Thirteen Crucifxions, 32

“Was I being hard on him?

            “Considering the circumstances, you were very gentle.”

            “His drinking didn’t help.”

            “Have you ever connected their alcoholism, Bryan’s and Peter’s?”

            “That’s why I married Peter.”

            “You knew already?”

            “Yes.  I knew.”

            “Then why go through with it?”

            “It seemed like the next open door.”

            “And you were bored?”

            “I was bored.”

            “Which is why you left Peter?”

            “He was getting dangerous.”

            “And?”

            “Don’t look at me in that tone of voice.”

            “What tone of voice?  Were you also getting bored with Peter?”

            “I’d learned everything I needed to with him.”

            “He helped you resolve your problems about Bryan?”

            “He did, actually.  Peter had no power over me.  Unlike Bryan.  Which made living with him like a homeopathic dose.”

            “And now you’re cured.”

            “Yes.”

            “But then you returned to him.”

            “I’d previously used him for my own therapy.  This time I needed to appreciate him for who he was.”

            “And do you?”

            “Well, yes.  He’s no longer drinking, there’s nothing there for me to want.”

            “But he wants you.”

            “Unfortunately.”

            “And it’s over.”

            “It’s over.”

            “Margery?”

            “Yes, Dwight?”

            “What is my use to you?”

            “I’m not using you.”

            “But why are you here?”

            “Well you asked me to come back.  And now I’m here.  I also suppose that we’re on the same path.”

            “In which way?”

            “I thought that it was already obvious.”

            “But is it?”

            “This again.”

            “I might be able to explain it.  We have been called together, you and I.”

            “That’s what Bryan used to say.  And in a way, Megan.”

            “Really?”

            “Once again I have to rely on someone to rescue me.”

            “Is that a bad thing?”

            “I might be compensating for lost time.  For four years, it was Megan and the women’s collective.  Then I met Warren.  I’d never been in love with a man before.  With him I felt rescued, safe.  Protected from the harsh politics and the petty jealousies of Megan and all the other lesbians in the collective.  You see Megan controlled almost every single detail of my life, and boy, would she freak if anyone else came anywhere near me.  With Warren I was safe from all that.  Together we created our own story, our own private reality.  Then his visa expired so that he had to return to England.  All I had left of him was his—our child.  Then I let Megan take that away from me.  Then, I just totally lost it.”

            “Are you all right?”

            “Yes, yes.  I’m fine.  I’m not about to cry, or anything.  Like, I haven’t already wept enough already.  Then Bryan rescued me from Megan, and—“

            “—Then Peter rescued you from Bryan, and now—“

            “—And now, it’s your turn, Dwight.” 

            “Margery—What is it that you really want?”

            “I want to learn how to function independently.”

            “How does that look to you?”

            “I lived alone for almost an entire year in between.”

            “Between Peter and me?”

            “Yes.”

            “How did you like it?”

            “I loved it.”

            “Then I came along and wrecked everything for you.”

            “You didn’t wreck anything.  It was just time.”

            “I was the next door for you?”

            “Yes.”

            “As I am now?”

            “I suppose.”

            “And then what?”

            “I don’t know, really.  Why?”

            “I’m just wondering.  I’m not trying to pressure you or anything.”

            “I don’t feel pressured. But Dwight, what are your plans?”

            “I wish that I knew.  Here is good.  For now.”

            “Yes.  Here is very good.”

            The black feather lay on the table.  At the last minute, Glen had felt compelled to pull it from the raven’s wing.  He didn’t know why he’d done it.  It didn’t even bother him that he’d just touched something dead.  Which was why he was, and for seven years had been, a vegetarian.  Seven years it had been since last Glen had tasted meat.  Since the fire. During this time he’d been living out an easy celibacy.  Simultaneously he had lost his taste for both varieties of flesh and both varieties of eating it: the animal and the human.  Glen, upon waking out of his coma, did recall having received a stern command that he never again make food of any living creature, human or animal.   This had been for him a very easy transition.

            Apart from his mother, and Marlene, Glen really trusted no one.  He had never realized this before. Rather a scary thought, this.  Had he trusted Tim?   As much as he felt he deserved, since while they were together Tim had always appeared to have some other guy on the back burner.  Glen had existed for Tim’s pleasure.  Only convincing him to model in the nude for him had given him any sense of balancing their relationship.  Finally Tim, enthralled that his “boy”, Glen, was on the cusp of art fame, lived at his disposal.  Until the fire.

            Celibacy had enabled Glen to see other people with a clear and dispassionate accuracy.  It was like reading other people’s diaries.  It didn’t matter who it was, or where Glen had seen them, but their lives would be suddenly opened to him, and he would know them with an intimacy that often frightened him.  Try as he might, there seemed nothing that Glen could do in order to suppress this God-like vision.  He wanted really to get away alone somewhere.  His four years at Good Shepherd had truly finished him.  Glen was burned-out.  Glen was tired.  And now he was about to start waitering at the Pitstop.   He didn’t need the money that badly, and was there really any end to his self-abuse?  Glen wanted badly to run away, alone, to get away.  Away where?  He had been there before.  While he was dead?  Yes, of course.  Not that he actually remembered, but ever since, by way of reminding him, after a spring rain, in the early evening, the sky at its western horizon would gleam with a gentle arresting radiance.  A vision this, of the habitation of light that he was now certain to have visited.  This region of dreams drew him and taunted him from inaccessible heights.  He’d seen this place, he had been there, and one day he would return.