In just 2 months, the life I knew has been obliterated. I search for the words to express that, but besides pain there is nothing. Actually. I wish there was pain. Just numbness. I sit here in a daze, not writing particularly well just thoughts and emotions fighting with God asking why her? What has she done to deserve? Is being with me so bad that she had to be punished physically?
No one’s saying it to me, but they don’t need to. I feel it. I know I am being watched with the wonder, did the constant stress of being in this relationship cause this? What other explanation is there for someone so young?
Praying to the God so frequently that now only word goes out to him: Please. As in, please change this. Please stop this. Please fix this. Please cure her. Please give it to me. Please stop. Please forgive me. Please let me take this on. PLEASE.
Nothing else comes except the numbness, wishing her pain was mine, wanting her life to be mine. She doesn’t deserve this. No one does. Why her? Why not me?
I look up and hear nothing. Please. Nothing.
Life as I know it is over. Nothing remains. Just the pain.
1) Remember grabbing KFC in Iran as a weekly ritual and going to the park (5ys)
2) first day in boarding school in India, I had peed the bed and was ashamed (8yrs old)
3) arriving in london to stay with relatives with my oldest sister (10 years old)
4) driving from the airport towards my parents after not seeing them (12 years old)
5) Being humiliated in my 7th grade english class because the teacher felt my English speaking skills werent up to par, and her being unsure if I would pass the class.
6) Getting on the volleyball team and realizing I was a bench player, getting subbed in and my only shot was tipping the ball in and scoring for the team (14 years old)
7) remembering that I followed Sumita (my middle sister) into almost everything she signed up for writing class, student congress, human relations camp, india boarding school
8) Returning to india after receiving green card, and seeing my grandfather for the last time before he passed away (18 years)
9) my first published story “Rain Fire” edited by a dear family friend who recently passed
10) Winning the National Conference of Teachers of English award (included a recommendation from the English teacher who didn’t think I would pass.
I remember being empty. Time ticking away, coffee getting cold and me just empty. It’s as if I had no memories, no past. And then I remembered the no. Mrs. Maruna didn’t think I would ever pass 8th grade English class. I looked up into her unsmiling face, looking for understanding. Nothing. The redness of my shame circled around my cheeks but hidden by the browness of my skin, it just squeezed my heart and soul.
I was single, young, and horny. We chatted online for a few minutes, and after a few sexual innuendos, decided to take our activities offline and meet up. I am ashamed now at my sluttiness, and willingness to meet a complete stranger just to satisfy myself but really not that ashamed to be zooming down on the freeway to meet her at 3am. She had left the door open as we had discussed. In hindsight, it made sense why she did. I shoved the door open, immediately banged my leg on the bed, and to hide the pain told her I needed to take a shower. Perhaps my only concern for safety was to be hygienic. She was already in bed when I walked out. I climbed right in, but couldn’t quite get comfortable. I kept moving around until she asked if her leg was bothering me? Huh? “I said, is my leg bothering you?” removing the blanket to reveal a steel leg. Holy shit, I was about to fuck the terminator. My penis tried to hide inside of me. The meanness in me proved my immaturity and explained why I never again tried to hook up online.
That was the inspiration for my post about my online adventure gone wrong, and while I wasnt as bad as Tucker is in his many “misadventures” with women in college, I think I came quite close to being Tucker with my comment that I was about to fuck the terminator. The sad part is that I had done a much longer graphic post mocking the girl and myself, and really made it my “Zinger” story. I usually told it to a group of new people, and usually it would draw huge laughter, but then I realized it didn’t make me look very good to my girlfriend to be. In fact, she was disgusted not at the fact that the girl had 1 leg, but the fact that others laughed so hard. That was probably the first time I realized what an asshole I came off to be. Sure, once people got to know me, they knew different. However, my choice to share this story as a starting off point really just made me another Max Tucker. And that’s not something I wished my legacy to be standing on. Especially on one leg. Yea, I havent matured much.
Havent been able to write much lately. Although, I constantly wish I had a machine to transcibe my thoughts which whirl around my brain but refuse to come out when I actually sit down to write. It’s as if my mind is still fighting the idea that I am going to leave my current life as General Counsel and become a writer. The thought seems to scare us both.
But I know I must sit down, must stop worrying about the dog, my breath, or my coffee, and just shove the words our before they get lost in what I call my daily life because if I dont, I will stay the person I am. And for once, it just doesnt sound that appealing. I got the gadgets, I got the tools, I got the girl but what I dont have is passion and the certainty that I am doing what I was meant to do. Write.
I remember knowing that I would be a success one day. I remember that success coming from writing and also from reading. I remember the confidence I had that the words coming out of my made absolute sense and were contributing to the welfare of society The sense that what I wrote mattered, that I would a writer of consequence. Instead of small burst of letters and barely thought of words, I would produce stories of vivid imagination and longing.
I remember my first computer, and being the first among many junior high schoolers to get one, and promising them I would make them a spanish book for $20 a piece and getting $200 from 10 of the honor students and then realizing that I wouldn’t have the time to make or print out individual copies, I went to Kinkos and made 9 copies then submitted the folders.
Mrs. Cano liked what she saw. Neatly printed out, well put together and everything in Spanish, this was what she expected from her best students A great template for others and so the first folder received an A. She then moved onto the next one, and marked it down for missing pages and lack of imagination, then after several others she saw something familiar, almost like a template and it struck her that this was the same folder as the first. Perhaps, it was a reprint by the same student. A quick look confirmed that the notebook had different names, so she pulled it out of the stack and put it aside to deal with later. But then the next folder was the same, and Mrs Cano knew this couldn’t be a coincidence, and did a quick scan through and found 7 more identical folders, but the surprising part was the fact all the names belonged to honor students. What was going on?
I couldn’t decide what to do with the $200 that was cradled under my mattress, It was the most money I had ever earned, and although I was proud of my accomplishment, I knew I couldn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t believe how easy it had been but I had small flutter in my conscience that I would get caught but I ignored that small voice, convincing myself that nothing would go wrong.
Less than inspired today when I got to the keyboard, yet was there for once without hesitation. Realized music and coffee werent on, which explained the silence in my soul. Reviewed the leaving idea and decided that although rushed, it was a good start. Managed only to add 2 more paragraphs after 30 minutes so decided to put it aside and begin the I remember idea. That proved to be even more difficult, and adter 30 minutes I had barely managed a young memory of when I first really cheated by photocopying some essays for all the honor students in my Spanish Class in junior. Wasnt particularly inspired and I think I have written about it before and sadly better.
The only thing I have to cling on is that waking up and writing has become easier but I need to face the fact that I need to start practicing more.
The idea seemed simple enough. Got a new BMW, Drive to New York. Got a map, and my eyes glanced over the country and I wondered why just New York…
A Recently broken up fake marriage, lied to for almost 4 years, I wanted to get away from LA fast but no so fast that I didn’t experience anything. Why drive? Simple enough answer: Why not? Nothing was stopping me but honestly I wasn’t sure myself. It just seemed to fit and make sense since not much else in my life really did I think I just wanted an adventure. I felt locked up and had been indoors too long. Behind bars of a loveless and sexless marriage, I no longer wanted to do the normal thing of travel by flying. Truth be told, I didn’t even know what normal was.
I met her when I had just turned a quarter of a century, felt like my gas tank was quarter full of experience, and it would be good to share 75% of my life with the company of another. She was, pretty, Punjabi and in school. She filled out the mold I had set in my head and so we began dating. No sex of course, but we are indian and we don’t do those sort of things. Some sexual foreplay and plenty of time with each others’ families well actually more with hers because she lived an hour away and me being a gentleman, I didn’t want to make her drive so I would go visit her and since she lived at home with he parents (as I did), I thought it appropriate to be the designated driver to her life. A mistake I would pay for the rest of my life.
San Francisco was added for obvious reasons since it hovered about us, and it made sense to pass it as a launch point also because we wanted to touch Utah (for skiing), glance over Wyoming, set up briefly for some steaks in Nebraska (had heard they were famous for them), and then plunge through Iowa to finally get to a city and state where we actually had friends: Chicago, Illinois. After getting our breath back by shoving it with Crown Royal for 3 days, we would then stumble onwards to Cleveland (for a Bhangra competition) and then finally make it to our original destination of New York. However, the thought of going back the same way we came smacked too much like my demolished nuptials so we planned to forge ahead to see the Niagara Falls on the side of Michigan (something I wasn’t aware of until we opened the map and talk to the Triple A agent), gently stop in Michigan and then open ourselves to Lexington Kentucky, a town I called Blue Balls instead of Blue Grass because thats exactly what I had for the year that I spent there. The pattern of our visitations become as vague as our reasonings for going there, we just wanted to keep going, my cousin never questioning or wondering why the hell we want to go anywhere really. The next states happened in a successiong, Atlanta and then Florida (the first place where I was to meet a girl and perhaps no longer be blue balled, and then for some fine dining in New Orleans, Louisana. Finally, we would hit the biggest state in the nation and it would take us 2 full days to cross it so our stops became Houston and San Antonia, and we hop onwards to Phoenix and Tuscon and finally return to Los Angeles, a mere 3 weeks after we began.
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