Some Truth

The following night I had a gig, and I got home after Sue was already asleep. I talked to her a little, and her responses were groggy, but she sounded like she was coming around and understanding what I was saying to her, telling me yes when I asked if we could make love. So I slid down between her legs and proceeded to feast on my favorite dessert. Her responses were passionate, but subdued, as compared to normal. After a while of enjoying her tangy flavor, without being able to rouse her into cumming, I moved up onto her and slid my cock into her juiciness. Before long, I felt my impending climax approaching, and I asked her if she wanted me to cum in her or pull out. She told me to pull out, so I did, releasing a puddle into her belly button. She didn't say any more to me, and I went and got a washcloth, wetted it with warm water, and took it back to her to clean her up with, which she proceeded to do. A little later, with no conversation other than "Good night." between us, we were both asleep.

The next evening Sue came home, from I don't know where, and came in the bedroom where I was, and let loose on me. I had never seen her like this before. She was red in the face, and screaming incoherently at me about I don't know what. We had never even had an argument before this. I made three attempts to get her to calm down, slow down and explain what was wrong, but she was so worked up that she was out of control. I finally reached around her neck and applied pressure to the nerve centers at the base of the ears, behind the lobes, which put her to sleep inside of three seconds. This wasn't something I did maliciously, or with any anger or ill intent, and certainly not with any desire to harm her. It simply seemed to be the most efficient way to bring some level headedness back to an otherwise uncontrollable situation. She woke up within three minutes, calm and relaxed. I asked her what is going on. What did I do that you would come at me screaming and out of control like that?

She told me that I had raped her the night before. I was in shock. I said I did no such thing; I made sweet and gentle love to you. She said that she was asleep, and had no say in the matter, and that she woke up when I asked if I should cum in her or pull out. I told her that I had thought that I woke her up as I started making love to her, and remembering that she had asked me the night before that why I didn't initiate making love to her, I did just that, but I had asked her first, and she responded with a yes. Then I asked her how many times have I awakened to find my cock buried down her throat so that she could have it big and stiff for her to climb on and ride, whether I was awake or not, isn't that rape as well, then. She said that she had never thought of it that way before, but I had better not have gotten her pregnant.

Nothing was the same after that. Susan continued seeing Gregg Rosenbloom, but apparently only when he wanted. For a few weeks things seemed to improve, maybe even approach our old closeness and companionship, but it was all a veneer. She went to work, I went to work, we still had meals together, but our topics of conversation never approached any of the intimacy we had previously shared. I was hoping for the best, and doing anything I could to conciliate Sue, trying to ignore that "Dead Man Walking" feeling I had, but in the back of my mind, I knew I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Susan left me in February, on Monday, the twenty-seventh of eighty-nine, after a night out with an old girlfriend who was a law student, and had come to town, with whom Sue had gone out to demonstrate how to pickup strange cocks. They came home with a couple of guys they picked up, one of whom fucked her dear old affianced friend, affianced, but just not to him, and left his dirty rubber on the bed. When he was done, he and his buddy were supposed to fuck Sue, but she had come, completely naked, into the second bedroom where I was stashed to be out of everyone's way, and laid down on the bed with me, hugging me, and moaning to me that "Baby, I drank too much, four Rusty Nails, and I feel sick."

She then quickly jumped up and ran to the bathroom to puke in the toilet. I heard the second guy walk into the bathroom and ask her if it was her fantasy to get fucked doggie style while she was puking in the toilet, and I thought, enough is enough. I got up and told the two guys it was time to leave. This dear old girlfriend, who was studying for the bar, must have done some serious bad-mouthing about our relationship, because within days of that night out, Susan had gotten her own apartment, and was gone from my life.

In the following seven months, I tried to kill myself six times. First with vodka and pills, but having consumed three fifths of vodka through the wee hours of the night, it was too much. I woke up, I don't how long after, with myself, the bed, and the carpet next to the bed covered in puke, floating in which, were the remnants of most of the bottle of pills I swallowed. A week later in March, I had a wreck in which I should have been killed if I had only been in a car rather than my Jimmy. I let a Mercury station wagon "T" bone me in the driver's door. Two weeks after that I tried two bottles of scotch and more pills, but apparently now my body was rejecting the alcohol, and I woke up to the same mess I had the first time.

I don't know why, or don't remember doing or saying anything to give any hint, but Susan had called the cops to come and check on me that morning, and she had told them that I was suicidal, I laughed at them and said, of course not. I closed the door in their faces. Boy, did I feel ill! I was Sue-icidal. Next time I tried falling off my ten-speed in front of oncoming traffic in a forty-five mile an hour speed zone, but no one hit me or even my bike, and I cut it as close as I could possibly time it. Amazing drivers in Ann Arbor rush hour. I tried jumping off a three-story building, and only hurt myself on a dumpster. I couldn't even commit suicide right. Then I sat up all night with my gun, but I just couldn't bring myself up to pulling the trigger, as I realized that accomplishing death wouldn't bring Susan back to me, which I finally understood was what I really wanted as the means of ending my misery. I loved her.

Chapter 31

More Lifespan Than Hope

Finally, my Mom called me crying in my ear that she needed me to come home and take care of her in her final stages of colon cancer, or my sisters were going to take her out of her home and put her in a nursing home. Mom wanted to die at home. I don't know, it may have been a scam between Sue and Mom, to bring me out of myself. I had just been run over by a drunk seventeen year old girl in a Mercury, in an accident on a Harley I had bought, and had gotten my right shoulder, the collar bone and the scapula broken, and nearly obtained the death that I had given up on. It seemed to me that I needed Mom to take care of me more than her needing me laying around recovering from my injuries while she was sick, but I gave away over a quarter of a million dollars worth of my sound equipment for next to nothing getting, maybe eighteen thousand out of it. I couldn't move the heavy cases and cabinets with my right arm out of commission, and I couldn't find it in me to care about anything anyway, and had stopped doing any shows. I gave away, literally, everything that had anything to do with music. A complete audiophile stereo system with a nice McIntosh tube amp, my Killer speakers, a pair of Klipsch Horns, and a pair of book shelf speakers that I designed and built, which Jaime and I put together that were just plain impressive in power and performance, and a literal wall full of music, all of which I gave to a guy by the name of Rob, who was a guitar player for the band Mission Impossible. This was a group of college students, which were basically a student "party" band that played most of the frat parties. I gave away all six of my mandolins and guitars, two of my mandolins going to George Bedard, and my red LP Deluxe going to Chris Castello. Over a thousand hard back books were just given away, grab whatever you like, plus anything else I could get rid of, and went back to Ohio to take care of Mother for the next seventeen months.

Almost two years after she had left me, Sue called me at my Mother's house, on the day after my Mother died, Monday, December thirtieth, of nineteen ninety-one. She told me at that time, that she had become quite expert at picking up men, eight to twelve, or more, a night, even more if she felt that wasn't enough to satisfy her craving. She said as soon as she got off work at three in the afternoon, she'd stop at a bar and find a guy to take home with her, and then just keep going out all through the evening and night, until she'd had enough men. She told me that this had gone on daily for most of the two years. Then her shrink convinced her that she was addicted to sex, and got her to go into a twelve-step program. I told her that she must have a tendency toward addictions, because when I met her, she was addicted to cocaine, which took us almost a year and a half to wean her off of. She said yes, that she had told her psychiatrist about that, and that was her Doctor's statement as well. She asked me about getting back together again, and I told her I'd love to, and gave her my phone number down in Columbus, where I had just taken a computer systems engineering job at the time.

She told me that she had gotten her masters degree and was taking a job as a substance abuse counselor at a high school in Virginia, and we should get together soon. Then she said that before we could have sex that I must get tested for AIDS, because she was reformed now, and didn't want to get it, and that she had been very lucky in not contracting it during all of her carousals, in which she never used condoms. I said I'd be glad to, but she didn't seem to believe me when I told her that she was the love of my life and I had only touched one woman since her, but it was true.

Zoë called me one more time after that, in February of 'ninety-two, and I lied to her, which is something I had never done before, and told her that my shrink said I shouldn't see her again. I never talked to a shrink about getting back with her, I was simply afraid of becoming so dependent on her again, and having her flit off and leave me once more. I knew I wouldn't live through it a second time. Now, I wish I had given it a chance; we might have lived these last twenty-one years together and happily ever after. I haven't heard from her again, but I did call her Mother once in nineteen ninety-eight and asked her to remember me to Sue, and tell her that I called, and I was going to get married.

After a period of recovery I tried dating again, but my heart wasn't in it. I saw a girl in Lima, by the name of Vicki Bambaloff for a while, even going to Mexico on vacation with her, but she was a rich father's spoiled brat, and I was just window dressing for her, as she preferred girls rather than men. We never had sex. I never even tried, although she was quite beautiful, on the outside. I went with a woman from Delphos, by the name of Marilyn Rahrig, and we even started to get what I thought was serious. When I took the computer systems engineering job in Columbus, driving back to the Lima area every weekend and several weekday evenings, to relieve the hospice ladies, who had by then come into Mom's house to take care of Mother, was one thing I felt was my duty. After Mom died, driving back every weekend to see a girl I had just met, who acted kind of ambivalent towards me, got old fairly quickly. I only saw her for a few months before we drifted apart. She was very passionate in bed, and I felt I could have made a life with her, as I cared very deeply for her. It's probably just as well though, as she, and her kids still had complicated feelings for her ex-husband that I'm sure would have interfered sooner or later.

I saw a girl who was a bartender at a little bar I played in euchre tournaments at for a while, just outside of London, Ohio. She was another dead fish, and we only consummated the relationship a couple of times before I moved on. When I got laid off from the job in Columbus, I moved up to Delphos and tried seeing Marilyn again, but she didn't want me around, so I hung out with my God Son's Dad, Aaron White, and started working on restoring an old Chevy pickup truck, and doing sound for the band Avatar out of Delphos. I ended up screwing a barmaid from the Star Bar in Delphos, which the band had played at, when she woke me up one night after she got off work, knocking on my door and wanting to come in just to fuck, no reason, no explanation. I never got close to her again, or even tried to, because she, also, was lifeless in bed, not wanting any foreplay, or my famous tongue work. Just laying there, waiting for me to get it over with, after which she left. Gals, if you ain't gonna participate, or even try to allow yourself to experience the fun and enjoyment of it, then why bother in the first place?

I answered a personals ad, and went out on a date, or rather met the woman at a lounge, and in leaving the bar she got picked up for D.U.I., and then wanted me to pay for her lawyer. So much for personals ads. Not. So, I stayed celibate for the next five and a half years until I met Brenda Kohli, whom I married in August of nineteen ninety eight. We had a four wonderful years together, she being a fantastic guitar player and singer-songwriter. People said of us that we were joined at the hip, and I told everyone that I couldn't have designed a better woman to be my mate if I were God. I did sound for her live performances, and recorded and produced six C.D.s for her.

Then I started driving a big truck all over the country, culminating in her leaving me nine months ago, but I guess it was really over long before then, as she was no longer interested in sex, and became very ill tempered as of hitting menopause nine years ago, and we hadn't made love since. She ran through the six hundred and fifty thousand dollars I earned on the road in the past thirteen years and left me with nothing to show for it, but a mortgage with eighty some odd thousand dollars owed on the house that is about to have the mortgage foreclosed on, as I can no longer drive truck with the amount of hearing loss I have, and therefore have no job or money in this economy, while she is living all alone in a tiny little house that she inherited when her Dad died. I asked her today, the first time I'd seen her in at least two months, anyway, if she missed me at all, and she just shook her head. So I asked, conversationally, " Then why did you ever marry me in the first place?" She was instantly bristling, and ready for a fight, and asked, "Is this what I'm gonna get?" I said, " You've already got all you're gonna get." and dropped it and went back to fixing her computer. So, now I believe that I've figured it all out. Happily ever after only happens in romance novels and song lyrics, other than that, you get what comes at you, or you get out of the way. But, Hell, don't take my word for it. Find out for yourself. The only thing I know for sure after sixty-one years on this rock is, all around a pig's ass is pork, and it takes a mighty big dog to weigh a ton. Well, I guess that brings us up to date. Anything else I can tell you? Yeah, one more thing.

My fourth wife, Brenda Kohli's first CD.

The title Forever, is after the title of the title song, "If Forever", which was a love song she wrote to express her feelings for me, along with many similar songs. Obviously it was all a big lie, like everything else she told me. Are all women faithless liars these days? She indiscriminately gives away anything she wants to be unencumbered with to who ever, even though my earnings were the sole reason she came by whatever she possesses in the first place, without even the thought that she gives away my efforts and energy, already expended. I guess that I, and everything I've done in my life with her, are simply so much trash to be pitched. And so it is. As I gain years, and lose ties with people, lovers, old friends and all of my possessions, I come to understand that I am not losing as much as I am gaining. Freedom. Think on it, all of the relationships, and the role playing you must fit yourself into to maintain them, all of your possessions that you must battle in the daily grind to hold onto, the total of them and the expected tendencies that they force you to conform to, are nothing more than the heavy chains of a great anchor that is bending your will to follow it into the social depths of the human tragedy with all of it's cinematic vulgarity that we have come to call civilized life, and the more of them I lose, the more freedom I gain, until the day I can finally greet my Maker and tell him to fuck off too, for this cruel joke He has foisted off onto all of us, and thereby stand alone, free of all. I guess, that no matter how poorly written, or it's complete lack of any decent plot, I'll continue to abide this story 'til it's bitter conclusion. Who knows, maybe it'll get a laugh out of me yet, though it may be my last. My many thanks to you if you have read this far, may that Maker bless you for your patience with my drivel.

THE END