Essay Rough Draft

 The house is empty, rooms cleaned out and cluttered only with the open spaces where things used to sit.  Not bare, the furniature still remaining, various orthless knick-knacks standing in rows on shelves, standing silent vigil.  I look around the remains of my living room in a bit of a daze as I try to comprehend the scene.  It looks stripped as though some apocalypse had quietly happened and raiders had come to take anything of vale.




 “Is this a Surger?”  Her tone made it clear she knew it was just that and simply couldn't believe that I'd managed to purcure such an expensive piece of eqipment.
 “Yup. Family wanted to know what you'd like for your birthday, and I begged borrowed and stole the rest. I knew you would want one.”
 The hug was amazing, she impacted me like a shot and hugged tight around me.  There's nothing quite as wonderful as pleasing the one you love, and I knew how much she'd wanted this fancy-ass sewing machine.  It had been expensive, but worth it to make her this happy.

 I'd met her first in a McDonald's in downtown Chicago during an event.  My girlfriend at the time were grabbing lunch and there Darcy was, on the phone to someone or another.  She was pretty, caught my eye, but I was with someone then.
 We broke up that night, me and my girlfriend.  I'd like to say it was because we shared no interests, or I felt tied down by her but the simple fact was the alcoholism I could deal with, but the coke habit was perhaps a bridge too far.  I wanted something more stable, more reliable, a wild girl perhaps but one that wouldn't drag me through hell and back when she was jonsing.

 I try to catch her as they move things, try to walk back from our troubles, try to fix it somehow, anyhow.

 Darcy was screaming again, I guessed the surger had dropped a stitch.  I wanted to go in and comfort her, but after so many years I felt less worried, and more numb.  If I had went in she'd scream and yell at me instead, so I just sat in my study and turned up the headphones.  She'd yell at me later of course for some petty reason or another, its how it goes.  She couldn't make the surger do what she wanted, so she'll take it out on me.  I knew, though, that'd come later after the near hysterical screams and crashes of her little rage fit tire her out somewhat and its nothing I'd not dealt with day after day before.
 “I HATE THIS MACHINE!” The by that point familiar shriek against the five hundred dollar sewing machine

 “You're getting married?”  My mother sounds shocked.
 “Uh, yeah, hard to believe isn't it?”
 “You're not gay?”  My mother had harboured this belief for years that I didn't enjoy.  It was founded in the fact that I never tried out for football and she had never heard of me having a girlfriend or asking a girl out.  The fact that I played football without equipment every day at lunch escaped her, and she never thought that perhaps I just left her out of my love life because in High School she would have overborne and once I returned to chicago... well who wants o tell their mother they went through four girlfriends in six months, with one coke addict, one ex-prostitute, one still practicing prostitute, and a married girl?

 I decide, now that thins are moved and done, to look up the girl I chased after all through high school and see if she didn't want to reconnect.  Stupid decision but hey, nothing ventured. Google her.  She was beautiful, skin like latte, chestnut hair.  Never shot me down so hard I didn't try again soon after, always was the sweetest thing.
 She's a lesbian.
 Figures.

 Day before the wedding.  There was still dresses to alter, food servings to prepare, dishes nt in order, and my wife's family were putzing about.  Her mother had spent the time fussing over the space and worrying about the minister who she didn't like and had all sorts of political (Church politics. Sigh.) issues with.  Her father was a nice man and wandered around in a daze the whole week like a shellshocked GI on Omaha Beach.  Her sister? Her sister was an anorexic who had decided just previous to the wedding that she needed to go on a “Juice Fast” for her health, meaning she was pale and sickly and angry... a big scrawny, angry, malnourished spider with her husband meekly in tow.  My family swept in and in under a day the herd of Jewish women had remade dresses, fixed programs, made gifts, all of it short of ressurecting Jesus himself... which I suspect they didn't do for fear of upstaging our wedding.

 “Mom, I'm not sure I want to be married anymore.”
 “Its just a phase, Eric, you guys will work through it,” she wasn't willing to accept that I was miserable.  All she saw then was me in a house, going to school, self-sufficient.  “It can't be that bad.  Is there something you can do different?”

 I had ducked just in time.  I'd done just enough fencing that I was reasonably quick on my feet and thus had been able to avoid series injury when my wife began t hrowing bottles of ginger beer at me as hard as she could.  Full bottles.  Glass and sticky pop showered down like fireworks, and had sent me running up the stairs while she threw everything glass towards me.  We'd been arguing about my lack of income due to school, her rage fueled by my “financial irresponsibility”.

 Two weeks later she unwrapped her new 800 dollar industrial mixer..


 We had been screaming at each other for two days.  I proposed.  I don't know why, maybe to make the fight end, maybe because under the childish rages I thought I saw someone I really loved.  We were about to spin apart like bodies in an unstable orbit and I wanted to do something, anything to keep it from exploding, so I blurted it out.

 “I do”.
 Two hours later we were arguing because her family didn't want to dance the hora.  They didn't want to accidentally drop their little girl.

 Her family has just left, having packed up everything she wanted.  I was going to be leaving the house in a couple months with what few things I wanted to keep, what few things were mine.  For now, her family (Acting forever as her mamluks) had borne away her posessions, leaving me an empty house, cavernous and without life, history fled.

 “I want a seperation.”  The wallls had felt like they were closing in when she said that.  My ears heard static, te world hyperfocused on my wife when those words came out of her mouth.  My house, my life, our plans all dissolved into dust.  “I want a seperation unless you change.  You need to see a therapist so you're more like what I want and then we can be together again. Oh, and you're responsible for paying for the house.”  The house I never wanted.  I think it was a threat... be what I want you to be, and you can have me.  Blackmail.  My world started to seperate as well, the walls opressive the future a black yawning gulf of loss, then I was through that gulf.  It wasn't a black hole, it was a curtain and now I was on the other side.
 “Actually, I have a better idea.”  Looking back I'd love to think I was strong and decisive here but I'm sure I was hesitant, that the words came out in a soft whisper, not a blast of self-sufficiency.  “How about we get a divorce and I never have to deal with you again.”  She looked stunned, and a small part of me wanted to spike a football and do a victory dance... then it crashed in on me, I had stepped off the cliff.  I'd been with her since I was twenty, the fights, the misery, the violence,  and suddenly freedom and my own life loomed, terrible and frightening and unknown and wonderful.

 The wedding rings are gone.  She must have slipped mine into a pocket or something on her way out.  With that the last sign that I was ever married is gone.  She's there, looking at me, ready to speak.  Standing there in my living room, I finally say the words I should have said long ago, and finally have the strength to say.  The only words I could say to the woman I'd been with for so long.
 “Fuck you, dear.” Waving cheerfully before slamming the door.
 I have a house to rearrange now because 've always hated that sofa there.

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