[Breeder] Howls

[TheBreeder]

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I had an entry written in my head, over the weekend.

Last Friday I went to see Spencer perform with his company. It was the last time I was going to see him dance. The concert itself wasn’t that fantastic, I’m afraid to admit—it was really not much more than a repeat of the exact same concert I saw a couple of months ago, save for the interpolation of a few sequences performed by students from a local, inner-city college. But Spencer was head and shoulders above the material, as he’s always been. He danced with grace and dignity; he engaged the audience in a way that only one other dancer in the company managed.

I watched the performance, happy when he was on the stage and a little bored when he wasn’t. And in my head, I began composing my journal entry for the evening. It was sweet, and terse, and elegiac. It employed some lovely metaphors. I spoke of how, although we hadn’t been sexual partners since February, Spencer and I had been in the weeks and months since still very much part of each other’s lives, spending most evenings of the week together—dining together, watching television and movies together, sleeping in the same bed, side by side. Then my entry was going to mourn not so much what I’d lost with him, but what I was going to lose when I move in a month, and how that loss would be the greater.

That entry was perfect, in my head. Then the little shit got in there and crapped it all up.

Like this.

1. Both of us had busy weekends. I didn’t get to see Spencer until Monday evening, when he stopped by after teaching class. We immediately hopped into my car so that we could go out for Asian food. “I was going to save talking about your concert for over dinner,” I told him, as I turned from my street onto the road that would take us to a main thoroughfare.

Spencer leaned over and patted me on the head. “Oh,” he cooed, in the tone of a parent whose toddler has decided to do something exceptionally cute. “Look. The man who knows fuck-all about dance is going to try to be a dance critic.”

I was immediately enraged. Though I usually have a slow trigger, being condescended to instantly pushes my anger’s fiery turbo-boosters. Even in jest, it turns me from placid to furious. “I do not have to be a dancer to be able to talk about your concert,” I snapped at him. “If I were educated in dance, or had a dance background, I might have more vocabulary to play with. I don’t need any special training in order to have and share my opinions, however.”

“That’s not true,” he started to counter.

“Do you have a degree in literature?” I barked. “Have you written any books? Because you and I talk about books all the time. Are you admitting you’re unqualified to have those conversations in the future? Neither of us went to film school. Are we not allowed to talk about movies or television any more, either? We can’t talk about politics because we’ve never tried to run for office? I’m an intelligent guy. I have a deep background in the arts. I can formulate and express an opinion backed on what I see.” Still furious, I blathered on. “The world would be a much narrower place if we were only allowed to discuss the little boxes in which circumstance has painted us, you know.”

“I see what you mean,” he said, backing down. “Okay.”

Because you know, frankly, maybe if someone who didn’t know fuck-all about dance had seen a rehearsal before it went to performance, he might have told the choreographer that when a lily-white suburban dance company dresses in long flowing robes of spotless white to dance under pools of bright heavenly lighting, and then dresses the all-black-and-Latino inner-city college students in tight red spandex that obscenely accentuates their nipples and genitalia, then shines upon the college kids lurid red spots that make them look like colored devils, the whole piece is going to look like it’s a fright show staged by the Coalition for a White America for a KKK rally. Because apparently none of the seasoned dancers noticed.

Just sayin’.

2. And like this, which probably hurt the most:

Over dinner we were having a civilized conversation when Spencer spoke up. “So am I the only of your friends who’s taken a gander at your last three pieces?” he asked.

It’s a well-established fact that none of my friends (or family) really support the artistic endeavors that comprise my career. That is, they’re happy I’m happy, but no matter how many of their concerts and recitals and poetry slams and bad dramatic society functions I attend for them, they don’t expose themselves to any of my work. I’d given Spencer a few copies of my latest stuff, a couple of months back. “Does that mean you had a chance to take a look at the last one?”

“Yep.” He took another mouthful of food.

I waited for him to finish, assuming that he had something to say. But then he took another bite, and another. After a while, I raised my eyebrows. “Was there something you wanted to say about it?”

Immediately he lunged in. “I totally didn’t like it,” he said. “It was pretty much fucking torture for me.”

All the reviews I received for that particular work were actually pretty glowing. I’m usually pretty confident about my own work, and don’t let negativity get to me, but this comment felt like a slap across the face from a heavily-ringed hand. “I’m sorry you found it so,” I said, without betraying the wound to my vanity he’d left.

“What, didn’t you want me to be honest?” he asked.

“Not if that was your opinion, no,” I told him. “I don’t.”

“Well, just remember you asked.”

“No,” I said to him, fighting hard not to lose my temper. “I didn’t ask. You brought it up. Then you proceeded to be hurtful.”

Spencer had the gall to act as if he were the one with the right to be affronted. “Fine. Next time I’ll just blow smoke up your ass, shall I?”

“You could simply say nothing,” I told him. “Or find positives about it that you did like, and talk about those. Don’t come out swinging and expect me to like it. Not with something so personal.”

Then I indicated that the subject was closed.

It occurs to me now that on some level, conscious or not, he might have been needling me in the hope that I’d question his capacity as a critic, so he could throw back in my face my words of earlier in the evening.

All it really made me question was his friendship.

3. And like this:

Battered and slightly resentful of everything that had passed so far that evening, I was trying to stay light and positive after dinner. Perhaps I was just being sensitive. Trying to keep the mood up, I said once we were back in the car, “I bought you some of that ice cream you like,” referring to a gluten-free, dairy-free frozen soy dessert from Trader Joe’s that vaguely resembles ice cream.

“OH MY GOD WHY DID YOU DO THAT I AM SUCH A FUCKING COW,” he yelled. Then he proceeded to launch into a diatribe about his weight and how excessively fat, fat, fat he is, and how he had watched some girl’s home videos on YouTube in which she discussed everything she’d eaten for the day shortly before she purged herself of it.

He’s not a fat man, by any means. But he’s not rail-thin, either. He’s broad-shouldered, and muscular, and strong from catching leaping dancers in midair. “Spencer, I know you know how unhealthy that is,” I sighed, pulling back onto the main thoroughfare that would lead home.

“But you can see her sternum and her rib cage and she is beautiful,” he said. “It doesn’t matter for you. You can eat like a pig and be fat and no one gives a shit because you’re old.” I am three inches taller than Spencer, I weigh sixty pounds less, and my waistline is seven inches smaller. I was walking out with half my dinner in a take-out box; he had inhaled all his. The old part I couldn’t deny.

“Thanks,” I said, tersely.

“Well, you don’t get it. You keep pushing all this food in front of me, ice cream and chips and chocolate. . . .”

“There are ways to eat,” I said, beginning to lose my temper again. “And there are ways to eat. You don’t have to grab the half-gallon of ice cream and eat it in front of the TV with a spoon. Nobody is making you consume it in two sittings. You take a fucking scoop and dish some into a bowl. Same with the chips. Nobody’s making you sit there with the bag in your lap. You take out a portion and put the rest away. As for the chocolate, you’re the one who went shopping with me and asked me to buy it, because on my own I don’t buy. . . .”

“So what you’re saying is you just want me to be a fat pig for the rest of my life,” he said.

“I’m just saying that if you are really concerned about it, you could exert some portion control and probably eat what you want without resorting to bulimia.”

“You understand nothing,” he intoned. Then he turned up the car stereo so loud that further conversation was impossible.

4. And finally, like this:

We were sitting on the sofa and watching television—during which he ate half the carton of the frozen soy stuff straight from the container—while his cell phone kept vibrating. And going off. In the course of about twenty minutes, he must have received about as many text messages, and then sent out an equal amount, pausing to tap out the hieroglyphics on the numbers of his ancient Nokia. It was so disruptive that I finally stopped the DVD we were watching. “Do you need to take care of something?” I asked.

“God, I don’t know why I’m getting so many text messages!” he exclaimed. Then, “And they’re all from guys wanting to trick with me!”

I’m still touchy about the way our sexual relationship had fallen by the wayside, so I think I can be forgiven for saying, “Well, that’s quite the burden.”

“This one guy I used to date a long time ago,” he said. “He’s the one from the extremely wealthy family, I think I told you.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, through gritted teeth.

“The one who’s hung really well. Much bigger than you. Anyway. He keeps texting to say he misses me.”

“Well, that’s nice of him,” I managed to say, blandly.

“Then there’s this other one who wants me to drive down to Toledo tonight to see him. And this third guy I used to know a long time ago who just moved back into town. He got back in touch with me recently who keeps telling me how he never should’ve stopped dating me because I was the best thing ever to happen to him. He wants me to go over to his place and hang out tonight and help him unpack.”

It was all I could do to keep from yelling. “THEN WHY DON’T YOU JUST GO OVER THERE THEN?!” Instead, feeling as if I was being baited and refusing to accept it, I mildly replied, “Well, let me know when you’re done with the texts and I’ll start the DVD again.”

He stuffed his phone into his pants.

I was both furious and teary, after he left, a half-hour later, shortly after ten. I’ve been angry and weepy since.

He’s trying to push me away. That much is obvious. I just thought he’d have been smart enough to see what he was doing, understand, and refrain in the future. He might have served me this fiery blast of misbehavior as consolation. He’s trying to convince himself that I’m stupid, and talentless, and a bad influence, and that he has many other options—or on the converse, trying to reassure himself that without me he’s intelligent and capable and desirable. (Which he is, all those those things.) Else perhaps he’s trying to enrage me in a manner that will make me break it off so that he can, in the future, officially blame me for the cessation of our relationship.

Either way, it’s stupid. It’s a waste of time. It’s not fucking worthy of either of us.

I know he hurts. I wish I could protect him from it, even as he bats away my encompassing arms. Even as he kicks and screams and spits at me, I want to soothe away the pain, because I know this behavior isn’t him. It’s his crazy and innermost fears. His anger at being left behind.

He’s howling with pain, and Monday evening was how it came out. However impassive and unprovoked I attempt to keep my facade, I too am howling back, just as loudly.

Writing through my upset makes me realize what I want to tell him, if he continues down this path: Spencer, you’ve only got two more weeks with me. Two weeks, and then I’m gone forever. This behavior isn’t going to make you feel any better in the long run. It’s making me feel like shit now.

I think in the future when you look back, you’ll want to regard the last two weeks of this relationship in a way that does us both proud. Honor our friendship, rather than trample all over it. Yell at me if you want. Tell me how I’m a shit for leaving you. But be honest about what you’re feeling. Don’t play these games.

For the sake of what we had, and what we both loved for a time.

Please.

More...

[chaser]

Since you are walking away from the situation why are you acting so hurt, perhaps you care more than you are willing to admit yourself. How foolish we humans act, honestty with ourselves sometimes goes a long way!

[bottomcub85]

Since you are walking away from the situation why are you acting so hurt, perhaps you care more than you are willing to admit yourself. How foolish we humans act, honestty with ourselves sometimes goes a long way!

This is glib. I'm pretty sure his situation is a little more complex than you're giving him credit for.

[chaser]

Perhaps so, but by his own words he displays much hurt, it is whatever, but completely walking away never solves anything. He indicates that they will never see each other again, it appears that Spencer has feelings that are not completely positive about what is to happen shortly either!

[TheBreeder]

I've discussed how much I care in previous entries about him. There's no secret in that, not in my blog, nor between Spencer and I.

The walking away is inevitable, since I'm moving across the country in three weeks. We've both known it was coming since the first day we started seeing each other.