Tallulah Tempest

by Robert Scott Leyse

  And so it is that I essentially start to feel I’m being blackmailed into setting all else aside (It’s not as if I don’t have other things to do.), putting a bright happy face on matters, and behaving exactly as Tallulah wishes me to behave for as long as she wishes me to do so. I don’t doubt the angelic side of her personality’s authentic—I know it is. But I also know the desperate, taunting, and violent side of her personality’s equally as authentic and I’m by no means certain it won’t make another appearance. She’s said she wants to stay and make me feel good? Well, who knows what timeline she has in mind? For all I know she intends to hold me to my fear-dictated words and actually stay all weekend. And I don’t care how soothing Tallulah’s caresses are now, or if she becomes the whole angel again without the unsettling intentness in her eyes: I won’t be wholly at ease until she walks out the door. To count upon her to cease being swayable by the whisperings of her dark side would be the height of naïveté and lasting relaxation with her simply isn’t possible. The inescapable fact is that, even when we’re shimmering with joy, we’re still seated upon an emotional powder keg—that my bed can, and very well might, erupt into a battleground at any time. And, admittedly, if another battle were to take place it might very well cycle around to becoming another heavenly interval of spontaneous outpouring of unaffected affection, but what of it? The indescribable elation of a heavenly interval notwithstanding, I’d never willingly revisit hell to reexperience it.

  But it’s not as if waiting for an unbalanced beauty to decide it’s time to leave isn’t a recurring situation: having to assure girls I want them to stay while privately desiring the opposite is almost routine by now. Hard-won experience has taught me failure to make such assurances will result in highly memorable demonstrations of annoyance, as inevitable as the stings of wasps if one disturbs their nest. I have ejected girls against their will but such is a last born-of-hopelessness resort, when they truly aspire to the heights of insanity; it’s far easier, even if time consuming, to put a false face on matters and smilingly indulge their every whim and wait them out. Unwillingly ejected girls make scenes in the hallway the neighbors don’t forget, and issue threats that twist unpleasantries through my imagination, despite my most strenuous efforts to discount them, for a long time. And I wonder how many hours total I’ve spent waiting in my own apartment for disturbance-prone sweethearts to clear out? I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s several weeks’ worth.

  As for what’s going on in Tallulah’s cute capricious conflict-hatching head, now that the ambiguous look’s commencing to depart from her eyes and she’s happily gazing at me—applying a liberal amount of caresses to my shoulders and neck, blithely chatting, squirming about like a little girl who’s about to be given a much-desired doll—as I peruse a take-out menu: I know she’s convinced she’ll be coming over again to raise more hell, insult and bait and frighten and disorient and annoy me until she’s once more bound and abandoned on the kitchen floor, or until I indulge whatever other obsessions excite her fancy, however extreme they may be. Yes, she firmly believes I’m game for more conflict-games; that I enjoy being attacked and challenged, forced to rein her in; that I’m as addicted to the drama as she is and can’t wait for another dose. She thinks this is the first night of a beautiful, passionate, tumultuous, storm-tossed relationship that will allow her to feel infinitely superior to every girl she knows; to her mind affection’s only authentic if it coexists with chaos and she feels she’s stumbled upon a treasure trove. But I’m telling you this: the second changeable Tallulah’s out the door I’ll be informing the doormen not to let her in my building again; and that, should she come over uninvited (being the willful not-taking-no-for-an-answer girl she is, it’s highly likely she will), I don’t even want to know. The last thing I need is a great deal of uneasiness on account of knowing a maniac’s coming over here intent on hijacking my life, irrespective of my consent. When it comes to being wanted by a hellcat, ignorance is the only possible path to peace of mind.

  Is banishment an easy decision? I’ll admit a part of me is arguing against my better instincts. After all, the delight Tallulah brings along with the stress is no illusion—it’s unfortunate her delight-dispensing qualities can take a backseat to her stress-sowing impulses at any time. She may be adept at healing the wounds she inflicts but why does she need to inflict them in the first place? Do I really want to be strapped to a maniacal fight-and-then-kiss-and-make-up-and-then-fight-again merry-go-round? My emotional reflexes, honed by too many fatiguing adventures to count, are dictating that I willfully blind myself to the good side of Tallulah and avoid her. The greatest crime I could possibly commit in her eyes would be to reveal ambivalence in my feelings towards her, continue to see her while unable to wholeheartedly embrace the idea of continuing to see her—unable to avoid being wary, holding part of myself back. From a hellcat’s point of view there’s absolutely no forgiveness for being self-divided and indecisive in matters of the heart and no retaliatory measures are too extreme: I’ve learned this lesson the hard way and have no wish to be schooled in it again. I really do have no choice but to give Tallulah the gate as soon as she departs and not look back.

  OK Angie, Ella, Steve: I’m done with telling of my latest wildcat-in-kitten’s-guise fiasco (For the record, Tallulah and I mostly slept between one or thereabouts and late evening, when she departed on account of having exams to prepare for: thank God for law school.) and what I want to know is: why do I repeatedly experience variations of the above? Why am I afflicted with reverse radar, such that I only become involved with girls who are the opposite of what I want? Why am I a magnet for sweet-faced closet crazies without wishing to be? Why do disturbed beauties repeatedly dupe me into believing them to be balanced and then unleash chaos in my home? What’s this business of only bringing home girls who guide me towards the gates of hell? Only half-jokingly I say: it’s as if I’m locked in a vicious self-punishment cycle on account of heinous crimes committed in a previous life, subconsciously atoning for buried sins.

  And why are so many delectable darlings thirsting to play abuse-me games, anyway? What is it about being mistreated—tied up, slapped and spanked, whatever—that gets their eyes to brim with admiration and affection? Why does gentlemanly behavior—being considerate, treating them like princesses—only elicit mockery, scorn, and contempt? These girls are well-educated, have money, and dress in good taste; they’re level-headed, socially adept, and well-regarded in their regular lives; they have beauty and poise and cleverness to burn; and all of them are into taunting and insulting me until I do their bidding and subject them to humiliation theater, and they’ll stop at nothing to get their way. They seek to antagonize me by any and every means available, go absolutely berserk. No course of action’s taboo when it’s in the service of their obsessions, all manner of emotional and physical violence is justified. I’ve been bitten, slashed with fingernails and rings and barrettes, hit by thrown objects, kicked—had my fingers bent backwards, toes stomped on, chest struck by a chair—been threatened with letter openers, scissors, corkscrews, kitchen knives, a bronze statuette. And they love to reverse the situation and insist I’m being mean when I resist indulging them—love to announce they’re going to involve the neighbors and building staff, say disparaging things about me, level accusations—love to say they need to be rescued and are going to phone their fathers, their mothers, their big brothers and sisters, the cops. And Tallulah’s not the first to try the cry-rape ploy.

  So what’s the story? I’ll tell you what the story is: these girls are going on the Internet and reading stress-for-kicks-and-arousal erotica rubbish and firing up their imaginations. No sooner do they read that drivel than they want to experience it. Not to mention the old standards—de Sade, Liaisons Dangereuses, and the Story of O—that deal with the same themes in a more bewitching manner, introduce glamour and transcendence and mystery into the equation via heightened style, words that reverberate with authentic emotion. These girls are allowin
g fiction to persuade them they’re bored with comfort, leading empty lives absent of meaningful aspiration and challenge, and in need of being slapped around. They end by being convinced they’re sick and tired of being admired for their beauty and intelligence and complimented and treated right. They end by yearning for degradation and despising men who want to be decent.

  All right, I’m being facetious, outright silly, with the brainwashed-by-reading theory. These girls are far too independent-minded to be swayed by scribblings; their reading habits, whatever they are, could never be responsible for their craving for conflict: the root cause is deeper, far more elemental, than mere manipulation of thought. I could say human nature, the inescapable imperfection of our species—ceaseless yearning for the new and novel, as if by such we’ll complete ourselves and become whole—is to blame for the antics of these girls, but of what use is such an observation? As all of us share the same imperfection, it doesn’t explain why the girls I bring home are capable of throwing a cantaloupe at my bathroom mirror and splintering it to bits and daring me to be angry. (If you recall, it happened last November.) Sure, too much of a good thing turns it sour, renders it stale and unfulfilling and sometimes outright annoying, and then perhaps the opposite is craved. These girls, on account of their comeliness and breeding and charm, are accustomed to being favored and being favored doesn’t allow them to taste of tension and darkness, so perhaps they begin to crave tension and darkness for that very reason and chase after it with all the will at their disposal. It’s undeniable these girls are extremely bright, driven by curiosity: it could be said the immaculately manicured gardens of their lives aren’t enough for them and that when they gaze at the virgin forest, unaltered by humans, on the other side of the fence they long to run amok in it and roll in the dirt, if for no other reason than it’s the polar opposite of what they’re familiar with. Is it a coincidence many of them are spoiled only daughters, quintessential daddy’s little girls, from well-to-do families? I don’t think so. They’ve been doted upon since birth, never lacked for support and affection—they’re in the habit of voicing wishes and having them granted without question, showered with every trinket or trip to Paris or weekend at a spa they could possibly desire. So perhaps that’s what’s made them restive and discontented, hungry for counterpoint and contradiction. But I’m telling you the ones I bring home seem to be in hot pursuit of unadulterated primal tumult, uncertainty, and fear: could being spoiled all their lives really lead to that? OK, I don’t pretend to know what drives my disturbed doll-faces to scare the daylights out of me—why they appear to believe I’m disposed to play along with their mania, yield to their displays of temper, and that I ought to feel supremely privileged to do so. I swear I only want balance and centeredness, a dependably stable girl, in my life—swear I only want an emotionally even-keeled relationship, characterized by mutual support and consideration, that’ll bring me lasting equanimity of mind.

  All right, I could babble in this email all day, but what for? Why continue describing the cause of my confusion when I’m only concerned with the cure? As for the cure: have I come any closer to solving the riddle of my repeated involvement with strife-addicted girls? Will I immediately cease becoming involved with them simply because I wrote this? Will I, going forward, stop spending the night with darling angels who metamorphose into fallen angels who insist I fall with them into dark places of disorder where I, to put it mildly, have no wish to be? Yeah, right! Instantaneous emotional and psychological overhauls of personality for the better, as if such are easy to come by and don’t involve years of effort with no guarantee of outcome, only occur in fiction and are inherently false. People don’t change overnight, if at all; once locked into a propensity one, like it or not, has little choice but to be swept along by it until it plays itself out, assuming it ever does: that’s how flesh and blood humans, invariably at the mercy of their inclinations regardless if they’re frightened of them, behave.

  So Angie, Ella, Steve: although I wish I could assert I’ve cured myself by writing the above, I know I haven’t done so and refuse to lie. After all, what would you have me do?—act like a laughably unrealistic character in a novel and declare the above has assisted me in extricating myself from my predicament and that I’m well on my way to finding a mate to live with happily ever after in domestic bliss? I have too much self-respect to do that.

  And thanks for bearing with me, reading my latest exercise in futility. We’re still on for dinner at the Boathouse, right? Looking forward to it—I’m in great need of some sanity. And, Angie and Ella, don’t forget the Malibu and San Onofre pictures. (Remember? You haven’t sent them.) What’s more transcendent than being united with the ageless rhythm of the sea—sensing the immeasurable strength and primal indifference of the sea—while waiting to catch a wave and then gliding with a wave after one catches it, as it seeks to wholly engulf the board and tumble one under in roiling currents of foam? Not much! The sea doesn’t care if one’s alive or dead and there’s beauty in that! Surf’s up!

  See you at lakeside,

  Justin

  Part Two: Rapture in the Storm

  From: Justin

  To: Angie, Ella, Steven

  Sent: Sunday, May 4, 2014 12:48 AM

  Hey Three Musketeers,

  So here’s the email in which I finally agree with you, freely admit what’s been obvious to you—and surely also to myself, albeit subconsciously—all along: I actually do like the untamed minxes I get mixed up with. Merely like them? Nay! I unreservedly adore them and am everlastingly grateful for their existence—I thank all the beautiful BratCats on earth from the bottom of my heart. If I truly wanted to become involved with an emotionally stable girl—that is, a nice girl—I’d certainly be able to find one. But now I realize I’ve always avoided nice girls like the plague: what a prison a nice girl can be. A nice girl is censorship of feeling, entrapment in emotional sterility, servitude to the bland and ordinary. There’s no captivating ambivalence, invigorating tension, aura of mystery and danger with a nice girl—no facing off with the unexpected, testing of myself in mentally straining situations. What’s the point of bothering with a girl who’s unable to provide blood-stirring experiences? Nietzsche’s well-known maxim, “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger,” couldn’t be more on the mark: it’s conflict that enables me to take my true measure as a man, become more emotionally resilient and adroit and enthralled with life and eager to greet each new day. Inner growth and well-being don’t come cheaply—they must be earned. A nice girl? I was entangled with one once—awhile back, in school—and found it carried the obligation of constantly being emotionally even-keeled, guarding against mood-swings, taking care to avoid even so much as changing my opinions, not to mention enduring endless conversations pertaining to food preparation, interior design, color coordination of dishware, and other wearisome domestic concerns she considered to be of paramount importance. I found myself muting my feelings, smothering naturalness of self-expression, denying my heartfelt instincts; and all in the interest of sheltering the nice girl from anything—and by “anything” I mean the slightest hint of stress—that might fluster her and lead to confusion and make her cry. (If you can believe it, she once stared at me in horror and started whimpering simply because I stated, in reference to an acquaintance’s invitation, “His barbeques are an excuse for him to parade his dull and dreary personality—never any fun.”) And thus the nice girl ended by being far more of a nightmare than any uncontrollable wildcat’s ever been.

  Face it: I’m not exactly enamored of stability. Stability’s predictability and predictability’s an emotionally demeaning bore. What’s to look forward to if one knows what’s going to happen—or, rather, not happen—in advance? As far as nice girls go, nothing’s going to happen that’s different from what’s already happened: no spontaneous outpourings of feeling, unforeseen flare-ups, eruptions of impulsiveness, intervals of soul-gripping passion—zero spontaneity, period, lest their precious domes
ticity-oriented evenness of disposition be ruffled. Nothing but monotonous mildness of self-expression that becomes more stagnant, suffocating, and intolerable with each passing day. Twining vines, indeed: nice girls steadily and subtly wrap themselves around the nuances and content of one’s speech, as well as one’s every glance and gesture, endeavoring to suppress what they disapprove of, until one’s dismayed to discover one’s apparently barely allowed to breathe. Nice girls live to enslave one to their terror of extremity of experience. Niceness is a weapon calculated to afflict one with self-doubt, and guilt in particular, and con one into being reluctant to fly the coop: such is how men are ensnared by the Susie Homemakers of this world.

  I thought I was seeking to avoid temperamental sweethearts, put a stop to the nonstop parade of feisty felines who raise hell in my apartment? What health-of-self-undermining idiocy! With a wildcat I needn’t worry about languishing in tedium, dying for a dose of rejuvenating delirium: the sea will cease to fling breakers at the shore before a mercurial cutie will fail to become an outlet for the forces of primal nature. There’s nothing like a fresh, vibrant, invigorating plunge into the headwaters of an unbalanced beauty’s unleashed discontent. To taste of thought-convulsing intervals of panic and uncertainty, have my imagination racing a mile a minute as I envision all the drama my latest wildcat might involve me in, the extreme acts she might be capable of, the extent to which she might convince me she’s forsaken her sanity... That’s the life electric. That’s being lifted free of stale normality, swept into heightened sensation, reborn in every nerve.