Elsewhere

24 January 2001

-|- as you might expect -|- musings of señor prod. -|-

Don't act that way around me when you know I'm cornered, she said, I don't want to do something rash.

Travel always seems to pervade my stories. Perhaps it's a metaphor for dislocation, perhaps it's just because things tend to really happen when we're going from one place to another. Nearly every time I've ever broken up with someone, or been dumped, it has been en route. Perhaps the destination could not tolerate our relationship. Perhaps the journey from one oasis or wasteland to another whetted our emotions so that a wrong move, any wrong move, would incise us. Often it did.

On the journey away from home we had expectations, preconceived notions about the arrival. Some nebulous belief in enjoyment or relaxation, and that we simply must arrive as expeditiously as possible. The image in our minds was often strikingly similar, but dangerously different. These barely measurable departures of doctrine would result in a dangerous schism, vitriolic pejoratives, and mutual excommunication. We would each become anathema.

So apparently, she was cornered. Maybe it was her Kinesiology class from which she was playing hooky. Or maybe it was her thesis or her parents or my lackluster clairvoyance for her needs. When I asked, her reply was a smoldering silence. But then I was mute in a very special language to her, a language which I barely knew existed, a language which was pure poetry, where every meaning was transmitted in the angle of my shoulders, the tone of my voice, the depth of the furrows on my brow. I said only the wrong words. And she did something rash.

It was very unfortunate, actually, because we were outward-bound. We didn't enjoy our getaway at all. And the trip home was intolerably silent. I wish I could've communicated something more soothing in my posture, at least enough to get us to the return trip. We weren't going to last much longer anyway, I knew that. I just wanted to enjoy the Saturday and maybe get one last kiss, which I'd long remember as desperate, searching, straining against a future both horrible and certain. Tragic, isn't it?

musings of señor prod.

The Revolution will not be televised.

The best, but not invincible.