brooklyn408

This is the second and final part of "everyone gets what she wants." Again, it's fiction, made up, just a story.


For a while, before they moved away, I thought maybe, just maybe, I could reach an agreement with my girl and her lover. The Other had seen me up close, had faced for the first time-- in a much more dramatic way than she had ever imagined--the brute fact of my existence. Surely she would at least consent to my occasionally seeing my girl? But she held fast, with lawyerly zeal she enforced the promise she had extracted from me. She had cunningly turned my stubborn hard-on, which I had brandished with such pride, into her own decisive weapon. And my girl, what came of the fierce independence that inspired her to abandon our so hetero, so confining relationship, which, she claimed, hinged on the principle of sexual property? My little De Sades willful desire to fuck whom she wanted, when she wanted had been crushed to dust by her passion for The Other. My girl, never a stickler for consistency, was whipped. Only once, in the months before their move, did I lure her away for a secret date. She was so nervous and conscience-stricken that she couldnt enjoy sex. She assured me that she loved me and always would. I begged her to stay, to leave her girlfriend and return to me. I knew there was something horribly final in my appeals, that because of my own pride and respect for her decisions I could never repeat them. We wept bitterly, she pronounced herself dreadfully confused, and she left.

Things had changed for me. The doomed-romantic pose that had sustained me through the first phase of the breakup had soured. That attitude relies on a degree of hope. Our little mnage had squeezed the hope out of me. The image of my girl lapping thirstily at her girlfriends pussy while I gave it to her: That said it all.

After they moved away, I tried to forget, I really did. I didnt call, I didnt write, I created no pretexts to visit San Francisco. I blocked my babys e-mail address, and I vowed to ignore any San Francisco number that appeared on my caller ID. I resolved to abandon them to the rigors of coupledom, to shit-streaked toilets and weekend video nights and piles of dirty dishes that can neither be washed nor tolerated. To distract myself from my obsession, I started to take seriously my dreadfully boring new job as editor of a financial Web site. Bouncing between a beige, windowless cube and a beige, windowless conference room, I edited like a perfectionist, I slaved over the prose in my own articles, I listened intently while idiots babbled at meetings and I responded in kind. I met for after-work drinks with the work crew. I drank with the dot-com hipsters, the Russian tech-support guys, the married sales types who commuted from Jersey and Connecticut. I despised them all. I pounded through Prospect Park on punishing runs. I read loveless post-war fictionPynchon, Gaddis, that crew. I set my alarm for 5:00 a.m. and tried to write my own fiction. I entered the banal and atrocious world of dating.

How completely did I fail to forget? Youre reading the result of my coffee-addled twilit literary efforts. As for dating, the women I met andvery rarelybedded sought a soul mate, and once oh God even a husband; I sought my dear and lost girlfriend. Disappointment, larded with guilt and sometimes with rancor, was the inevitable result. Everything, in the end, dissolved and reconstituted itself as the quest for Her. The idea of finding a new girlfriend filled me with dread. Serial monogamy, the planned obsolescence of relationships, is a sham, a flimsy product of the consumer culture it ostensibly means to defy. My girl was unique, not disposable, irreplaceable even in or especially in New Yorks vast singles bazaar. I began to see it as a slave marketa market in human flesh, in soulsand I fled it in fear.

Forgetting having proven impossible, I surrendered myself to memory. I reread old notebooks, stared at old pictures, played music we had enjoyed together. Can memory redeem a lost past? Proust says yes, but it took a chance encounter with a fancy cookie to trigger his heros thousand-page redemption. I could find no analogue for Prousts shell-shaped confection. Memory only mocked my present, exposed it as hollow, dull, empty. In short, I wanted my girl backI missed her--and despite her omnipresence in my consciousness, she was gone, gone, gone, like the lamented dead are both present and definitively absent.

I conjured an absurd plan, less spectacular than the fatal threesome idea, but not exactly something a therapist could endorse. Not long before she moved out of the apartment, my girl and I had spent a languid, bitter, and incredibly sexy two weeks in Puglia, the heel of Italys boot and the secret repository of many of its charms. It was there that she had pressed her case for moving out. I decided to take the two-week vacation that my horrific job so generously allowed me and return there, retrace our path, and find a way there to exorcise the demons that tortured me. Maybe in a cup of espresso, a glass of wine, a dish, a view, a swim, a fuck, I would find the elusive compound that would bring my girl back to life for me. To make matters more ridiculous, the one-year anniversary of the mnage fell precisely at the midpoint of my trip. It was madmans stuff, really. What could I have hoped to gain from such an adventure? Shouldnt I have gone some place completely new? I mocked and excoriated myself as I planned the trip, but that in no way impeded my meticulousness.

Rome, where my plane landed, nearly killed me. The beauty of the architecture, aged stone bathing in spring sun, fell heavily upon me. Beautiful women, done up in tiny miniskirts and high-heeled shoes with razor-sharp tips, buzzed and roared past me on their Vespas like wasps. I made a pilgrimage to Caf St. Eustachio, which makes what may be the worlds greatest espresso and where my love and I had rubbed shoulders and cooed after a memorable fuck. The espresso was typically voluptuous, a lovely chocolate-like bitterness enveloping but not killing a feint but stubborn undercurrent of sweet. As I sipped I dreamed of my girl and in my reverie I spilled my half-filled cup. Before I could react a barman produced a towel, cleaned the mess, and ordered the man behind the machine to make me another. Soon a new cup appeared before me with a bang and a brisk prego. I downed it in a gulp, thanked the barman, and took to my heels. Rome was too dense with beauty for a heart as jangled and isolated as mine. The beauty of its espresso alone made me sad, the way a sunset or a jutting mountain can be like a knife in the heart when youre in a certain mood. I needed to head southa flawed plan, considering the beauty I knew awaited me there.

I spent one night wandering Romes streets and woke up early the next day, having slept precious little. I couldnt resist another trip to Caf St. Eustachio, which broke my heart again, and then it was off to catch a train to Puglia. A dull ache caused by emotional exhaustion and sleeplessness weighed on me, and the espresso only seemed to magnify it. The ant-bed chaos of the train station seemed an uncomfortable mirror of my addled brain. On the train I sat next to two chubby American college girls who chatted incessantly about the dramas of their year abroad. Across from me were two young Italian businessmen, impeccably turned out in linen suits, and a lovely Italian girl, probably a student. What could they think of us, we leaders of the free world jaunting through their homeland as if it were an amusement park? There faces said little. They looked through us if they looked at us at all. I buried my head in the Herald Tribune, but found no solace there. I wondered what the fuck I was doing in Italy, and then failed to imagine any other place I could be. Lovely hills rolled by unapologetically, tiny village train stations thundered past, their few lonely, waiting passengers zipping by in a slapstick dumb show. Existence is a fraud, I told myself, a paupers drunken dream. I faded into a light and fitful sleep, even though I could still taste espresso in my mouth.

At some point the train arrived in unremarkable town of Brindisi, Puglias capital, where I was to rent a car. The towns homeliness, its squat, crumbling, post-War buildings oddly comforted me. I wondered whether I shouldnt shuck all my plans and just hole up in some horrid little hotel. My girl and I never did this, I could tell myself, as I ate in some ugly but probably quite excellent trattoria. And we never did this, either, I could add, promenading up some sad little street. But that wouldnt do, would it? I piled my minimalist luggage in the trunk of a tiny car, and headed to the farm land south of Brindisi. My destination was the 17th century farmhouse, plunked down amid olive and fruit groves where just miles from the Adriatic sea, where my girl and I had spent four days The place was a working olive farm that rented a rooms to tourists looking to consume a little rusticity, a little authentic Italian countryside.

It was in our little bedroom there, as well as on the beach close by, that she had laid out her plan to move out of our apartment, to leave me in search of more independence, more autonomy. Oh, how I cried in that dark little bedroom, while she held me and the sun burned furiously outside! Thats what I remember about that leg of the trip, the diabolic unforgiving sun and my resolute, on-topic girl. Oh how I had her there, how I fucked her desperately as if the sheer pleasure of fucking could make her stay with me!

By the time I arrived it was almost dark. The unpaved road from the highway wound through a vast olive grove. My windows down, I could smell wildflowers in the air, a refreshingly new sensation, because I had visited before in high summer, when all the flowers had burned away. But the olive trees, thick, squat, and twisted with age, were crushingly familiar. One bright night after two much wine I had chased my girl into the grove. Laughingly, in love, we ended up fucking like teenagers under one of those old warhorses, she bent over and clinging to a knotty limb. My heart sank at the memory, and as I drove through I realized I would that very night go out in search of that tree.

I remember now. I am standing by an aged olive tree, according to the innkeeper as much as 1000 years old. Maybe it was this one, I muse, running my hand along its coarse bark. Its nighttime, around midnight, the moon is fierce, and Im drunk on white wine. I was wearing a swimsuit, she a little wrap skirt and a halter. We had made a risotto of squid in its ink, and somewhere toward the bottom of the second bottle of local white wine our mood had turned jolly. We were laughing at some stupid old story, we were high on great food and wine, and we started kissing. Oh god, I see her now, her body bronzed and hair bleached from her manic suntanning, I dont care what shes been telling me all day, shes my baby. Suddenly, she turns on her heel and skips out of the bedroom into the night. I can hear the cicadas, I can feel the built-up heat of the day diffusing into the darkness, the clean ocean air, the somewhat gloomy and stately olive trees stand motionless against a wispy breeze. There she goes, my baby, skipping into the moonlight, into the olive grove. I go after her, she zigzags to dodge me. She makes a few juke moves around one particularly gnarled old specimenI think it might be this oneand lets me catch her. She melts in my arms, her kisses are sweet, shes got my cock in her hand. In my haste to get my hands down her little skirt the thing collapses and falls away. I kiss her desperately, stroking her bare, sun-kissed ass. I need to feel what it feels like to be inside her, now, as soon as possible.

Lets go back now, I pant.

Let me show you how we do it in the country, purrs my farm-raised princess. Ive never heard sweeter words.

Its completely quiet, save for the cicadas, theres not a soul about. Its late for the country, past midnight, and the only lights emanating from the distant farmhouse are our own. She pulls my cock out of my trunks, and I move to take them off. No, keep as much on as possible, you never know when someones going to come, she says.

What about you?

One of us should be decent.

My baby bends over, presenting her ass to me like an offering and spreading her legs. The world, which has been crumbling under my toes for days, is suddenly solid, pure, beautiful. At times like this, beauty is redeemed, made whole, drained of heartbreak. Oh how I slid in, how I watched her neck, her hair, the curve of her back, her hips, her ass, under the moonlight while I slid back and forth in her drenched pussy! Even now, alone and drunk under this crazy old tree, I can feel her smooth hips under my hands, I can feel the pulsing of her asshole as slide my finger in. Shes lost in pleasure, drunk, groaning loudly and grinding her pussy into me, gripping the trunk tightly. I feel like I can fuck forever, I want the world to stop, to freeze.

I dont know how to pay tribute to this gorgeous ass in front of me other than to give it what I know she loves. I lay a hand on a bobbing check and then raise my cupped palm high and bring it speeding down. Whack! She groans assent and soon the air resounds with my slaps. Shes pushing back hard and working her clit furiously with one had, using the other to steady herself on the tree. Oh, her plump, sweet ass, reddening under my slaps while her pussy sucks my cock! Why cant this be existence, why must it be but a lost trace? Finally, she explodes, but Im too hot to come with her. My dear sweet girl finishes me with expert handwork while sucking my tongue, and I have fallen in love all over again.

The tree, the wine, the nightthey had done the trick. Memory flashed up before me, the dead had sprung to life. I felt something like happiness as I staggered back to my room, and collapsed into the bed I had shared with my baby. I slept better than I had for weeks, months. I dissolved into a dark pool of forgetting.

Morning brought desolation. Through squinting hangover eyes I saw everything. I had literally become a loser; I had lost bitterly, and I was reveling in my defeat, like a sad drunk writhing in his own vomit. What the fuck was I doing here, in this place and alone; why was I retracing a journey that was, after all, disastrous, since it marked the end of our relationship? But I didnt stop there. What had I become in New York--a functionary, a glorified clerk scribbling and editing articles that meant nothing to me? I hated everything, I deplored my existence. I managed to crawl out of bed, get dressed, throw my scant belongings and get into the car. I drove south to the sea, the closest I had ever come to the Mediterranean, birthplace of Western civilization. I found a rocky opening along the shore and parked my car on the side of the road. I made me way toward the water through the hard black jutting rocks. The sun lashed above, but a cool breeze troubled the gulls trolling for fish amid the choppy waves. I found a flatish rock down close to the water, close enough to dangle my feet in when the waves lapped up. The water was still too cold to swim in, but it felt delicious against my bare feet. I watched the azure of the ocean and the azure of the sky meet in a hazy line deep in the distance.

This is where it all started, I reflected, 2500 years, the birthplace and graveyard of empires and ideas. The Punic Wars, the birth of Christianity among a strange band of monotheists to the east Wasnt this the water, more or less, that Christ walked on? What a load of crap. I spit into the impossibly blue and clear swirl, and then took a sip of of the sea, to see what Western culture tasted like. Rimbaud declared that I sat beauty on my knee and found her bitter. I drank of the ooze from which the Western idea of beauty emerged and found it strangely bracing, in its briny way.

I thought of what had come of it all, of New York, capital of western culture, with all of its idiocies and busy work, its businesspeople and dotcommers and strivers and artists, all hot after the dollar and after glory. Striving, striving, striving, wheezing and shuffling like rats in a dumpster. I had landed on the fringes, in a modest-paying job that offered neither glory nor pleasure. I had taken the Western ideal of love seriouslywhy? and was shocked to find myself in the trash heap. I thought of all the married people, the couples walking arm in arm in the park, pushing strollers, snaking into Starbucks for huge cups of warm milk barely bothered by a hint of coffee. Why had I not thrown my lot more completely with them, these fit, self-satisfied citizens, the most prodigious (and ruinous) consumers in the history of the world? I didnt know, exactly, but I knew that I hated them. Maybe I needed a lobotomy, or a prescription, or an SUV, or a wife, or a child.

I knew I had to go clear. I had failed to create my own life in New York, and the pre-fab life that awaited me made my stomach hurt. I couldnt go back to that, I couldnt get on the subway again in the morning or run in Prospect Park. I still loved Brooklyn, its grit and its brownstones and its relative freedom from the worst abominations of consumer culture, but I couldnt abide all the pasty stroller pushers who were moving in from Manhattan. However it had startedand its origin didnt look too bad, on this rocky beach on Italys heel, where the Greeks and the Romans and other dominators had alighted, with the blue water dancing under the sunWestern culture had gone off, like heavy cream in a warm fridge.

I decided to abandon my Puglia plans and head south, to where I had never been before: Noto, a Sicilian town that promised agreeable baroque architecture and (more to the point, for me), what many consider the countrys greatest bakery, the Caf Sicilia. I would return to New York only to sell my apartment, and then move to Noto to apprentice at the caf, for free if necessary. I would spurn my struggles with the Word for labor that employs all the senses, and the intellect, too. And in place of the pleasure of love I would embrace the glory of Sicilys dessert table. Grinning, happy for the first time in ages, I hopped back into my car and plunged south into Italys depths.