Sin and Zen, #1

by S. W. Stribling

  They were all part of the same artistic circle in their little Romanian city near Hungary. He was a guitarist. A rockstar that was even part of a tour in Germany once. I was so impressed I wanted to vomit. If I hadn’t been so happy to be finally connecting with her, I probably would have.

  We cuddled for a while after that, light caresses with soft fingertips was all that was said.

  I felt for her. She hid her pain well, but I could feel the torment inside of her. The death of something she truly loved. I knew she would always love him and I knew she would never love me that way. She may love me one day, but never like she did him.

  I died a little inside too. But I held her. Kissed her forehead and held her. This was not my night to be selfish.

  I WOKE UP WITH CLAUDIA. She had a cheap mattress with no bed frame or box springs. It was sleeping on comfortable ground. It was June, and she lived next to the top floor of her apartment building. It had a view, and it had the effect of a sauna. We slept with just a sheet, and barely that sometimes.

  She was being the sweet girl she had grown to become with me, kissing me, nuzzling me, and occasionally popping pimples that popped up on my forehead from time to time. She loved it. It was our little thing. One of those odd things you think about once you lose somebody.

  ‘Ew,’ she said, ‘Got one.’

  She put her fingers in place; I could feel the sting already. She would look me in the eyes, make a grimace as if she was the one in pain and then push and pull the skin until I could feel the fucker pop. It seemed to hurt worse when somebody else did it, but she would always give me a kiss afterward and I rarely kissed myself after popping a pimple so it was worth it.

  ‘I saw you changed your relationship status to ‘it’s complicated.’’ I said

  ‘Yea, but I think I will delete it. People keep asking me questions now.’ She said.

  ‘Well, isn’t that why anybody puts anything on Facebook?’

  Silence. She never admits when I’m right.

  ‘Not that I care about Facebook, but why change it now?’ It had been a few months since the letter from her ex and she had never changed her status. I also noticed she put up a song called ‘Stupid boy.’ I knew that one was about me. She always called me ‘boy’.

  She didn’t respond.

  I also noticed she wrote her status to say she needed time and space.

  ‘Do you love me?’ I asked.

  She pretended to not hear me and kept looking for new pimples.

  I looked away; I had woken up perturbed.

  ‘You asked me that last night.’ she said.

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Yeah, you don’t remember.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said no.’

  We were silent for a minute, then I got up. I put on some pants and went to go grab a bowl of cereal.

  I kept silent as I ate my cereal and she sat across the table from me and watched.

  ‘We talked about this for over twenty minutes last night.’ she said.

  I could tell she had been bothered or upset about something, I just hadn’t known about what until now.

  ‘You also asked me if I wanted to move in together once you got out of the Legion.’

  I kept eating. Some of my newly opened flesh wounds still burned.

  ‘I had a dream about you last night.’ I said.

  This time she was quiet.

  ‘You moved on and left me for somebody else. You didn’t even seem to care.’

  ‘That’s not what I want right now.’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I just don’t know if this is good for me.’

  ‘I don’t know if I’m good or bad for you,’ she said, ‘but I want to be good for you.’

  I was too pissed off to have a real discussion about it. The feeling of betrayal and the pain of unrequited love still lingered with me from my dream. I would wait until I was drunk then let the floodgates open to let her drown in it. It was never on purpose to handle the situation that way, but it became the way I handled my emotions with her. I was strong and silent while sober, angry and loud when drunk, always feeling ashamed and guilty afterward, always hoping she wouldn’t remind me of what I had said or done. I never acted that way except with her.

  I left in a passive-aggressive silence, punishing her for not loving me back, for attacking me in my subconscious. I knew my dream was trying to warn me to run from this girl. That she had the power to destroy me just as quickly as she had saved me. But it was just a dream. I would walk it off and come back to have her and the dream again that night.

  She sent me a text ten minutes after I had left saying she was in a ‘don’t trust anybody’ state. I wasn’t sure if it was because of her ex, or something else in her past. I wished she would open up to me, tell me why, tell me more than that. But I felt she was afraid to lose me, that she wanted me to understand her. I felt closer to her. I didn’t respond, but I did still love her.

  My clothes didn’t smell too bad. I was sure the guys would be up for a drink.

  7

  After 6 months of being together, I gave Claudia an ultimatum of committing to me or walking away from this guessing game of a relationship for good. I would have stuck it out as long as possible, but my friends thought the ultimatum was best for me and my happiness. I listened.

  She didn’t like the idea at first and was saying goodbye. She didn’t understand the need to put labels on it. I didn’t understand what was so bad about it. Everybody thought we were together until she corrected them. We did more than just fuck each other now. She was just as much a girlfriend as I thought a girlfriend should be. It felt sad even thinking this way. It felt pathetic saying it out loud.

  She reluctantly agreed. She still kept the same ground rules as before, but now I could tell the world she was mine.

  Nothing much changed really.

  She still told me she didn’t care if I slept around. Great. The perfect woman. And the whole idea bothered me. I’ve never met a woman who had said that. I wasn’t sure if it meant she was sleeping around or planned to herself. It was that, or she really didn’t care about me at all.

  One drunken night I came home and confronted her about it. She said that when she’s with somebody she doesn’t need to sleep with anybody else. I didn’t either, and so I didn’t despite my free pass. ‘As long as you wear a condom with them’ she would say, ‘And if you fall in love with somebody else or it’s somebody I know, then I want you to tell me.’

  This level of maturity was more than I could handle. It drove me crazy not knowing what she really meant by all this. A smart man would’ve thanked the gods and enjoyed his cake, but I wasn’t smart. I was her ‘Stupid boy’.

  IT WAS AUGUST NOW, and we were in love. She finally said the three words I had been fighting for since the beginning of the year. It felt good. Damn good. I had won. Shit.

  I always found something to complain about. Now it was with her living situation. She was still living with the same guy she used to sleep with. It drove me crazy after months of staying at his place, walking by his open bedroom door, and looking at the bed she used to mount him on. Then there were the Romanian parties where the two of them acted like old pals. I just wanted to scream out the secret I knew between those two so everybody would feel as uncomfortable as me.

  I was tired of the daily routine. Every day, it was the tedium of military life: cleaning, formations, and uniforms. Everything I hated about the military and nothing of what I like about it.

  My physical therapy wasn’t every day now, and I needed something to fill my time besides Claudia and drinking buddies. I tried learning a few things like the guitar and Linux. But like most things in life, I’d be overly passionate about it in the beginning, then burn out and set it down for an indefinite period. I learned a few songs in case I needed to be that douchebag at a party. And I kept Linux as my operating system but gave up on trying to code.

  So mostly I just felt like I was rotting
away in Malmousque and started thinking about being medically discharged from my broken dream of being a superhero that fell from the sky to kill people as a member of the infamous French Foreign Legion. I had been thinking about it since early spring. They discharged people once a month, not including summer. Nothing happened in summer in France and when I talked about the idea with my chef de section, he said three months wasn’t enough time to start the paperwork before summer. I’d have to wait till fall.

  My leg was getting better, but not at the speed I was hoping. The doctors said I would always have a limp, always be limited, and that metal rod in my leg would have to stay.

  They asked me what was next for me.

  I said I had no fucking idea.

  They told me I would never be a parachutist again, and with my leg, I would never be in a combat company again or able to do anything that involved heavy lifting or strenuous exercise.

  Well, I didn’t join the Legion to drive buses or sit at a desk, so I saw the door for my exit was opening if it hadn’t only been cracked before.

  Fortunately, I still had plenty of time to stew things over, even when kicking you out, paperwork holds everything up. The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency. I would still get a paycheck until fall, probably winter.

  We drank wine and enjoyed the rest of summer.

  8

  I was officially released from duty in the second week of December. I took two bags of clothes and items to Claudia’s and set up shop.

  Claudia’s dreams hadn’t been going as well as she wanted. She didn’t like school. She thought she was too good for it. She couldn’t find work, at least acting work. She was still taking care of the same girls she came here to France to take care of. It was definitely a defeat for her, but not one she ever admitted to.

  She seemed constantly stuck between wanting to improve in life somehow, but then thinking she was already better than everybody else. I wasn’t sure how she pulled it off, but it was easy enough to ignore or laugh at internally.

  I wasn’t sure if she saw me moving in as a defeat. She had asked me to, but she also had that same conflicting aura about her that told me she may be constantly bouncing between the pros and cons in her mind about whether she liked the idea.

  I saw an old lady selling stuff as I was walking to her place. She had a small wooden kitchen island on wheels for sale. I gave her a few euros, and she gave me the table. I gave her more than the table was worth and she thanked me for it by giving me a book in English she had found.

  It was a pocketbook about etiquette from the late 19th century. I found it charming and kept it in my inside jacket pocket from then on. It would give me something to read when sitting at the bar alone. I could look around and be amazed how far we’ve fallen from grace or at least proper etiquette.

  For Christmas, Claudia and I went to visit the family she worked for in Perpignan. It was an older man named Jean, older than I had expected and his kids were still kids, not quite in the double digits of age. He joked about how people thought he was their grandpa. I laughed too; it was a good joke. He was a nice man though, and his new internet wife was coming over from Indochine. I think she was his third internet-wife.

  Jean’s oldest daughter from his first marriage, when he didn’t need to order women online, married rich. He was a producer of music, and we spent Christmas dinner with them. Christmas dinner in France is on Christmas Eve. We opened gifts there; I got drunk and played the piano with the music producer.

  Then he took over to play a lovely song for his wife and we all listened. Maybe it was the candles or the wine, but I felt warm and fuzzy as he sang. In that moment, I envied somebody else’s life.

  Afterward, we listened to his wife’s music. The warm and fuzzy turned to nausea. I bet every woman this man has married or loved has forced him into making an album. When will he learn to keep business and sex separate? Laïcité.

  But the man seemed happy, and I had everybody calling him Porn Jesus by the end of the night because of his robe. It was a long, dirty white, and transparent. His junk was there for all to see and he didn’t care. We drank, we smoked, and we ate lots of cheese.

  9

  A year had gone by and I still didn’t know where Claudia and I were together. But I also didn’t care as much anymore. It was comfortable and habitual. The idea of losing her didn’t hurt as much as it used to.

  I had to find something to do though as being jobless was not something I was used to. And I couldn’t see myself living off my meager pension while playing the guitar and learning Linux.

  I grew up with a Southern Protestant, hard-working attitude. Unfortunately, I was far from that. I felt lost on a deserted island of what to do. I had joined the service like any good Arkansas boy did, right out of high school. Now, I found myself with no pieces of paper that said I was smart, beautiful, or talented.

  So, I did what most anglophones do in foreign countries when they can’t do anything else.

  I decided to teach English.

  I found a school in Barcelona so I could get certified. Really, I just needed an excuse to go to Barcelona. Pinchos, sangria, and beautiful woman who weren’t all taller than me.

  I signed up for the class and left the same week.

  I stayed with a local guy who rented out his room to me for the month. It was right in front of Park Güell - a beautiful place.

  Barcelona was far from a disappoint itself. The people, the food, and the Sagrada Familia and other architecture felt right to me.

  Barcelona was heaven. The cigarettes were cheap. The beer was cheaper. The drugs were stronger and more varied than what you could find in France. Cute girls on a terrasse or on Las Ramblas were always there to laugh at your accent and give you weed. I was never a smoker before, but even I did it every day there.

  Unfortunately, my level of English was a disappointment. I did not understand how ignorant I was in my language. What the fuck had I learned after twelve years of school?

  I became good friends with most of the class. We would work hard during the day and drink well at night.

  There was an Irishman that nobody could understand but me. There was a monster of a Scotsman we called Shrek. And a Saskatchewan who became like a little brother to me. He came from Regina. It always sounded like ‘vagina’ when he said it though. And he said it often.

  ‘So where are you from?’ said the cute girl at the bar.

  ‘Regina.’ he said.

  ‘Como?’ she said.

  ‘Vagina,’ I would interject. ‘I came from one too.’

  Most of his past life experiences and stories revolved around Regina. By the end of the month, I had told all of Barcelona that I came from the Vagina, that I went to the University of Vagina, and that I loved Vagina.

  There were more girls in the class than women, and they would sometimes let their hair down with us. I made some connection with all of them, but never the full connection. When dealing with the opposite sex, you never quite knew how to behave. They say they have a boyfriend, then get drunk, dance, and take you home so you can touch them but not fuck them. I enjoyed the variety though; they were anglophones from all corners.

  There was the princess from California who enjoyed teasing. The tough sheila from down under. The Julia Roberts look alike from Boston. The English one who was fun to drink with but wore makeup that could scare away predators. The giddy one from Scotland who looked like she just came from some pagan cult rite meeting. She even taught the class a ‘deer’ dance. We all had to teach something our first day. I taught people how to jump out of a plane. They were quite entertained with that too.

  I loved all these women in their own way; some I showed it more than others. The one I got closest to and turned in my free pass with was from Texas.

  We had a party at her apartment as she lived in this spectacular city. We all stayed up drinking and dancing. Towards the end of the night, once most had left or passed out, we began the drunken intimate
conversation that happens between two people. That conversation that would never usually make it far because of reasoning or social correctness.

  We held hands. We kissed. We made fun of the couch pillow that had a picture of her boyfriend sewn onto it. Her mother had made it. Her boyfriend was in bed asleep with just a door separating him from his unfaithful girlfriend.

  The next day we shared looks of remorse and nostalgia, and half-breathed attempts at talking about whether it was something to act on or let go.

  We said nothing. We let it go.

  IT WAS TOWARDS THE end of the month and we were standing on the roof of the school taking our first coffee break when the Aussie started with another one of her monologues. It always seemed to be the same thing, or at least the same tone. How teaching kids in Australia is great, but she just needed to do something different. Or how nobody really knows what they’re doing here.

  ‘I just don’t understand him.’ she said.

  ‘Ah,’ I thought. ‘It’s about her boyfriend.’

  ‘He just doesn’t seem to notice me anymore.’

  Everybody listened and feigned concern as she spoke. Or just sipped their coffee and looked away.

  ‘Why is it that men do that? I mean, the first few months they can’t get enough, and then suddenly it’s like I’m not even there.’

  The women gave their ‘mm-hmm’s and just nodded in approval like an African-American choir after the preacher laid down his hard truth about the Lord.

  She went on for a while. I tried talking to the Irishman to not get involved.

  She was too loud.

  ‘Well,’ I said, making sure I had her attention. ‘For every beautiful woman, there’s a guy tired of fucking her.’

  I didn’t believe that what I had said was original, but the others laughed as if it was the first time they had heard it.

  She gave me a glare that said she hated me. That she’d love to smack the shit out of me if I gave her what for. I got a flashback to the Italian-Spanish-French girl back in Marseille. I’m not a hateful person, but I enjoyed fantasizing about hate-fucking her. I gave a smirk to tell her I wouldn’t say no. I complimented her.