March 11th, 2024 - Hostel
Dear TNY,
It’s Tuesday and I finally got to “Hostel”.
The reason it took a day was that on Saturday I started the first of four days of driving something like 1500 miles across our beautiful, for spacious skies, our amber waves of grain, our purple mountain majesties, above the fruited plain. But I have arrived. Once again Chuck, the noblest donkey, has pulled off the impossible. Fully loaded, all those miles. No. Fucking. Issues.
And “Hostel”? Fucking excellent. This is the kind of story I can get behind. From beginning to end, it’s a fucking mystery what’s going to happen. And it’s a mystery that I cared about. It came to goddamn life right in front of me. The story was plain. Not overly complex. The framing was just right (that being the story from the woman’s perspective about the other couple’s actual story (just FYI, I know the word “husband” was used but I wasn’t clear if the narrator was male or female until she, my guess here, wished Roy had come downstairs when she slept on the couch (I did think maybe she was a lady when she talked about Mandy breastfeeding in front of her); what I’m trying to say is that the sex/gender/whatthefuckever isn’t important to me for sexist or otherwise reasons, it’s important because I’m trying to imagine a fucking person and it seems important to the whole “creating a person from scratch” jam)). The story sizzled with youth and sex and angst and intrigue and hope and love and heartbreak. It was quick. It was good. #welldone
There you go.
I need to talk about something else, though. Last night I was up late with The Wizard of Kindness and he and I were doing the thing that I love: just bullshitting. About memories. Dirty buttholes. Weird porn. Our dead friend Ben. Love. Art. Guys, I get to sit across the room from this man, whom I love dearly and respect up a fucking redwood, and he wants to hear my stories and I love hearing his. It’s beyond the best. And he told this story about snowboarding/skiing with his son. In the middle of the story he started weeping. And I’ll save the details for him and me. But it was beautiful. And terribly sad, TNY. Later, he said that he felt okay doing that because I understood these things. That, paraphrasing, he felt safe. Let that sink in. A man I respect full value trusted me enough to weep in front of me about one of the ten best memories of his life.
And here’s the thing that I’ve been thinking about all day: why does that man feel okay doing that, but my significant other doesn’t feel safe enough to share what she discussed with someone last week or even who that someone was and what the objective of the conversation was? Like, if I “get it” why doesn’t she trust me in that Wizard way?
And, TNY, it’s because I think I might have ruined everything. Things have gone from having to charge my phone two to three times a day because we were video chatting so much to exchanging a handful of, let’s be honest, bleak texts for the last four days. I was, this week, kneeling on the floor in her house and facing away from her, packing my belongings up, and she said, “How do we get past this?” That’s how bad it has gotten. And it breaks my fucking heart. So in the spirit of “How”, I’m going to try to explain what I’ve learned on the road in the past four days.
The best way I can explain this is by having you imagine that I’m seeing an image through old timey 3D glasses. The red and blue kind. That’s how I think I see relationships. I start with both eyes open, full dimension and color, wild and beautiful. And she was brighter, ever brighter, ever brighter. And then I slid into her town, her life, her friends, her house, her habits, her quirks, her problems. And I worked. I worked hard, because making her happy makes me happy. But…then it’s Youtopia and being told that monogamous relationships are absurd and being ignored at dinners & parties and trash in the sink and projects that generate more projects which generate more projects and old dogs & no sleep and hyperfocus vs not and feeling fucking alone alone alone alone alone. And a life, hers, and a not life, mine. Now, did she do anything on purpose? No. She did not. There is no ill intent. But there is a little boy who became afraid. He looked at a beautiful woman that he loved (and still loves, so deeply) and saw, with his own perspective from a very fucking different life, so much to be afraid of, including her ability to remove herself of him (and as he watched her in that red room, he saw an angel who did not and could not see how unsafe and afraid he was (and how unsafe she was); he just smiled and tried to pretend that he belonged). And guys, he was chugging beers and crying to himself about how he wanted to go home, because he was trying so hard because it just wasn’t him, but then he ate a bunch of drugs he didn’t want to, like desperately didn’t want to do, and smiled about it anyway. But she doesn’t know that. She doesn’t know how terrifying all of this is. In the same way that she doesn’t know how to do all the shit he knows how to do. In the same way that she definitely thinks the amount he drinks is fucking terrifying and he has noticed that she doesn’t drink as much because of it. They are different people with different experiences that have created different weaknesses and strengths.
So this little boy, he was afraid. Is afraid. And he’s looking at all of this through the 3D glasses. And then without knowing when it began, he started feeling like things were not balanced. He was afraid, alone, on a limb, and working so hard to make beautiful things for his beautiful woman. And it did not feel equal. So now we have fear and we have frustration and then anger. And that boy’s response? He reached up a finger and put it over his left eyelid and slowly lowered it, such that the view stopped being three dimensional and multicolored and it became a two dimensional image of one color and one color alone. And that color was negative. Without any of the positives, which he now was blind to, everything seemed designed to destroy him. Each movement, where things were located, weak plumbing, floods, etc. It all grew and grew and grew until there was a very rich and multifaceted image of a life that felt impossible for him to live in. There was no fear anymore. There was no happiness. There was only BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD.
What happened to me in 1996 when my brother was hit by a car is that my life partner was taken from me and it hurt so bad that my 15 year old self immediately repressed it. And then, a decade plus later, the person I promised to be with forever…well I told her I stuck my dick in someone else. And that let my brother out of the box and he melded with losing my family. And I ran. I ran from my mistake. I tried to run to the next best thing that promised a life that looked like what I thought I wanted it to look like. But the reality is I fucked up. I’m a fuck up. I fucked everything up. And I’ve been running ever since. Running from that feeling of being hurt. Whether it’s me hurting me or someone else hurting me. Running from being alone and running from accepting that alone is okay. Fuck man. Just running. I believe I have developed a mechanism to keep me safe. That mechanism is a finger that reaches up and pulls one eyelid down. It blocks the positive so that I only see the negative which ejects me from the situation, never having to resolve my fuck ups or what have yous. My brain thinks the best way to keep my heart safe is, when real sadness seems to be on its way, it will change what I see so that everything I need to disconnect from the situation it’s apparent and I’ll leave. I think my brain thinks that it can keep me safe by taking me out of the fight before I get knocked out. I think he’s trying to save me, anyway. But he’s just fucking me because I still have all those feelings inside, he just covers them up with bad data and I make decisions that might not actually be in my best interest. And I hurt people. I hurt them badly. And that’s fucked up and terrible.
And, to you my special lady, I’m so sorry. I, like you, never meant to do any of this. I felt this happening since Youtopia, at least a little, and I had no idea what to do. Or how to talk about it. Yes, we had a lot of beautiful days of wonder and light. Thank you so much for those. But I was so scared. And you did your best. You were kind. And I wanted so badly to be what you wanted. But I’m a simple guy. Fragile. Vulnerable. And I’m afraid of you. Not that you’ll kill me or something. But I’m afraid that you won’t see me. Can’t see me. That you’ll just keep pulling me along like Youtopia, and I’ll have to chug those beers and cry and want to go home so goddamn bad while I’m trying to be what you want. I’m afraid that you’ll make me face it all. And I don’t want to. It’s too much to face. I’m not saying I can’t face it or won’t. I’m just saying it’s not a fucking deck with a hot tub on it. It’s a fucking human being who has been hurt so badly by life. Probably because, as my dad would say, I’m a huge pussy. But, my oldest talked to me today about how he had a mild panic attack in high school. He talked to this pussy for guidance on how to be a man and deal with his emotions and vulnerability.
I guess what I’m saying is that I fucking try so hard for you. I try to beat my defense mechanism so that we can stay together. Because I don’t want to lose you. It’s just trying to save me from pain. It doesn’t know any better.
But now that I’m not in the same pain that I was in our life, I have opened that eye again and see that you do not and did not deserve to be treated how I treated you. You do not deserve to feel insecure. Or without value. Or that you have nothing to contribute. Or any of the other things I said while I was hurt. You are not an image, 3D or otherwise. You are a human being who should be loved as much as you love. Full sun plant. I’m sorry I lost the patience to do that for a minute there. And, TNY, you should see her. She’s made of fluffy clouds and rainbows and shooting stars and giggling children and every fucking puppy that’s ever been born. She is made of what I am not. Joy. I’m a broken toy. She’s a full Toys R Us filled with kids who have bottomless wallets.
I’m afraid I fucked it all up because I got mad, sad, and afraid.
But I want to make it better. I want to be better. I want to be the partner she was so excited to tell everyone about. I just need help. And support.
On Saturday, I drove away thinking the ball’s in her court. She knows what needs to change. But the deal is the ball is in both of our courts. I have to figure out how to shove that eye open. To push the lid up. Because she never stopped radiating as a beautiful human being. And honey, you are astonishingly beautiful. I just stopped seeing it. So, we both have work to do if we want to get our 40 years together before one day I’ll be gone and one day you’ll be gone. And I’m just a boy standing in front of a girl saying I’d like to fucking try.
I’m a cliché cunt and I stole those lines.
Well, there it is. A 42 year old baby.
Oh, in case it wasn’t clear: I’m so very fucking sorry for how I made you feel and I saw you trying and I was a fucking dick unnecessarily and I shouldn’t have been. As you said, if you’d forgive me, I’d like to become the person you want to be in a relationship with.
I love you, baby. Both eyes open. I’d like to be safe for you again. Wizard style.
Nick
P.S. I’m in a bar and a little upside downsies and I’m listening to Mazzy Star “Fade Into You” on loop. And all I can think is that I’d dance with Ben, both of us in dresses, to this song. And we’d both be crying, brothers of a very different, paranormal, mother. I miss him so much. He had a snag of the material that I thought was exclusive to me. But I feel like I got a wisp of the cloth he rolled in, actually. Either way, we are alone. Him dead and me dead on my feet. What a fucking life.
