…But I Play One on TV

“Hello, this is Sailor Man. You might remember me from such productions as ‘Our Wedding’ or its mad-cap sequel: ‘Our Honeymoon’. If you are receiving this message, you might be my wife, although it has been a long time and I may require a photo identification to verify the veracity of this claim. Should you even remotely recall our relationship, no matter how vague, please do call me at…..”

I bit the bullet and turned off the land line months ago, during the elections, when I was being plagued by political robo-calls and collect calls from prison searching for some whackjob named Jason. And as much as I loathe cell phones, I appreciate their utility, not enough to remember to turn them on after having turned them off during class, mind you, but I appreciate them nonetheless.

I must have had the phone off since last Friday as when I turned it on this morning there were a dozen messages. Not all from Sailor, but the last one, printed for you above, was the most recent and biting.

Bad dog! Bad dog!

It’s what goes through my head when I know I’ve fucked up. Puppy dog, big as she is, cringes and shrinks magically before my eyes whenever I rebuke her. So that’s the image I have of myself when I screw up. Time is precious, any time with Sailor, even if it is on the phone, is precious too and I missed it. He’s at sea, must take advantage of any and all cell phone range.  Missed him. Again. Damn.

Hey, Sailor, Make Hay

Believe it or not, I learned this poem sophomore year of Catholic high school. To date, this remains one my favorite naughty poems. Do keep in mind this is posted by woman whose husband is away at sea…

(ponder,darling,these busted statues
of yon motheaten forum be aware
notice what hath remained
–the stone cringes
clinging to the stone,how obsolete

lips utter their extant smile . . . .
remark

a few deleted of texture
or meaning monuments and dolls

resist Them Greediest Paws of careful
time all of which is extremely
unimportant)whereas Life

matters if or

when the your-and my-
idle vertical worthless
self unite in a peculiarly
momentary

partnership(to instigate
constructive
Horizontal
business . . . . even so,let us make haste
–consider well this ruined aqueduct

lady,
which used to lead something into somewhere)

ee cummings

Hey, Sailor…

You know, after all this time, I have no idea if Sailor reads this blog? I’m pretty sure he doesn’t. I know I wouldn’t want to know the inner workings of my twisted mind anymore than was necessary. This blog is best read by strangers.

But Sailor is away on another high-seas adventure. I’ll see him for a few weeks in March and then, not again until July. Such is life of a college student and her mate.

And Valentines Day is this week, I’m feeling all soft and mushy. So I am dedicating this next week of poetry posts to the man I love.

I am deeply, deeply, sorry for this y’all…

Harlem Night Song

Langston Hughes

Come, Let us roam the night together
Singing.

I love you.

Across
The Harlem roof-tops
Moon is shining.
Night sky is blue.
Stars are great drops
Of golden dew.

Down the street
A band is playing

I love you.

Come,
Let us roam the night together
Singing.

Deep Sleep

Sailor Man arrives in town in exactly three hours and while I am thrilled he is coming home, this harkens the cessation of secret single behavior for the time being.

No more moody Easter European piano music at all hours on the stereo. Trashy books will be hidden on the shelf. Seriously, there’s just no explaining to him how I got sucked into this “Twilight” book saga. Dinner time will mean actual dinner again instead of my nightly fare of peanut butter and crackers with a glass of wine. And watching TV and movies online will be limited to just Sunday mornings.

About the only thing I don’t change that irritates Sailor is my tendency to read three books at the same time. Drives him mad, I know, but there’s simply no other way for me. The one thing I don’t compromise on.

And I’m not complaining and this isn’t a “forbidden” type thing, it’s just part of the general compromises one makes when one becomes a “pair”.

Likewise, Sailor has made the same sacrifices. No singing in the house. I love him, but the boy sings off key. No computer games until all hours of the night. No leaving clothes all over the damn place. And a slew of certain boat behavior I’m sure he shelves for the sake of this marriage.

But like the change of the seasons, Sailor will be back on boat at some point, and all those hidden quirks will come raging to the forefront. 

I prefer now to simply think of them as hibernating for the winter.

The Tough Road

Another friend is getting divorced. I’m not surprised. I saw this one coming for sometime. It’s sad though, they are basically good people, lazy, but good people and the real reason they’re getting divorced is that it’s easier for them to walk away than to try to work on their problems. Problems they haven’t addressed, put on the perpetual back burner, and have now festered to the point of being gangrenous. Problems that weren’t insurmountable.

While I’m disappointed in and for these friends, I’m also pretty pissed off at them too. Sailor Man and I have been together over seven years and most of that time has been spent apart. He’s a sailor, so he goes off and sails. I’m a landlubber, so I stay on land and lub. We’ve missed special occasions together, holidays, anniversaries, illnesses, traumas, and a million small moments. We’ve spent, equally, the same amount of time apart as we have together.

And it’s not easy. The fondness for absence is occasionally quite a big amount of bullshit. Particularly when you move around like we do. Every few years it’s a new town, new job, new friends, no friends… I miss him when he’s gone, but I also make a point to enjoy the time by myself. I make sure I have a life with him but also a life away from from him. It’s how you cope. Before moving to Erie, we lived apart for 14 months, which royally sucked, but we got through it.  We did the work.

And Sailor Man coming home doesn’t automatically fix things either. I get so used to living as a singular person, it’s often pretty frustrating and damn difficult to plug back into that life-of-two-mode upon his return. I’ve established schedules and habits and systems that he doesn’t automatically follow or fit into and sometimes it’s like trying to push an elephant through a dog door. But we we make it work.

Consider Rudy Guiliani. 4 ex-spouses between he and his current  wife. And people want this man to run our country? While I’m not naive enough to believe that a flawed person can’t be a great leader, I’m also not gullible enough to believe that a man who can’t honor a commitment to one person-twice– is going to honor a commitment to 300 million people. He might as well be Liz Taylor at this point because she wouldn’t get my vote either.

I’ve seen people get divorced for a hell of a lot less than what Sailor Man and I have been through and I personally blame it on the wedding industry. All this ridiculous time and expense being placed on this one day in life with absolutely zero thought towards the life afterwards.

My friends were like that. I recognized it then. I stood up in their wedding wearing the ugliest gown I have ever had the misfortune of having to buy for the most expensive, overblown, and ridiculous event I have ever witnessed. They were so into the wedding and so not into talking about joint banking, life insurance, children, in laws, household chores, money and the millions of other things people have to fucking talk about before they get married.

The point I’m trying to make here is that a wedding does not automatically equal or amount to a marriage and it’s about damn time some people started realizing it.