Target?

Target?





From Target I shuffled over to a recorder recital at my son’s school. My son is nine. Here’s the thing: I went to school there. I performed in that same auditorium when I was nine. Same stage, same curtain, same smell. It jogs ones sensibilities to say the least. I make the best out of a situation where one could be considered a townie. I remember when we first moved into the O.G. house about 10 years ago, this house I was raised in which I bought from my Dad, I was working on a rock record with an up and coming rock band. The lead singer and I got quite close, and we are still now, but we never made love despite an excruciating sexual tension. During this time of getting re-acquainted with my old home and my old home town, I was never there; I was at the studio well into the nights, so I didn’t really feel it. But then my son was born, and in we came into the quaint yet queer community called Old Greenwich. Being a musician, I was home days, and I built a studio off the house where I could work when the work came in. So I was in the unenviable position, as my estranged wife works from home also, and also in the music business, to go to drop offs and pick ups at pre-school and of course the dreaded “concerts”. The fall festival recital, the spring into music celebration, and so on. At these pickups and drop offs I was forced to interact with these things, these “women” as it were, these stick figure blonde bobbed inanities. My first reaction was to want to seduce them of course, but then I was struck, as they politely snubbed me, (for what kind of a man is not in an office on Wall Street?) by the feeling of not being good enough, of being unpopular. This for me was a new feeling, because all through school I was popular with the freaks ‘cause I partied, the jocks because my band played at all the keg parties, and obviously the band crowd. Woman from all these groups saw me as a kind of Jim Morrison, if I may be so bold. An enigma, an artist. And so I had no trouble with popularity or girls. Fast forward in time to 5 years ago, me standing next to Barbie Doll with feted breath from abstaining from food but yielding to a white wine at lunch. And I am unpopular? The truth is, these girls were the cheerleaders, they have always been snotty, and now, with their husbands’ money, their clicks in place, they have no need to talk about something of substance! Who of them could be served by a conversation about art? Music? You’re a musician? Oh my, Oh, my my my. This just won’t do. And so that year, and several years after that, I let myself feel like that guy in high school that the girls turned their backs on because he wasn’t even worth worrying about if he was dignity was blatantly wounded. This had a damaging effect by the way on my sexual identity. Having just come off doing a record with a beautiful young girl who would have, in an instant, jumped into bed with me, I was now faced with feeling like I couldn’t have these girls if I was the last guitarist on Earth.
But back to the most important thing; my beloved Target. I went shopping for my sheets, and my lamps, and my carpets, and my drapes, and my windex, and my paper towels, and my phone, and my soap, but forgot shampoo for some reason, but remembered pillows, but not pillow cases, had the presence of mind to borrow some Fabreeze from Vinnie, but spaced out on light bulbs. And I made my bed and I was happy. And that makes me feel like I am betraying my wife. But this is her doing, no, it is our doing, but this whole thing feels like freedom mixed with regret. Shaken not stirred. But it feels good to drink it. I can’t help but feel guilty that I like it there, at 5 View Street, because I feel free again, and at the hand of my wounded wife, the last person you’d ever suspect as the hero, is the reason I have come alive again. And I’m worried that she will be the victim of her own gallantry, her finest hour will be her undoing. I have moments when I see her being alone, and unhappy, and that makes me very sad, but I have just as many moments seeing her making love to some rich fifty year old divorcee, him devouring her because she is to him young and she is very good in bed.
And of course the newness, the elixir of the sexually satisfied. And so my happiness cannot be real, because it is actually paralleling a new sexual experience. Of course this feels great, I don’t have to live with someone who sees me as a liability. But how long will this last? How long will freedom span into reality?

Woman Target

Woman Target




Women. They have a propensity for manipulation I sometimes think. Perhaps, and I say perhaps; it’s an unconscious thing, but I have become a victim of the greatest manipulation of all time. I remember my girlfriend sat me down one night about TWENTY YEARS AGO at Tuscons, a bar in Greenwich, and she said and I quote “I need for me, to move to the next level in our relationship, but this is not an ultimatum”. End fucking Quote. Not an ultimatum? It’s the biggest one of all time. And so, not wanting to lose her, I with great trepidation agreed to marry her. I didn’t even ask her to marry me, I asked her to get engaged to me on a snowy ramp in Byram on New Years Eve of all things. Actually it’s not far from my new separated husband domicile. And she did in fact marry me, and now, she says, and I quote, “I’m not sure if I can ever love you again like a man, but what’s at stake is so important that we need to find out”. What the fuck am I? A fucking idiot? Not only is the writing on the wall, it is the wall. She wants to come with me and the kids to go to Target to get sheets and pillows and lamps for the separation casa. How sick is this? Making this a family outing is like inviting your friends to witness a suicide. What the fuck is wrong with this woman?
And what is wrong with me that I keep holding on? This is what I ask you, this is the question: am I being desperate because I was dumped first, or do I really want this to work? And either way, I feel in my heart it won’t. And here is where I get angry: I know in my heart she knows she can never love me again like I need her to, but she, a woman, knows, as a master manipulator, that this thing will go a lot easier if we do it in stages. Be it conscious or un, they do what they do, because it is their nature. I am becoming angry at women and I don’t want to be. But will one of you please, for the love of God, prove me wrong? I have never felt so used and so alone as I do right now. And what do I do with this?
I guess I have to shut down. Yes, that’s the ticket. What else can I do? I must become humorless around her, for why does she deserve it? I need to beat her at her own game, and manipulate HER to my unconscious gain. Which is what? My gain? Just to fuck. So that won’t work. So I need a new unconscious gain. I need a new unconscious gain. But I’m an ape, just released out of the glass; I don’t think like this, I’m out of my element. It’s Insidious. The only thing I can think of is to go get my separation sheets on my own. And deny the illusion, the manipulation, and my collusion in this web of lies. So it’s off to Target!

BONGO

Bongo




I have told my son I am staying in a “Club House” for a while, and that we will have lots of fun there. No problem. But he told a friend of his today at school and I’m sure it will get around. And we know that one of those kids is going to say, “Oh, your parents are getting a divorce”. And we will do damage control the best we can. This town is filled with divorces and second and third marriages, there’s just too much money here to stay together. Too much time to want more. But I never thought in a million years, even though sometimes I wanted it, that I would be one of them. They always seemed lost to me. Disoriented. Confused that what had happened, happened to them. And now I walk among them, not legally one of them, but I am one of them. We are vampires walking among the married, ashamed, yet not for being who we are, but for being out of place. Like we took a wrong turn and ended up staying in the wrong town for 20 years. All of a sudden, you, and they, realize, your not one of them, you are an outsider, a stranger, not to be trusted.
A pariah. An anomaly. Having just come from the Bronx Zoo recently I can now relate, even more than before, to the Apes behind the glass. Living in a created environment, a false one, indeed, it mocks them, look, here is a tree….enjoy! Some grass….see? You DO belong here! And those people staring at you day after day, just pretend they’re not there. I’m sure they don’t feel sorry for you Bongo, I’m sure they don’t know something you don’t know. Why would you think this is not the way it is supposed to be? Look, here’s some dirt. See? It’s all good, now shut up and act like a fucking cute little monkey. I saw their eyes; they know it’s a joke. My wife let me get a vasectomy THREE months before telling me she didn’t want to fuck me anymore. Don’t worry, she said, everyone says it’s not so bad. And I did it so we could have sex more without worrying about getting pregnant. That was the plan, our plan. So I cut my balls to try and save our sex life, and she said, “Look, here’s a nice house in a nice suburb, see? Now shut up and act like a husband, oh, and by the way, no more monkeying around for you.”

I’m out of the glass Bongo, but I’m lonely, and I wish you were here.

Cable Guise

Cable Guise




Got my cable installed today at casa de separate’. I’m lying there on my friends old King size bed (it has no sheets yet and my skin cringes as it touches the polyester surface, I thought you would want to know), The cable guy was there for about an hour or so and as he was leaving I had a strange instinct to ask him…”hey, what’s the rush, c’mon stay a while”. It hit me how lonely this has the potential to be. When I came home, or I guess I need to change the connotation of “home” now, when I came back to Old Greenwich to pick up my son from school, I got a call from my wife, asking how I was doing. I told her it was a bit strange and lonely, and she said she thought she would feel that when she occasionally stayed there. I then informed her she would never know this feeling, because she would be a guest there, like in a bed and breakfast, and in fact she would most probably love getting away from the kids once a week in a little cottage. Who wouldn’t? But it’s not like that for me; I’m gonna be fucking living there. So I have to wonder where this is really headed. I think they call it the best of both worlds. She gets to have me around when needed, or even wanted, but she doesn’t have to deal with all other bullshit in marriage, and I get that too, but she gets to STAY HOME. Throw in the added benefit of no sex which, as we all know, is easier for women, especially women who don’t love you anymore, or should I be more accurate, not IN love with you.
I remember the day that bomb was dropped. We were headed home from visiting friends in Sharon Connecticut, and I sensed something wrong with my passenger. I asked what was wrong and she said, as she always does, nothing. But that day there was something more. Something right at the surface. So I pushed. And boy it came up out of the water and kept going like a tactical nuke being launched from a Sub. She said she was not happy. And she wanted more. She wanted to feel passion again. Naturally, I asked, what 17 year marriage has passion? She said that didn’t matter and that it was what she needed. So I said, what are you saying? And then, the words came. I love you; I’m just not IN love with you.
Thus began the terrible campaign in the war against commitment.