by Nate Allen
She loved Ray Arnett, even when less of him came back to her from Normandy than left, and Ray would always be indebted to her, even when other necessities and ingredients of the marriage became absent, for her loyalty, he remained loyal to her. They were a product of a different generation, one that understood commitment, sacrifice, and had an appreciation for what you had, rather than bitterness about what you didn’t, a “we” generation, not a “me” generation. It was also a harsh upbringing, and she would parent with that same degree of fear. As a child Jake had at times hated her, she could be mean, restrictive, and overprotective, while simultaneously neglectful. But as Jake had gotten older they had found the opportunity to enjoy a friendship, she had instilled in him a fierce loyalty and determination. And he would be there when she needed him, just as she had been for him, not always in the way he had hoped, but there nonetheless, irrespective of anything else going on between them.
Meanwhile Rae Anne was about to take a road trip. She had been asked to be the matron of honor in her cousin’s wedding in Beaufort, North Carolina, a beautiful, quaint, historic coastal town. It was a trip that she would make alone as Glen was preparing for the start of the Spring semester. She told him she needed a bit of space and perspective from the frenzy that had been the previous month, and this provided a nice escape. She had intended to make a mini-vacation of it, staying a few days after the event, and therefore unlike the rest of the wedding party, she retained a room by herself elsewhere. The children’s needs and business carefully arranged to be taken care of by her parents, Glen and Frank. It was a much needed and well-deserved break she professed, and Glen understood that it would be in his best interest to afford her the time. He might not have agreed with how she would spend it however.
She was going with the intention of having a fling while she was there. She would succeed. In the day or so following the wedding, when everyone else had gone back to their respective lives, she remained for a bit of rest and relaxation. She was feeling particularly stressed and needed time off from the constant demands of her life. Her husband agreed. She had thought for half a second to invite Jake, it presented a nice opportunity to have some fun without all the sneaking around, but that thought quickly vanished, as she reminded herself she needed a little diversity in her supplemental plan portfolio, it was too heavily invested in someone who had the ability to perhaps hurt her, and that was unacceptable.
She met Timothy at a seaside bar on a Sunday evening. He was there from out of town as well, a photographer and journalist from a travel magazine sent there to do a midwinter piece on the historic area. He was immediately attracted to her, and she to him. And after a couple of hours of verbal foreplay, making sure he wasn’t married …another disqualifier of hers, feeling him out for personal philosophies and how he might feel about her being married, he passed the entrance exam with flying colors. She would develop, or perhaps refine a sob story she had already perfected to the tune of “I’m stuck in a marriage, my husband won’t touch me, I’m on fire, I’m just looking to have some fun and broaden my horizons, I think I’m desirable…. ” (fishing for a compliment) “Why do you think he doesn’t want to have sex with me?” in that careful southern twang of hers. She knew she had the man on the hook an hour earlier, but she wanted to wrestle with him for a bit, reel him in, let him out, reel him back in so by the time they got back to his room he was ready to pounce. It was a delightful occasion, he was well equipped it would seem, and they spent the night together.
She had accomplished what she sought, gotten a bit of “strange,” no-strings attached, and they would exchange email addresses as a means of staying in touch. That was important for her, for it to be meaningful to her partner, for him to have some awareness of the gift she had given him in the opportunity. Jake provided her that in abundance, she would find others to be less impressed, and less interested beyond the immediate gratification of sex, she was married after all. That limits the opportunities for a relationship to grow, and most men are not interested in such difficulties.
After the incident where the police had been called to the house, Jake had helped her set up a free email account over the phone while he was sitting at his son’s basketball practice one evening, her husband was behaving understandably suspicious and she wanted a way to communicate with Jake openly, but without the worry, so he told her how. He had six different email addresses in fact, that was one way he segregated the women and his activities …he walked her through the steps until she was finished, she narrating as she completed each step. Jake had no idea at the time he was creating a pipeline for her to communicate with others as well.
She returned to Raleigh rested and rejuvenated, the attitude and appearance of someone who has just had an hour long deep-tissue massage, refreshed and relaxed. She had not had an orgasm, the familiarity with the man wasn’t there, and neither was the level of comfort she preferred. She enjoyed controlling the environment, which was why she had been so bold as to invite Jake to her home for their first get together, and this excursion didn’t allow her to do so. While she hadn’t gotten her “O,” she delighted in the fact she had given Timothy several, and in that there was an enormous affirmation for her, her desirability, her prowess, and it had scratched her itch. The spontaneity adding to the excitement, and it would become an aspect of her future outings. She called Jake and asked if he’d like to meet her for coffee the middle of the week, and as always, he arranged his schedule to accommodate her. It had been now three weeks since he had seen her, and he was anxious at the thought of how they’d left things last time, she seemed a little “deflated.”
He gave her a strong but gentle hug when she arrived, and a signature kiss on the neck, again it seemed appropriate for a public display of affection, however she was not quite as warm in her embrace. He would later begin to think of how she must dismiss Glen in such a way. It sucked. They each sat down and ordered a sandwich, he a cappuccino, and she a coffee, black, no sugar. They had not been there five minutes when she told him she had something she had been dying to tell him, almost giddy with it, her lip squinched up to her nose like Elizabeth Montgomery in Bewitched, (younger audience please check TV Land for times and listings) he perked up eager to hear what she had to share, it must be something good he thought.
And then she proceeded to tell him about the guy she had met, how she had seduced him in a fashion, going into great detail in some uncomfortable aspects for our man Jake, and she continued to the apparent point of the story, and their occasion for this meeting it would seem, as she announced with great pleasure how she had come to realize through the experience, that Jake was not the source of her “feel good,” that it wasn’t specific to him, and she did so with the coldest satisfaction, like one of those guests on Maury Povich where the patented response was “You are NOT the father,” …she had declared he was NOT the source of her recent happiness, and she couldn’t wait to tell him. Ouch, …that kinda hurt …unnecessarily so, and extremely uncalled for he thought silently, as he sat there across from her smiling, continuing his silent conversation with himself, “That’s great, tell me all about it,” he replied and proceeded to listen, only this time he had the frozen expression of a mannequin… “Touché Jake… I’ll see your bursting my little bubble, and beat you with this metaphoric club you provided me with,” …or so it had to seem.
He had never taken part in anything like it. Perhaps relationships weren’t his forte after all, at least not relationships of this nature. It would get exponentially worse. He thought he had attached his heart to an unavailable woman, he had seemingly hitched it to Halley’s Comet, and it wasn’t going to be back for another 75-76 years or so it felt. What the fuck? And like Bob from the local morning radio Showgram was always saying, “I quit this bitch,” he thought. See ya!!!
You have to remember he had a kind of emotional OCD, and this shit was eating him up from the inside out. He could’ve hurt somebody. He went home and composed a very pointed and targeted email, of
the “fuck you very much” variety after he had some difficulty digesting his “lunch,” for it had not settled well.
So brace yourself, might want to go get a drink or a snack cause this could take awhile, but its relevant for a couple of reasons. First, it was impressive how the landscaper could articulate himself, and if you pay attention, he’ll tell you in a sense how things could take the turn they did. Secondly he was a wordsmith, it was his twelve-inch cock so to speak, and he would poke her with it just often enough that she wouldn’t forget it. The only common denominator between her “types” was that they had to be able to carry on an intelligent conversation, and he had no equal in that arena.
The first letter is extremely honest, it tells you what was going on inside the man, and in a sense it represents the last we’ll see of rational thinking where she was concerned. But she would never see it, there’s certain to be irony in that. For the most part everything afterwards would be written with ulterior motives, so here it went,
It read:
Dear Rae,
You asked me to trust my instincts and intuition and as such, I’m sensing a change in the role I’ve played in your life, or perhaps sadly, a cessation of it. I’m glad you’ve begun your journey anew, and I hope time and reflection will tell what a happy, enlightening, and fulfilling one it has been. I also hope you find something to sustain you along the way. It is becoming apparent why I was brought into your life, to fan the fire, as a bridge from one part of your life to the next, or maybe just as a short chapter in the story you will tell of your life. We existed in a vacuum of sorts for a moment in time, and it was an extremely intense, passionate and loving period. I ache at the thought that it is coming to a close, but I’m thankful for the experience of it at this time in my life nonetheless. I hope you have some similar feelings.
It was difficult at times to be separated from you, extremely difficult, and I think I could have sustained it. But I realized some things about your feelings toward me after the Beaufort trip, …as did you :)) when you explained that you had come to the realization that you could feel whatever it was you felt in your experience with me… without me, …and that I was not the source of it. And while I understand what you meant it was saddening to hear it, because what I have felt when I was with you was unique and specific to you, rare and not commonplace. The language you had used in the previous weeks is missing from your messages of late… “that you could not imagine seeing me and not wanting to have a physically intimate relationship,” that you were afraid if you let yourself you would “consume” me, “the affection between us was so strong it couldn’t be hidden,” and that your “insides were raging,” that you had never met anyone like me, and didn’t want me to not be a part of your life.
They are all wonderful things that will echo in my heart and head I am sure. But unfortunately they didn’t really withstand the first pierce to the armor, and I think I will consequently have some doubt regarding their strength and sincerity, not to mention my ability to trust my intuition in such matters. I am glad that I have given you something in our friendship that was of value to you, glad that I helped push open that door to the powerful love we all deserve and desire, and yes, truly saddened, in the deepest of ways, that I will not be the one who gets to walk through it. I have shared things with you that I have learned on my journey, words that have a pain associated with them for me, and while I know you understand the meaning in them, they will never truly mean what they should until you too have a pain associated with them to understand their value and wisdom.
Thank you for letting me be a part of your life, for allowing me to travel however briefly a part of this road with you. In reality it will be a journey that you must take alone, and I wish you all the best from the bottom of my heart, and wish for your safety as well. You will always be the “third” woman I have loved in my life, and I will remember you every time the wind blows through the hole left in my heart of that space only you have occupied. As always…
Love,
-Jake
…and he promptly sent it without hesitation …and then panicked as soon as he had done so, wishing he could undo it, to the point he began trying to access her email that he had helped her set up in an attempt to permanently delete it before she read it. If he couldn’t guess the password he was prepared to try and answer the secret question to reset it, even though it would send up a red flag to her in doing so …he didn’t care. His attempts failed to the point it triggered the automated prompt to reset the password via the secret question.
He had six adolescent boys downstairs making all the ruckus in the world, all calling for his attention and presence, and he was upstairs panicking like he had hit the launch codes for a nuclear attack, or the drug addict who in a moment of dread over their situation has flushed the remainder of their stash, only to then try and stop it from going completely down the toilet and salvage some trace of it, regretting the decision …it would have been pitiful to watch, he really was an inherently good guy, but unknown to anyone he was becoming an aberration of himself.
The secret question was “What was your first car? ” He knew this, he had replayed the conversation in his mind, they were lying in his bed that Sunday morning the first weekend they had spent together, revealing bits and pieces of each other as unacquainted lovers do, and she had told him about how she was the first of her girlfriends to get a car. Her father was getting a new one and handed it down to her, it was a yellow Lincoln Continental, big as a damn classroom he remembered kidding her. She had told him that all the boys called them the ’Nental chicks as they drove around their Five Points neighborhood. It was so big they made her get two parking permits to park in the Broughton High lot. She kept it throughout her college years.
It was “Continental,” so he knew the answer to her secret question, but it was his last resort. He closed out of the webmail, and decided he would wait a few minutes, clear his thoughts …and the cache on his computer, and try the password again, he didn’t want to alarm her that it had been compromised if at all possible, and in the process close the window of communication. He pulled up the email login again, and tried a couple of more passwords, he remembered vividly the context of the conversation they had when she was setting it up, the password had to be something relevant to their situation, and what it represented to her, escape seemed relevant. He tried it, and boom …he was in.
It sounds unbelievable, but it happened, and there he was in her email account, but there was a lot of damn mail and it wasn’t all his. It was like a perverse soap opera, he was reading her emails from this guy Timothy she had told him about, emails from men who wanted to sleep with her, men she wanted to sleep with, and the competition was fierce and there was woefully plenty of it. She was like the cheese in a room full of hungry rats, and everyone wanted a piece. It would prove to be painfully masochistic to the pleasure-seeking monkey in Jake. But there was no going back, no erasing the knowledge of it. He copied all the emails and addresses, and everything that was saved in her sent and inbox and pasted them into a word document on his computer, then saved all the emails “keep as new” or “unfucking read,” or whichever way he’d found them, deleted any trace of the email he had sent and logged out.
He had seen behind the curtain and the image had disturbed him. He had that summer camp “I wanna go home,” look about him. Yet in spite of everything, he wasn’t able to walk away from the relationship, couldn’t change how he felt about her.
Unable to exit or make a U-turn at this pivotal point, he became that crooked man that walked a crooked mile, and this milepost on the journey represents the point where the man went from being “different,” to being “weird.” From being the man he was …to some corrupted version of himself.
He would wait a day or two before composing an upbeat email that he thought would speak well for him as a progressive open-minded man… Written in a tone she would appreciate, surprise her, and hopefully alleviate any stress she had regarding his reac
tion to what she had said. This one read:
Hey Doll,
I know I probably seemed a little weird after the news of your Beaufort trip, and yes I was a bit jealous, but it wasn’t necessarily what you may have thought. Contradictions are fine, even attractive… I have plenty myself, but inconsistencies are scary. I was still on the 8th or 9th floor of a 10 story emotional building and your elevator seemed to be falling fast ;))
Hell, if you recall when I spoke to you that Saturday while you were at the wedding you told me that you didn’t want to have to choose between me and your husband, …those are powerful, endearing words Rae, and in a day’s time, or a chance encounter, all of that seemed to have changed. Perhaps you can’t understand or empathize how the loss of significance (or the appearance of significance) affected me, but I hope you’ll accept that’s how I felt. The only possible conclusions I could draw weren’t very comfortable ones.
Let’s face it, for all of my experience and maturity, I’ve never been in a relationship quite like this, and I’m still feeling my way around a bit. I’ve had time to trim my sails and adjust my course so that I don’t end up in the emotional rocks so to speak ;) Truthfully, I had to dial down the emotions a bit, and that’s okay. I like to think that friendships are living things, kind of like a tree, and during the life of ours we will have different seasons, all the while the roots growing deeper and stronger, and while each season will have its own intensity and passion (or lack of) it will eventually fade into the next, never gone, just waiting to evolve and return anew.