Note: I wrote and performed the following at The Interart Annex at 500 West 52nd Street in 2008. It’s now a piece of ancient history.
“Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a crucial component of spiritual devotion. And when religious fanaticism supplants ratiocination, all bets are suddenly off. Anything can happen. Absolutely anything. Common sense is no match for the voice of God.”
~Jon Krakauer, from “Under the Banner of Heaven”
Surfer Jesus
I’ve known a few Mormons in my life… you know, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints... LDS. When I was eight and living in Sedona, Arizona... in the back of an International packing truck transformed by my mother and stepfather into a sort of hippie RV... five of us and a huge black dog named Moses... we were adopted by a family of Mormons who bought us groceries and attempted to lure my parents into the fold. I thought they were nice and I especially enjoyed playing house with the daughter, who reminded me of my childhood crush, Tatum O’Neal. Then, in high school, I dated a Mormon girl a bit younger than me. I’m not sure we ever really talked about anything... Our dates consisted of spending copious amounts of time in her bedroom dry-humping until both of us came. I don’t think I even realized she was Mormon until I suggested we actually pull our trousers down. What did I know, I lost my virginity when I was thirteen... seduced by an eighteen year old gypsy who lived over a palm reading shop on South Street in Philadelphia. I had no problem with premarital sex... When I graduated from college and moved to Louisville, Kentucky, I met Belinda.
This story really starts with a wedding... Well, I’m not sure what you’d call it. It was a small affair on a roof in Chelsea where I was sharing a one-bedroom apartment with my friend Steve who slept with a gun under his pillow. He was having a hard time adapting to New York. The date was March 21st, 1992. The spring equinox. It was 10:30pm on an unseasonably chilly evening with the wind blowing and the stars and moon visible. Up on the roof, Belinda and I knelt on a sleeping bag and between us were two yardzic candles, two sunflowers, and two torn pieces of paper on which we had hastily scribbled our vows. We’d been in love for almost two years and hadn’t had sex. It had become a big problem, mostly for me. And marriage was the solution, mostly for her. We lit the candles, which kept blowing out, read our vows, which I felt more than a little silly about, exchanged rings... two silver pinkie rings I bought on the street from a wrinkled Mexican woman who wished me well. After the vows... improvised pseudo-religious mutterings to the gods and goddesses... we exchanged the rings, kissed, opened up the sleeping bag, crawled inside, and consummated our union. We were both nervous as hell -- like two virgins (neither of us were). But she was dealing with tremendous guilt and I was negotiating a whole lot of pent up energy. I came in about five seconds. After it was over, we lay there for a while in silence, pretending to take in the starry night. Fact is, I was wondering if every time would be this bad (I’m sure she was thinking the same), but luckily, in a matter of minutes, I got another erection and we did it again, this time a little more successfully. The next day I drove her to LaGuardia and she was off, back home to Utah to resume our long distance relationship.
I was in love... if I wasn’t I wouldn’t have been in such a state of ‘what the fuck” all the time. I worshipped her golden locks and round moon face. And her free spiritedness. She was my Leda, my Penelope, my Helen… or my Ariadne more like it. Anyway, when I try to describe why I wanted to be with this woman, words don’t come easily… It wasn’t just a physical thing... I remember when we were tripping on a heroic dose of mushrooms in the Cascades… this huge primeval forest… I was chasing her… she was darting in out of the trees like a wood nymph… She had this expression on her face that just told me she belonged there. Such fucking joy! And it was this energy… this otherness… that sucked me in so completely. I wanted to belong to that club. So when I found out that she was opposed to premarital sex, I entered a world of pain.
On Monday, June 22nd, three months after our roof-style-Chelsea-wedding, I flew to Salt Lake City to meet Belinda who was living with her parents. The plan was, we’d stay at the family compound a few days, make plans for our September 12th wedding date… we were gonna make it legal for her folks’ sake... and I don’t think I fully appreciated the ramifications of this decision until later... then we’d pack up her car and hit the high road via route 15 down the Pacific coast of Mexico straight to the village of Ajijic where we’d rented a bungalow on lake Chapala. Two months of nothing but chilling out and screwing with wild abandon. Our pre-legal-wedding-post-rooftop-wedding honeymoon. It was only a week before that I was dancing naked with a stripper in a cheesy bar on the upper west side of Manhattan drunk and stoned out of my mind. My friends from Vince and Eddie’s, the joint where I was waiting tables, threw me a little bachelor party, and did I mention that I licked ready-whip off the stripper’s breasts and ass? In Salt Lake I found myself in an alternate universe. White picket fence, beautifully trimmed yard, and a pool... nothing but Mormons for miles.
The next morning, June 23rd, I woke up at 7:48am and felt guilty about sleeping late. Everyone else in the house was up. Belinda has seven brothers and sisters, not to mention the myriad of other relatives who are always “stopping by” for two or three days en route to two Mormon epicenters... Snowflake, Arizona and Cardston, Alberta. Belinda had slept with me in the wee Mormon dreaming hours and slipped away to muss up her virginal bed elsewhere. I knew we wouldn’t, couldn’t have sex in her parents’ house... that was made crystal clear, but I woke up feeling something that I could never get used to... a perpetual case of LDS blue balls.
Later that day, after spending the morning exchanging niceties with her relatives, getting treated to a luncheon of white trash items such as ambrosia salad, various Jell-O molds and a large tray cake for some cousin’s birthday (it was usually someone’s birthday), I found myself down at the pool lying on a beach chair staring up at the sky watching as an entire storm passed by. The heavens went from cloudless clear blue to dark purple and green and back again in a period of two hours or so. During that time I lay in silent meditation. Belinda had left me alone in this alien environment. But I was the alien. After 24 hours in Utah I wanted to go back to my own planet. There was this conscious feeling of… GET OUT. And I’ve experienced this many times in my life… this deeply troubling discomfort. I don’t belong. And then I start acting out. Earlier that day, I embarrassed the shit out myself by walking straight into a sliding glass door. The entire clan sitting there laughing. I escaped to the pool.
As I lay on my beach chair, at one point I looked up and noticed the clouds parting... There he was. Surfer Jesus. The lord himself was looking down on me, smiling. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the Mormon Jesus but he’s much blonder and paler than what the rest of are used to, kind of like a California surfer dude... Jeff Spicoli from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”... with a beard though... ready to hang ten on that great long-board in the sky. Belinda’s mom had pictures of him up all over the house. Nice looking dude. Why he was smiling at me, I don’t know. Maybe he was just welcoming me into the fold.
June 25. Making the wedding plans. She had over a hundred relatives she wanted to invite. I had twenty. Later we took her car to get tuned up for the trip. As we rolled past one suburban strip mall after another we decided to grow a patch of sunflowers in her parents back yard so we could have flowers at the wedding. Probably the only thing we were of one mind about. Suddenly it hits me... I had agreed to be married by her Mormon Bishop... Mindboggling, yes, but sadly, what was foremost on my mind was this nagging question… why isn’t she having sex with me... We had sex in New York, why won’t she have sex with me now?
Let me explain something here. Yes, I was smitten and all that, sure. But something else going on. I sort of liked the idea of being adopted by these folks… I mean, I wanted them to like me. Mormons are generally nice people… they gave my family food when we were hungry. When I was very young… five maybe… I always wanted to be “real”. A “real person”. “Mom, why aren’t we real people?” Real and normal were interchangeable to me. I had been living with my grandparents and my grandfather usually wore a tie. My five year old idea of normal was wearing a shirt and tie. Here I was in Mormon country… everyone was wearing shirts and ties.
That night we attended a family dinner at her grandmother’s farm in Orem, Utah, about an hour outside of Salt Lake. They were all there, the whole blessed clan, over one hundred of them… all blonde. And Belinda’s grandmother was responsible for every one of them. This little old lady, 88 years old, the matriarch. She did this. We walked into a canopied tent where everyone was eating supper... I had a three week growth on my face and for some reason decided to wear my Che Guevara, Hasta La Victoria tee shirt. Belinda had bird nests in her hair like Christian dreadlocks. We were the bohemian couple from hell stepping into a perfectly arranged Mormon diorama. No one at the long dinner table even looked up from their corn stew and white bread when we entered the tent. With a mumble and a nod from Belinda’s mom, I was sitting at the table dipping wonder bread in my stew. Then suddenly, this wizened woman stands up and addresses her tribe. She spoke of the importance of family, the connectedness of humanity, how we should give back to the earth, how we should love our neighbors, and on and on. It was a wonderful speech and transcended all my notions about the Mormon church. I was moved. Then she sat down and everyone ate dessert. I peeked around at all these light-skinned people as they solemnly chewed their apple cobbler and for the briefest moment felt honored to be there.
Thursday, June 26, I woke up with a pit in my stomach the size of a dinosaur egg. We had both been secretly second guessing this whole thing and reality was setting in. That morning we drove up a canyon, on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, the Mormon capitol of the world, and tried to figure out what had gone wrong.
Which brings me to the heart of the matter. Belinda came clean and told me she wished I was Mormon. I knew it was coming. But it cold-cocked me anyway. And there were clues… good ones. 1. in her top five list of role models, Jesus was first, 2. she sent me the book of Mormon for my birthday, and now she told me straight out... she dreamed about us being a pious couple, living in Utah, near her folks. I was deluding myself. I had always thought of Belinda’s religiosity as a thin coating of dust that a little Windex would wipe away easily to get to the nice finish but instead I found myself involved in a very complicated love triangle between me, Belinda... and Surfer Jesus. Here’s the thing though… as much as I thought she wanted ME to change, it was me that was getting into this Henry Higgins thing. But she was no Eliza Doolittle. And this was not “Pygmalian”. She had strong convictions. Her faith was permanent. She was here with her peeps. I had no right to patronize and belittle her but I did it anyway. Up on the mountain was the beginning of my never-ceasing high horse argument against religion. Why was I so unaccepting? Why did I want her to change… I thought I was in love with her. I mean you can’t argue with faith. It’s impossible. It’s purely a subjective thing. But I tried, I sure as hell tried and all it did was make her feel like shit.
By now, the whole thing had evolved into a jack-Mormon wedding. Jack-Mormon means it was as close to Mormon as it could possibly be without being held in the temple where the true Mormon couple gets hitched. The only way we could be married in the temple is if I converted and that was out of the question. If we had gone through with our plans, I was supposed to register at the ward that very afternoon. But if I had done that, all my ancestors would then be baptized Mormon in the church’s annual baptisms for the dead. It was becoming like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and I was going along with all of it… But do you know what finally clicked in my mind and snapped me out of my daze? It was the thought that if my grandmother attended my wedding in Utah, she wouldn’t be allowed to have a gin and tonic or a glass of champagne because there wouldn’t be any alcohol allowed at the reception. My grandmother, who hasn’t gone without her five o’clock martini in over sixty years! That ain’t right, Jack.
June 26. The mountain. Going round and round. Circles. Do I believe in god? No... I mean, I’m agnostic. I can’t marry someone who doesn’t believe in God. Well, I don’t disbelief in god either… Okay, are you willing to raise our children Mormon? Why can’t our children decide their spiritual paths when they’re ready? Will you come to church with me? I don’t know. Sure, I guess. My head was spinning. I was so confused. She was confused. It was going nowhere. So we decided to go to Mexico anyway and jump into the river of de-Nile.
I was scared. The river was pure fear. I couldn’t imagine breaking up. Let me fill you in on a little secret, I have a tough time with separation... it eats down to something primal in me. I believe it began when my mother threw me out of the house on a rainy night in Port Orford, Oregan… I was seven. And when I get scared I get ugly... I get mean. And when I show my teeth, people want to flee. It’s intense... If I had just acknowledged it, had at least a basic awareness, maybe things would have turned out different. Maybe I could have just walked away… clean and free but there are so many contradictions... Love. Fear. And everything in between.
On Friday, June 27, everything finally broke down. Belinda, dealing with her own set of cautionary instincts broke into a chorus of, “if you won’t allow our children to be raised Mormon then I can’t see myself marrying you.” And that was that... at least for the moment. In a fit of anger and hurt, I tore off my silver pinky ring and threw it into the Great Salt Lake.
Lulu the Cat
In 1989 I was living in Orono, Maine with my cat, Lulu, and my best pal Matt AKA Bullit, a larger than life misanthrope and scoundrel who I relied on for cut to the chase no bullshit advise. I had a girlfriend named Cate who was almost fifteen years older than me, soft red lips, bright blue eyes, method actor stormy disposition. Normally we lived together but our fight fuck fight fuck cycle was wearing me out so I decided to spend my senior year at the University of Maine with Bullit instead.
I fell in love with Cate in a touring production of Moliere’s “The Miser”... She was a “non-conventional” student... much older than any of us... with a daughter... a dancer. I was 19 she was 33. For three years our relationship was based on an unhealthy combination of her fixation on younger men and my need for a substitute family. She was stranded at the altar when she was twenty. I longed for someone to take care of me... and here was a ready-made family... with a bomb attached... the fuse already lit. And even though there was only so much time before the explosion, when I got my acceptance letter to the prestigious Actors Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky I asked Cate and her daughter, Brye to come along.
In Louisville I became an acting apprentice slash theater slave for the year. This is where I meet Belinda... a fellow apprentice. I had Cate and Brye in tow and Belinda was living with her musician boyfriend, David. Neither relationship was on solid ground. Cate, understandably depressed, homesick, jealous, and full of self-loathing, laid into me one night. Starts with the screaming and moves into the physical assault... sucker punches me in the head. I try to restrain her. She picks up the phone to call the cops. I rip the cord out of the wall. Brye appears in the doorway in tears. Was this me as a little boy watching my own family coming apart? I spend the night in the car. Things didn’t get back on track. A month later, Cate and Brye drove back to Maine in my car with most of our crap... and Lulu the cat.
Belinda and I were cast in a play called “Out the Window” by Neal Bell about two people desperately in love but cannot have sex because my character is paraplegic. The play opens with me in a wheelchair on top of a table, hung-over and without a clue how I got there. Belinda’s character wanders in from the bedroom and can’t figure out why I’m on the table but reveals to me that in our drunken stupor we had finally been able to have sex the night before even though I have no recollection of it. It’s a sweet little play about how, if you believe in something strongly enough, love transcends all obstacles.
So Cate had split. David took off a week later for Seattle. Belinda and I became inseparable... were treated like an item. They all probably assumed we were fucking too. I hope they thought it was hot.
In June of 1990 the apprenticeship was over. I hopped in my friend Connan’s pick-up and we headed north across the Ohio River toward New England. Belinda was driving to Seattle to be with David... Our no sex fling thing was over and I was perplexed... what just happened? I resigned myself to go back to Maine...
Cate was supposed to pick me up at my cousins’ place in Cambridge, Mass. On the phone she told me my cat had run off... she had “accidentally” left the car door open and Lulu escaped to the woods. I took it as an assault.
When I got to my cousins’ joint I called Cate. Tells me she can’t be there for two days. I call Bullit and ask him to steal my car and come get me. Tells me he’d see me in six hours.
In the car I try to describe how I felt like a different person after my year in Louisville... that I feel like a much better actor... That I’m in love with Belinda and ready to break up with Cate... Bullit is quick to shoot down anything that doesn’t fall under his unspoken code of New England pragmatism . Of course, this is mostly due to his own romantic misfortunes. But one can use a good slap sometimes. I’m breaking up with Cate. Silence. Just like the last ten times? I fell in love down there. Is she moving to New York with you? No, she’s going to Seattle to be with her boyfriend... I attempted to fill in the details but I wasn’t convincing Bullit of shit... or maybe I wasn’t convincing myself.
We arrived in Orono late that night. Bullit and I drank a great deal of beer and passed out. Next day, first thing I did was find my cat. Went to the spot where Cate claimed to have ‘lost’ her and called her name. Came running out of the woods immediately. Poor thing. Traumatized. Second thing I did was find Cate. I dumped her. The first decisive break-up I ever initiated. It felt GREAT. Third, I wrote to Belinda to tell her what I just did. I was very proud of myself. And excited about my future. After all I was in love and it didn’t occur to me in the slightest that I might receive a letter from her two weeks later telling me that things were going well with David. I tore it up and fell into despair.
I had decided that I would stick out the rest of the summer in Orono, living with Bullit and his girlfriend... listening to them having loud S&M sex all night. Then, in September, I would fly to Ireland to visit my mother who I hadn’t seen in about two years. After that, on to The Big Apple to find out just how successful I would become. First I had to get through the rest of the summer.
I spent the next few weeks desperately trying to get laid... called every woman I could think of. When I was the hotshit star of the UMaine stage I had offers left and right. Where were these women now? I guess they smelled my desperation. I would lie in bed at night, Lulu at my feet... my thoughts would turn to Belinda. Since I tore up her letter, I hadn’t written her back. In my mind, she and David were living in premarital bliss and that was that. I have never really been... in my whole adult life... and perhaps even throughout my childhood... I have never been able to just go through life without the need to affirm myself through another human being... mostly female. It was impossible for me to be without someone, a trait I share with my father who was recently married... number four.
One night as I was lying in bed, asking myself why, why, why... I noticed Lulu wasn’t there. Panicked, I went outside and called her name. Nothing. I walked down the street calling for her in this silly voice I used when I talked to her and I’m doing this walking and calling thing until I see the silhouette of a woman carrying a cat approaching me... Central Maine noir style. The woman says my name... “Josh?” “Suzanne?” Turns out it’s someone I dated when I was a freshman. Slightly goofy, dark hair falling down over big brown eyes... English major sexy... Suzanne steps under a streetlight... in her arms, a tiger striped pussycat.
The sex was good that summer... and we were tight... she was busy shaking off her most recent boyfriend... one of her professors who was stalking her... I was having fun being the new boy and sometimes maybe I was playing the part more than actually being it... but when September rolled around and I was ready to fly off to Ireland and ultimately to New York, it was bittersweet. Maybe we had something real. But it was too damned easy. One night as we lay on top my car watching the northern lights... I told her I loved her. But somehow perhaps my timing was off... and it was never mentioned again.
St. Brigid’s Well
My mother lived in the town of Doolin in County Clare, almost directly across the spit from the Aran Islands. Her stone cottage was at the end of a rough dirt road a kilometer or two from town on a plateau not far from the cliffs of Moher. Everything green and grey for miles. The sky constantly overcast and the grass perpetually damp. Sheep and cattle grazing nearby. It had been over a year since she sold all her belongings in Philadelphia and taken off on another one of her crazy spiritual quests. Arrived in Ireland with seven suitcases and nowhere to go. Didn’t know a soul. Somehow, miraculously or otherwise, she landed in this magical little corner of the world, found a place to live, some work, and a circle of eccentric friends.
I was nervous about our visit because she had shown signs, in recent letters, of going mad. Before she left Philly she lived with this guy who claimed he was the messiah and spent his time doing battle on the psychic plane... Thomas claimed “cyber nazis” were transmitting secret information through himself and others. He and my mother were perfect conductors of this psychic activity because they were artists... On one visit, I heard screaming coming from their room... something like... “Go fuck yourselves cyber nazis! Stay away from my family!” My mother made the right decision to leave when she did... but in Ireland she was still having visions... claimed that thousands of women visited her... every night on the astral plane. Women who were abused or violated or victimized... women seeking solace. My mother had a rough time in her life... two divorces... abandoning her three kids... her constant struggle as an artist... her family disowning her... a rape here, a car accident there... spending a year in the loony bin after trying to kill herself and me. The visions were a perfect outlet to work through the pain. She didn’t have to take responsibility for any of it... like Prozac for artists. Anyway, I was always happy when I wasn’t the target of her schizophrenic episodes... Today, I haven’t spoken to her for over three years... Ireland circa 1990 was the last time my mother and I had any semblance of a decent time together.
There’s magic in Ireland. I was open to it, maybe even seeking it out... My second day there, at my mom’s urging, I hiked alone through this desolate area called the Burren, known for its wildflowers and Celtic ruins. On a hill overlooking Galway Bay I discovered a ring fort where the Irish once watched for invaders coming from Europe. It was a warm day and I decided it would be good to get naked and lie in the middle of this ancient stone structure. As I lay dying... daydreaming away, I suddenly noticed the sound of tiny bells and hundreds of little footsteps. I thought to myself, “no, this can’t be”. I peeked through the cracked ruins and saw my faeries, a herd of goats with brass bells tied around their necks. I danced around the circle, exchanging a wee bit of prose with the goats and then fell back onto the moist grass. Staring up at the overcast sky smiling at my near mystical encounter, I felt oddly at peace... whole. It’s these glimpses that make life just mysterious enough to keep you desiring more... and at the same time I could have died there and everything would have been just fine.
At night, my mother and I walked through wet fields of grass, crossing stone fences and making our way through brambles and cow pies to get to the pub... McGann’s. Musicians from all over the world would sit in at McGann’s and a couple of times I witnessed jam sessions with close to twenty fiddlers, tin whistlers, accordion players, and drummers. The clientele at the pub was a motley crew of opinionated locals and visitors from Europe and America who were there for a benign argument or two. My mother went there to meet her secret boyfriend. A man named John Griffin, about twenty years her senior, a devout Catholic, married and the father of seven children. Mr. Griffin pulled me aside one night and confessed in a thick brogue, “I feckin love your mother Josh, I feckin love her!”
One Friday evening, after several pints of Guinness, I mustered up the courage to talk to a young lass and I must’ve received a bit of the blarney by osmosis because I used the corniest line on her... “Excuse me but you are the most beautiful woman in this place, can I buy you a drink?” Noreen Ryan, moon-faced, with endless freckles, flaming red hair and a huge smile of unsymmetrical teeth... she was sitting there with her mate, Ethyl... six two with a shock of dark brown hair shooting straight up... a gigantic female rooster. I spent the next couple of days roaming around the Burren with Noreen. She was only eighteen and had run away from a strict and religious home life. She was on the lam. She was the other... said fuck you to the Catholic church... Belinda hung around the periphery... in one moment she was a get naked dance around the May pole pagan and in the next surfer Jesus would scold her and she’d straighten up her act... Noreen was in a full out rebellion. I wanted some of that... I invited her back to my mom’s shack the following night.
My mother had asked her Dutch friend Oane to spend the night as well. Oane was an intense woman, intelligent and cynical. Turned me on to R.D. Laing and the “The Divided Self”... you know, how we exist for others who, in turn, exist for us... how we’re essentially dead unless someone defines us otherwise... then she drove me up a hill above Doolin and presented me with one of the most brilliant sunsets I have ever seen. This was a woman with an Ayn Rand brand of self-esteem... everything had to be twisted around her philosophical bent... and I found this sexy... Noreen arrives at my mother’s after supper. The air rife with tension... a few drinks... a few laughs... then to bed... my mother went upstairs... Oane, Noreen and I shared a room. I was on the floor with Noreen... Oane on the bed... a few moments of electric silence, Noreen reaches down my drawers... deliberate exhalation from across the room. I take Noreen outside... There she is in the dirt writhing with anticipation... naked from the waist down... I can’t do it... I had adopted some kind of strange moral barometer... I went inside and pretended to go to sleep.
The last day in Ireland my mother and I made a spiritual exodus to the next town where she would visit a holy well from time to time to pay homage to St. Brigid. The novelist and poet Robert Graves, in his manifesto on the history of poetic myth, “The White Goddess”, describes St. Brigid as ‘the virgin as muse’. According to Mr. Graves she is associated with poetry and healing and throughout the British Isles her healing powers are exercised largely through poetic incantation at sacred wells. In Gaelic lore her symbol is the white swan and she is often referred to as the bride of the golden hair. Virgin as muse... golden hair... Bingo... this was my cuppa tea.
The well was sheltered inside a makeshift structure nestled in a small grove of hawthorn. We entered through an old wooden door and walked down a cobbled path. My mother suggested I take off my shoes, put my feet in the water and let the healing liquid work its magic... Okay... Then she told me to ask Brigid for something I truly wanted in life. Here I asked for a moment to myself... and when I was alone, I got down on my knees and prayed...
St. Brigid? If you can hear me, I’ve got something to ask you... Is it possible... Do you think it’s possible to live the life of an artist? I want to walk the creative path... and I want to share that life St. Brigid... I want a family... a real family. Kids, grandchildren... a soul mate. But I’ve got to know... is it Belinda? Is she the one? She is? You’re sure? I knew it! Thank you St. Brigid, thank you!
That marked the beginning and the end of my religious period.
Earlier that summer I picked up a copy of “Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Big mistake. Let me sum things up a bit... it’s about some idiot who falls in love with a beautiful young senorita and then waits like 53 years to be with her. The reason it takes so long is due to a myriad obstacles... like she marries someone else for instance. Anyway, I got the idea that I was going to wait for Belinda for all eternity like my man in the book. Now, thanks to St. Brigid, I was secure in my life’s quest. I knew there would be other women, sure... but Belinda and I would be together one day. Maybe she was my muse, my personal St. Brigid. I mean I am compelled to tell you this story, right?
Sublet
I arrived at JFK in September of 1990 with a suitcase and a hundred bucks. Standing in the airport lobby in an indeterminate state I asked myself, where am I gonna stay tonight? I dialed half a dozen numbers... Nada. At the bottom of the list was Kate.
Kate was one of my fellow apprentices in Louisville and had what a good friend of mine called ‘the annoying disease’. Originally from Nantucket she’d proudly announce... ‘I’m from the island’, provoking my friend Bruce to ask, “what island? Manhattan, Prince Edward, Easter…?” She went to Hampshire College, was a snob, and wore oversized flowery muumuus. I didn’t like her.
Kate lived on 85th Street between Central Park and Columbus, coincidently the same block where my grandfather was born in 1912. I rang the buzzer... no one answered... I sat on her stoop scribbling in my journal. An hour later she loped down the street in a flowery tent like dress, hair tied up in a silk scarf. I pretended to be happy to see her as we walked up five flights to her tiny one bedroom apartment.
First thing she asks... “honey is it okay if I prorate the rent while you’re here?” What could I say? I agreed. She put a cup by the phone and told me to drop a quarter in every time I made a call. A cup of tea was a quarter too, toast... fifty cents.
One night, as I got up to pee, I must have made too much noise... she appears in the doorway without her glasses holding a baseball bat. “Who the fuck is in my house”?! “It’s me, who do you think it is”. “I don’t like having men in my apartment”. “I’ll be out of here as soon as possible, I promise”. I had to piss like a monkey so I excused myself. After I flushed, she called from her bedroom, in her normal annoying tone, “honey, make sure you put the seat down”.
I called the only person I could think of, a friend of the family’s... Arthur Stern. He couldn’t have been more sympathetic. Suggested I grab my stuff, head over to his place pronto, which turned out to be right up the street.
Arthur Stern was a 74 year old Jewish gay man living in a five bedroom apartment with two estranged room-mates and a cat with feline AIDS named Butch. Arthur had been an art teacher for fifty plus years but when I met him he was mostly hanging around in his underwear reading newspapers and entertaining gentleman callers. On the walls he had dozens of paintings by his students, mostly male nudes, and everywhere were endless piles... discarded newspapers, books, playbills... unidentified crap. In his youth he was a member of the folk group, The Almanac Singers, headed up by Pete Seeger, in the early forties. And later on that year after Arthur dropped dead of a stroke in his kitchen, Pete sang at his memorial service.
Arthur took me to museums, galleries, concerts, always lecturing on the finer points of aesthetics and art history. He cooked me rich dinners and we drank vodka and Sambuca, philosophizing into the wee hours. Too bad I freaked out when he tried to stick his tongue down my throat one drunken evening. I could have been more forgiving, I guess, but it did seem inappropriate. Our relationship wasn’t the same after that and when he died a few weeks later, I felt guilty about raising such a fuss.
One night we were sitting around talking and drinking as usual and the conversation turned to the fact that I needed work. Arthur knew the chef at Odeon in TriBeCa and got me a job as a line cook. Arthur also found me a sublet in Staten Island...
The owner was a stained glass artist. In the apartment, sunlight would reflect off the glass creating a kaleidoscope of colors... I would spend hours lying in bed watching the shapes dance across the ceiling. Once, lying there daydreaming, a photograph of the artist and her husband hanging above the bed fell off the wall and hit me on the head. I screamed like I’d seen a ghost... picked up the photo... the glass in the frame had cracked creating a clear division between the man and the woman.
One busy Friday night at the restaurant I finished a dish of seared scallops... somehow I dropped the pan and smoking hot butter melted a couple of layers of skin off my right forearm. Next stop, the emergency room.
As the doctor was treating the burn, a nurse gave me a shot of Demerol... stuck the needle right into the bone of my upper arm. All I remember is saying... “I think I need a bucket”. Then my heart stopped. Literally. I started floating above my body... I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear either but my senses were alive... the past, present and future were one and the only emotion I felt was pure bliss. Everything was bright white. Gravity became a non issue. No gravity and no judgment. This was nirvana, man! And Jesus was definitely NOT standing at the end of a long white tunnel in a pool of blinding light.
I opened my eyes... ten faces with green masks staring down at me. They had just jump-started my heart. I hyperventilated. Now I was back in reality and reality ain’t nirvana. Five minutes later I was on a gurney near the main entrance of the emergency room hooked up to an IV watching as a parade of wounded and sick people limped and staggered by. A gunshot wound to the face. A teenage boy with his thumb cut off... his older brother laughing at him as if it were the funniest thing he ever saw. The kid was actually holding his dismembered thumb in a kleenex. The older brother looked over at me and said “yo, look! There go that dude who almost croak”!
They released me... I wandered out to the street in a daze with absolutely no idea where I was. It was then that I realized I peed my pants. I caught a cab and headed to the Staten Island ferry. The big clock on the wall read 2:01am. Fifty nine minutes until the next ferry. I found a pay-phone and called Belinda. David answered and as I told him my story, Belinda got on the line. I downplayed the whole drama but the fact that I almost died wasn’t so funny to them. They kept me on the phone until the next ferry arrived and I sailed home to Staten Island where I spent the next two weeks in self-imposed exile.
The idea of dying wasn’t so bad anymore after floating around in the hospital. I suspect it had to do with the maternal umbilical connection. I was constantly trying to re-attach my cord. Carl Jung was probably right about the importance of individuating, the concept of finding your own sense of self, separate from your mother. After my mingling with the afterlife, I felt capable, for the first time perhaps, of being alone in the world, and death just didn’t seem so bad anymore.
I needed a mindless day job so I could devote myself to what I really wanted to do... act. So I landed a gig as a doorman at the Roger Smith Hotel on Lexington Avenue where all I had to do was open doors and carry luggage... and wear a goofy uniform replete with a red cape. It was around this time that a few of us ex-Louisvillians were organizing a theater company. I immersed myself in the production of my first New York show, “Momentary Lapses”, an evening of eight short plays. It was agreed, in one of our meetings, that I should invite Belinda and David to join our new company. When I called her that night, there was startling news... she and David had broken up. Thank you, St. Brigid.
Belinda arrived with a backpack and a sad disposition. She spent the first few days at my apartment weeping about David while I provided her with unlimited supplies of red wine and chocolate. She listened to Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” album over and over... camped out in my king-size bed watching soaps and wiping me out of kleenex. I was bursting with the love I wanted to give her... once she was finished grieving about David that is. It was the spring of 1991, a year before the rooftop ceremony, and I couldn’t have been happier.
Right after “Momentary Lapses” closed, we took off on a cross country road trip. Graceland, New Orleans, Big Bend National Park, hot springs in Taos, red rocks in Sedona... We shared a single sleeping bag most nights in our tiny two person tent but you know the score... a big fat zero. But plenty of cunnilingus... I serviced her to her heart’s content but not once did she reciprocate. In fact, over our off and on relationship, I only received about a handful of blowjobs. Yep, I’d say about five total.
We ended up at her parents place in Utah. I seriously considered settling there for good. But Christ, after two weeks in Salt Lake City, I burned for New York... I begged her to come back with me but she said she wasn’t ready. I guess my rational mind trumped my heart because I decided to head back east... I mean, what was I going to do in Utah? But before I got in my Toyota wagon and found my way to Interstate 80, I kept my promise to St. Brigid and asked Belinda to marry me. I got down on one knee... the whole bit. Tears streaming down her face but she didn’t answer. Told me she needed to think about it.
Across the great divide, Belinda and I spent hours on the phone pining for each other. And we had phone sex too... Mormons are especially good two things... phone sex and dry humping... and Belinda used to tell me this story about a friend of hers who would only take it in the ass because somehow that didn’t officially count. I’ve never been into anal sex.
In March of 1992, Belinda flew in for a short visit and after pestering her for three days to give me an answer to my burning question, she finally said yes, and we did our thing up on the rooftop.
The Apple Pie Hubbub
Back to the breakup in Utah... Remember how I had dramatically thrown my silver pinky wedding ring into the Great Salt Lake? Well you could say the official wedding was called off... and the unofficial wedding was annulled as well... So after the divorce, I guess, I called David, Belinda’s ex, the only person I knew in five hundred miles. He was at his family’s camp. I hopped a bus to West Yellowstone, Montana.
For the next five days we drank a lot of Jim Beam, rowed around on the lake, did a little fishing, and bonded like long lost brothers. What amazed me was he held no grudge whatsoever considering I had basically stolen his girlfriend. He was more in tune with his own shortcomings though... I think he felt their break up was his fault... He and I were a lot alike... his songs were full of angst and self pity... the major difference is that he comes from a great deal of money... never had to work a day in his life... I always wondered why he felt so sorry for himself... I mean, I thought I’d cornered that strip mall.
So we’re sitting on the dock... commiserating... I’m beginning to recover... maybe even ready to move on... and I admit I’m a little high... right on cue, Belinda’s white VW Fox rolls into the driveway. She walks down the hill toward us... her two ex boyfriends... the only two boys she had sex with. Then like a scene from a bad soap opera, she bee-lines it over to me... throws herself into my arms, sobbing.
When we were tripping on mushrooms she found a glove in the forest. A lone glove. Weeps about this glove... keeps repeating, things shouldn’t be lost. Sitting next to this bucolic stream running down the mountain, she clutches the glove close to her heart like a lost child. Tell me about the glove... where did it come from? Does it have a history? Why is it so special? She glares at me... eyes reduced to tiny slits. Who the fuck do you think you are? Mr. Rogers? Runs off and leaves me there... I become the glove.
After I left Utah her father gave her some words of wisdom. Wrote her a heartfelt letter she was clutching even as we embraced down by the lake. The basic message... it would be a hell of a lot easier if I’d see the light and embrace Jesus. Thus our summer summit talks began, featuring the theological point of view versus the philosophical point of view. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t disagree with her dad. He was right in many ways. So why didn’t I just give in? After all, there are unique perks. In the Mormon afterlife each man gets to rule his own planet. I mean, who wouldn’t want to rule a planet? Unfortunately I have major problems with dogma in general... and back then I confused dogma with faith... I wish I knew then what I know now... If we were smart, we would have called it a day back in Salt Lake City. Problem was, I wasn’t willing to let go. She had this magnetic pull on me... I wanted to be that glove. I wanted her to find me... keep me safe.
The day after she arrived bearing her father’s letter, I said goodbye to David and jumped in the VW. We headed north, to the International Peace Park on the border of the US and Canada, high up in the Rocky Mountains.
July 4, 1992... 4AM. Conrad, Montana. I sit on a closed toilet seat in the bathroom of the Conrad Motel. Belinda sleeping soundly on the queen-sized bed... her mouth open, a little drool forming at the corner of her lip. I’m at my breaking point... madness setting in... my stomach aching, not with anything like nausea but with a yearning so fierce I could fuck a jar of peanut butter.
We arrive at the Peace Park and set up our tent at the base of a snow capped mountain... big horned sheep, deer, bears congregating for a free lunch... waiting for tourists to feed them. Families with small children sitting by fires roasting weenies. I want to run naked through the hills with her... find a crystal clear lake and dive in. But the fog rolls in and we can’t find each other.
The only reasonable thing to do was part ways. Once again we said our goodbyes. This time she decided 10,000 miles would be far enough and drove up the AlCan to Palmer, Alaska where she found solace in her sister’s basement. I came back to New York... this place has me in its grips like crack. I saw other women... some really good ones too... but I couldn’t allow myself to let go... I even tried to reconnect with Suzanne.
Six months later I fly to Alaska. There I am again... pointed north toward the far reaches of Belinda... sitting on the plane between an Inuit and an Athabaskan... the Athabaskan was about 6’5” and had been shot in the arm in a bar brawl the night before... I had some valium and he swallowed handfuls between shots of Jack Daniels. The Inuit, about six foot wide, told me he had been shot in the back after caught cheating on his wife... just had his sixth surgery... he too gobbled up valium and Jack... they offered to show me around Anchorage... maybe take in a titty bar or two but I declined... I was on a mission.
After a week of groveling and cajoling... whining and self-flagellating, I somehow convinced Belinda to move to New York. I didn’t use the words Mormon or Jesus once.
That June we moved into a sublet in Hell’s Kitchen. For the first time we were a real couple... and we were having real sex! Took me a while to get used to it though... lots of bouts of limpdick... premature ejaculation... your basic performance anxiety. The tables had turned... once she was open for business, she was the one frustrated when I couldn’t rise to her expectations... her pious attitude turned into... Would you just fuck me already! The first year went by pretty fast and things were going a-ok... we even attended church together a few times. The one at Lincoln Center... 65th and Broadway... the mini mall of Mormon wards... five churches in one. It looked exactly like every other ward across the country... Ikea like preassembled wood paneling... Surfer Jesus and his fellow travelers adorning the walls... a podium with a mic stand... One of my favorite Mormon rituals is testimony Sunday... the first Sunday of every month... folks take turns at the podium speaking on any subject that moves them... tiny tots get up and claim the church is true, Joseph Smith is the true prophet, Jesus is this or that... and there are the sexually repressed folks... one guy got up and railed on and on about premarital sex... how wrong it is... how it ruins your life... how it takes you away from God... poor tormented soul... I leaned over... whispered to Belinda... this guy really needs a stiff dick up his ass. Last time I was invited to church.
The thing was... our sex was back to premarital... and guilt was seeping back in. We entered a new level of partly requited fucked up love... I kept asking her to marry me... she kept me at a distance. Yes, we were fucking. Yes, she was physically there with me in New York. But she wasn’t happy because I was trying to strangle her faith.
We once went six weeks without speaking because of one particular transgression... I refer to the incident as “the apple pie hubbub”. And fittingly, the apple pie hubbub took place over Thanksgiving in Hell’s Kitchen. Her brother and his wife were staying with us for the holiday weekend. It was Thanksgiving Eve. Belinda was doing her best to make an apple pie and getting increasingly frustrated. I was acting out... overstating things... making lame jokes... generally being an asshole. Belinda innocently asked me for help rolling out the dough. I responded with something like, “oh come on, what the hell’s the problem, you can do it”, patronizing, judgmental... I made an effort to laugh it off. But as in Goddard’s film, “Contempt”, when Brigitte Bardot’s boyfriend makes the slightest critical comment about what she’s wearing or something, Belinda, like Brigitte, didn’t let it go. In a normal transaction all I had to do was apologize and she would have forgiven me. But as in “Contempt”, it didn’t happen.
In the spring, she escaped again... heading back to Utah to study massage therapy. Oddly, our last few weeks together in New York were perhaps our best ever. Maybe we knew that it was the beginning of the end and we decided to be especially kind.
The Womb Room
When I was two, my father was in medical school, my mother was institutionalized, and I was living with my grandparents in Philadelphia. One of my mother’s hippie friends had a sister named Laurie who was my babysitter. My father came home from medical school on one of his breaks and started fooling around with her. They got married after consulting the I Ching. The marriage lasted almost a whole year. Right before Belinda left for Utah, my father hooked up with Laurie again in New York. Conveniently, she invited me to take care of her cat while she was at a conference in China. So that June I flopped at Laurie’s pink, womblike apartment on Central Park West and didn’t escape until April.
I expected to stay for just six weeks, I swear. But I was a lost soul. Belinda was in Utah. I had just gone through the sad task of dissolving my theater company, a huge emotional deal for me. And without Belinda, without the company, I had nothing.
Laurie was a psychoanalyst and I was sleeping on her couch for chrissakes. She asked me to stay on after the official house-sitting gig was up. I assumed it was because of my forlorn despair and helplessness. Actually it was something more Oedipal. She had some Henry Higgins ideas of her own...
We conducted these weird therapy sessions together, maybe two or three times a week, she called our “alembic”. Webster’s defines alembic as, ‘an apparatus formerly used in distillation. A device that purifies, refines or transmutes as if by distillation’. We’d meet in her womblike living room, light candles and tell each other our dreams. She’d put them into some kind of cosmic context. Then we had to open our hearts to each other. This was where shit could get very weird. She and I were contained in this metaphorical vessel. And in that vessel we had to allow ourselves to go through alchemical changes in our psyches. Jung referred to the alchemical process between a man and a woman as “the great work” which, as far as I can tell, is the pursuit of perfection in a relationship. Alchemy is, after all, the practice of turning shit into gold. In Laurie’s mind, she and I were doing ‘the great work’. Problem was I wasn’t interested in doing the great work with her. I wanted to do the great work with Belinda. But Laurie was trying to convince me, in a systematic way, that Belinda was no good for me. Then she suggests we go to bed together. When I turn her down she screams like Medea. And do you know what? If I had been the slightest bit attracted, I might have gone through with it. But the fact that she fucked my father was the first major turn off... the second, she was twice my age.
I was a prisoner of my own broken heart and head... I needed a place to stay... I longed for a mom... I was buying into Laurie’s machinations... and, frankly, I was exploiting the situation... I was getting some basic needs met at the discount price of my integrity. I’d wake up and see Laurie traipsing around in her nightgown smiling at me... happy that I was sharing her life... even breaking into a few flamenco flourishes... but it gave me a sick feeling. I was looking for answers... I was waiting for a voice to tell me what to do. I was waiting for St. Brigid to deliver me from... what? I didn’t get it.
Laurie did have some valid points... despite her shameless games, I began to question my relationship with Belinda on a more conscious level. To Laurie, Belinda was stringing me along... manipulating my emotions... bringing out the worst in me... I didn’t want to believe any of this but when I talked to Belinda on the phone, I got into a pattern of attacking her... I was using Laurie’s voice instead of my own... I was complicit with Laurie’s skewed take and losing sight of what I wanted... I believed I was mending things but I was doing nothing more than driving Belinda further and further away. My only recourse was retreat back to the alembics where Laurie would launch into her endless psychobabble about how Belinda was destroying my soul.
Then Laurie asked me to marry her. I did the next dumbest thing... decided to move to Utah instead.
Withdraw and Expand
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls who, having found the one pearl of great price, sells all he has, in order to possess it.” Matthew 13. Fear of death is reason enough to continue on... once you get past that you can toss the pearl back to the oysters. I wanted to die in the Cascades... the mushrooms took me from birth to death in six hours... in the end, I rested my head on the mossy ground... Belinda refused me this luxury... pulled me up and made me live another day.
In April of 1996 I bought a beat up Subaru, borrowed my dad’s hi8 camera, packed my shit and hit the road. The plan... make my way to Utah by way of the nine circles of hell... I’d start in Bangor, Maine and do a sort of Sherman’s March toward self annihilation. The goal... destroy whatever was left of my ego by means of candid on-camera Q&A’s with anyone willing to tolerate my twisted attempt at catharsis... friends, family, enemies... I created a list of interview questions... have you ever found me abusive... do you think I’m an asshole and if so, give me some examples... do you think I deserve to die...
The night before I set out, I threw an epic going away party and served pot brownies. The party went on well into the following morning when I staggered to my car and hit the road fully expecting never to return.
The odyssey revealed the hard truth... An old friend broke down in tears... WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?? My grandfather on my mother’s side who I hadn’t seen since I was six wouldn’t let me in his house... met me at the end of his driveway and dismissed me. Ex girlfriends gave me payback... one woman laid into me about my arrogance... accused me of stifling her... another said I was terminal case of arrested development... what was I attempting? I was provoking people... the people closest to me... the people I needed the most... They were clawing at me, drawing blood... but I didn’t stop there... I let them pour turpentine on my wounds. My family was bewildered... my friends thought I was insane. I caught up with my mother in Taos... Ireland now a distant memory... I needed my mom... yearned for her... but there was no mother to be found... fireballs of anger lit up the New Mexico sky... we turned away from each other. 7,500 miles logged, 55 hours of tape burned, I limped further toward the abyss.
Five weeks into the trip, just east of Salt Lake City, I checked into a motel in Roosevelt, Utah... decided I needed a moment to myself. Called Belinda and tried to explain what ‘a moment to myself’ meant but she just got pissed that I’d miss another cousin’s birthday party that night. I was tense. I turned on the TV... found a less than stimulating pay per view soft porn flick and officiously masturbated. I couldn’t sleep.
I could barely compose myself when I saw her. She was so... I don’t know, maybe she was just as nervous as me. We headed up to our favorite mountain, laid down a blanket and talked about religion, sex and anger. I apologized for the “apple pie hubbub” and she said she was sorry for holding out on the sex. Hopeful, but when I tried to kiss her, all was not well.
That afternoon, Belinda went to work. Avoiding her family who, surprise, was not happy to see me, I decided to go see “Dead Man Walking”. In it, a doomed man learns to take responsibility for his actions. Jesus, I wanted that too. I wanted Susan Sarandon to tell me everything was gonna be okay. Cried like a friggin baby in my car for ten minutes. Dried my tears and went to pick up Belinda. She was busy consoling one of her massage patients who was also weeping. This woman had just found out that her husband murdered her best friend. Talk about life imitating art...
Later, Belinda and I went to a bar to meet a couple of her massage school buddies. A gay man named Brian... nineteen and fresh out of the closet... and Mo... short for Maureen, I guess. They were nice to me. Everyone, for the most part is nice in Utah. In the bar, which really wasn’t a bar... there are no bars in Salt Lake City, only “clubs”... I became invisible... Belinda, with her back to me, sought only the comfort of her new friends... strangers... I was the stranger. I sat there nursing my Jameson’s on the rocks half listening, my heart breaking, like a large hand crushing my chest. I wanted to crawl under the table and disappear.
Later, there were a couple of extra cars parked in her parents’ driveway and Belinda made a crabby comment about how her mom was turning the place into a motel... I was assigned her youngest brother’s room... he was off on his mission... converting godless heathens somewhere. His room smelled like catshit... only fitting since the family cat box was sitting in the middle of the floor. I got into bed. Maybe it was the smell, I don’t know, but I couldn’t fall asleep... kept visualizing lypomas, those lumps older people get right below the surface of the skin... benign tumors. I noticed one on my arm earlier that day and was a bit concerned. I searched my body for more... kind of like counting sheep for neurotic people... or chanting a death wish?
At breakfast, I contracted a brief case of Tourette’s... Her sister Elizabeth wanted to go hiking with us... I blurt out, are you fucking nuts... WE’RE TRYING TO SAVE OUR RELATIONSHIP IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T NOTICED. I was already on thin ice... now I was underwater. And it actually began to rain.
It was still pouring when we arrived at the trailhead so we sat in the car to wait it out. Belinda described what she wanted most in life... “a calmness”. I apologized for the outburst. She said she couldn’t take any more abuse. She mumbled to herself... how she needs to get out of these horrible situations. I felt worthless but mustered up enough strength to put my arms around her. I can’t be abusive to someone I love... fuck... thing is, I have these outbursts... used to attribute it to genes... my grandfather yelled... my dad yells... my mother certainly... I hold on to my anger like a family jewel... become an unconscious bundle of misfiring synapses... I was crying now as I felt her pull away even more. I held on tighter... desperate. “Is that it, are we finished?” She released herself from my grip... turned away... said nothing.
St. Brigid, what’s the deal? I heard your message, didn’t I? I was there at the well. I didn’t make you up, did I? Or did I only hear what I wanted to?
That night we went to the Pie, a hippie pizza joint on the University of Utah campus. A couple of pitchers of local brew later, Belinda asked... “do you think it’s possible to feel unconditional love for someone and not be together?” It was a good question and came from an honest place. We finished another pitcher and made our way up into the mountains again, this time in search of her friend Mo’s cabin. I was counting the minutes until the glass in our picture frame would crack.
The cabin wasn’t exactly the epitome of romance... smelled like catpiss... my new favorite scent. We crawled into bed and I tried to make the best of the situation by telling her stories about the worst places I lived growing up. We read to each other from Bukowski’s “Love is a Dog from Hell” and fell asleep. Held each other all night. I wanted to make love to her but didn’t dare make the overture. In the morning I woke up first and watched her sleep for a while... I kissed her on the lips... she woke up and turned away. Got out of bed and quickly got dressed. I wanted to hear her say how wonderful it was to be in my arms again. Instead she described the night as, “hot and squishy”.
Back at her parents’ there was discussion about putting down the family dog... Cassie the boxer. She could barely walk. Belinda argued that Cassie needed to die away rather than wait three weeks for her younger sister Amy to get back from her mission in Chile. I always thought the dog belonged to Amy so in her defense I piped in to say she’d be devastated if the decision was made without her. Belinda was ice cold , “I’m not waiting three weeks. If I had a shotgun, I’d shoot her right now.”
The next morning Belinda gave me a massage. She was different... in her element. The massage was deep and healing... she did this one thing that felt like she was raising the energy through my spine and up and out through the top of my head. I had an intense visualization. A man about my age now, hair slicked back, clean shaven, brooding, appears and walks through a doorway and stares at me. He was familiar. Jung would say it was my shadow self, introducing himself. Hi. Afterwards, Belinda and I sat down and had tea... she said the words. It was over... the beginning of the beginning of the end of the beginning.
After the massage, we went back to the spot where I had thrown my ring in the Great Salt Lake and I interviewed her. She was brave to do it and was lovely and quite open and honest in all her answers to my inane questions. She confessed she had thrown her engagement ring in with mine shortly after I had taken off to Montana. Hearing that made me feel good. After the interview, we headed back to her house and divvied up our stuff. There was no going back from that point. I hit the road toward more uncertainty than I’d ever faced.
Every once in a while, I still think of Belinda and even occasionally pine for that idealistic view of love that I felt for so long. Yes, I still need the muse, I need my St. Brigid, but she’s now more of a part of me, part of my creative spirit, rather than a whirlwind of chaotic energy driving me into unconscious realms of insanity. I leave the terrible longings, the painstaking pursuits of romantic love to the youngsters. Then again, maybe I’m just fooling myself. Sometimes I’d like nothing better than to run naked through the hills of Ireland chasing nymphs.
I read the entire essay!