Linda

I wrote this story years ago and posted it elsewhere. Upon reading MsCherylTerra's "Bookworm" I was reminded of myself and that time in my life when I was a young bookworm, shy, twice burned and totally lacking in self confidence. So I'm posting it here now and dedicating it to MsCherylTerra for reminding me of a beautiful woman I once knew.

Most of us have times when nothing goes right. During those times we couldn't hook up or find romance to save our lives. There aren't even decent excuses or good explanations for it. I was in a blue funk like that once. It lasted way longer than necessary.

*****

Linda, a cautionary and not particularly edifying tale.

When I was in my early thirties I had a quiet contemplative time of sober reflection, re-assessment and re-education. It was miserable. I was not yet thirty five and had two failed marriages behind me. As radical as my thinking might be the radical part didn't extend to marriage. Marriage was supposed to be forever and you were supposed to like each other. Mine didn't pan out that way. I was not yet forty and I had two divorces under my belt. I did place the blame squarely on my spouses, but I was the one who chose them and I was feeling pretty uncomfortable with what that said about my intelligence.

I was alone in a big old two story house with my two dogs and in a poor economy I was chronically short of money. That first winter I closed off all but three rooms to save heating that barn- the kitchen, bedroom and a big formal dining room were where I hunkered down to hibernate through the dark months of winter. I burned candles a lot, but not for lighting and not for brooding while listening to the somber music of the acoustically lovelorn. I had begun meditating again, and practicing yoga. A dimly lit room helped to clear my mind and suppress distractions- I wasn't doing transcendental or candle meditation, I was just trying to turn down the volume on the harsh light of that somewhat incandescent room of cheap panelling and crummy fiberboard ceiling tiles.

I lived in a small midwestern town and I worked by day in a brickyard so clearly these were activities I kept to myself. I had enough fucking problems without alerting people to the idea that I might have an intellectual or an emotional life. Some things just aren't done in certain locales, and I was in one of those locales.

I started re-reading the beats...Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg- and I studied the writers they referenced too, like Spengler, Spinoza and Kant. I read Baudelaire and Verlaine and Rimbaud and I felt better educated...but not exactly better. There's a reason beatnik women dressed in drab black and brown and grey and ironed their long black hair- they were fucking depressed from reading the stuff written by the men they were fucking. There's light that shines through Kerouac, especially in little books like "Tristessa" and "Visions of Gerard". Those two are his best books but not his most acclaimed. What makes them stand out is the love he kept in himself for those two characters, and that he was so eloquent in sharing it with the reader. But Kerouac is also morose and there is a grieving that runs as a constant theme through all his writing. Ginsberg too is giving voice to a lament, and Burroughs of course is one sardonically blunt son-of-a-bitch. He called it like he saw it and he saw a riotous decay into chaos wherever he looked.

So these were the perfect literary companions for me at that time, bound to help me wallow in my isolation and alienation. I had enough sense of self not to style myself as a brooding poet or writer though. Low as I might feel, I couldn't indulge my self-absorption that much.

Even though I was habitually broke and spiritually bereaved I allowed myself one more indulgence, one luxury. I ate all my meals out. There were two spheres in my world, work and that dark and empty old house, and I needed to at least be in the same building with other people daily, so I frequented the only restaurant in town, a national chain that served breakfast around the clock and had pretty much run all the little greasy spoons out of town, except for a couple of hangers on down by the river and near the factories.

It was an unlikely and an incongruous place to carry a copy of "Une Saison en Enfer". Rimbaud would not have cared for the place and probably would have broken the dinnerware, shit on the floor and masturbated into the bleu cheese dressing. There weren't any dark and brooding coffee houses where I lived. But it was brightly lit and had a crew of pretty waitresses and while I wasn't actively shopping for one I did like to look at the shiny menu. Anyone who noticed my reading material might be either intrigued or confused...I'm not sure exactly what I hoped for. Mostly I just got indifference.

A woman in her late forties also dined there often, with her on-again off-again companion. The bright lights of the place didn't flatter her- she was pale and cynical, with a brown page boy and she looked oddly French- she chain smoked Camels and exhaled smoky, sour and disinterested responses to anything said to her. She was Linda.

Linda had been beautiful and she was broken. She was still beautiful, in a seedy and jaded way. She had some hard miles on her. The friend she showed up with was getting a bit longer in the tooth than her- shabby and disheveled, grizzled and ill tempered- probably a lot like I look today- and they bickered back and forth just audibly enough that everyone could overhear. What was embarrassing was that whenever I saw her there her face lit up and she spoke to me in a soft and sultry contralto. That barely husky voice was all kinds of sexy, and Linda was sexy- but she looked and sounded like trouble and a pain in the ass. She emanated warnings. She might have been wearing a sandwich board blasting "Danger, Will Robinson!" She gave me the feeling that she might go off at any time for no discernible reason. I didn't overtly encourage her, but I didn't exactly discourage her either. I am not an atypical male, I don't care how this story makes me sound. I was just going through a rough spot. So, like most typical males, I'd have done Linda, if I thought I could get away undamaged and unattached. But she WAS scary.

There was an exquisite young Latina girl waiting tables in that place. I thought she was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, and I was terrified of her. She had flowing long black hair and deep dark eyes that oozed seduction. Even in my current melancholy I was still able to talk to other folks, and to women, but I couldn't talk to her. She would speak to me and flash that glittering smile, having said something clever, or mysterious, or simply incomprehensible- we all know how young women are- and she walked away leaving me wondering what she had just said. I was barely able to coax a word out of my own mouth. My brain and all its speech centers locked up when she looked at me and I was paralyzed under her gaze. I had sworn off beautiful young women, and she was much younger than me, and exhilaratingly pretty. If you need a firmer diagnosis of my unhealthy condition, I don't know what that might be. But I knew if I could get it together to even speak coherently to this diosa I was a goner.

Petra warned me about Linda one day, in a conspiratorial, joking manner. She told me Linda was sweet on me, but she was fucking nuts. I managed to laugh with her and I said I knew that. Do I need to say how wonderful and exotic it is to be forewarned of danger by an excruciatingly beautiful young woman who is also somewhat cryptic and mysterious? I was manufacturing a fantasy life around a goddess that I was too afraid to talk to, imagining what I might say that was so ultra cool that she'd be enraptured with my wit. And all of it deserted me when she flashed her glorious smile at me.

One Saturday morning I tromped into the restaurant with a "Season in Hell" in my hand and settled into a booth, and within five minutes Linda entered, alone, and plunked herself down at a table facing me. I thought, "Fuck." She started talking to me right away. I tried to be polite, and not too cool. But I wasn't going to let her hit on me with the diosa Petra on duty and watching...and she was bugging me that morning anyway, flirting and batting her dark brown eyes at me. So I kept my responses short and non-committal and kept burying my nose in Rimbaud. If you're familiar with Rimbaud you'll get why that isn't an entirely pleasant thing to ruminate on.

All of a sudden Linda got the picture. In one ferociously lucid moment (It should have been obvious from the start) it dawned on her that I was blowing her off, and she got pissed. She exploded. We weren't even more than casual acquaintances and she went off like I had left her pregnant at the altar. She slammed dishes and threw tableware, all the while cussing me for an insensitive prick.

"I'm sorry I bothered you, you bastard! Just stick your face back in your goddam precious book, and fuck you! I won't ever bother you again!"

I can't remember all the things she hollered at me...but I'm pretty sure everyone else in the place could. If it hadn't been me I'd have been laughing my ass off. Everybody enjoys a good scene and you tend to remember flying plates and silverware.

She stormed out of the restaurant and I suddenly felt like I was alone on stage...and I had stage fright. I felt like I had been fucking Linda in the darkened high school gymnasium and suddenly all the lights went up and the house was packed and Linda had stalked off mad leaving me with my pants around my ankles and my slick and shiny dick bobbing up and down. And as she ran away she was shrieking "I told you not in my ass, you son-of-a-bitch!"

Seconds later Linda stomped back in and paid her check. She might be down on her luck and mad as a hatter but she wasn't any piker. Besides, it gave her a second chance to slam the door and make another grand and dramatic exit. As soon as I figured the coast was clear I left my breakfast unfinished and I slunk out, with considerably less fanfare than Linda. It hardly went unnoticed. Every eye was on me, boldly smirking at my discomfort.

If you fall off a horse, they say to get right back on. They may or may not know shit, but Sunday morning I grabbed a copy of the Chicago Sun-Times (They had Mike Royko, and I went where Mike went) and marched right back to the scene of the crime for breakfast. I sat down at a table and Petra came over to talk to me. She was smiling ever so slightly. She wasn't sure how mad or embarrassed I was going to be about Linda.

"I heard about your Linda incident" she said. "I was in the back and heard the commotion. Kathy told me what happened"

And I started laughing- that broke the ice for me. We talked for about ten minutes, just chatting and replaying The Linda Incident. We both felt kind of badly for her and wondered if we'd see her in there again. I couldn't get up the nerve to ask Petra out, and she didn't make it easy on me and do it for me.

Linda did eventually apologize to me. It was awkward. She had embarrassed the hell out of me and once burned twice shy. So I didn't fuck her after that either. I didn't learn a damned thing from Linda. You can't really prepare for that kind of shit and there isn't much to learn from it either.

The best possible ending is that Petra and I saw more of each other and fell in love...at least briefly. But that isn't what happened. I wasn't ready for it. None of this had repaired what ailed me. That would take a lot longer. My confidence was still shot. In real life there are seldom epiphanies that strike us like a thunderbolt. And even if it happens it's hard to break an acquired habit of uncertainty and apprehension. I was cured...eventually, but the lesson took hold in increments. Petra married some shallow clown who used her badly and the last I heard of her she was married to a much older man with a lot of money. I hoped she was having fun, and I hoped she was spending all his money- I know I spent a lot of sleepless hours dreaming about her.

To this day, over thirty years later, whenever I see a sloe eyed and stunningly beautiful young woman, jet black hair and glowing olive skin I think of Petra. I did learn from my absolute debacle with her, the girl of my dreams. I learned to speak up when I wanted something and I learned to not give a shit if I was embarrassed by speaking up. You can't win if you don't play and it was pure cowardice to be afraid of playing.

I landed in a pretty good place once I crawled out of that funk, but I've often wondered how it would have gone if I'd learned that lesson sooner.