I enjoy Live Stream, playing old records online. I don’t get a lot of viewers, but it’s very cool seeing people login to listen to my records with me.
This morning, I put on a newly pressed copy of Mel Brown’s Chicken Fat (1967). Dude fucking rocks – gotta be one of my favorite blues guitarists.
I even got a really cool comment from an online friend. “Thank you! Enjoyed the music with my coffee.” Dig it. I love making fun connections.
I should add such things are not without a cost. I unfortunately burned out the needle on my old ION Digital Turntable (LP 2 CD) the other day.
I’m now using my Victrola Empire Wood Record Player, and the sound from the speakers is better than playing the ION into a Bose wireless.
—ooOoo—
Morning. A cabin in the woods. Smoke coming from a stone chimney. Scattered clouds and a blue sky beyond the evergreens that surround it.
A rustic scene. Open-roomed. No walls. No barriers. Just two men sitting on tree stump stools on either end of a large homespun log-wood table.
“What happened,” the one man asks, while standing to tend the fire.
It’s cold. The morning chill is rough, tactile, piercing; contracting a gazillion tiny little muscles attached to hair follicles. Goosebumps.
“There’s this old friend of mine,” the other man begins, “who seems to have disappeared.” He pauses, “She just doesn’t respond anymore.”
“Odd,” he replies, poking the fire, sparks bursting out with each poke.
“I know, right? I really hope all is well, especially knowing there’s a history of mental illness. Seriously. I’m worried. I hope she’s okay.”
“Who is it? Who you talking bout,” he asks turning around from the fire.
“[Redacted]. You know her. She’s the one we met at that Dead show, and I was supposed to hook up with her a couple of times, but someone was always running cock-block. Fucking Susan. It was always fucking Susan.”
“You mean…”
“Yep. I still talked to her. We’d check in sometimes. We had a lot in common. A lot of same struggles, and I thought we had a good friendship.
One of us would always check-in every now and then, just seeing what’s up and how things are going. Our attempts at hooking up were fucking years ago, and although we talked about sex and marital troubles…”
“She’s still married,” the one man asks, standing upright, looking at the other man with a little bit of judgmental shock and concern in his face.
“Seriously? You’re gonna talk to me about marriage? Really? What the fuck is marriage? Paper. It’s just paper, memorializing and documenting something you did 30-whatever years ago. Lawyers made it up, and the county records it. It’s a fiction. A legal fiction. It isn’t real. Like real, real.”
“You’re so jaded. You sound bitter,” he responds with some exhaustion, sitting back down at the table.
“Am I? Do I? Or is what I’m saying true? And it bothers you to know your marriage, those rings, that fucking ring, your marriage license, just some piece of paper, won’t stop someone like me from fucking your wife?”
“You’re a dick,” he kinda laughs, hoping to redirect the conversation, looking at him eye-to-eye, wanting to drag down the momentum.
“How is Katy these days? She hap…”
“Don’t,” he exclaims.
“py? Should I send Katy a text to see if she’s content in her life? You know, to see how Katy’s doing these days? Whether Katy might need something more in her life? Something different? You still sortin’ Katy out? You need some help at home? Let me know. Really. I don’t mind…”
“Fuck you,” the laughter and smile disappear.
“I know. I know. I’m just joking. I don’t wanna fuck Katy. It’s all good.”
Enter the pregnant pause. That deafening silence overflowing with undeniable tension. Where the air freezes between people, forming a fragile wall made of ice, waiting for someone to crack and break it with some comment of reconciliation. Some friendly restoration of relations.
“Anywho. When I was in Miami, we were texting ’bout things, and I started to share with her about my shenanigans, which started up around that time. To your point, I guess, her reaction surprised me.”
“Wait … Why, what?”
“When I was in Miami, we were texting, and I told her about my shenanigans, and her response surprised the shit outta me because, I don’t remember the exact words, but she was feigning disgust.
I distinctly remember sitting on the Miami-Dade Metrorail reading her responses about how she couldn’t believe I would do such things. How she couldn’t imagine doing such things. Fucking blew me away.
Seriously. The person who told me about all of her affairs, fucking co-workers and others because her husband stopped being able to get hard at a young age, was lecturing me on the virtues and sanctity of marriage?
Wild. Such a bizarre exchange. So disconnected from reality, like was I supposed to simply forget over a decade long talking ’bout these things on her end? Like it was okay for her, but not for others? What changed?
And, if that weren’t enough, she then made comments about how she didn’t want to talk about such things, like I was wanting to enter into some sexting situation with her. What a trip. I fucking couldn’t believe it.
It was gaslighting. I went back to my computer to look up old messages, to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind, and there they were: Dozens of painfully detailed messages from her about giving prostate blowjobs.
And, after my not engaging or responding to any of her prostate blowjob messages, there were her follow-up messages to me about needing to disregard because her account had been hacked. Un-fucking-believable.”
“Ugh. She really claimed her account was hacked,” the one man asks.
“Yep, but even that’s a joke, because she also sent me an audio file of her playing with herself. Seriously. I fuck you not. This wasn’t that long ago. One day, I’m at the gym, about ready to go for a run, and she sends me an audio file. I open it up, and all I can hear in my earbuds is her rubbing out her wet pussy for me; cumming, having an orgasm, moaning my name.
Now, unlike the prostate blowjob messages, I sent a response to the audio file. Please. No judgment. How do you not send a response to someone moaning an orgasm in your name? I think it was something like: ‘Kinda rough going for a run with my dick hard’ or something along those lines. And yes, we probably also sent a couple of follow-up messages, but I didn’t respond in kind, and she never sent anything like that since.”
“So? Whatcha think happened,” the one man asks.
“I dunno. No idea. I mean, I have ideas, but none of them are good. Could it be she had a chance to take the higher ground, to scold me with her newfound moralities because of past actions? Could it be she was drunk when she sent all of those things? Could it be she’s now trying to reinvent herself in recovery? Shadow work? Or could it be this is what it looks like to differentiate between a manic and depressive episode? Who knows.”
—ooOoo—
I keep seeing the same person at stop signs in the neighborhood around my house. A woman in a slick black Jaguar, with tousled blonde hair, and bright red lipstick; but attractive, beautiful, and a real woman; not like the disturbed trans woman in Brian De Palma’s ‘Dressed To Kill’ (1980).
Find me on Twitter at @NuroticAttorney