"I am seeing a new shrink" says my neurotic, secretive and beautiful friend via email. We have been through so much. I wish for her to abandon the crippling burden of perfectionism and put all the men of the past in the freezer. To cease reheating old soup and clear the way in the fridge for fresh fruit. I love when the imperfect can speak honestly with one another.
"New shrinks are great. I
always falling the trap of trying to please them and make them feel like
they are doing a good job, thereby subjugating all the stuff that
doesn't fit with the script and mask they have already given me."
I am not sure if I should write about being here. I
am enjoying Laos but seeing it in a different patina when i consider living
here.
I think they will offer me the role but i will politely and ironically price myself out of the market. Unless the boy dumps me in which case,
Sabadee Bitches!!! I have told him as much.
We have had a great time although I have been
ill and puking lots. A German woman sharing a bumpy ride to Vang Vien
this morning asked "are you pregnant or just sick?" I was spewing fluorescent
pink liquid into a garden on the side of the road at the time. I brushed my teeth
with all the nonchalance of a Bombay prostitute. "Just sick I hope!" I
had a pregnancy scare just before coming here, of which I advised the Lover ipso facto to be a mere scare.
"Hey, I
have some good news- I'm not pregnant!" He was not as enthralled to hear the news as I had expected.
"What?? Did you think you were?"
"Yes! But I didn't want to worry you."
We were walking by my favourite mulberry tree en route to work at the time. I stopped to pick two mulberries. Turns out men don't like hearing
that sort of news, whether in the stressful unknown space or after, when
you can confirm there is nothing to stress about. Who knew. I just had
to offload. He was shaken, perhaps stirred. But so was I. I had no choice, I had to talk to someone.
Its 3am and the streets of Vang Vien are quiet. A few
chickens make noises, they could be dogs, roosters... I'm sitting on a wide balcony on the fourth floor and a
few stoners wander down the streets. The
pancake-on-a-bicycle guy is roaming hoping for hungry stragglers.
The chap and i had a period of disquiet upon arrival, our first real disagreement this trip. He looked cold and angry. I felt frustrated and confused. I was still sick and took violent medicine in the fading afternoon. Ive just woken now. I felt like taking my passport back and leaving. Why this flight mechanism Madame Shangrila?
He is in bed now sleeping soundly. When he turns away from me sometimes I cannot remember his face, despite the nights I have studied it and the curve of his nose in the soft pink light of the rock slat lamps, the flickering of dying candle light. The harbinger of loss perhaps. I muse lightly and then search in the deep recesses for a flash of his face. It blends with other faces although his scent and memory and voice do not.
Flashes of being in the moment are interloped with memories and flashes of the last time in Asia and the Last Days of Gnome. I recall a tumultuous other-world journey through Singapore airport, itself a destination in terms of eventfulness. Fish eating my feet, losing my passport and that uncomfortable conversation about my using. He looked at me and said it with a smile but he was judging and testing, his mind working.
"How often? Everyday? How much?"
I prevaricated but could not dispel the directness of his enquiry.
It was not long after that he broke up with me. I had told Kate House of the conversation.
"He uses people Caitlin" she said to me. "I knew he would break up with you the minute you told me about that conversation."
She was correct. A pragmatist holding a flawed product.
Insanity is practicing the same behavior over and over and expecting different results.
