Emotion is a Pejoritive (John I)

It's not "Awe, don't cry", it's "don't cry or you will regret it."

Stuff it down, keep a stiff upper lip.

I met John working in a guitar store when I decided I was good enough of a player that I wanted to get a nice bass. Then, acoustic bass guitars weren't made, so I was recommended to a place that would make me a custom one for the price of a moderately decent factory made guitar.

We hit it off immediately, it was like we were made to be together. We both were artists and introverts and we both had our ways of working out and being healthy and everyone said we were a "good looking couple". The ex was jealous, telling everyone that John had "stolen me away from him" as though I was his property and actually shaved his long hair bald to be a complete drama queen, all this and we had broken up for very good reason four months before John and I became a couple.

John had a fallout with his boss at the guitar store and bought a studio to work in and there I learned to identify and carve and bend exotic woods: indian rosewood and purple heart and red mahogany and madicasar ebony. I learned to carve soapstone and cut inlays out of mother of pearl and abalone.

Freelancing as a luthier wasn't going as well as he'd expected but he did as well as he could and we'd enjoy long weekend days window shopping at our favorite hobby stores: the place that sold stones of all kinds from carvable soapstone and alabaster, the exotic hardwood store run by a sweet couple, Herman and Marie, and the aquarium shop where we would dream one day of having a huge discus tank.

I was 20 then and doing my first year of college, doing fine arts. John was 27 and told me all about the midevil artists like Hieronamous Bosch and Albrecht Druer. He built his instruments with a heavy Celtic accent to them, I learned how to do Celtic braids and knots for the soundhole designs.

I became very very attached. It seemed we were joined at the soul, because I could just imagine where he was and go there and he would be there, even though I'd never seen him at this place before, and we hadn't made plans to meet.

He took on a full time job working at a home for the handicapped, and time went on. He started doing a live in job with a single handicapped man on the weekdays, so I didn`t see him much. He invited me to come to a local hang out where these guys were often, but the times I would go were uncomfortable with the guys making remarks about my body and touching me and stuff.

Around the time this happened, John became very jealous and stuff. I just dismissed it as normal, since other boyfriends I`d had had their jealous, posessive moments, but this was a bit strange. He moved into a house a block away from my bachelor apartment and he would call at 9:30 every morning and night.

Christmas came, we had been seeing each other about a year and a half now. We talked about getting married and where we would live and such. He didn`t have enough money for a ring, but was going to get one.
Things weren't perfect, John was ever more and more demanding in bed. Nothing I did lasted long enough for him and I'd do my best to the top of my pain tolerence. Maybe I'm a lightweight but 20 or 25 minutes of BJ was all I could handle. I didn't think it was a problem, we were together whever he had time away from work.

He started to drink, heavier and heavier. "Green Chartruse," he said. "It's made my monks." He would get absoutely plastered on the stuff and microbrewery ale. A few times I had to practiclly carry him to my apartment where he would pass out in the bathtub. He seemed to have an obsession with bathtubs.

I went to the Christmas party at the home for the handicapped where John worked, and one of the clients had invited one of my friends. It was warm and nice and I had that rare I belong, feeling that I always wish for that I don`t get from my family, but I think thats what most people get. I helped out out the platters and listened to jokes and laughed and did their dishes and really felt for the first time in a long time that I belonged somewhere. Once the dishes were done, one of the female staff pulled me aside and asked what I was still doing there.
``What do you mean? I'm here with the other guests and we are having a nice time I think"
"You're not one of the guests and you will have to leave."
I went white, then red.  The room shrunk and suddenly felt cold. "But I've been a good guest and helping out and I even did your dishes."
"Yeah, we were kind of wondering why you did that. Now you have to leave."
"But I am John's guest."
"Staff don't get guests" this wasn't true, there were family of staff there.
I asked Jason, then Brian, both CP survivors who I had taken on trips and  gone out with. Neither would make eye contact with me and both of then shook their heads.
"Come on Michelle, we're going." "But I'm a guest here, just come and get me when the party's over." "I'm not a cab driver," I said "you can come now or find your own way home." She was mad at me. It was me, after all, that convinced her to come to this party in the first place. "You see, this is why I don't like John," she said. "I don't follow..." "Isn't it obvious? He's cheating on you."  But the words didn't sink in, the rolled off into the winter wind. Quiet in the car. "John would never cheat. We are in love."

Things were still going on at the studio, I was getting good at carving and was doing the head stocks and the heels on the guitar necks as well as making little wooden and soapstone animals.

John was becoming strange though. He and his boss at the guitar shop had had a bad parting of ways, and there were disagreements on who owned what tools. John would tell me that the owner had a man come in the night with a dog and there was a fight, and that he killed the dog with a pipewrench. There was no blood outside. John was becoming delusional from stress.




John Would Never Cheat

We were together and it was early spring. Things were just getting intimate and he took down his pants and... shaven. Bald. Everything. "Sherry said you would like it." "Sherry? Your boss?" "Yeah well you don't like going down, she said you would like this." "John, I have a broken skull. I'm doing the best that I can, but it hurts me." I've never seen such of look of horror on a person's face, ever. It was as though I'd hit ho or something. He locked himself in the bathroom. I realized the levity of what he meant. He'd been fucking his boss. I was floored.

I asked why that happened. John said "They don't like you." I didn't understand. I was nice to them, they had accepted my invitations out... "You use too big of words." Well that's stupid I thought. "John, you are jealous of every move I make. You accuse me of things I haven't done, and it turns out you were the one doing it. Those guys... they touch me and they make lewd remarks about me. You're the jealous one, you should be noticing this and protecting me from those goons." He looked like a scolded child. "But they like Sherry?" I realized that this handicapped guy was being very self serving. By welcoming Sherry into his house he had 2 caretakers for the price of one. This guy had shitty values.

Things weren't the same after that. I couldn't touch him. I couldn't leave him. I couldn't talk to him. I was traumatised. John began to get more and more despondant. Hindsight was 20/20, I knew now why i was kicked out of the Christmas party. Months went by, and nothing seemed to change. My heart and my trust had been broken.

My friends invited me over for games and drinks. I overdrank and the room was spinning and so they put me into Michael's bed to cool off. Michael came in the room and was saying something to me, sympathzing. I was barely conscious. Just as Penny came in the room to check on us, Mike reached out and touched my breast. "Mike!" Penny yelled, snapping me out of my state for a minute. I felt violated and used in so many ways



I knew Everything Would Be Alright from then on

One day I got home from school and there were valentines all over my apartment. JN+NP, bookmarked in books, written on the bathroom mirror in lipstick, on the windows in soap, on the walls, on my denim jacket, 80's style. 


John and I went on our usual Saturday route to the craft and hobby stores and the reptile and aquarium shop. It was a really nice day. After I dropped him at his house so I could go and ride my horse. "I love you" he said. "I love you too." "Things have been really hard, but they will be better from now on." I thought he was talking about Sherry, that he's told her to go take a hike. "I'm glad" I said.
"but you never come over to my house, you don't spend time with the guys at the deli."
"Those guys touch me and make lewd remarks, you are the posessive one, why aren't you doing something when they do that? As for coming over, you never invite me over. You have told me that you didn't want me there. I can come over now, and ride my horse later."

Silence. "Do you need to go to the hospital?"

"No, it's too late. Everything will be ok from now on. I love you."

"I love you too. I will see you later."

I went on my ride with Foxy, and I felt something strange like a wisp. Fox seemed to have felt it too, because he spooked at nothing and smashed my knee into the wooden fence. I didn't cry often but I suddenly started to sob, not because of the pain, but because John was dead. I pulled myself out of that weird feeling. "You're just imagining things because of the weird talk."

John didn't make his usual 9:30 call that night, nor did he in the morning. I assumed he was making a final breakup with Sherry and thats what he meant by everything being ok. Then the phone rang. It was the rude handicapped client wanting to know where John was. "He's not with you?" Suddenly I remebered my premonition from the previous day and my blood ran cold. "Check and make sure none of your medications are missing, please" I waited some time and he came back and said no they weren't. I went across the road and knocked on the door. No answer. I knock on his landlord's door and tried to convince him to open it to check on John. He reminded me of the 24 hour privacy rule, and wouldn't comply. I went back home and called the police. They said they would come.

They arrived after about 1/2 an hour and got the unhappy landlord to unlock the door. I got dizzy and told the policeman that I would be back, I just needed my medicine. When I got back to John's house, an ambulence was there. The police asked if I knew of any ways that John might have killed himself. What a horrible thing to put through someone's imagination. "Um he works with handicapped people and might have gotten some pills, and he has a woodshop, I can't even think of what he could have done with tools..." the cop had me sit down on the curb. "9 out of 10 times when someone thinks that someone has committed suicide, they are wrong, the person has just gone for a walk." That seemed wrong to me, the ambulance... "but 1 out of 10 times the person is right and this is one of those times." I got mad. I threw my keys into the middle of the parking lot. I got mad again because the keys didn't fly nearly far enough for the amount of emotion I was going though. They should have circled the globe and smashed through every window along the way.

I started at a raindrop that was hanging under a blade of grass. It was like I was tiny, like an ant, and I could stare up at this raindrop, left over from last night's storm. I could see the police car and the ambulence and the ENT's rolling the covered gurney out of the house towards the ambuence in perfect detail, but upside down. The drop shook loose from the blade of grass and rolled into the depths of the lawn.