PFK1 (34 page)

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That’s it. I give up. The fucking goddamn bitch. I imagine there

are those who would say I am only getting what I deserve for taking

up with a married woman.

No doubt they are right.

And yet – I did not initiate this affair. I merely fell into a neatly

prepared trap. Megan has used me to get what she wants from her

husband. That is how it appears.

Now I am truly at my lowest point. This incredibly rotten

development I cannot fathom to save my life. Do you want to hear

what she said? Megan actually thanked me for helping Mark "turn

himself around and become a more serious person."

Apparently they’ve even discussed having a baby. Megan wished

me good luck in The Future and added she hoped we could still

remain friends but the relationship is definitely off. Repeat, definitely

off. She said it twice, just in case I was too dense to grasp the

meaning the first time.

I am shocked right down to my socks. You could knock me over

with a feather. This is the lowest of the lows, I swear. I can’t fucking

believe this shit. Probably the worst part is that her rejection of me

makes her more attractive than ever.

As if she weren’t already attractive enough. But this is, oh so much

like the other one I am guessing they must be acting in concert

somehow. Is that what the fuck going on?

That is how crazy I am getting.

Or am I giving them too much credit? Maybe they are just

graduates of the same school of relationship management. It is

possible, I suppose. In some ways this reminds me of that Jeanette

dame I fled from up in Portland last summer.

They’ve apparently all completed the same course work, learning to

manipulate men in a basically deceitful and selfish fashion, while

proclaiming their constancy and devotion.

It is treachery. It is betrayal.

Meanwhile, I am dumped again and for what appears to be

essentially the same reasons as before. Megan says she re-loves Mark

and intends to move to Spokane with him in March. He has finally

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found a decent paying job in Washington and should be able to

support her and their future offspring in an upwardly mobile fashion.

Those aren’t her exact words but they are pretty fucking close. I

am so pissed off I cannot fucking see straight. When she told me

about this, I played it cool and said I needed some time to adjust.

Toned down is always the best response, I think.

Never act surprised, never show your true feelings. That’s my

motto. But right now I’d like to get my hands around her neck.

Nothing fatal, mind you, just long enough to leave some nice finger-

shaped bruise marks on that slender, lovely neck of hers.

Yes, that long, slim, slender, beautiful neck. Purple and blue

marks, thereafter turning a sickly yellow and a week or two of

laryngitis and the required wearing of one of those funny neck braces.

Yes, get my hands in position. And squeeze.

For the past two days I have been sitting right next to Megan but I

have not spoken to her once. Tomorrow I have to go to work again

and spend eight hours in close proximity. I refuse to speak to her

unless I absolutely must.

What could I possibly say?

Hold still. I want to fucking throttle you.

Goddamn it. Goddamn it. Goddamn it. It is my own fucking fault

for falling into this trap. I went into this affair much against my own

better judgment and now I am getting precisely what I deserve. What

a fucking stupid clown I am.

No doubt the other one would truly enjoy this new pain I have

brought on myself. Yes, this is really rich. She’d be laughing her

superior, upwardly-mobile laugh. No doubt she’d really be having

fun with this new development, the fucking bitch.

Never underestimate the sadism of women.

At lunch, I drove to the waterfront and watched the seagulls circle

the water for a long time. The Siuslaw River flowed slowly to the sea,

to the open arms of the sea. It’s a lonely blue river, a river of January.

The salt smell was strong in the cold wind. I almost didn’t return to

work, but I had promised this dipshit client I would pay her overdue

utility bill if she brought in her shut off notice. Naturally she did.

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All that needs to happen now is for Megan to suddenly shift her

affections to another guy – say Karl, Ken, Kirk, or Colonel Klink, and

start shacking up with him. Another parsimonious anal-retentive

compulsive pickrat vacuum cleaner guy.

Soon Megan will announce through her friends that she is finally

"happy" and then Mark will shave his beard. Next, I will see him

down at the Beachcomber Tavern sans facial hair.

After that I will wobble home drunk, as always the total fool.

How interesting this all is, or would be, if it wasn’t actually

happening.

As soap operas go, it has all the requisite touches – a snail’s pace, a

mindless plot, some crudely obvious foreshadowing, and the

underlying assumption that men are hopeless idiots.

Yep. This one has it all. Soap opera fans would enjoy it

immensely. I am ready to leave town this instant. What the fuck am I

doing here anyway? This crappy little beach town offers me nothing.

I think I should probably be in New York or Los Angeles, where

people of talent inevitably must go to get ahead. Let the middle class

bitches and their dumb ass boyfriends sort out their love lives and

leave me out of it.

I feel ill equipped to handle these sudden shifts in preference.

These are grown women in their twenties who are no more sure of

their affections than infatuated fifteen year olds. I just can’t believe

how fickle they are.

Just for the record, let me review the supremely successful

relationships I have forged during the past decade:

1) Leanne – the very first time we fuck, she gets pregnant.

Abortion is unfortunately against the law. A baby girl is born and we

give her up for adoption. Even now, when I think about it, I want to

hold a gun to my head and pull the fucking trigger. Ka-blam! A

shower of blood and brains. So far I have not done this, though I still

think about it often. Five years later, Leanne dumped me for a low

life cretin who beat her. Message: I was not quite enough of a loser to

suit her.

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2) Marie – I spent Christmas 1974 alone in an empty house in

Atlanta while she ran off with somebody else. I had plenty of time to

think. The minute Marie shoos the other guy away, she tells me she

loves me. By then I’d decided to return home. I left Atlanta and

Marie let a year go by before she told me that she was serious.

What was I supposed to do? The truth is I was too shell-shocked

right then from getting dumped by the other one to just jump right in.

Instead of taking it slow and seeing how we felt about each other,

Marie insisted on the whole deal. It couldn’t be at my speed. It can

never be at my speed. Marie wanted me to move to Florida, and I just

couldn’t make myself go through with it.

Still, I have thought about Marie many times since then, about her

gentle smile, liquid gray eyes, about her beautiful face and body. I

sometimes find myself wishing I could go back and do it all over

again. Right now is one of those times.

Because I am so used to being manipulated, deceived, and conned

by women, I cannot quite believe it when someone is actually playing

me straight. Message: Wherever you may be, Marie Montambeault, I

beg your forgiveness.

3) The Other One – I can’t even bring myself to say her name

anymore, so vile is the taste. What a fucking phony bitch she turned

out to be. She insisted all summer long (1975) that she loved me and

couldn’t understand why I would not "commit." The truth is, I was

holding out on her, for some pretty sound reasons in retrospect. And,

while she was demanding undying devotion from me, she was still

seeing her former boyfriend Blane behind my back.

Yes, bland bland Blane. When I found myself at last starting to see

things her way, she advised me that she had just fucked another guy

and what did I think of that? I was appalled, of course. Next she

dumped me to resume with Blane. Then she announced she was

pregnant. Didn’t say who the father was.

I suggest abortion. She becomes furious.

I couldn’t fucking believe it. Though nominally Catholic, she

aborted said unborn child. Also confessed that she had sneaked

through all of my journals, after promising she would not.

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Later, she dumped Blane to shack up with a new discovery, a man

who is pretty handy with a vacuum cleaner. Meanwhile, she said she

still pines for a long lost San Francisco doctor fag. Looking back, I

think her manipulative behavior was genuinely weird and utterly

unscrupulous. Message: Patrick was fucking a carbon copy of his

horrid mother.

4) Sarah – sweet as she was, the whiskey and the Marlboros (I was

not smoking then) got to me. Message: Cough, hack.

5) Katrine – a certifiably insane 19 year old when I met up with her.

She even passed a formal screening process. Katrine became angry

when I attempted to live my life in a rational manner. I’m not sure if I

really even bought the idea that she was mentally ill. Compared to

other women I have known, Katrine seemed fairly typical, although a

label got stuck on her by the system.

On the other hand, although Katrine demanded loyalty from me,

she would fuck absolutely any other guy who came along. Wrote her

off to preserve my sanity. Message: Way too much trouble.

6) Jill – a political apparatchik who got pissed off at me because I

wouldn’t run around buck naked in front a bunch of strangers. Made

fun of me when I told her I want to get married and maybe someday

have one or two children. Ridiculed the idea of ever falling in love or

getting married. Got herself a tubal ligation. Message: Jill comes

first.

7) Megan – a married woman who came on to me until I started

having an affair with her. I fell in love, she didn’t. Used me to get

husband to knuckle under. Dumped me the minute she got what she

wanted. Message: You were useful for a while.

Quite the little track record, isn’t it? I am so pleased with my

recent excellent success with women. The way I see it, there is no

correct way to respond to them. If you do what they say they want

you to do, they find a way to screw you over. If you resist them, they

will still find a way to screw you over. To care about a woman is to

give her power. To give a woman power is to invite unhappiness.

You are better off in jail.

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In the case of the other one, my feelings really betrayed me. I

screwed up in not dumping her the instant I caught her sneaking

through my stuff. What a despicable trick. I sent exactly the wrong

message by being gentle and forgiving.

My patience and tenderness backfired miserably. While I was

working my ass off at the rose garden, she was going through my

writing. A more typical man never would have kept a book that told

truths about his thoughts and feelings.

A more typical man would have insisted she forget about nursing

school and hang around with him. A more typical man would have

smacked her in the mouth the minute she started to bitch and crab and

nag.

How are the rest any different? How is Megan any different? I

can’t see that she is really, perhaps less vicious, but still entirely

faithless. Let women go their own way.

Let them mate with inferior men. Let them live dull, boring lives. I

want a woman who is not only beautiful but brave, who can see past

my faults, who can understand that I am striving to be strong and true.

No such woman exists, I am afraid.

* * * *

January 16, 1979

This journal is four old year’s today. By all rights, I should destroy

it and myself and be done with everything. That would be a fitting

end to an obscene chronicle. All I have left is my writing. The words

keep me going, goddamn them.

The longest interruption I have experienced is the time I spent with

Sarah in the spring of 1976. I see that I failed to mention much about

her in my last entry.

One of my many mistakes.