S.B.T.5

We have to speak in code these days, those of us who can see. Sometimes the terrible is nature, like when a mother cat in a rage of hormones cannabalizes her kittens. It is rare but it happens. Rare enough to be shocking, routine enough to be recognizable.

Maybe there are just two kinds of people, like it says in the old modular joke frame. Submitted for your consideration: the blind and the sighted, of course it’s not about eyes alone. So for now the idea of right and wrong may it rest in peace, though it may be reborn as karma would have it.

There was the familiar old phone number coming up on the caller ID. I had no inclination to answer it, but could feel a tension, like a disturbance in the intestines, like a wave rolling between two ends of a sausage, a distinct physical signal buried beneath the streams of thought and straining of emotions. “What could he be thinking?” I asked myself. In my heart of hearts I hoped it wasn’t any bad news about his family, or his health. How do you let go of those kinds of concerns for someone you once shared your life plans with? Especially when there are so many people all over the place who need so much help, so much friendship, so much caring? I ask myself, “Who am I to choose?” I hadn’t heard from him except once before, after I broke off with him in April. That time the call was for something neutral and disconnected also. It was just a few weeks after we split. I felt like I was lost on a plane in Switzerland.

But he did not leave a message so I figured that it couldn’t be really bad news. It must be something trivial, I surmised. His controlling capability, which I once found strangely forgivable, now seems like a brick wall at the end of a dark alley I wouldn’t go down. It seems such a long time ago that I cared, having cultivated a “Ho Hum” way of dealing with questions I have about him, about us, about the real truth. Until I heard his voice and sensed trepidation in it. He called the next day twice and left two identical messages. Asking for technical computer information.

“Don’t you fall for that.” I warned myself sternly. It may not be trepidation at all. It may simply be his way of ridiculing the generous adoration that I once had for him. There was a kind of pleading in his voice, I worried that something big might be wrong. But then I thought, it no longer concerns me. It’s not my place to look to him or look out for him, to empathize with him, to care. Is it wrong or somehow pathological to cut off feelings for another you once said you loved? Notice I say “said you loved”. Because I couldn’t. I wanted to, but even after the first of a never ending series of disappointments, the love became a high stakes crap shoot. But I was willing to work on it. I deemed it worthy. Besides, he was a good old friend from college days-someone who’d been a good buddy. Someone who knew me way back when. Someone I thought I knew. But I didn’t. Too many years had passed between us and too many experiences neither one of us wanted to talk about. No, actually I wanted to talk, he didn’t. I did talk, but I don’t know if he heard me. I’ll never know, and “that’s OK”.

The messages he left may have actually been meant to upset me, I can’t be sure, because I’m not sure if he knew me well enough to know what would upset me. But maybe I’m short-changing him. If I had any mercy, I’d consider that he just wanted to connect and didn’t have access to any other way. But even if I could be merciful, I’d still have wisdom to fall back on, and experience, and anyway, I’m too tired to respond. Just thinking about it is exhausting. He will have to get his info some other way.