The Diary (My love stories) -- 1

Author's note: (This is an excerpt from my diary. Very rough, unedited and unadulterated. The names have been changed, however, to shield and protect the identity of the characters. This is the way I write my diaries: narrative and descriptive.)

MY DIARY

My Love Stories

De ja vu.

Once again I treaded the same dangerous path to psychological and emotional destruction.

It was almost midnight and I lay in bed alone reading, but not reading; and watching TV, but not really watching. There was much distraction to focus on either one: listening to the commotion in my chest – the pounding of the heart that was raging with jealousy, and waiting anxiously for Will to come to bed. And I thought I was not the jealous kind. I was such a hypocrite. I lied to men to impress them, and most shamefully, I lied to myself. I was once married to a wonderful but very jealous and possessive man, and I was determined to obliterate all the jealous bones in my body to prevent what I ultimately had to do: divorce the man whose only mistake was loving me too much.

I struggled to restore logic in my head and tried to reason and convince myself that I was totally unfair and unjustified with what I was feeling. But hours of that mental war did not suffice; instead, I got increasingly distressed each moment that I could not confront Will about my emotional state. He and Katie had spent the whole day together, watching TV, cooking, eating, and luxuriating in bottles of wine. They had stopped at Safeway yesterday after he picked her up from her friends’ house in Boulder. She had come from California to visit them and us for Easter. They bought provisions they both loved: bottles of their favorite wine, crab legs for their ritualistic crab fest with brie and other cheeses and special crackers. Katie paid for everything this time in consideration of Will’s sudden loss of employment. For all the years of visiting here, it was the first time she had ever taken the initiative to pay for the victuals. I found this to be strange and something I could not identify with, especially since she had the money and she was single.

Since Will lost his job we vowed to make only intelligent trips to the grocery store and not succumb to our usual impulsive shopping. But the refrigerator became uncharacteristically sparse this time. There was nothing in it that I cared to eat. It was obvious to me that not a single thought was given about me when they planned their festivity and selected the foodstuff. I did not fancy crab legs, and drinking wine had never been a component in my lifestyle. So what was left for me to eat? Was I supposed to just sit there and watch them enjoy their cuisine and wine? Even if there were foods that I could thaw out from the freezer for myself, I would have felt such a pitiful outcast to be preparing my own meal, when Will was cooking everything else for the two of them. In four years that we’d been together, and all the times I had spent with him and his children, I never excluded any one from my cooking. And I did 90% of it. So now that he was doing the cooking, why did he exclude me? Whether or not it was intentional, and I believed that it was not, was immaterial. The fact that I was not considered in the preparation of their cuisine was a testament to how much he had thought of me, and that was monumentally important to me.

I refused to be a party to their culinary joy and stayed downstairs at my office desk in the company of my faithful computer and a convoluted piece of writing that made absolutely no sense even to me. I retrieved one document after another from the hard drive, hoping that one of them would inject a dose of literary inspiration in the black hole of my mind, only to meet utter futility. So most of the time I just sat there, staring at the conglomeration of words that did not enthuse me.

How could I let myself be so emotionally and mentally destructive? Whatever happened to the proud and the secure woman with the highest self-esteem? Had she been evicted from the realm of her sound temperament to become this – this infantile persona that was alien to her?

Will invited me to join them. I refused with a monosyllabic ‘No.’ He returned to Katie immediately, without any slight acknowledgement of the fact that I was in a funk. That was just the way he was. It was acceptable to me that he would treat his children that way--to not entertain any sulking from them and they could cry the whole day if they wanted to, as long as they did it in their rooms. Kids must be treated and disciplined that way, I agreed, to make them grow up with some sense of maturity, disposition and good judgment. But I felt it was different with me, since I had done it only twice since we met (ironically, it was about Katie then, too), and the fact that we were a loving couple who continued to educate each other with our whims, quirks, foibles, idiosyncrasies, and most of all, the measurement of our love for each other.

He came back down two more times to invite me to come up and eat with them. Again, I refused with no explanation. And again, he quickly walked back upstairs. I would not see him again for hours. Not until I decided to go to bed.

I had planned to be mature and join Will and Katie in the living room, but when I found them lying comfortably on each side of the sofa, facing each other, with a blanket each, I felt ill in my stomach at what appeared to be such an intimate a sight, conflagrating the fire that was already building up inside me. “You look so cozy,” I uttered, and went straight to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Afterwards, I said good night and went straight to bed. I had hoped that Will would follow immediately and kiss me good night, or at least, to find out what was vexing me. He did not. He stayed with Katie, watching “The Ten Commandments” that they had both seen several times.

The TV in the living room turned off then I head the sound of the door leading to the basement open and I heard their footsteps down the stairs. Katie always slept down there when she came to visit. When Will finally appeared in the bedroom, he was surprised to see me still awake.

“I thought you were already asleep,” he said.

I didn’t say a word. I just thought to myself: If you thought I was going to sleep, why didn’t you follow me to bed and kiss me good night? You didn’t even move from your cozy position when I bid you good night.

He brushed his teeth, which took about 20 minutes. Since he started his orthodontic care, brushing his braced teeth became such a chore for him. When it was over, he slipped into his nakedness and joined me in bed. He tucked his right arm under me and around my shoulder and held me close to him. Even after having brushed his teeth for a long time, I could still smell the alcohol in his breath. But he wasn’t drunk. It always amazed me at how he and Katie could drink so much and not get smashed. We watched the television for a few minutes with my face on his chest and my body pressed against his.

I wanted so to linger in that position for a while at least until the burning acrimony inside me was extinguished. But he had already watched too much TV with Katie and he was tired. He turned the TV off.

All right, I said to myself. This is the first opportunity we’ve had all day to be alone, and you are going to sleep? No, I would not let that happen. I need to let you know how upset I have been all day.

“We have made an agreement a long time ago that we would not go to sleep angry,” I said, my heartbeat on overdrive. “Well, I am very upset right now and I know I won’t feel better until we discussed what happened today.”

“Okay,” he replied softly.

I delivered my impassioned speech, my voice cracking from the intense emotion that I was feeling. He listened and when I finished talking, he apologized. “I am sorry,” he said. “I never meant to exclude you from the party. I wanted you to join us, and I came down several times to invite you but you said no.”

“Join you for what?” My voice was tremulous. “You know I don’t eat crab legs. You know I don’t drink wine. Did you even consider that there was nothing there that you prepared that I could eat? Admit it. Your ritual crab fest is designed just for the two of you. It’s what you do every time she comes.”

“You could have made something else, and I would have eaten it, too.”

“See, that’s another thing that got to me. You were cooking for her . . . and I had to cook for myself? Have I ever done that to you? You prepared that elaborate feast for the two of you, and I had to make my own? Do you even realize how awkward and alienated that would have made me feel?”

“It wasn’t a feast. There were only a few crab legs.”

“A few crab legs? You brought home a huge bag of them. But it doesn’t matter whether you had fifty or twenty. The point is, you took a lot of effort to prepare your banquet, and not an ounce of consideration was given to me.”

“I am really sorry,” he said. “I had no idea that it would upset you so much. I will modify my behavior from now on.”

He will modify his behavior. This pronouncement usually indicated that the discussion was over as far as he was concerned. He was going to modify his behavior so that this episode would never happen again.

But the discussion was not over. I wanted to talk further. I wanted to discuss his relationship with Katie. I wanted him to know how much I didn’t appreciate how he had devoted all his time with her, and how uncomfortable I felt seeing them in such close proximity like that.

De ja vu. We had been here before—three years ago. It was an impassioned argument that almost ended our relationship. As a matter of fact, I did say I was leaving and breaking up with him. But I did not, and we made up.

I could not bring myself to discuss Katie. It made my skin crawl just thinking about it. They were brother and sister, for Pete’s sake. How could I even consider any possibility that they might have any sexual relations. That would be incest!

“Good night,” I said, and gestured to break away from him without kissing him. We never went to sleep without at least kissing each other.

“Good night,” he replied and turned his back to me as well.

The subsiding rancor took a quick u-turn and again, the hammering in my chest returned, even more violent this time that it was shaking me all over. I started hyperventilating. He kept still and quiet even though he could sense my agitation. When I could not take it any longer, I spoke.

“I am still very upset,” I said, inhaling and exhaling deeply.

He did not respond or move.

“My heart is beating wildly and I am shaking all over,” I continued. He remained static and unresponsive. I was concerned that he would let me go on without acknowledging my emotion. I turned to him and talked to his back. “We need to talk some more or I won’t be able to calm down.”

He turned flat on his back. The little moonlight streaming from the window curtains was inadequate to show if his eyes were open, or whether he was staring at the ceiling, wondering when I would stop nagging at him so he could go to sleep. All that wine, all that food, all those movies they watched . . . I was sure he was tired and was trying his best to be patient with me.

“The last time we had this discussion, it almost ruined our relationship. I love you, Will. I don’t want to lose you, but I have to get this off my chest.” Still no reaction from him. “I really hate to feel this way, and most importantly, I hate myself for feeling this way. But I can’t shake the image off my head. Seeing you lying there with Katie was too much for me to take, especially after I have been so upset the whole day.”

“We weren’t that close to each other,” he said. “She was sitting. We were on opposite sides.”

“She sat lotus facing you, and you were lying stretched out with a blanket over you. You were on the opposite sides of the sofa, but you were still close enough that your feet could have been touching.”

There I said it -- an insinuation of a possible incestuous relationship that I could not even imagine. God (forgive me for saying your name in vain), if someone had accused me of such a nauseating and appalling relationship with any of my brothers, I would be screaming of anger now and any association I had with my accuser would be terminated instantaneously. How could Will be so calm about all this interrogation? But that was just one of the best qualities I loved about him. We could argue an issue for infinity and never raise our voices to each other. We’d debate through the night until the matter was resolved – all without losing our temper. I did cry the first time we had this argument, but not till after I had told him I was leaving him.

“If you think there is something physical about me and Katie, that is just insane. We are close, yes. We’ve always been very close since we were young. But there is nothing incestuous about it.”

“Seeing you like that on the sofa brought me back to that image of the two of you sleeping together in the same hotel bed during one of your trips together. How can anyone blame me for feeling this way?”

He tried to convince me as he had done the night he told the story to me that there was nothing malicious about their sleeping in the same bed. It was an economical thing to do. Since they had done a lot of traveling alone, just the two of them, like hiking, or going with her to her yoga trips to other states, I had wondered how many times they had slept together in the same bed. The thought repulsed me and I felt dirty just thinking about it. And why did he make any of those trips during the time he was married? It was no wonder that his ex wife did not like her coming to visit. He had told me how one time Sue took the kids and spent the weekend at her mother’s when Katie came. And why did Will let that happen? What did the kids think? I tried to remember if that was one of those times when he and Katie went away on a trip.

“I admit that Katie and I have a special relationship,” he said, “more than I have with my other sisters. Thinking back, that was probably why Sue resented her.”

“I know. Every time I get this upset about you and Katie, it reminds me of how you said Sue had acted around her. Perhaps she felt the same thing I feel now.”

“I assure you, Angelia; there is nothing between Katie and me that is not normal. Haven’t you ever slept with any of your brothers before?”

“Never in the same bed.”

“Well, I grew up in the farm,” he said, indicating that it was not unusual for brothers and sisters to sleep in the same bed.

“Brothers and sisters should not be sleeping in the same bed once they reach puberty,” I said. Isn’t that the reason that you have separate rooms for Robert and Molly here? Isn’t that the reason that Sue has moved Robert out of Molly’s bed as soon as Molly started developing? Because you and Sue believe the same thing that I, and most people believe. And yet, I am having a difficult time trying to make you understand why I feel the way I feel about you and Katie.”

He did not dispute the issue but he blamed society for dictating what families must do or not do, that it took something innocent and wonderful and made something impure and malicious about it. There was a little truth to what he said, but to me it was more than societal, it was a simple case of hormones, of chemistry and biology.

His description of his childhood with Katie, how they spent a lot of time together more than with the other siblings because they were closest in age, how they played and touched each other (I did not know what he meant by touched and I didn’t ask for an explanation) made me recall a movie with Richard Thomas. It was like Will and Katie’s story. The characters in the movie were very close; always playing, chasing and wrestling with each other. When they grew up, they engaged in an incestuous relationship. I shuddered at the analogy. I began to tell him about the movie but he strayed from it. Did he know about the movie or he just wasn’t interested in hearing about it because he had suspected that it would have some relevance to his relationship with Katie?

Our discussion lasted till two o’clock in the morning. I wanted to talk about it, and so I did, and it was a huge relief to get it off my chest. Gradually I began to feel calmer; no more thumping in the heart and no more emotional shivering.

“I love you, Angelia,” he said. “I assure you that you have absolutely nothing to worry about Katie and me. There is nothing physical about us.”

“I love you, too, and I believe you,” I said.

Did I really believe him? It did not matter, for deep in my heart, I wanted to believe him. It was the faith in us – in our love -- that made me believe – the same faith I relied on when we first met in person and I thought it would never work between us and I almost left him.

The exhaustion from all the argument and discussions wore off and it was amazing how two people could go from one extreme emotion to another. The old adage “the best part of a lovers’ quarrel is the making up,” held true for us.

I could not remember when exactly it happened, but we were suddenly hugging, caressing and kissing each other.

“What is this?” he asked, fingering my nightgown.

“It’s silk,” I said in a singsong voice.

“No, it isn’t,” he said as he had done a million times. He began to stroke his hand up and down my hip, thigh and leg. “This is the real silk.”

He began to undress me. I had always gone to bed as naked as he, something I could not believe I would ever do in my life, being the most modest person I had ever known. But lying in bed with him, being nude came naturally. Well, he had to work hard at it, but once I began stripping with him in bed, I stopped going to bed with anything on.

“There, that’s more like it,” he said as he tossed the garment away and held me tight, our bodies fitting like ying and yang. My heart palpitated with excitement – the good kind that unbelievable lovemaking and shuddering orgasm could inflict on a person. We were both breathless when he drew morpheus out of me.

“Whew!” I exclaimed. “Perhaps we should have a spat more often.”

I reached out for the fragrant moist tissues in the drawer and pulled out a few sheets. “I think this calls for at least six tissues to clean ourselves.”

He laughed. “At least.”

I rose from the bed after wiping myself several times and rushed to the bathroom. He had released quite a bit of his essence that I really had to probe my middle finger deep inside me for a while to wash his semen out. I ran the water and used a plastic bowl to wash the ejaculate off my vagina. The sound of the running water through the pipes must have been loud enough to wake Katie and I wondered if she would suspect what was going on. White floaters swam in the tub. I had not seen that much semen from Will in a while. After drying myself off, I grabbed a facial towel from the shelf and put it under the hot water till it soaked completely. I wrung it with both hands to get rid of the extra moisture and handed it to him. He was waiting for it and thanked me. I remembered how shocked my friend Brenda was when she heard me talk about it the last time we saw each other. “Let the fucking man get his own hot towel,” she had said. “I would never serve any man like that.” That was Brenda. Very blunt with her opinions, and loved to say the f-word. What was the big deal, I thought. I was there in the bathroom, and there was no effort to wet a towel and give it to Will as I returned to bed. What I don’t understand was that I had never done that to any other man. They just got up and took care of their own hygiene. Will never asked me to do it, and I could not recall when I started doing it.

There were numerous things I never did before that I did with Will. To name a few, the nakedness in bed, the discussion and exploration of our sexual wants and dislikes (he did not enjoy oral sex), and the fact that I could initiate lovemaking, although it was never necessary since we wanted it every night.

I snuggled next to him and he pulled me close. I sensed that he was bushed, spent and sleepy. “Good night. I love you,” I said. He lowered his lips to mine and we kissed. “Good night, my dear,” he said. “I love you.”

Normally we would separate after saying good night to each other, but not this time. We remained locked in each other’s embrace for a long time.

He began to snore right away. Sleep did not come as easily to me for there lingered in my head a strange and gnawing feeling, pondering all that we had said to each other. Was I satisfied with his adamant proclamation that there was nothing incestuous between him and Katie? Maybe. Would this be the last argument on the matter? I hoped so.

I remember what Will had said a long time ago before we even got to meet in person. He was telling me that his sister Katie lived in La Jolla, California, how she looked just like him, and how close they were, and how she adored him and loved him that she could never get married unless she found someone just like Will.

That was hard to take then. It was hard to take now.

Was it jealousy? Or was it possessiveness that brought me to this state of mind? Perhaps it was insecurity, or all of the above. I had become what I had sworn to myself never to become one. I had always believed that a little jealousy was all right, sexy and endearing even. But this was the destructive kind of jealousy. I hated it and I hated me for being it.

I loved Will. I did not want to lose him, or him to lose me. Until I could uncover any substantial proof that he was, or had had any kind of an incestuous relationship with his sister, whether sexual or not, I would not risk losing him.

Tomorrow will be better, I said to myself quietly. Tomorrow, I will spend the whole day with you and Katie and we will have a good time. I fell asleep convincing me this.

(Please go to The Diary (My love stories) -- 2)