Our family sofa, from what I remember, was a disgusting shade of blue. This particular shade of blue was on the offensive, ready to be interpreted by my body in ways other colors couldn't. Tasting and swallowing a color isn't possible, but I'm positive that couch gave me a punch to the tonsils more than once. And between the cushions, there was a thick layer of crumbs and food particles that solidified together and sat just beneath the surface. My feet would sometimes itch while lying there and to get it scratched, I would shove my foot between the back of the cushion and just scrape it against shards of Doritos, dried-out cookie crumbs, and other decayed carbohydrates. It felt so good.
My father would sit beside me in his green arm chair with no arms on it and drink Old Milwaukee and watch TV. This was our nightly ritual. He would watch re-runs of MASH and Cheers and get drunk and I would doze off on the sofa, periodically scraping my foot against the crumb-laden scratching post until he decided it was time to eat. He would saunter over to our stove which had a permanent brown burn mark that stretched from one end of the panel all the way over to the other. It didn't all happen at once, it accumulated after so many nights of my father's midnight drunk cooking choreography.
The food was always prepared perfectly and was always served in under one hour. He may have burned the shit out of the actual stove several times, but never the food. It's beyond confusing as to how he managed that. It's as if the universe was watching him and had every intention to make him ruin, burn, or drop something, but then just decided "Fuck it, let him succeed. What's one more paradox?"
After we ate, I would doze back off, periodically scraping my foot against the crumb confetti under the cushion until he would say "Alright, time for bed" and he would carry me back to my parent's room where we would sleep until morning. I slept in my parent's bed, with my actual parents in it, until I was about thirteen or fourteen. That may seem strange and that's because it is.
Years later, as a spritely young college student, I met a French exchange girl. She was ethnic Armenian and had every bit of that Levantine merchant (as Hitler called them) mystique about her. Her frame was small, her body was thin, and she dressed like a hipster. I'm not really sure what a hipster is, but I assume it's someone who denies themselves the pleasure of food in order to wear clothes meant for 11 year old orphans in Kosovo. And that's what she looked like. So tiny, so brown, such bizarre clothes, I imagined her sitting on a dirt road in an Indian market, sitting next to a giant pile of some kind of red spices. That's how exotic she seemed to my extraordinarily white eyes.
Because I'm the type of person who likes to get way too personal way too fast and also because I have a very poor concept of acceptable social behavior, I walked up to her after class one day and said "Hey! Where are you from?" as I extended my hand like a vacuum salesman.
Her eyes widened and then she looked down at the floor and zipped her bag and muttered "France ..." and she said it with absolutely no confidence, as if she expected me to mock her for being French. I said "Oh, where exactly? Paris? Lyon?" and then scanned my memory banks for more French cities that I had skimmed on Wikipedia once. Nope. That's all I had. I remembered Strasbourg, but it was too late as she had already began answering and said she was from Paris and then rattled off the Blah-de-blah-Blah town from where she specifically came. Then my eyes widened because I realized that now I am completely in love with her. By the time we walked out that door together, I already had our wedding location and our first adopted puppy's name already picked out.
That first day was a complete blur. She asked if I had to go to another class and I said no even though I had a lot of classes left for the day. I ended up not going to any of them and sitting with her outside the cafeteria and talking nervously while heart-attack sweat piled on under my armpits. I can't remember anything I said except for one instance when I made her laugh. I seriously saw the roof of her mouth because her head slid back so far from giggling. At one point, I slipped and made a comment about how I was supposed to be sitting in Philosophy class and she said "I thought you said you didn't have class?"
My heart immediately took the wheel and sent a surge of "cute" to my brain and I used it to craft the most charming sentence ever said to any woman anywhere ever: "I lied because I wanted to spend time with you." She stared at me for a second and I smiled and widened my eyes and she started laughing and said "You don't have to do that! We can text!" and by the end of that first day, I had her number. Feeling high from the first step towards an exclusive, committed, monogamous relationship with her, I resigned myself from the table and said I was actually going to class. In reality, I was going home to take a shower. Humans are 95% water and at that moment, 94% of it was soaked into my shirt. Before I left, I held up my hand for a high-five, but for some reason, when she touched my hand, I clasped my fingers between her's and just held it like that for a second. Then I said "Byeeeee" and she said "Byeeee" in an equally high-pitched tone and we parted ways.
While I was at home that night, I had thoughts running back and forth about what I should do next. I have her number, so should I text her? Every ten minutes, I would pick up the phone, type a text, delete it, and then put the phone down. I did that all night until I finally decided that we would have no contact until we saw each other in class the next day. However, even that seemed like it wasn't enough, so I used every ounce of my overly-observant, borderline-stalker instincts and thought about every possibility that I could use to be closer to her. Then the perfect plan emerged: I would intentionally show up late. Sounds strange, but the desks were split into two and she sat directly behind me and the girl who sits next to me has a BFF in the same class. If I show up late, her BFF will take my seat and I'll be "forced" to take the one right behind it which just so HAPPENS to be next to her. With the confidence that my psychotic obsession with her had made a plan come together, I shut my eyes and went to sleep.
The plan worked. There was an awkward silence at first and I thought about how I was going to kill myself once I got home because of it, but then the professor gave us a group assignment. Group assignments are carte-blanche to interact with other students with every intention EXCEPT the group assignment. I can't remember exactly what it entailed, but I intentionally tried act serious about completing it just to see if she would follow along. Thankfully, she didn't and even tried to be cute and lighten the mood. Everything was falling into the place. I wanted to greedily rub my palms together like Scrooge McDuck.
This period of awkward silences and no-texting lasted longer than I would have liked, but it's because I was over-thinking every single ounce of intention which went behind every action. Then Charlie St. Cloud was released in theatres and that was our first date. We didn't actually go to the theatre, we stayed in her apartment and told stories and drank blueberry vodka (which I detest) and then decided to just not even attend. Part of me was elated because that meant we could be alone the entire night. The entire rest of me was feeling sick and my eyes were blood-shot red. Despite my wretched human body in which I was obliged to keep alive, I've never had a more fulfilling experience before. We told each other everything about our families. I told her everything about my crazy German parents, about growing up in Suriname with no electricity before we moved to Texas when I was a kid, how my mother always screams "You kids make me so nervous, I could just shit!" and all the rest. In turn, she told me about how her mother tries to treat every illness with Armenian folk remedies, like putting a wad of garlic in your ear for a headache and wrapping a hot stone in a towel and putting it on top of your stomach for a belly ache and then she told me her father died when she was about four years old. She started to cry and I told her that I couldn't feel what she was feeling because my father was a chronic alcoholic and chain-smoker and was still alive well into his early seventies. Nothing seemed as small as her existence when it was inside of my big bodied embrace at that point in time.
Of course, you can see where this leads. The usual pattern ensued: We spend time together, we become a couple, we only spend time with each other, and with time comes obligations and with obligations comes a commitment and with commitment comes a relationship and with a relationship comes sacrifice. My greedy plan was being fulfilled faster than I could have expected, but I wasn't ready. I just simply was not ready for the stares other men would give to her, almost graciously ignorant of how it might affect me, the fights we would have because of my insecurity, the days without speaking because I was stubborn enough to wait for her to come to me instead of the other way around ... but there was never anything through which we couldn't push. We made it through each, individual, hurtful phase.
Really, we did. My previous girlfriends, whom I still love and wish nothing but happiness upon, couldn't do what she did or tolerate what she tolerated. I even appealed to TeamLiquid for help several times regarding my attempts to learn her language and once to help write an apology letter (albeit deceptively) to show my proficiency. By the way, if anyone is wondering how that turned out, she read it and just said "You didn't write this." and the kissed me. That had a very Taylor Swift ending. It sounds like it couldn't be true, but with what was about to come before us, it almost seems insignificant.
My father passed away almost a year into our relationship. I say "my father" and "passed away" because this is the normal, distant language I'm expected to use. I accept it and will follow the protocol, but I will say this: My father passed away, but my daddy died. I can accept my father passing away and I will never accept my daddy dying. The negativity which this event unleashed on our relationship is what lead to its complete and utter Soviet-style collapse. I starved her of honest interaction and she responded accordingly. After my daddy died, I became completely demented. I became a cancer-phobe (since he died at 72 from cancer) and a hypochondriac. I was running to doctor after doctor, psychiatrist after psychiatrist and I wouldn't discuss a single aspect of it with her. The final nail in the coffin, straw on the camel's back, and mound on the grave was when I packed up and moved back in with my mother. And even THIS she was willing to tolerate. She loved my mother and my mother loved her and she understood that as a mother of four children who has never lived alone, she wants the youngest, the baby, me, to be back home with her in this time of my father's death. In her mind, it was a cultural obligation and as a good German boy, I will come back to my mother.
Except that I only became more distant. The idea of speaking with her on the phone would make my back erupt into this rash which felt like it would be with me seven weeks after my death. My embarrassment, shame, and above all, my complacency with my pathetic mental situation was defeating me. Utterly and hopelessly defeating me. There were nights when I would be in bed with my phone next to my hand and periodically I would turn over to see how many of her missed calls would rack up ... I think her record was over thirty calls. Thirty calls in one night. But I just could not bring myself to reciprocate. I just wanted to die.
My mother sprang to my rescue and arranged for me to go on a short holiday in Austria with my father's family, but this wasn't my first set of goodbyes to put into motion. Marie texted me and told me she was going back to France and this was my last chance to see or speak to her. I called her immediately after reading that text, but she didn't answer. I called again later that night, no answer. I tried to Skype her, no answer. Ready to just sink my head into my pillow for yet another night of hypochondria and loneliness, I turned out the lamp.
Then the phone rang.
It was her.
Her voice ... I could have fainted at the sound of it and not even the strongest smelling salts or most convincing Voodoo ritual could have brought me back to life ... her voice ...
Somewhere, out of my thick-tongued, dry-mouthed, hypochondria-ridden brain, I made the sincere promise of seeing her before she left for France. It was absolutely sincere. I remember when I said "I love you" before I hung up, she said "You should .... because I love you."
Thankfully, my sister was visiting from Austin at that time and she was going home regardless, so I rode with her with plans to stay for the weekend and that was how I found myself in her apartment that night. Every bit of my distance, neurosis, psychosis, every last scintilla of it vanished that very night. I kissed her, her mouth, her cheeks, her forehead, her eye-lids and then promised to kiss every part of her before she left. She even came back to my sister's house with me. I felt like a twelve old sneaking my girlfriend into my parent's house. What happiness I felt! We slept together on the couch, sleeping soundly to the Dirty Dancing DVD on repeat.
The next day, as my sister drove Marie and myself to the airport, my heart was completely steady, my mind was clear, and I felt normal. Not sad, not anything. Just completely normal. But somewhere along the line inside of that airport, around those people, I just couldn't say goodbye to her. I did what, in my mind, was keeping a theme alive. Kissing every part of her before she leaves seems like a theme, right? So, I lifted up her left elbow and kissed it. Without a moment's hesitation, I said "I'm gonna kiss the other one when you come back" and then she said "When you come here!!"
Her voice ... the excitement ... every single one of you would kill me if you knew that I never spoke with her after moment. Never sent her any Skype messages, any Facebook messages, no emails, nothing. You guys would tear me apart and you have every right to do so ... but Taylor Swift had a point. Sometimes, you have to believe in love stories.
"Remember that woman from work who bought all our furniture when we moved?" my mother asked on one awkward summer Wednesday morning
"Yeah ... Sandra, right?"
"Yes, well, her and her husband are moving to Montreal, their son is a doctor up there, and since daddy died, they want to leave that furniture with us."
"What are we gonna do with it?"
"Well ... let's just put it in the living room and then we'll have a big garage sale."
It seemed like a normal proposal, I had no ulterior or subconscious feelings towards the decision, so I welcomed that disgusting blue sofa back into our home. After all, it was the structure which hosted, comforted, and soothed me during my boyhood years. During this time of furniture transplantation, I tried sending emails to Marie, short and sweet, nothing too serious, and she responded in the equivalent tone. Knowing that it was over between us, I felt I had nothing to lose. One night, after becoming completely dogshit drunk, I wrote her a message which could carry every dead man's memories from the Civil War. That's how long and obnoxious it was. And, somehow, through the great unknown cosmic forces of physics and probability, she gave a favorable response. One thing lead into another, a different tone, a different medium of conversation, a different feeling ... but somehow, it wasn't different. It's what we are.
It is what we are. To put it into humane sentiments, I had even broken up with my current (at the time) girlfriend Emma, just on the off-chance that this could lead into something which would make me happy.
When I signed into Skype that night because she wanted to tell me the "big news" (which I knew was her returning to Austin, but to retain the mood, I played ignorant), I could not believe the image I saw. When that webcam flicked on, I just saw her sitting on her bed and holding up her right elbow and said "Are you gonna kiss this one, too?"
I nodded. I couldn't speak.
To skip past a few boring and minor details, we ended up embracing each other in person in a way which would make the Columbine shooters put aside their plans and think about sticking around on Earth for the possibility of having something similar to that. It was absolutely incredible. After deciding on being hosted by my mother for the rest of the holiday, she found herself in our home. Welcomed to the smell of roast beef and slightly raw potatoes (typical German odors), she collapsed into my mother's arms. I was shocked to see that she was so happy to be within the confines of the family which raised me, my mother's little baby. Not knowing what to do, I ran away to my bathroom and turned on the faucet and waited for those two to settle down.
They never did. When I walked outside to the patio, I heard my mother's dialogue and realized that she was explaining every detail of our family to Marie. Not every detail, but every single particle from the Austro-Hungarian Empire until that very moment. Trying to brush my mother off of Marie's back, trying to get Marie to pay attention to me, trying to get BOTH of them to settle down and call it a night ... absolutely futile. That first night turned into an all-night family revisionist history session. And the fault was on both parties, to be clear.
However, it wasn't always that boring. One night, while in bed with her, I told her the story of that disgusting blue sofa and how it is the EXACT same sofa we have in our living room right now. I told her how clean it is now, how different it feels now, but in my heart, that will always be MY sofa. She laughed so hard when I described my foot-scraping ritual. And how my dad always cooked when he was drunk. She couldn't contain herself. She would giggle so hard and then peer at me with these wifely eyes, that I could just FEEL the oxytocin building up inside of her membranes. All of these family history" shticks wore off very quickly. This is when things became a little ... aggressive. I had pushed her away, lost my mind, then kind of regained my good sense, then kind of lost it again, then suddenly I have her in my home with our old furniture, which provides MANY stories to make her laugh. But ... having her .... all good sense is absent. One night, we had sex with each other. It was my first time, it was her first time, and everything else is irrelevant.
She left, became settled back in Austin, had her first semester at U.T. right ahead of her. I'm still with my mother, doing what I can to help around the house. I re-painted the entire house, cut down all the cedar trees, even took some of the leftover cedar and had a beautiful plant-bed made for my mother ... just things like that. However, I couldn't live this life without any amount of sacrifice. I couldn't live this amount of happiness with having her back in my life without some form of responsibility ... I just couldn't.
In one very distant part of my mind, I knew this was coming.
When I received the call, I was wearing work-gloves and had just turned off a chain-saw.
"I'm pregnant."
I threw off my gloves and ran inside to make sure I heard that correctly? Did I hear really hear that?
At that point, I was almost delirious. I had tunnel vision.
I took off my gloves and gave them to my brother. I was going inside. How could I EVER TELL MY MOTHER? How could I ever tell my mother I made a girl pregnant before I was married?
I wanted to kill myself.
As I entered that house ... my mother comes RUNNING at me, SOBBING and says, verbatim "I just got off the phone with Marie ..." and then started sobbing again and saying how proud she is. How proud she is? Of me? For what?
My mother always wanted grandbabies and she wanted them from me and she wanted them from her. In her mind, this is the greatest gift she could have ever received.
In my mind, it's .... I don't know what it is. To be honest, I cannot comprehend what it actually is. Last night, I slept on that disgusting blue sofa in our living room. At one point, I woke up and turned over. I dug my foot between the backs of the cushions, but they're clean now. There is no crumb confetti to comfort me.
Slowly descending into this spiral of responsibility to which I have voluntarily assigned myself, I drifted off into a deep sleep.
At one point, I woke up because I heard the typical voice from my father:
"Alright, it's time for bed."
I was so groggy and tired, but I got up and lifted my arms up, waiting to be picked up by my father.
The reality seeped into my pores like an air-borne illness. My father is dead. He is not going to pick me up and take me to bed. His days of taking care of his children are over. They're over.
However, mine are just beginning.
