Reel in Realty

“This is a late model ranch home, refurnished with period replication pieces. It was previously a one family dwelling, now trisected into these identical units.”

What she means is that it’s an old broken down home with its original broken down furniture, sold to an old sod with investments on the brain. He reworks some essential plumbing and adds some outlets, shoots up some rough dry wall and makes me a potential home.

“The kitchen is furnished…” as she shows me that all four burners work on the stove and that the fridge light comes on.

“We would just need a deposit and you can being moving in next week. Of course it will be the unit next door, but they are reasonably identical, just that one faces the street.”

Libby walks around the room, making sure she has enough closet space for her ample wardrobe and kitsch shoe collection. They are all great shoes though; I helped her throw away the crappy or redundant ones, now they all fit within select categories and color combinations to give her maximum and practical flexibility.

Don’t know why she cared about closets. Most of her clothing was a large bin of underwear; a throwback from college days when she bragged an entire two months without doing laundry. She had stripes and dots, thongs and boy shorts, solids and diaphanous. Sporty bras, three pronged latch bras, front clasping bras; none that could escape the ruse of my nimble fingers. I looked at her eyes; I think we were thinking that same thing. We laughed together as the realtor was in the middle of telling us how to get to the laundry room and what key to use when the basement is flooding and we have to swim out the skylights. Damn, I had no idea what she was talking about. Then we were out the door..

“You really want to do this?”

The best thing to do is to sit on a question like that; you know she needs a little reassurance but if you give it too quick… Either way; we’re in my car, driving away from another cute brick apartment, wondering in unison about the true identity of the person next to us.

It difficult making that decision to discard your lives apart and trade them into one big mess of getting in each others way. To be immersed in the stage of required symbiosis, am I ready…

“And if we break up, you can have your girlfriends over.” She inserts without a pause of sense, as though that was my main concern. As if I were intrinsically drawn to that subject whenever I spoke of our plausible life together… This was her way of reasoning out of the complicated fluctuation called our relationship; and she was broadening the gap at every word.
“Lots of couples go through this.” She piped in; somewhere between a song and a crosswalk. Was she talking about her cheating problem or about the hesitance to move all of our shit into one pile called home? I was cued and ready for the sweet part that happened routinely in our near weekly cycle of despondence.

The first part of the cycle was a relatively smooth transition, loving words and gentle touches; it was all designed as a compliment to our affection to one another. It was the good part that made all the other things more bearable.

The secondary portion kicked in at random intervals, brought about by tiny things, habits and comments seeping out of their hiding places. It was a stage of precautionary measures and relative defensiveness that generally occurred when something triggered and tripped the jealousy instinct. Some days it was good sex that made us angry. Sometimes it was even sitting leg to leg in her little tub and trying to talk things out, why it would never happen again

The tertiary stage was brief, yet burned gratuitously. It was when I told her that I don’t think I have what it takes to be in this relationship. For me it was that one damn thing, I never could put it down. It was that bitter day in January when I sat at home to start a Camus novel and calm the fuck down; the same day she walked around Pittsburg with an old High School flame and got her confused little brains banged out.

The last, it was wonderful state of reconciliation. We flooded all of this into an hour or less of apathetic detritus. We argued and blamed and screamed with our hearts. We lashed tongues; we hid our wet faces in pillows and blankets. I can see it replay like some gaudy pantomime. We would get through it all again, we would finally tell each other what we needed to hear, the stuff that maybe we even meant when we said them, and that’s the scary part. We were just so damn honest and open, even after all the shit; that very moment of glory and indulgence.

Perpetuate Cycle… Now…

I L*VE you Johny. I L*VE you too Libby.

“You really want to do this!?” Her head rocking in my periphery, fighting my concentration and attention to the surrounding lanes for a bit of eye contact and some assurance that she isn’t just handing her check over to some half ass.

“Maybe we need this…” It just came out of me live relieved gas. It just felt right to say, felt forgiving and rewarding. I wanted it to be real; just the way I intended it, I wanted to stop this cycle some day.

“There are lots of places to do it in the cabin!” She said with a manic excitement. She was being playful now, coaxing me out of my shell and into a sensual mood. This might have been her defense route against pending emotional danger, disarming me with powerful sexuality; this I realized late in the relationship.

It was true anyhow. When we were given a friendly little tour of the cabin we researched those details whenever we were out of earshot or at eyeball range.

The air had a hint of hippy too it, some nice mountain folk renting from a lady botany Professor in Ca. We even went online to read a couple of her dissertations, to see if she was groovy enough to add to our new list of acquaintances.

The stairs were wide enough to fit us when entangled. We giggle. The washing machine was low enough. The bathroom sink was bolted on nice and tight. This tour was an experience of innuendo. We said thanks and dreamed for nights about holding each other forever in that little back yard.

“Ya, lots of places…” I said; nothing else on my mind but images and fleeting emotional gasps as I put together more reasons for and against the move.

“You should come with me this summer…” She said it quickly then went back to staring out the side window uninterestedly. Very coy. She even went far enough to clip some good jobs out of the local paper for me; and then we both entertained the though of driving that thousand miles together to spend a summer amidst the Steelers and the Amish.

“Lots of places…” That’s all that could come out of my stupid grinning lips. The mile rolled on and we rolled even father apart. I never could get over the affair; and she probably got fed up with my shit in the meantime.

How much can you expect two people to overcome anyhow? No goddamn Romeo’s over here baby. Just two people with time to kill and some nice apartments that need some credit secured lovebird to fill it up with their kitsch shoe collections and drums of groovy underpants.

Lots of places indeed, except that we gave up a long time ago on finding them together. Cast your heavy line in the chilly Atlantic, mine ill put with vigor into the frisky Gulf of Mexico. Reel in your catch kiddo, and let it be reality this time. Let it be the bright shining lips of just a bit truer of a world on your gilded hook. A world where I loved you for as long as you let me, and even just a bit longer…