The amazing thing about her series of posts “cheating,” is
how well she managed to get inside the male mind and present a story from a
married man’s perspective – and so resembled my thinking to some degree, I
might have expected she wrote it about me, only she apparently wrote it well
prior to meeting me, and posted the first of three parts almost a month before
we started texting in March 2012.
She posted the other two parts yesterday although it is
unclear as to why she waited nearly two years to post the whole set.
Reading it unnerved me, because, as I said, she demonstrated
a knowledge of how a man thinks far better than I would have suspected, and her
male character’s thoughts rang frighteningly real inside me.
The story is largely of a married man being dragged off to a
bar by his coworkers (or perhaps he needed to show them he was more or less human)
where a girl at the bar flirted with him.
He dropped a card, she dropped a pen, and from there came an
intense brief flirtation (frustrated by his inability to act on the urge to
kiss her and maybe more, dragging me back to outside the German bar when I
ached to do exactly the same.)
The male character is constantly aware of the social
pressure of his co-workers and the somewhat mocking bartender.
But she is center of his attention, as is the ghost of his
wife and her oranges, and his eventual conclusion apparently that he doesn’t
like his own life but is apparently too much of a coward to actually cheat.
The story opens with his declaration of love for his wife –
and the fact that she bought him oranges from an orchard in the country while
she was on her way to some job.
The oranges serve as a symbol of that married life, and the
urban/suburban conflict (that is not mentioned in the story) between them.
She actually drove hours out of her way to get the oranges
for him since she knows he’s loved fresh oranges since he was a kid.
But there are troubles at home, curses exchanged, marriage
counseling sought, and a loveseat where he sometimes goes to sleep after their
arguments.
Sex is so routine, he could set an alarm clock to it, five
times a week.
Another symbol she uses in the story is an oak table, one at
his mother-in-law’s house, and another, similar to it at the bar – which pulsated
from the base lines and vaguely reminds him of his son’s piano lessons (symbolic
itself of suburban life and all that comes with it.)
The table too, is symbolic of the solidity of his home life,
though the vibrating one at the bar hints of hidden urges, and potential
infidelity.
At least, in the bar setting, where is marriage seems less
stable, more subject to social influences, and, of course, seduction.
Marriage, a mortgage and kids ruined him as a pick up
artist, even though he met his wife that way in bar, even though he didn’t belong
there then, something his wife mocked him for, yet at the same time brought
them together.
His coworkers brought him to the bar to help him calm down
over threats of furloughs and unpaid overtime at his job – a bar, he considers,
a world away from his home.
This kids rejecting his affectionate kisses and his wife’s
(justified) complaints about her mother also seem to highlight – if not a
troubled marriage – then one so utterly devoid of real affection, it’s no
wonder he’s tempted by the woman at the bar.
It is clear he needed a drink before he could go home.
He settled at the bar at first, while his coworkers settled
at “their” table.
It was the bartender that pointed the woman out as eyeing
him from the other end of the bar.
He caught the tail end of her dark-eyed stare, although she
jerked her head back when he noticed, trying to avoid his gaze.
She was reading a book, just as his wife had at that bar
long before.
He overtipped the bartender and then fled to his coworkers’
table, but on his wife, the woman at the bar dropped a pen – which he
apparently recovered, even as his coworkers teased him about the woman.
Here we come back to the symbol of the table, which this
time reminds him of the one he and his wife had recently purchased – again a symbol
of how solid his marriage was, although he shortly questions if it was worth the
price and whether he would have to sacrifice it when it came time to send his
kids to college.
He and his wife had purchased the table from a farmer, who
needed the money to replace a piece of broken down farm equipment.
But he concluded that the table would have to go, and – as symbolic
images collide, there would be no more oranges – a symbol of his wife’s love.
Around him, other men grew rowdy, and his pressed his glass
against his forehead, staring through the glass at the distorted image of other
patrons.
At this point, the woman from the bar approached him, telling
him he had dropped a card which she retrieved for him – the worn business card
from the farmers who had sold his wife the oranges.
The story’s ability to pile on symbol after symbol is
amazing and powerful, and this image connects the woman at the bar with his
wife in a remarkable and painful way.
A man does not want to be reminded of his wife when he is
contemplating fucking another woman.
And yet, this provided him with an opportunity with the
woman, which he promptly blew, recovering a moment later by offering to return
the woman’s chewed up Bic pen (a phallic symbol).
But she had already dismissed him as a lost cause and went
back to the bar, although she was not through with him. She approached him
again when he went back to the bar and began to doodle. She flirtishly asked
him to draw her. He said he doesn’t draw anything he doesn’t deserve,
basically, accepting his bland life and rejecting the possibility of engaging
romantic experience with this woman.
Like the poet herself with me during that troubling summer
when she wrote poems about compassion and quick sand, this woman felt a bit
tenderness for this henpecked man, giving him an opportunity to continue, and
when he failed to, she moved off, taking with her the pen.
The story has no real resolution. All the real cheating when
on in his mind, and yet it is a powerful sexual story nonetheless, and shows just
how well she understands the married men she has encountered in her life.
The woman at the bar was 32, just the same age as the poet
was when she wrote the story. Much of the description fits her as well, from
her dark eyes to her clear fingernails. But most importantly, her powerful presence
in the barroom, where she the poet seems to have mastered the art of seduction.
As I said, the story hits me hard in the gut because I am so
much like the man she portrays, and the fact that she is so far out in front of
him or me is a terrifying concept.
The man is apparently in his mid-40s, but clearly caught up in
a life he doesn’t like, but can’t leave, and the woman, offering him some relief,
feels sorry for him when he can’t even accept a one-night stand with her.
One can almost hear the cackle of his mocking co-workers or see
the smug look on the bartender, who lets her buy the man a drink, out of pity.
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