Now and Then

on betrayal

Now

As you drive home, you think about her body.

In betraying herself, in betraying the wired frame of her consciousness, she betrayed you.

Falsehood, was something she was adamantly against all her life. The sort of put-on quality of almost human but not quite. She talked of Eliza Doolittle with a bottle to her lips. The almosts of her character. The not-quites. The allegory of it all. Everything was always an allegory with her.

She waxed poetic about the overwhelming feeling of alienation. The rented spaces and the irony and tragedy of Shelley’s creature. By the time the sardonic pretentious diatribe was over the bottle would be gone.

She lived and ached and died to be thought of fondly. With extensive and detailed fervorous favor. But again, like I said, In betraying herself and the seemingly inconsequential concept of her body, she betrayed you too.

Now, her monologues (framed in the warm forgiving light of retrospect) just seem ironic. Absurd. Human. Heartbreakingly so. How against falsehood she was. A paper tiger.

And isn’t that what she valued most? The contradiction of humanity, the tenderness of it. To love so and eat so and speak so and commune so.

Now, you think of the bottle in that same warm beautiful light of retrospect. The empty bottle upon empty bottle. Like an extension of the arm she waved while speaking.

And the light doesn’t seem so forgiving anymore.

Then

In the year 2000, another woman decided to start again. To quietly erase herself and commit. To completely give everything to something. To the idea of something or someone or a time imagined in foresight. Just to be a good man in a storm. She didn’t know that good men falter even when they didn’t intend to. That good men resent you for the harshness of the wind. That sometimes you do something for so long until what you were doing it for is gone or you recall one day that it was never there to begin with. You end up doing it just to do it; just because you always did it. You fail to think of these things in the beginnings and you end up in situations where no one is to blame; so the blame just lies on the floor. In between everybody. A betrayal you orchestrated obliviously.

In the year 1981, a girl fell upon a start. She thrashed and clawed against it. The tide took her anyway. Her body, like everything else, betrayed her. She stumbled through the start of her start. She learned more than she taught and that was the biggest crime. No one forgives a girl stumbling and thrashing and resentful; least of all herself. No girl admits this to herself. Sometimes when you want, it’s the worst thing of all. Sometimes dissatisfaction is not absolvable. The first lesson girl learns is that love is not enough. Even coming from you. Even the one with ferocity. Even the one you will die for. A betrayal of a lesson.

In the year 2002, the woman resigned. She gave so much and was asked for more. She saw the start as hope. She gave it names like joy and blessing. She named the unnameable sort of feeling. She loved it with fervorous favor. But a resignation by any other name is still a resignation. It doesn’t denounce the joy, she learned, but it is a start she did not recognize. She was again committed. Renewedly so. Heartbreakingly so. Love again found her, teetering on the edge of enough. But betrayal all the same.