with the ideal expression of love that results in a metasomatism where neither lover knows where whose flesh begins and ends, and whose mind governs an ecstasy so superb and felt so equally by both, its essence is refulgentic. The ideal love, then, is when both have felt what the other has felt, whether the feeling has passed them both or not. There is the mystery of life, and love. Yes, on less than the ideal the man thinks of love as that which he finds on the end of his prick just prior to his orgasm: a vagina, an asshole, his hand, a plastic cup. Shit! One can see if one had a choice, the selection would be the ideal. That takes such a stroke of luck. But, a woman? She'd take it with anything he had as long as it came with romance, be it penis, finger, carrot or The Daily News. There is this need, then, to have sex. One can have sex without love, that's certain. But love without sex? Think again. Senses is all. There is nothing but the senses. Returning to the ideal love, then, in the strictest sense of the word love, the only true love is the voluptuous love. Anything else is a contamination of what it was intended to be. It is so easy to prove. The feeling...when I take you in my arms, take your lips in a kiss...is always the same...total ecstasy. I swear, if we were to be together for a hundred years, it would always be the same feeling. Our love is that special. Can you blame me for wondering what it will be like when we make love? I can see where a little daydreaming can go a long way, and I've done a lot of that lately, but if what we have is so fantastic with merely a bit of the way we have to go, Lord! what sort of a psycho-sensual explosion is in store for us when we achieve simultaneous orgasm? You know, don't you, that's going to happen the very first time we are together in each other's arms? How can we have anything less? You'll see. I can't help writing of this because it's been a dreadful forty-eight hours, and I use the subject to restore some of my equilibrium.

  That's why I expressed my concern about how you were. The tragedy of Lou has pre-empted our lives. I asked Lou, in one of those moments as he drifted in and out of consciousness, what I could do for him. He apologized because he couldn't make the proper attribution, but he read somewhere that when it came time to die, one must make sure there was nothing else to do. I find that doesn't apply just to dying. In our lives, there is exactly the proper moment for everything to occur. Simply, it is The Moment, the instant a particular iron is at its hottest when it needs be struck. Life is truly a succession of The Moments. Miss a moment, and it remains vacant forever. The world is all wrong if this is not our moment to love. I want it, or I don't want life. I must have it. I will not survive without it. So, I am concerned that so serious an interruption has affected your feelings for me. The moment came to do for Lou, but the time in that moment had to be taken away for us. The bright sun is not good for beginning things, just as too hard a test too early in a love nettles its mettle. Well, did it? Do you love me still? As you did before? Less? More? Differently? Static? Growing? Changing? Oh! Sweetheart! How I do not want to lose this moment to lose myself in love with you! I sense some small change in my ardor, a brighter but more focused need for you in my life. I'm terrified I shall lose you through some disastrous piece of bad luck. I can't take that chance. I've made up my mind. We must do what we must do, you and I. All will be explained at our very next meeting, tonight, I hope, even if it's for only a few moments.

  There is nothing to say further about the incident that precipitated Lou's death. Because the identities of the men are unknown, we can assume either they were paid to do their work, and we can speculate as to who that might be; or, it was a case of mistaken identity. Everything has its moment, and now is not my moment for this.

  This moment belongs to you, to us, to our love. I will have nothing interefere until our will be done. I want to see your loveliness. I must taste the sweetness of your juices. I long to feel your tenderness in my arms. I ache to hear the echo of your ecstasy. I need to smell your love exuding from your flesh. Sam and Mary must be the one being they are.

  With my limitless passion I hold you in my arms, and kiss you tenderly until our dreams are the reality of our embrace. I love you with all my heart and soul, and will do so forever and ever, always,

  Your

  Sam

  CHAPTER 45

  DEAR SAM:

  There's no nice way to say this. I don't want to do you a disservice by trying though I don't want you to misinterpret my bluntness as an attempt to hurt you further. I take no pleasure in writing this to you.

  I've pretty much made up my mind that I end our relationship at this moment.

  This doesn't come without thought, less than one might expect because so many things were pointing in this direction. There is nothing really specific. You are an extremely bright and personable young man
who will be snatched up in an instant, I'm sure. Yes, there were a few pleasant moments I shall always treasure in my memory of you, and for a while I found you quite attractive and appealing. Hardly is any of this enough for a long and lasting relationship toward which you quite definitely were headed while I was not.

  Also, you walk with too many problems. I'm not just referring to your dearest friend, Lou, and what happened to him, for which my heart goes out to you, but you seem to attract the wrong moment at the wrong moment.

  The truth is Vito has asked me to marry him, a fact that pleases my folks no end. He does have his own business, and knows how to enjoy life, that's true, which speak in his favor, yet, do not prompt me to entertain his proposal. The point is he's fun and exciting to be with, and I don't want to miss out on a single thing.

  If you like, think of this as a trial basis; a trial separation, if you will. Should something make me change my mind I'll be sure to find out how you feel. In the meantime, please don't embarrass me by trying to contact me in any way. I'm writing this note also specifically to take that option from you. No matter what happens, I would like to consider you always as one of my dear friends. I hope you will allow me to be one of yours.

  Although this will be difficult and painful to understand now, you will find as the days go by how wise a decision this has been.

  With warm thoughts of you always,

  Fondly,

  Mary

  CHAPTER 46

  --WHAT THE FUCK? Sam exploded after he read Mary's letter. He found it on the floor of the shop when he let himself in the next morning, Tuesday. He was still a bit shaky from Lou's death; still asleep, this his worst nightmare. He stared at the page. Mary's hand was beautiful, each letter perfectly formed, equal to all the others, and viewed as an entity unto itself, it was a work of art. He thought of his own childish scrawl by comparison. Sam waved the sheet of paper to the air, as if it would scramble the words to say something different. He read the letter again, emphasizing each word by each word.

  --Lou! Where are you when I need you! What is she doing to me! Sonofabitch! He slammed the flat of his hand on the worktable. No Magiik appeared, nor did the Boom! wake him up. He wasn't dreaming. He was reading what he was reading all right! No! It couldn't be so. He needed a more neutral light. He went to the sidewalk. The message was the same. --What the fuck? His face screwed up, his shoulders hunched together, his stomach sagged. He felt a diarrhea coming on. The tone left his leg muscles, and he sought the refuge of the curb. The letter hanging between his legs, his elbow hard into his knee, his forehead jammed onto his hand. The picture of the classic lost soul, he said to himself, though he altered not his posture. Surprisingly, his mind wasn't racing; it was plodding and quite methodically. This is real, or it's not real. It's real. I accept, or I do not accept. If I accept, then how can I gain the best revenge? To get thirty seconds on the evening news of my body free-falling? Or, a two-line obituary in the newspapers: ...the body found floating in the Bronx River yesterday was identified as...a suicide. Which would really make her feel completely rotten?...for a long! time? Shit! You asshole, if she really meant this all she would say is: --What a dumb fuck! You are a dumb fuck, you know that? How can you think you mean so little to her after what you have both felt? So what are you saying? If you think you can go on living without her, what do you do? Ah! Now you have the perfect excuse to jerk off! Your gonads have been hanging on you like bocce balls anticipating the ejaculation into her vagina, and now that it is not to be, you must find your relief. Go pull your prick. De-horn yourself! Fuck you! What a stupid bastard you are. You're not worth a shit. Everything is hopeless, and there's not a fucking thing you can do about it. The only possible place for you is in a deep, shitty, muddy, wallowy depression. You're entitled! Fa'n gool. I felt the magic, I know she felt the magic. We are in love, she couldn't fake it, I know that much! So? So you must not accept what she has written on the face of it. You must determine the reason for the letter. The only way I'll really know is if I talk to her. I must talk to Mary. Mary! Mary! Talk to me! Why? Why are you doing this? I don't understand what's happening, I don't want to understand what's happening! I want to die! All is despair. Helpless and hopeless. There is nothing. Yes, but I'm not yet so irrational I don't understand something is very wrong. My emotions have been put through the traces these last few days. The upheaval goes on. So, why wouldn't this same miasma affect Mary? How can I assume anything? She could walk in here right now and beg me to tear up the letter, written in a desperate moment, not to be taken seriously. Why would she do this? Maybe she's fucking good and sick of you, Man! Shit! I wish I could die! Oh! Jesus Christ Almighty! This world is getting to be too much. People like Lou shouldn't get killed like that, not leave me so alone. Why worry about me? Think of poor Lou. Why must that have happened to him? That he should die, and I remain alive? It's not guilt, I would've done the same for him, chased those bastards. It's just that...well...his life seemed so much more worthwhile than mine. And especially now, if Mary really feels that we've been making something out of nothing, what the hell is there left? To continue doing what I'm doing? Break my ass? For whom? For what? Everyone is taking for themselves, fuck the rest of the world. Mom and Pop, just doing for themselves, taking everything, every drop of blood I have for their own selfish selves. I don't want to do it for them anymore, and there's no reason for me to do it for myself. Not without Mary. What woman would ever give me a tumble? OW! The pain! The rotten fucking pain I feel inside. Desolation. Misery. Poor bastard that you are. Why don't you go end it? What the fuck are you waiting for? More of the same ache and pain. God! It hurts so much. There is so much tearing inside, how does one endure it? Mamma mia! Mary! Do you know what you're doing to me? Would you do this if you knew? Shit! Why not? If I meant nothing to you before, why would I mean anything to you now, just because my soul is wracked? All I can see before me is that painting--or was it a tapestry?--in the Met, what was the title? The Martydom of St. Anthony, or somebody. All those fucking arrows ripping through his whole body, his neck, his arms, his legs, his chest, his stomach. Fifty of those fuckers, maybe. Yet, he's still alive enough to have the sainted face, the religious ecstasy. I have none of that ecstasy, but I know what fifty arrows feel like. You sad bastard, there's nothing left for you in this world. ...Jesus! It's a good thing I don't remember what thoughts go through my head, so much confusion. I didn't do my quota for today. Who can think of food. Lou, I don't know what to do for you anymore. There should be a memorial for you somewhere besides your three books which I gave to the library in your name. And Sol? Where's Sol? He should've been back. What's he going to say? Oh! Christ. He should be here for my funeral. I wouldn't want him to think... God! You ass, don't you think he's had enough of that crap? I just can't fucking believe Mary would do this! I have to...

  --Eyhh! Cumba! The fuck you doin'?

  Sam knew he was a cab driver even before he could focus on the half-worried, half-angry eyes on the basketball-sized face wearing a sculptured full beard and a pith helmet. He was also aware he was being helped up from a horizontal position off the street. Guided to the curb, he saw the cab angled crazily, and felt hands brushing at his clothing.

  --You won the lottery, right?

  The biggest fat man he ever saw. --Huh? Who you?

  --I'm God. Sometimes life I take, sometimes I give. With you, I think I give. You okay. You fine.

  --Lottery?

  --You walk ina fucking street like you head up you ass. So? Whatsa news? He held up to his face Mary's letter still clutched in Sam's hand. He read it. Fucking dame.

  --I love her.

  --Look, Cumba, nothing I to do for you. There's no room ina casket for the hard-on. So? Wanta lay back down ina street?

  --I want to die.

  --So? I putcha back ina street!

  --Yes...No! I must see Mary.

  --I see the problem. Self-fellatio. Ride wid me, talk it out. Les go.

  --Let me ride with you. />
  --Das what I said. You be a body of confusion. What I talk of?

  -- Tell me of love.

  --Ya got it. As he got in the driver's seat next to Sam, who was positioned as a porcelain piece staring ahead, the letter on his lap, he asked if Sam was more in the mood for something like the Bible, or Spinoza, or Kahlil Gibran, which he pronouned like the "G" was under water. No matter, he didn't like Czzzzeee-bran anyway, besides he was a Boston boy, and what the fuck do they have compared to the numen of the Bronx from which he derived his self-derivative eclectic philosphy which was sought out by scholars of the world. He would soon write a book. --What would I say? F'r'instance... He began with the formation of the universe, the creation of light, and the establishment of life. By the time he got to Man and Woman, he'd stopped for lunch twice, carried twenty-seven fares, and went through nine bottles of Dr. Pepper. It was when they got to City Island that he stopped the cab, took his corpulent self to a bench in the sun where he spread his arms along the back of it like a soaring bird, extended his legs, and stared hard to the sea. It was several long, long minutes before Sam found himself leaning against a post, arms folded staring at him. He was demolishing a huge Italian hot meatball grinder. He offered Sam a Dr. Pepper. Sam remained wordless and shook his head. This is like love. What you see is Dr. Pepper. What I'm really drinking is wine.

  And there it was before him.

  Romantic love is the personification of the altered state--body, mind, soul. It is an innate capacity reflected in perceived expectations wishing fulfillment. It is the embodiment of the highest level of phantasy to be realistically experienced by the total being. In its truest sense, love is to be only once in a lifetime, all else a mere silhouette. --Cabbie, where can I rent a furnished apartment?