You Don’t Get to Say Goodbye – Episode Three

Desire.

Sometimes in life – no – make that “often in life,” everything we desire falls into our lap without us noticing the grand beauty of the experience. We often become the bumbling running back on a football team who fumbles away his opportunity for celebration and joy. We become the antithesis of who we desire to be in the clutch.

This all transpires as “life lessons,” many of which we learn over and over and over again. The most dispiriting aspect of this cycle of internal humiliation becomes our seeming inability to overcome our own foibles. So many of these moments and potentials could easily have gone another direction.

In life, we either keep moving forward, keep learning new things, keep overcoming past struggles, or we fall into riding out our time here on earth medicating ourselves with mindless entertainments, depressions, apathy, and disconsolate unhappiness.

Tamara

Eighth grade delivered the shock of Ray’s young life. In the wake of the seventh grade’s flirtations with Dawna and Rachel, in third period, the teacher assigned seats alphabetically.

Normally, this would not constitute a problem. Ray rarely cared who sat beside him on either side. In fact, assigned seating would keep his friends from distracting him and teasing him into cutting up in class. The first exception to this philosophy came in third period English.

Tamara Jones. The most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. The girl who stole his heart immediately. Not only were they beside each other, Tamara sat to his right with the aisle immediately to her right. She basically became his silent prisoner, or object of worship.

He would steal glances her direction but only when he was one hundred percent sure she would not notice. He recognized not daring to look her direction had to be something she noticed. He knew, though, he could not hide what was in his heart because his eyes would tell it. In a heartbeat.

Ray both thrilled and dreaded walking into English every day. He liked to get there early so he could watch her walk in. She always dressed to perfection. She always gave off the air of beauty personified. She absolutely always looked better than anyone else on their best days.

As the first couple months of the school year skated by, Ray and J.T. held many pow wows over how fortunate he was to be seated next to the girl he was gaga over. J.T. constantly suggested that Ray assert himself and speak to her. Make connection. Find a way into her life.

Great advice, and Ray knew it. Yet, that same “shy” bug overwhelmed him again. He could not muster the courage to do anything but shoot furtive glances her way and marvel at her excruciating beauty.

J.T., one day, took a page from the dance with Dawna escapade and purportedly spoke to Tamara at school. He let her know of Ray’s infatuation and that Ray was just dying to get to know her.

“She said you needed to call her,” J.T. stated, excitement all over his face as though it was he who had fallen for the girl.

“No she didn’t,” Ray replied.

“No kidding! Really! You just have to call her!”

“I don’t think I can do that. We’ve been in class two months now and I haven’t said a word to her yet. How can I call her?”

“Pick up the phone and dial. Here’s her number.” J.T. handed him a wrinkled sheet of paper with his near-illegible writing scrawled across the top.

“I can’t.”

“I’ll sit with you when you make the call,” J.T. interjected.

“That would just make it worse.”

“I told her you would call her tonight at 6:00 pm.”

“What?”

“Hey. I knew if I didn’t do something like that, you’d chicken out. Now you have to call her.”

“Shit! Why’d you do that?”

“Because you’re miserable and you hafta get past this. If you don’t, you’ll have to go through the whole year like this.”

“But what if she say’s no?”

“Hey, she told me to have you call her. She won’t say no.”

“Crap. 6:00 pm… I can do this…”

“Of course you can! You’ll thank me when this is over.”

“Ok. I’ll do it.”

“That’s the spirit!”

“What if her parents answer? You know they probably will.”

“So you ask to speak with Tamara. That’s not complicated Ray. Just do it.”

“Ok.” Ray drew a deep breath. He could feel his hands shaking already.

The afternoon raced forward like an Olympic sprinter who smells gold. Ray dreaded making the call. He felt trapped. Excited. Scared. Ecstatic.

His palms began to sweat at five minutes until six. He knew he must call at six sharp. Any earlier he would appear over-anxious. Any later – scared. He was both.

He was thankful for the cord extension on the living room phone. Otherwise, he would have had to make the call in front of whatever family would cross into the room. At least this way, he could hunker behind the bathroom door. Hopefully no one would have to use the bathroom…

Panic set in at six o’clock. He felt his fingers dialing but the experience was surreal. He was actually going to call Tamara and speak with her. She would be the voice at the other end of the line, the dream, the fantasy, the most beautiful girl he knew. He started praying that no one would be home.

“Hello,” a disembodied man’s voice droned into Ray’s ear.

“M-m-may I speak with Tamara…please?” Ray stammered.

“Tam!” the voice called out dully in the background of Rays heartbeats and nerve rattles. Momentarily the voice he knew well but had never engaged struck his ears.

“Hello?”

Ray’s mind blanked. For a moment he thought of hanging up. She wouldn’t know for sure it was him. He silently cursed himself for allowing so much silence before he spoke. “Hi, Tamara,” he managed.

“Who is this?”

Oh God! Had J.T. lied about talking to her? Had he been set up? In a bad way? “This is Ray. Ray Kline. J.T. said you said to call you.”

“He did? Why?”

Is she toying with me? Ray thought, panic now far too slow for what he was feeling. Nothing to do now but go for broke. “Because he said he talked to you because I want to “go with” you and you told him to have me call at six and its six and I was wondering if you would, if you would like to go with me.”

His face burned and his stomach churned and he felt light-headed. He’d actually done it. He’d actually asked the most beautiful girl in the world to go with him. For all the speed in which time had sped along leading up to this moment, its revenge now manifested in eternity. The silence on the other end of the phone crashed into his ears.

“I don’t know why he would have told you that.”

“Maybe he was playing a joke on me, but I really do want to go with you.”

“My answer is no.”

“Ok”

He placed the receiver on the cradle after his thumb had crushed the plastic nipple that disconnected the line and had effectively hung up. He felt sick. He felt embarrassed. More embarrassed than when his older sisters had dressed him up as a girl for Halloween. Wig, high-heels, make up and all. The embarrassment there was compounded by the fact even his closest friends did not recognize him. Then, winning the prize for best costume. That was all minor compared to this.

This time, he not only did not get to say goodbye, he’d really not even made it to hello…

Dreams

Love is a murky pinwheel with many spokes
Named and unnamed, swirling, wind-blown smoke
Mirrors revealing all the pain
Shards and pieces and debris remain

Yet each facet owns a flavor, a scent, a sound
No two alike when the heart speeds and pounds
The double-edged weapon we chase until we can take no more
Or we find fortune in the relationship store

Eventually the question arises to face the dawn of day
Who would ever wish to endure their life this way?
Dying for love at every disastrous turn
Only increases the heart’s propensity to yearn

The dream of love stands only as illusion
An infidelity and a life intrusion
Scenarios of bitter, melancholy paths and trails
Muscling up the heart to become tougher than nails

Yet that very same muscle crumbles into warm gooey putty
When the currents of life and love get muddy
Only to deliver the hope and it may seem
There’s only the universe enraptured by love’s bright dream…

 

You Don’t Get to Say Goodbye – Episode 2

Tags

love, young love

The roads of life get experienced one moment at a time regardless of how cluelessly we traverse the journey. At times we see the grasshopper. The glinting dew-diamonds on early-morning grass. The butterfly, crocodile, whale chiffon clouds on stage with the azure background accenting their show.

Then there’s the walk home after an exhilarating evening of joy. Those moments come rapid-fire yet soft. Billowy. Unforgettable. All because you’ve set your heart free. All because you’ve connected to your higher self and you allow yourself to glory in all that is good and kind and fortunate in your life.

Those roads, less traveled, beckon to us. Always. For the most part, we not only ignore them, we grow into a refusal of their actual existence. Memory serves us well here if we could only grasp the importance of the fact that these moments of walking on air truly emanate from within rather than without…

Rachel

“She likes me!” Tingles shot an array of directionless explosions throughout his body. His brain. His arms. His legs. The tip of his nose. He likely glowed brighter than the most dominant star in the sky.

They’d danced. He actually danced with her! Seventh grade was becoming a bellwether time in his young life. The holidays had passed. Rachel had asked (through a friend) if he liked her. He appreciated her forwardness. After Dawna, he needed that.

He got to walk her home. What an amazing time to be alive! They held hands. They strolled Dunbar Avenue with its elongated shadows painting a surreal backdrop to their majestic victory over new love.

Ray noted the magnificence of her warm hand, the tapestry of stars winking their approval through the maple leaves overhanging the sidewalk by Jimmy Smith’s darkened house. The world slept. The entire world snoozed the night away allowing them their time and a complete run of everything everywhere. Nothing was denied the two young lovers, as best they knew to be, as they strolled in harmony.

When the time came to part, and she walked into her house, Ray felt blissfully lost. He remembered his favorite shortcut. He floated between two darkened houses. He imagined a narrow deer-trail from all the times he’d cut through these peoples’ lawns for a more direct route home.

In the daylight, he’d always felt the thrill of necessary caution. Caution because he must take care not to be seen as this trespass might not be welcomed by the homeowners. Tonight, the entire world bowed to him. He ruled the night as he’d never known he could.

As he approached the alley between Rachel’s street and his, he noted the darkness and how easily his feet found true purchase and how the crisp shapes of daylight blurred into gray-black marshmellowness at night. His gaze rose to the heavens, the stars all witnessing his primal victory as he waked with a lilt, a skip, and an unceremonious topple over a seldom closed gate.

He’d tumbled over the thigh-high obstruction and flipped onto his back in the gravel of the alley. There were the stars. Laughing. Not in derision. They giggled because they knew he did not feel the fall. He simply grinned back at them.

He had the sense to collect himself. He knew nothing could hurt him this night. Yet sometimes in life, he’d found it important to make sure he was ok. After a few moments of physical inventory, he took a moment to smile back at the heavens, lift himself and cut through the apartments, which was a daring move since he’d never really done that before, day or night.

Why not? He was indestructible. He ruled the heavens and the earth. He could still feel her hand in his. For the second time, he felt love engulf his entire being from the inside out.

***

Days and weeks of school passed by. They saw each other as much as two twelve-year-olds could. Summer began and he had not yet kissed her. Something about a kiss frightened him to his very core. He couldn’t understand it. T.J. was frustrated with him. He could not believe Ray could go this long with making “a move.”

It happened one day that Rachel had struck out to T.J.’s house in search of Ray because Ray and T.J. were best friends. Ray was not there. In T.J.’s backyard, underneath two broad canopy trees, sat a bench-swing.

Rachel was growing into her body. She proudly walked with her growing breasts accented with tight-fitting tops. Ray appreciated this. In fact, his internal self drew toward them like an emotional magnet huge as the Empire State Building. Those breasts called to him. Their siren song taunted him.

Intimidated him. This fateful day, filled with T.J., Rachel, and the swing, forever changed Ray in ways he would continue to discover decades later. T.J. lured her to the wooden ship. The one that sailed away with Ray’s dreams.

To his credit, T.J. told Ray about it the next day. Or was he bragging? He’d slipped his hand up under her tight blouse, and fondled the softness Ray had believed was his. T.J. even took the time to describe how soft they were in his Neanderthal vocabulary.

Rage tore through Ray, a voracious beast that threatened to devour everything and everyone. A hardness grew in a recess in his heart. That dark corner where Dawna and Rachel had erased the pain which resided there. They’d filled its emptiness with love, or so he’d believed for many, many years to come.

That pain had always been there. A casualty of two parents who fought too often and too loud. A small kid who could not understand why they could be so harsh at times. But that pain had always been a dark shadow within gelatinous darkness.

Now, that pain morphed into something hard. Something more rock-like. The dual betrayal of best friend and girlfriend washed over him like a black wave of dirty, oily goo. While Ray raged inside, he simply walked away from his friend, then ran to his pillow in his room and wailed into it all the pain of childhood which should never feel this dark.

A few days later, T.J., having apologized over and over and over again, found Ray and Rachel at T.J.’s cousin Harry’s house. The three were playing spin-the-bottle in Harry’s garage. The intent was to get Ray to kiss her. When the bottle pointed to her, he could not do it. He could not kiss her. He walked away.

The next day (it seemed), Rachel was seen walking arm-in-arm with some tall, stringy-haired guy from highschool. While Rachel was about to go into the eighth grade, Ray knew he could not compete with this guy. He looked dirty. He looked unscrupulous. Ray would never be like that. This dude looked like Ray’s moral-less father.

He knew she would give this guy whatever his needs demanded. For the second time, Ray learned the harsh lesson, “You don’t get to say goodbye…”

Memories

Choices float through our hearts,
Forever available in their invisible realm.
Not like objects in liquid dreams, but
Wispy clouds on high.

We choose where memory drives our soul
From open joy to blackened hole
Yet too often we choose one or the other
When both should live on.

Love always delivers the paradox of knife
One side ecstatic, the other strife
For love’s acquisition is the grail we hold dear
And its absence the darkness we fear.

Memory’s clouds too often envelop pain
Darkness its character, its definition, its reign
When joy and aspiration may be saddled as well
Our choice, slice of heaven or burning ember of hell

Balance lends credence to life and our love
That we may learn to be wary yet cherish
Our smiles and our foibles which never need perish
When we keep whole the memories of love…

You Don’t Get to Say Goodbye – Episode 1

Love.

Simon and Garfunkel once sang, “If I never loved I never would have cried…”

Let’s say you find yourself single. Not only that, you’re single and you’re past your mid-life crisis. Or so you hope. The landscape of dating has become skewed beyond all recognition. You try dating sites. You work to re-identify who you are. You soul search. You decide you’re better off on your own.

You know you don’t mean that.

But you know its true. Why? Because every woman you meet is not her.

Have you ever had a “her?”

That woman who steals everything you own inside – with a simple smile. A quirky habit. A simple giggle. Her presence.

Then there are all the others. The true “damagers.” The ones who trample your emotional repertoire. The women who shredded all the feelings of warmth and compassion you hold deep inside. Once they finish shredding your innards, they mock your pain, spit on your emotional remains, and grind you under their heel as they stalk away.

So odd that the question of whether love is worth the pain does not get examined as deeply after the cruel ones. The agonizing search for answers drives madness and delirium throughout your heart and soul when you lose a love you believed in. A love you embraced whole-heart.

The odd thing is this. You don’t get to say goodbye. Sometimes it’s you. Sometimes it’s them. Only the heart can tell…

In this serial storyline, life scenarios will be presented. Love and pain will be the common theme. A poem, in remaining true to this site, will follow each story. The ultimate tie-in will be the observation that “You don’t get to say goodbye…”

Episode One

 

Dawna

T.j. spun his bike in a violent semi-circle by standing and stomping on his right pedal. Ray followed suit.  The synchronized move appeared as super-hero moves, at least in their eyes. They were tuned to each other… and their prey.

Dawna and Sally.

T.J. was more wingman in this cat-and-mouse chase of the twelve-year-old nemesis’. Ray was flipped-out-gaga over Dawna. Had been all summer. The twitterpation had begun near the end of sixth grade.

They stood poised in the shade of a generous maple tree, sweat beading on their tan bodies. Their eyes darted as their necks twisted methodically, scanning for a glimpse of the elusive female riders.

“Do you think they saw us?” Ray asked with a hint of wistfulness he could not cover.

“I say we run them down and talk to them. We’re faster than they’ll ever be.” T.J. noted Ray’s slight cringe of fear.

“What would we say?”

“You’re the one who wants to ask Dawna to the dance tomorrow night.”

“I don’t know how to do that.”

“You’re never going to find out if you don’t ask.”

“Maybe you could talk to Sally at school tomorrow…”

“She’s in my fourth period English.”

Ray jumped, landed with both feet on his bike pedals, and spun gravel behind him as he shouted, “There they are!”

T.J. followed down the gravel alley in hot pursuit of a rendezvous that would never happen.

***

Friday night sock hop. The deal had gone down. Sally had been informed Ray wanted to “go with” Dawna. Sally confirmed Dawna wanted to “go with” Ray. T.J. and Sally commiserated at how shy the two of them were and that they’d never get together without help.

Ray’s jaw dropped when she walked into the lunchroom. Of course, tonight, this was no lunchroom. In fact, the room appeared to him as some ethereal manifestation of some other world. A world where he and Dawna would finally meet and talk. He had spent his entire summer chasing her.

And eluding her. He hated the fear and shyness within himself. He constantly felt as though he would burst each time he thought of her. Everything in life that was good reminded him of Dawna.

This night, though, he beheld an angel. Her long, stringy brown hair he was used to seeing flying in the wind from their bicycle chases now flowed majestically tied with the most feminine of ribbons. Her smile when she talked with Sally, caught sight of him, and the giggle which ensued fueled something so primal within Ray his fear became a raging dragon which must be slain before he could win her hand.

The music of the early 70’s paired with the strobe lights, and the darkened room with dancing bodies all around overwhelmed his senses. The “Theme from Shaft” rattled around the room followed by “Papa was a Rolling Stone.” Nick Johnson stole the dance floor with his gyrations and insane ability to move his muscular body to every rhythm and make it all look incredible.

Ray had no clue how to dance like that. He had no clue how to dance. He realized almost immediately if he went up and asked Dawna to dance, he would not know what to do. He went into the bike chase mode. He avoided Sally and Dawna throughout each song. Dawna appeared to be doing the same.

He steeled his will to go up to her on the “next song.” Then that song was either too fast or completely undanceable to him.

“C’mon man! You’ve got to do this!” T.J. gave Ray a nudge. “You’re going to run out of time! You can do it!”

“I know. I know!” Ray felt the wildness in his eyes and the alarming pounding in his chest. The clammy hands. The music. The strobes.

Dawna.

Someone announced through the speakers, “Next to last song everyone!”

Ray’s heart sank. He’d wasted the entire dance swimming in fear. Now the night was going to be the biggest disappointment in the history of mankind – all because he was such a scaredy-cat.

“I’m going to do it if you won’t,” T.J. stated emphatically. He strode away toward Sally and Dawna. Ray’s weak protest drowned in the lyrics of Sammy Davis Jr.’s “Candyman.”

Ray couldn’t look. Panic overwhelmed him. He thought about running for the door but instinctually he knew that would be the worst thing he could do. “Candyman” was winding down.

T.J. appeared out of nowhere, grabbed Ray by the shoulders, spun him around, and gave him a forceful, but gentle in its way, shove. Sally had just done the same thing with Dawna.

“Candyman” faded into the Stylistics’ “You Are Everything” just as the two pairs of eyes met. T.J. and Sally arranged four petrified arms together into “slow-dance” position and stepped back.

The entire universe ceased to exist. In a surreal bubble of Dawna and Ray and music and touch and emotion and joy inexplicable, the two bodies moved to the music. Ray noted how rigid they both felt and he did not care. Nothing mattered.

No joy known to man could ever top this moment. This breakthrough. This ecstasy. The most beautiful girl ever born was dancing with him. And yes, she was everything, and everything was her.

He lived an eternity in those three minutes and twenty-three seconds. He felt the song would never end and he would die the most glorious death, happy beyond all sense, dancing in the arms of this girl he loved.

When the song did end, the experience felt as though a bomb had dismantled everything and everyone into a chaotic mélange of lights and talking and exiting and abrupt separation from heaven.

He walked the nine blocks home underneath the stars of the autumn evening singing “You Are Everything” over and over and over…

For one moment in time, Ray knew love, wanderlust, joy, passion, exhilaration, and heaven. Truly, only one other time in his life would ever feel this combination of pure love and adoration and completion again.

Saturday and Sunday they went back to the bikes. Ray’s shyness ate him up. They’d barely spoken. He felt even more terrified even though Dawna was all he could think about. On Monday, Ray avoided Dawna at school. By the end of the school day, Sally informed T.J. who in turn informed Ray that Dawna was breaking up with him.

He knew why.

This is where he first learned, “You don’t get to say goodbye…”

Lifetimes

Lifetimes gained
Lifetimes lost
All within a song

Two hearts racing
Facing life and love and futures bright
Knowing so little
Yet learning so much

Her eyes and her hair,
Even her crooked teeth
Mona Lisa fell jealous and lost her smile

One heart broken by its very hand
One heart spoken only to the stars over the moonlit land
One moment cherished throughout lifetimes of trials
One special memory of love’s first blush

How many lifetimes do we live in a moment?
How many lifetimes may we live in a song?
One future path crumbled sadly into the sea of time
Yet, the joy, the pure, pure joy of first love

A lifetime relived too often and not enough
A pain billowed too often to life
Bittersweet melancholy to flavor his life
And a smile for the moments they soared…