PANDEMIC BLUES (SUMMER).
At the tail end of Spring, I posted Merzbow’s Pulse Demon here on my sister site. I noticed that someone from the New York City / Long Island area liked it and I decided to see who she was.
Hesitation marks. Satanist. Anorexia. Borderline Personality Disorder. Medications. Has an OnlyFans account. Topless Shibari pics- of herself. Too-much-information posts about cream-pies and wanting to fuck some random guy she met who ended up abandoning her to get high with his friends. Wow. For most people, there’s so many red flags waved to say “no” the first time and move on. Amazingly, the t.m.i. - not the self-abuse, Satanism, or BPD - had me say “no”, too, until I found her other page which showed a more leveled side to her. Posts relating to her anxiety and depression issues. The color pink. Cute Japanese cartoon animals, Animal Crossing, and owns animals herself. Her paleness laying on the backyard grass with her long dark flowing hair down her neck and skinny wrists across her purple tee holding her pet rabbit. I re-considered because I empathized and related with some of what she suffered through. It’s May, and if I don’t take it now then I may not have it later. So hand me the dice and let’s fucking roll.
Ruth* posted about doing your 100% in a relationship and I checked it off. A few moments later, she caught me posting something of mine I took from the neighborhood veteran’s park. She messaged me to ask if that’s where I got it from. We finally reached out to each other. Lo and behold…she’s from the very same town I am! In fact, we’ve crossed paths before in that same park on one warm Wednesday before sundown, but we didn’t realize it was each other until after the fact. She’s into darkwave, some noise, the post-punk / d.i.y. aesthetic, noise rock, and introduced me to The Mountain Goats. Overtime she’s disclosed her use of LSD, acid, and getting blackout drunk as coping mechanisms of years-long bullying and social isolation. One story she told me was when she approached Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu) after his Brooklyn Bazaar performance and ended up telling him her life story. Fortunately, no heroin. She’s stayed away from it as half of her friends she’s ever known have perished from it. But most importantly as mental health sufferers we also matched on our worlds of hurt, our worries of opening up and having doors shut in our faces, text anxiety, and remembering that last time we felt excited about something.
At times I was on edge because I’d assume the worst if I didn’t get her texts that night or seen her posting and ignoring me. Not so. We kept in close contact. Intense texting during off-days and breaks, in parking lots and even me laying in the emergency room two days before we met. She’d finally disclosed her Satanist practices which her ma’ hated (no animals sacrificed) and her nudes which she feared would lose my approval. No judgment. She didn’t send me any, just a bathroom selfie of her 5’7” Polish-Jewish self with black curly hair, pouty lips, and large-rimmed glasses. The concepts of re-assurance and honesty made me chance it and open up to her that I’d never did with anyone else that quickly…despite her somewhat shy shortcomings. I was feeling euphoric once again. I now had someone I’d fight for. She was unique and could give me most of what I was looking for in a female.
I saw her post occasional suicidal thoughts and had to intervene on sight, taking no chances. But Ruth assured me everything was OK and were just that - thoughts. On a happier note, she lamented on how she missed riding her bicycle because of how nice her butt looks. She got points for that one. The moment she felt sad about not being at the beach, I went for it and asked to take her. “Sure!” she said. Boxcars! To hear her say that made me feel so fucking good. It meant everything to me. With minimal worry, we were on our way in meeting each other soon.
I absorbed the June moment sitting in my backyard against the fence under the trees, the stars, the moon, and the dark blue night skies. Personal tranquility, promise, and hope segued into something good while the nation was burning from all the civil unrest and pandemic restlessness. Violence, protests, and scorching fires were born from George Floyd’s murder by the police. People none more fed up than ever in lockdown lost their jobs and their livelihoods by witnessing the collapse of their favorite pastimes, venues, and restaurants. All the while an enablist president with a lust for dictatorship, hate, and murdering democracy dead was steering this country towards a fascist state to the point of no return.
* * * * * * * * * *
Wednesday’s here. I wake up, I shower, and have a light breakfast. Fresh clothes are ready to be worn. Buzz, brush, and razor. Take the phone out of its case and polish it up. Wash the car and vacuum it because who knows what type of person she is. 3PM came and I got her text. Ruth and her ma’ were in the neighborhood tending to an injured animal. She gave me her address and told me to be there at 4PM. I’m on my way.
It’s a breezy but silvery day. The weather is in a drab mood, but not enough to tarnish my excitement. Ten minutes, three miles, and some narrow wooded roads east later, I arrive at her house - and it’s about to fall apart. The slightest flick of the match would burn it all down. There’s tin statues of mini-animals and mossy bird fountains all over the place to pony up the storybook charm. No sight of her 20 cats, her bunny, or bird. It’s been five minutes waiting for her to come out. Lord knows what she’s doing but it felt special that’s she putting the finishing touches on herself for me. The front door opens and here comes Ruth. I was very happy how she turned out. Green and white-striped tee, a denim overall mini-skirt and torn black hosiery with rainbow specks and black boots. This is the same girl who’s been posting lewds and Japanese schoolgirl uniform shots? You would never ever know it by looking at her. It’s Irma Langenstein with social media accounts and that 2010′s online edge but she’s still got that weirdness. We trade hellos and smiles, got in the car, and rode west on the service road to the south shore through the salt-and-peppered day.
I was so nervous with her that I couldn’t even form a complete sentence. I felt like I owed her an apology for stepping over some personal boundaries in getting privy about feelings and her hedonistic side. The soft-spoken nerd assured me that everything was OK. The more we spoke, the more things smoothed out and relaxed themselves. We slowly drove as she explained to me about her BPD and gradually went into her interests before we arrived at Gardiner Manor Park.
We cut through the wooden trails to reach the shoreline and walked on the sands, walking by the sea ribbons, discarded shells, and old aquatic artifacts. It was where she told me she attended the same university as I and had friends at the radio station. Who does she know? J-Ro. Everyone knows J-Ro. They’ve worked together at the organic supermarket. What did she get him for last year’s Secret Santa? Sacred Bones’ Killed By Deathrock. Wow, she knows what’s up. We backtracked through the woods where she opted for the long way out and worked out because I wanted my money’s worth. She saw me constantly being pinched by the mosquitoes, and kind enough of her to actually care and hose me down with her organic citrus repellent.
We had time after showing each other our SE’s to drive to Argyle Park still under the cool cloudy skies. We circled twice around the large duck pond dodging both the goose smears on the asphalt and people fishing off the elevated walkways, aiming to fill the air with nothing-talk to make up for the awkward silences between us. My mind’s racing, my breathing heavy, and my pace almost couldn’t keep up with this quick little walker. I’m exhausted, she’s exhausted, and so was whatever daylight Wednesday had left. It’s 7PM. Time to drive the mouse home.
One amusing point of our day was while driving back east on Main st. we heard screetching behind us. I look up and there’s a group of people on the sidewalk looking over to see what just happened. In my rear-view I saw an SUV that blew a light penetrated into a parked car. Ruth and I slowed down and looked at each other mortified to our chests. Had we been 5-10 seconds slower, we might’ve been casualties. We still drove north towards her house, up Railroad Ave. and past what used to be the old Vinyl Paradise which was now George’s Vintage Clothing & Records.
I’m with a woman whose Williamsburg-mind would fit more in the city than on the island. Ruth had many friends to rely on in case of shelter and recently celebrated with a close friend who found an apartment in Queens, while she just returned from a winter job in Denver and came home with no car, no job, and no money in the bank. I wasn’t fazed at all. Along the way she’s disclosed to me that she’s had ten straight years of relationships lasting from five months to two years with at most four-month gaps of being single in-between. She’s been undefeated in the break-up department because she gets sick of them. All of them. No reason needed.
We pull up in front of her house. We have our final smiles and say our goodbyes to each other. I see her walk in through the front door and I slowly drive away. I arrive home and came down sad that our day ended. It shouldn’t have. With my luck, a day like this should’ve never happened, but somehow it did. And now I’m wrapping my head around it. I take off my black shirt. The aura of her citrus repellent overlapping mine of basil, black pepper, and cedar on fresh woven cotton lingered on for what would forever burn in my mind of our day together. I had a great time with someone who was on my level and wasn’t like anyone else from the island. That was capped off when I just got a happy positive text from Ruth: she had a great time, and it was nice meeting me.
* * * * * * * * * *
I gave it a few days to see how Ruth was doing. I texted her and asked her if she could go to George’s Vintage- one day with me.
“Sure! I’d love to go!” she exclaimed. So far so good. Then I asked her when she was available. No return text. My attempt to see her again fell on deaf ears. That’s odd. I didn’t want to push it, so I waited a couple of days and asked her again. She did somewhat reply, saying that she couldn’t talk because she had friends over and wasn’t able to make plans. There were times during my lunch break at work where I would shoot her a random text or music video like she had with me before. No response. Something wasn’t right. I had a feeling that things were deteriorating between us.
I saw that she just re-blogged something - about playing on people’s feelings, enticing them for sex and weed before abandoning them and never seeing them again. #that’s totally me! lol, she tagged. Are you kidding me? Is she really serious? Displaying her intentions for all to see about taking people for a ride and leaving them at the curb is all a silly game to her? Absolutely disgusting. I felt it, because this could be something she was setting up for me. The tension was tightening up and pulling away from the center. The metal thick-gauge wire was fraying and was about to snap apart. I said nothing about it to her and rolled the dice again on future plans, hoping she would snap out of it. I texted her if Thursday or Friday was good. She replied and said that she couldn’t. She had other plans to celebrate a couple of birthdays in with her family. I wasn’t going to hustle it, and with respect I told her to have fun and have a good time.
That week, New York State announced that all restaurants would re-open providing safety measures were implemented. I had no work that Thursday. I was craving for Japanese food after three months of total closures across the board. I went to Commack to sit down and chow down as much as I could for a couple of hours. I tried out half of everything they offered on the menu. All the red tuna and salmon sushi rolls, sashimi, miso soup, dumplings, fried rice, noodles with peanut sauce, and lychees I could possibly eat to the point of almost passing out. I tapped out and asked for the bill, paid my way out and left the restaurant almost unable to walk to my car. I got home and took a two-hour nap to relieve the food coma I was suffering from. It’s 6PM. The gym was still under lock-down and I felt like I didn’t accomplish enough for the day. Off to the neighborhood park I go.
My visit started like any other. Arrive with my SE in hand with my headphones and start walking around. Dark sounds of grimy, electric dancehall were in my ears as I minded my own business and wandered around the crooked wooden pathways. A group of people caught my peripherals during my travels. I look to my left to see a group of three people and…Ruth? She recognized me and waved hello in my direction. Such a…surprise to…see her? My mind knew something was wrong and couldn’t help to ask why she wasn’t with her family. That was my first instinct.
“Hey, Ruth…weren’t you supposed to be with your family?” I asked. “Yeah, but we’re taking a different shortcut through the park to meet our other friends!” she smiled. I took a pounding one-two punch. I was baffled when two and three equaled zero and nothing added up right. I saved face and said goodbye to her and the two others she was with.
“It was nice meeting you!” said one of her friends as I walked away from them; a verbal smack in the face disguised as a sweet, pleasant manner. I left the park feeling disposed and thrown out. What a dirty low-down tactic for someone to blatantly lie to me and smile in my face like I was nothing. Never had I felt so dejected and disgusted with anyone. She turned into a totally different person, othello-ing me in only a week’s time. There was nothing I could do except to sit.
She purposely stayed off for a few days until after the 4th of July weekend because she knew I wanted to make plans with her. Now here’s a new update on her leveled blog: blow-job posts and golden showers are her new fetish. Great to know. I asked myself why we’re still following each other. I had to get out of there and cut my losses before I discovered other things about her I didn’t ask for. At this point I don’t even know who she was anymore, so I unfollowed her. Ruth, being self-conscious of people leaving her, saw it. She finished the job and unfollowed me in return with the quickness. Snake eyes. Money’s over. Good-bye and good riddance to each other.
How did I fuck this one up? It could’ve been our shaky nervous start, the age difference, my openness, or pushing the accommodations too hard. But she didn’t tell me. Why would she? It’s more fun to keep people dazed in circles guessing. The games and deceit, careless abandon, moments that would never be, losses accruing, and what was once OK now non-acceptable made the hurt-avalanche come down hard. My anxiety, depression, and loneliness returned with it. If there was one moment in life that I was right the first time, it’s this one. Kevin Parker said it best: “the less I know, the better”. Had I stuck to my guns before, then none of this would’ve happened. But no. Common sense flew right out the window because Summer was at stake. It came down to risk versus reward and I lost.
Days after the fact and my mind was keeping itself busy over-calculating and over-thinking what hurt the most. I still couldn’t get her out of my head. Envisioning her getting shaken and rocked by some other luckier undeserving guy. What in Christ’s name she’s posting on her money accounts kept me up at night because I went out of business and who knows above what I’ve done to have it all collapse. The intense flares in my mind lit vividly and radiantly thinking of what I could’ve had with her and lost.
Before we met, I read the risks as much as I could and did my 100% to support her. I got all the difficult questions out of the way about her kinks, drug use, and t.m.i. because I wasn’t going to revisit another life-changing personal collapse like what happened before: the Brooklyn goth girl who gave me my latest heartbreak that forever changed me for the worse. Since then, I pay an even heavier price for strikes and losses these days which, adjusted to inflation, I’m still struggling to pay off. This time, I took everything I saw at face value instead of ignoring the ugly truths shielded by the beautiful lies. I already knew at first sight, so why pretend to be naive and ignore the cards on the table? Because I asked, my situation with Ruth didn’t hit hard as before. Yet, I underestimated how severe her instability was and that’s why I’d never thought it’d backfire that quickly. Did she intend on turning against me all along? Did she know what she was doing? Am I right to feel hurt and upset as I should? How fucked up was it that what we both suffered through were the very same things she ultimately used against me? Does she really hate me that much? Can I blame her? It may be her mental duress that already made her feel sick of me like the other men she’s been with, but what’s the difference? Sufferers do what they do with no apologies like non-sufferers do, just like Satanists need little or even no reason at all to go for the kill as much as non-Satanists who are as naturally heartless when they tell others to fuck off; compacting the sting of being suddenly tossed aside so quickly like an option while I’ve made them a priority.
My anxiety / depression drove its fangs deeper into my skin and almost right to the bone. The venom induces black spots, obscura, cataracts, and tinnitus. Illusions, juxtapositions, and reversed images. Everything made me lose focus on myself and the beauty in things I’m after. It’s scrambled the ideas that gave me value in myself and separate myself from the others. I couldn’t see and experience things others were enjoying because my mind was on overdrive, scrambling to find answers or imagining all the relentless regret, false constructs, failures, catch-22’s, contradictions, double standards, and fear of being left behind. My memory was failing on me because my mind was burnt out on fighting these intense obstacles that clouded my vision.
Anxiety / depression and BPD are such demons; always behind the controls to make one raging hot or on total shutdown. No matter how hard I shake them off, they never let go. Look around in this dystopian America I live in; the three-ring circus politics, the constant barrage of lies and defeatist news producing ubiquitous toxicity. The self-demoralization and -devaluation from friends, family, and co-workers. Social media, dating-site pitfalls, repetition re-enforcement, the quarantine and isolation have all lowered human emotional morale. I’ve come to realize that my lifetime threshold of tolerance for drama, rudeness, and being taken advantage of has way exceeded its limits. I’m sick and tired of being disappointed, mistreated, and broken. But as I learned dealing with mental illness, it’s out of my hands. There’s no end to it in sight. Not where I’m from.
I’ve seen a huge push for mental health awareness along with a growing urgency for it to be more inclusive and less ostracized in society’s eyes. Unlike my dad who used to attack everything that moved, I confided to my surviving family who listened with welcoming ears. Friends whom I can count on one hand stopped and took the time to listen to me unconditionally. Followers of mine opened themselves up to me about their emotional struggles and that support went both ways. Everyone else who saw me down on my luck picked me up with no judgment because I chose the right ones. (Save for my general manager who seemed concerned about my well-being but was really interested in how far I gotten with her.) Some of them warned me to issue common sense next time and to stop at red flags instead of speeding past them - doing so to see the good in people would certainly cost me later.
Knowing me, I would’ve kept going because she was more than I had: nothing. There are nights I still think of her and sympathize with her hellish struggles. We should’ve been supporting and sympathizing. Instead, we despise each other. We have our own reasons. I can’t ignore the fact that she acted spitefully. I’ve been hurt way too many times but she didn’t see it, and those effects still linger to this day. Sadly, in Long Island’s disposable world of dating and meeting people, it’s all or nothing. No in-between, no gray area, no room for error, no negotiations. Once it’s over, it’s over. And after all that happened, I don’t regret meeting her. Not one bit.
* * * * * * * * * *
Every evening after my workout session, I sit by the lakeside for peace of mind and meditation. Come 6-7PM I’ll watch families, couples, and groups of friends stroll along the decks and sandy shorelines under the setting sun behind the trees. The bright yellow sunbeam streams are blocked by the trees surrounding the water all around as the horizon turns different dim shades of gray, orange, turquoise, and dark blue morphing by the goodbye sun; peeling back all shades of light to reveal the moon hanging overhead. A car full of young teens pull into the parking lot behind the lake with The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” blaring, the new Summer hit sensation. The daily treks through my neighborhood to the trails with an iPhone full of post-punk and d.i.y. grasping the aesthetic are over. I can never return. What a waste that I can’t enjoy myself in the very town that I live in, that is, unless I want to chance re-opening new wounds and enjoy feeling sick to my stomach, running into friends-turned-strangers who threw me away.
It’s 2AM Monday morning. I’m in my own spacious backward sitting on the fresh cut grass away from the swimming pool. The full moon smiles down on me as it chases Saturn and Jupiter. Faint trails of clouds suspend themselves against the clear hazy milky skies. I hear the rushes of vehicles riding down the highway that’s 300 feet away from my home but the streams and perpetual frequencies of chirping crickets are closer proximity and priority.
And now, tonight's news: the Brazilian woman from the radio station is out vacationing on a yacht with her new boyfriend who's all smiles and they're having the time of their lives. A goth-girl acquaintance is raving about her new b.f. and how she's screaming up and down the block telling everyone how much of a great guy he is. The ginger with the burning red hair, big brown eyes, and freckles just put up pics- of her boyfriend whose arms are wrapped around her with this hot-shit look on his face. Meanwhile, I'm sitting here feeling worthless while all of this is going on as the world keeps rotating without my input. Charli XCX & Sky Ferreira’s “Cross You Out” and Grime’s “Violence” run burning hot and full of euphoric energy from my iPhone right to my head. In A Dramatic Gesture’s “Basic Aerobic” plays right after, a track that took me back to when I had more promise between us.
But any time I think of how left-field The Mountain Goats sounded, it’ll remind me of her. I have forever quit them. Now those sounds are tainted by bad experiences, cruelties, and large pills hard to swallow. What a disgrace that it’s summer and there’s no one to share any moments with. No one to stay up with at night to talk about favorite music artists, the state of consciousness and well-being, or prying my mind wide open and say what I’m thinking or feeling - without repercussions or feeling demonized and vilified.
Who knows where she is or what she’s up to. Is she sleeping her precious daylight away? Did she find another guy to share her next drug journey with, or what sexual acts is he putting herself through now that she’s ready to go? All I know is she’s having a winning Summer. I'm not.
