Chapter 5: The Road Most Groveled



Chapter 5: The Road Most Groveled

“ What have I done... what have I done,” I think to myself as I pound my head against the bathroom wall. I want to yell and to scream but all I can think of is the word Aack! I know Aack! is a stupid word, but it’s the only one that can truly describe how I feel. I don’t use the word very often - only when my brain is too numb to assemble the word fuck. I need to work on my stress vocabulary. Four years of college and I have less coping skills than a Cathy comic strip. Not to mention a complete inability to try on a new swimsuit without being overly critical of myself.

I can’t believe I asked her to marry me. It’s times like this I wish I were a superhero and could run faster than the speed of sound so I could sprint through the phone line and capture stupid utterances before they had a chance to hit someone’s ears. I also wouldn’t mind being able to shoot flames from my fingers. I always thought that would be cool. I could use my superpowers to fight evil and during my downtime to make Smores lightning quick.

I lean over the bathroom sink and try to refocus by splashing some cold water on my face. I’m not sure why people do that though. It never seems to help. You open your eyes and look into the mirror and you’re still standing in the same pile of crap you were before - only now you have public bathroom water dripping down your face.

I feel faint and lean against the sink to steady myself. The thought of having my face pressed against the dirty floor of a public restroom is the only thing that keeps me conscious. I know how disgusting that is. I once hit my head on a stall after losing my balance trying to flush the toilet with my feet and passed out. I’m not sure what bothered me more: lying on the dirty floor of a public restroom or waking up to find a guy taking a dump in the same stall. I don’t care how badly you have to go. That’s just a major breach of bathroom etiquette. It’s right behind standing at the urinal and commenting to the old guy peeing next to you that it sure does take old people a long time to start peeing. And it wasn’t even one of those quiet dumps - it was one of those extremely noisy dumps that make you want to finish peeing as fast as possible so you don’t have to see the embarrassed face of the person when he finally emerges from the stall.

I look at myself in the mirror. I’m a complete mess. My forehead has turned a reddish color from banging my head against the wall and the front of my pants have gotten wet from water that was left on the sink, leaving them covered with just enough water to make it look like I peed my pants. Now I can’t leave the bathroom until it dries. I try to pace back and forth really fast to let the air dry my pants out, but it doesn’t work. I decide to use the electric hand dryer and wait diligently in line behind the man drying his hands. He hits the start button four times before he gives up and just dries his hands on his pants. I walk over to the electric hand dryer and use my elbow to hit the button because I hate touching wet bathroom fixtures with my bare hands. The hand dryer gives off that tepid air that never actually smells like real air. I try to position my pants to get maximum air on the wet spot, but it’s too high up for any air to hit my pants. I try to stand on my tippy toes to reach it, but only succeed in getting a calf strain. I decide to return to the table before anything else bad happens and so I head back to the table with a noticeable limp, a blotchy red forehead and water all down the front of my pants, looking like Shemp after he got into a poke fight with Moe and Curly.

“ What happened to you? It’s been like 20 minutes.” Thelma asks as I return to the table.

“ I’m not certain. I think the entire bathroom attacked me at once - the stalls, the sink, the automatic hand dryer and even the creepy guy at the urinal who watches everyone pee.”

“ So did you call Laura or Susan?” asks Thelma.

“ You promise not to yell?” I say as I start to bang my head repetitively against the table.

“ By asking that, you know I’m almost certain to be yelling in a few minutes.”

“ Well, I did something really, horribly bad. I just asked Laura to marry me.”

“ You asked her to marry you! Isn’t it customary to still be dating someone before you ask them to marry you? This is beyond insane. This isn’t just normal insane; this is gay people voting for a Republican insane.”

“ I didn’t mean to propose. Lately Laura has been hanging up the second she hears my voice, so I was trying to come up with something clever and witty to say but didn’t plan ahead and I got really flustered and accidentally asked her to marry me.”

“ Please say she didn’t accept your proposal.”

“ That’s where the really bad part comes in. I realized my mistake as soon as I said it and totally panicked. I just let out a horrified gasp and then hung up before Laura could give an answer. Is that as big a mistake as I perceive it to be?”

“ Imagine you’re on Wheel of Fortune. The puzzle is a three letter phrase starting with d and ending in an h. Do you really need to buy that vowel?”

“What am I going to do?”

“ One: stop banging your forehead against the table. You’re making the whole table shake and quite frankly you don’t need anymore water spilled onto your pants. I’ve had menstrual cycles where I didn’t retain that much water. Did you try calling Laura back right away and pretending that it was a bad connection?” asks Thelma.

“ You are amazingly devious,” I say as I slide around the booth to give her a big hug. Well, a small hug anyway. I have personal space issues that I still need to deal with. When I was a kid, my parents were strong proponents of the tough love style of discipline. Well, except for the pesky love part of it.

“ I wish there were more underhanded people in the world,” I continue. “ Everyone goes on and on about the saints and the honest folk of the world. Give me devious and underhanded any day. I find it oddly relaxing to know for a fact that the people in my life are going to screw me over. I hate to leave you again, Thelma, but I’m going to call Laura back now.”

“ How long has it been since you hung up on Laura?”

“ About twenty minutes now.”

“ You can’t do it now,” Thelma says. “ The statute of limitations for that excuse has already passed.”

“ Are you sure? Twenty minutes isn’t that long.”

“ You forget that you’re in the doghouse. It’s like dog years; you have to multiply by seven to get the true time.”

“ There are too many complicated rules in the world. I’ve lived in the same apartment for four years now and I still can’t remember which way to turn the key to lock and unlock my front door. How am I supposed to remember rules that involve math and stuff? God, I’ve made such a mess of things. If I can’t call, what am I supposed to do.”

“ I’m afraid this has to be an in-person conversation.”

“ Does it have to be face-to-face? I hate seeing Laura when she’s really angry. She’s big into throwing things at my head when she’s mad. Four of my five concussions are from Laura throwing things at me. The other one was from an unfortunate break dancing accident in the 80's when I was an extra on Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo and had to serve as a spotter for one of the Fat Boys. And you don’t know how horrible it is to have a 320 pound guy sitting on you while he’s rapping WipeOut.”

“ Strangely enough, I do,” says Thelma. “ But due to terms of the injury settlement, I’m not allowed to discuss it.”

“ I just don’t know if I can face her, Thelma. It’s gotten worse now that Laura’s been entering those dwarf-tossing contests they hold every Friday at the local pub. Girl can really do some heavy lifting now. Laura can now even toss tweener midgets - the ones who aren’t extremely short, but yet aren’t quite normal-sized. I wish she would stop doing those contests though. They’re very degrading to small people. Plus I hate having a girlfriend with bigger biceps than me. I especially hate when Laura challenges me to a flex-off right in the middle of sex. It really kills the mood.”

“ Can you focus just a little? I’ve seen disposable cameras that had better focus than you. Listen, I hate to give advice, but...”

“ You’re a therapist,” I interrupt. “ You live to give advice.”

“ I should clarify,” says Thelma. “ I hate to give advice to people like you who ask for my advice and then always do the exact opposite. How many times does Laura have to break up with you before you realize that you and Laura are two semi-tolerable people who are absolutely wrong with each other. All you do together is fight.”

“ You know that’s a complete exaggeration.”

“ You forget the time I went to dinner with the two of you and had to listen to an hour of arguing over whether the emu is an underrated bird.”

“ That wasn’t an argument. That was a debate,” I say defensively. “A debate in which Laura came out as the big loser, I might add.”

“ I think everyone in the restaurant who had to watch you take off your shirt and do your emu impression should be considered the big loser in that argument. And it was an argument, not a debate.”

“ O.K.” I concede, “ So we argue - but that doesn’t mean we’re not right for each other.”

“ You’re sitting here afraid that Laura will knock you unconscious with household knick-knacks. It seems to me that mortal fear of your significant other is not the cornerstone of a healthy adult relationship.”

“ I thought you said no longer referring to Laura’s breasts as chimichangas was the cornerstone of a healthy adult relationship.”

“ You are really starting to make my brain hurt,” Thelma says as she takes off her Sally Jesse Raphael-ish glasses and rubs her temples. “It’s like all my neurons are trying to kickbox each other to death. You’re not just driving me to want another drink” says Thelma, “ you’re picking me up in a limo and driving me there in style.”

Thelma gets an odd little hitch in her voice when she says that. She tries to cover it up with a nervous smile, but I’ve seen that look before.

“ How’s that going?” I ask.

I know the answer already, but I need to throw it out there. And, from the way that I’ve asked the question, Thelma knows that I’ve figured it out.

“ I had a relapse three weeks ago,” Thelma says.

“ Why didn’t you tell me? This is serious. You were sober for 8 months. What happened?”

“ I don’t know. I couldn’t sleep and started to clean. I just got some of that Orange Clean product that they sell on those late night infomercials and had this intense desire to try it out. While cleaning, I found an old bottle of vodka that I had stashed away - some really cheap vodka with a passed out mule on the label that I started buying towards the end when taste was no longer a priority in my drinking. And I just wanted to remember how it tasted and thought it might help me sleep and I don’t know how many other excuses popped into my head before I eventually drank the rest of the bottle. I guess I must have passed out. I woke up with vodka dribbling down my mouth and Orange Clean spilled all over me. I smelled like a screwdriver.”

I try to think of something sensitive to say, but I don’t deal well with people with problems. I try, but they make me uncomfortable. I generally end up sitting a couple of inches away from them, awkwardly patting them on the head in a duck-duck-goose kind of way. In my perfect world everyone is happy or at the very least extremely miserable but willing to keep things to themselves. But I want to help. To be there for Thelma. One of my basic tenets of life is that you should never turn your back on a friend in need - mainly because they’re the ones most likely to steal from you.

“ I think you should reconsider AA,” I say knowing Thelma won’t even consider it.

“ You know I have clients who go there. I’ve been thinking about seeing my therapist again though. I’m not sure I can do this on my own.”

“ I’m always here for you,” I say.

“ You have your own problems to worry about.”

An awkward silence follows before I finally ask, “Was it just the one night?”

Thelma looks down and then up and away and then when she runs out of places to look she finally says, “ I know I need to talk about this, but I’m not ready right now, you know. Could we not talk about the drinking. Just for today?”

I look into Thelma’s eyes and they’re tired and I can tell she’s not ready for this conversation right now. “ OK,” I say, “ but you need to talk about it sometime.”

“ I know,” says Thelma. “ Just not right now.”

“ We would make a good couple, wouldn’t we?’ I say as I slide around the booth and give Thelma a reassuring hug and the awkward head pat. “ You run away from your problems. I try to pretend mine don’t even exist. So, what should I do with Laura. Is there any way to avoid the face-to-face? Couldn’t I call her up and just pretend that she just misheard me? Maybe pretend I said ‘ Let’s see my friend Mary.’”

“ You don’t have a friend named Mary.”

“ Believe it or not, I actually thought of that. What are my chances of making a new friend named Mary on my way over to Laura’s?”

“ You’ve made only eight friends in the past decade. And four of those tried to slip poison in your food to get you to stop coming over to their houses. You throw in the Mary requirement and I say the odds are very unlikely.”

“ What if I call Laura up and don’t mention the proposal and then when she brings it up, I just make her think it was all in her head? That she wanted to marry me so bad, she must of had a hallucination or dream or something.”

“ How do you wake up each morning and manage to look at that vile face of yours in the mirror every morning?” asks Thelma.

“ I just make sure I set my alarm clock.”

“ In just a few brief seconds you’ve managed to sink lower than a Hollywood agent in a limbo contest.”

“ Fine. I’ll talk to her in person. Am I supposed to bring a gift or card or something?”

“ Maybe you could stop at the Hallmark store. I believe they have a new I’m sorry I accidentally proposed to you and then hung up on your sorry ass! line of cards that might be useful. Forget about the gifts. Just bring your medical insurance card and your ducking skills and you should be fine. Stop being afraid and just get the job done. Remember: There’s nothing to fear, but fear itself... and maybe those guys who have hooks instead of hands. They’re pretty scary. So, what are you going to say when you get to Laura’s?”

“ I don’t know yet,” I say. “ Something will come to me when I get there.”

“ You know, one of the reasons we study history in school is that it helps us learn from our mistakes. Just promise me you’ll have a game plan before talking to Laura. If you don’t, you’re going in there as a single man and will come out with a wife, two kids and a pedestrian desire to go to the zoo every weekend. Just be honest about it and fess up to your mistake. There is never any advantage to tiptoeing around a problem - other than really strong toes.”

*****************************************************************

I drive my car up Laura’s house. It feels weird driving. I haven’t driven my car in over three months because I got a really good parking spot outside my apartment and just couldn’t bear to give it up. But, Laura’s worth it. Especially if she doesn’t throw stuff at me - otherwise I’ll probably have to re-evaluate my whole parking space decision.

I walk to Laura’s backdoor to see if she’ll talk to me. I avoid going to the front door because there’s a window right above the door that puts me in severe danger of being hit by thrown objects. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 17 times, shame on me. It’s times like this that I wish they made Nerf vases. I think about using the front door as a show of faith in our relationship, but seeing that Laura has replaced her regular welcome mat with a giant bulls eye, I decide to be safe and use the backdoor.

I walk slowly around the house, not quite sure what I’m going to say, but knowing that it has to be the absolute right thing to say or I may lose Laura and my front teeth forever. I sit on a rock by the side of the house to collect my thoughts. It’s a beautiful, expensive boulder hand-chiseled from the mountains of Nepal by monks. Laura and I etched our names in it to show our love. Unfortunately it belonged to Laura’s neighbors at the time and they threatened to call the cops unless we paid them for the boulder.

I take a deep breath as I sit on the rock. Unfortunately I forget about the exhaling part of breathing and end up passing out. When I come to, I gather the courage and knock on Laura’s backdoor. No one answers. I knock a second time. Still no answer. I know Laura is home, hiding behind the door, debating about whether she should open it. I can see Laura’s shadow moving at the bottom of the door and can hear the faint sounds of her breathing. Plus it is one of those sliding glass patio doors and I can literally see Laura standing behind the door.

We look into each other’s eyes and I know that’s a mistake because it always makes us forget how absolutely wrong we are for each other. When we look into each other’s eyes, we just see two people in love and nothing else matters. Laura stares at me, but doesn’t open the door. I put my hands up to the patio door, just resting my fingertips on the glass. Laura raises her fingertips and places them directly on mine, with only the thin glass separating us. We just stand there quietly; staring at each other; fingertips almost touching; unspoken words passing silently through our fingertips.

I watch as Laura’s eyes fill with tears. Her light blue eyes look like a sparkling pool of water so deep a guy could drown in them - or at the very least pee in them without anyone noticing. Well, her right eye does anyway. The left eye kinda darts back and forth when Laura gets upset making it look more like kids playing Marco Polo than a serene pool of water.

“Why are you here?” asks Laura. “We’ve been together seven years already. Aren’t you tired of finding new ways to hurt my feelings? There must be more fulfilling hobbies you could look into. Couldn’t you take up decorative rubber stamping or something?”

“ You know that I would never purposely do anything to hurt you. You’re my heart.”

“ That’s the scary part. You hurt me this much when you’re actively trying to be nice to me. I’m scared to think what you might be like if you ever make the conscious decision to make me feel like shit.”

“ I don’t know what I was thinking this afternoon. I wanted to talk to you so bad, but I was expecting your machine. When you actually picked up, I got flustered. And I know it was horrible of me to hang up immediately after proposing, but you know how panicky I get when trying to be spontaneous. I would never ever hurt you like that on purpose.”

Laura’s jaw tenses and becomes rigid and I know it’s only a matter of seconds before she goes all tetanus on my ass.

“ What are you talking about?” asks Laura, unclenching her jaw just enough so that words can be uttered at a frequency that can be identified by the human ear. “ I was talking about saying the name Susan after saying you loved me. You couldn’t have proposed to me this afternoon. My phone’s been off the hook all day.”

“ Thank god it wasn’t you,” I say as a shot of relief courses through my body. “ I can’t tell you how guilty I was feeling about hanging up.”

I can feel the muscles in my body relax and a feeling of tranquility overcomes me - at least until I glance at Laura and notice that instead of growing more and more relaxed, her jaw grows more rigid and her lips purse so tightly I can no longer discern that she has a distinct upper and lower lip. They’ve melded into a monolip. One giant, none-too-happy monolip.

“ So,” Laura begins, “ it’s okay now because you only thought you were hanging up on me? The thought of proposing to me was so repulsive that you had to hang up? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“ No, it was more the fear of you saying yes that made me hang up.”

“ I can’t believe you just said that to me,” Laura says as she starts to cry harder. “ That’s the most horrible thing anyone has ever said to me. And that’s including the two years in college that I worked as a telemarketer who called people around dinner time.”

“ I know we’re not the perfect relationship. But we love each other. Doesn’t that count for something?”

“ I just don’t think we have a future together,” says Laura. “ I don’t see the point of dating someone who doesn’t ever want to marry me.”

“ Come on, Laura. We’ve been together on and off for seven years now. How can you doubt our future together? And I never said I never wanted to marry you.”

“ You don’t have to open your mouth to say something.”

“ Have you actually looked up the word say in the dictionary, because I’m pretty certain that you do. How many times do we have to have this discussion? You honestly think we’re ready to get married right now? We can’t even stay together for two months straight.”

“ The thing is, I don’t think we’ll ever get married. I’m thirty-two years old and I don’t think I can wait for us to get our act together. I think maybe we should break-up. And not that break-up where we both know we’re getting back together again. For real this time. I’m sorry.”

Laura removes her fingertips from mine and slowly starts moving them down the patio door glass. I’m losing her and I don’t know how to stop it. I try lowering my fingertips to keep pace with her fingertips. It’s not much of a connection, but right now it’s all I have. Laura finally removes her hand from the glass and takes a small step back, still staring at me.

Laura finally says, “ I’m sorry, but I can’t do this anymore. I love you, but you take too much out of me. My mom always told me to never stay with a guy who makes me cry and that’s all I seem to do around you these days. I’m like Richard Simmons when he goes on Letterman - only without the sequined short-shorts.”

“ I’m sorry I made you cry,” I say.

“ Don’t. Please. I just need to go now. I’m sorry,” says Laura as she places her fingertips up to mine one last time and scrunches her fingers two times in a final good-bye wave and then draws the blinds to the patio door and it sinks in that I’ve lost her. Completely.

I stand on the patio for several minutes with my fingertips still on the patio door, hoping that she will come back. But she doesn’t. There’s no sign of movement behind the drawn shades. But, it’s hard to leave. It’s like being in a movie theater and seeing a movie that truly moves you. There’s something in you that just can’t leave until the absolute final credit rolls. I think Laura senses this need for finality too. That’s why she’s switched on the neon light above her door reading “Finis” that she had installed following our last break-up.

I step off the porch and head around to the front of the house. Everything seems to be going by in slow motion and I begin noticing all the things I’ll miss. The way the two in Laura’s house number is a slightly darker shade of black than the rest of the numbers. Her lawn ornaments wearing the hand-knitted outfits Laura made for them. And the motion-sensitive Princess Diana wreath that plays Candle in the Wind when you approach the house. I’ll miss all of that. Well, maybe except for the lawn ornaments. That garden gnome in the thong bikini really creeps me out. But other than that, I’ll miss everything because I’m crazy mad in love with Laura. And it’s at that exact moment I come to the realization that life totally sucks when you actually like the person you’re having sex with.

I look up at Laura’s bedroom window as I head to my car and see her watching me through a small crack in the curtains. I walk backwards, staring at her, hoping she’ll fling the curtains open and yell down at me not to leave - that she loves me and we’ll work things out somehow. But she doesn’t do any of that; she just stares. It can’t end like this. It just seems like we’re destined to be together and two people can’t stop a love that is their destiny - only their families can do that.

I open my car door and notice the boombox in the front seat. My CD player is broken and it’s the only way I can listen to my tunes. Then the way to win Laura back finally hits me. I grab the boombox and my home-made Peter Gabriel mix CD. I decide to re-create the scene from Say Anything where John Cusak woos back the love of his life by holding up a boombox and blaring Peter Gabriel’s song In Your Eyes. I look up at Laura’s window and luckily she’s still watching. I can tell she knows what I’m doing. She opens the curtains a little wider and I can see her smile. She doesn’t want to smile, but she can’t help it. She loves me and she loves that I’m the only person alive that knows how to make her smile when she’s feeling bad. I hold the boombox over my head and shout “ I Love You, Laura Davenport!” as I hit the Play button. But instead of In Your Eyes, Peter Gabriel’s song Shock the Monkey blasts out of the boombox. Though in a semi-comatose state I can definitely here the romantic phrase “Monkey, monkey, monkey. Don't you know when you're going to shock the monkey” come out of the boombox as Laura’s smile is slowly replaced with the rigid jaw that makes her look eerily like Burt Reynolds trying to make it through a scene of Cannonball Run and I watch as the curtain closes. Aack!

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