Choking on Cupid's Nuts

My coworker-mistress rang my cell phone Saturday afternoon and asked if I wanted to come over and blow a few sticks of mota with her. I declined.

She went on to say she misses me and my “many talents.” She listed a few of them (some explicit, some implied). She really wanted to see me again, she said. I declined.

“Come make love to me. I love you.” The satellite relayed her message three times, like poetry. She whispered, unaware of the fatal precision of her words. “I love you to death, Steven.”

* * * * *

My emotions refuse to cooperate with my intelligence. I can’t let her go. I’ve tried. My God, I’ve tried. I’ve hardened myself again and again. I’ve pushed her away with good, solid “fuck yous” and unadulterated “don’t-talk-to-me-anymores,” only to sabotage my efforts with inexplicable tenderness the next time I see her.

I’m under an evil spell of my own incantation, stumbling continuously into the abyss of her life. I can’t escape her. Or more accurately, I can't escape my thoughts of her. Two years ago, her lips – threads of slippery pink silk – stitched us together in a soulical weave.

She coaxed me out of my lifelong shell. She made me feel confident. She let me be myself. She knows me. She can tell I’m upset when no one else can. She calls me sometimes just to compliment me, or to say how much she appreciates our friendship, or just to hear my voice. She’s complex, in denial, fearful and morally bereft – but she loves me.

She said so. Three times.

* * * * *

I hung up the phone and felt so low the blue carpet fibers in my living room towered above me. Her words reverberated like a plucked string. There was nothing to do but try to drown them out.

I mixed grain alcohol with Gatorade Fruit Punch and slammed two glasses with a grimaced shudder. I tried to watch an idiotic movie. But even as my words slurred, her voice ricocheted around my head. In fact, it was amplified, repeating like a scratched CD, a program loop, a tune stuck in my subconsciousness.

In a vain attempt to break away, I walked outside my house and sat on the wet ground, a disgusting, blubbering drunk. I took in the tepid acridity of a cigar and the disapproving frowns of Greek constellations looking down on my loneliness. Then I cried.

I shed tears my sober, collected self can’t condone. I cried because I miss her – because I hope I never see her again. I wept for love and loathing, for lost time and innocence, for depravity and denial and fear. I cried for my wife and children. I sobbed for her and her daughter. I cried for my wasted existence, for the sense of worthlessness that penetrated me.

Smashed inside, I went to bed. My wife was angry that I’d been drinking. She asked why. I told her the “other woman” had called me. As usual, my wife asked the right question. “Why do you answer the phone when she calls?”

I groped in the darkness, but (as usual) I couldn’t lay hold of anything that would pass for an acceptable answer. I passed into dreamless shadow.

* * * * *

I rolled back and forth all night long, never satisfied. I got cold lying only in my boxers, so I pulled the blankets up. Five minutes later, I was an inferno and I tossed the blankets over onto my wife (who’d just as soon monopolize them anyway). Moments later, I was cold again.

I got up and tried to write, but I couldn’t concentrate. Still drunk, I glanced through a copy of Men’s Health, reading the same sentence for about five minutes before I gave up and turned on the computer. I read the top news stories and a few journals (none of which made any sense). My eyes burned and teared around the edges, rebelling against the glow of a monitor in the black hours of the morning. I shut it down. The screen’s light faded into thought. I closed my eyes and listened to the pendulum’s march. Marking time to its swing, like a madman I still heard I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.

I turned and peered through the gloom towards my wife asleep in our bed behind me. She had one leg outside the sheets. She’d been angry at me for several days (probably with good reason). We’d barely kissed or touched each other at all since 2004. I considered whether I should wake her up and give her a go. She stretched and lifted her arms above her head, arching her back. Her breasts rose in the darkness. I was momentarily hypnotized by the hourglass of her petite form. In my absence, she clutched my pillow and wrapped herself around it. Then she relaxed, drew her leg back under the covers, and rolled over, breathing deeply.

I sat in the darkness, wondering. Wondering why I was awake, why I wasn’t that pillow entwined in the gorgeous young woman on the bed, why I didn’t feel anything but loneliness.

I went and made another drink.

* * * * *

Crying when you’re clear-headed and crying when you’re drunk are two different things. When you’re sober you feel a sense of release afterwards; maybe you even feel better. But when you’re sauced the pressure of tears only adds to the brutality of your hangover.

At 5 A.M., violent reality broke through the stupor.

My head was cracking in two, dry and encrusted. My nose felt like a box of stale Triscuits. My dry tongue like a cat’s. I was all heat and raging fever. Lying on my stomach, I could feel hot revulsion moving, retreating to the nearest exit.

I shot out my insides – Gatorade-red, acetaminophen-laced ejaculate. The mixed nuts I’d eaten earlier came back to avenge their death. I puked for a half-hour, hurling nutty spit between sips of cool water. I swished with Listerine, but I couldn’t extract a bit of nut-shrapnel that was stuck in my throat. Still feeling its dull stab in my gullet, I returned to fitful, sweaty sleep.

* * * * *

I hate my weakness, my failed resolutions, the effects my bad choices have on everyone around me. I hate myself. What I hate most is that none of it is anyone else’s fault. I can’t blame the wife who spurned me. I can’t blame the mistress who tempted me. Naked guilt and self-loathing sit right on my face and ask me to guess their weight.

Maybe love and hate are subtly connected in ways we don't imagine. Maybe they aren’t polar opposites at all. Maybe they’re sibling rivals, bonded because they know each other so well. A magnetism draws one to the other in an intricate balance, and where one exists, the other will be present somewhere, although not in plain sight.

I love you.

She hates herself for loving me, I hate myself for loving her. Our adulterous relationship sits on a fault line, a volatile mixture of affection and self-loathing. The seething pressure underneath may explode and destroy us both.

Maybe it already has.

* * * * *

No one ever gets it right when Cupid is depicted in art or similitude. Cupid is not a chubby winged baby. He's a warrior. In truth, when Cupid strikes, he always aims for the chink in the armor: he always exploits the weakest point.

The nut-shard is still lodged in my throat. I’d be okay if I could just cough the damn thing up, or swallow it down, but I can’t dislodge the little prick. It pierces my throat with harsh remembrance whenever I try to talk or eat or drink.