Breakup tears

Halfway to the weight room, Carolyn's angst grows to something that must be addressed with a time-out. We sit down on a bench near a stone column. Other students move past us, too intent on the looming doors of the gym to overhear.

Carolyn cries that she will never survive alone. I tell her she is not alone, that she has friends and people who like her. "But I need a significant other to feel secure! I need the stability of another person to keep me safe! I need to be someone's first priority. I need that stability!"

I grab her face and whisper. "Stability is not other people. Stability is not out there, somewhere else. It's not a goal you have to reach. Stability is a path in your head, and you walk along it, and you plant seeds as you go. And pretty soon they sprout and you grow trees on either side of the path, and you get a forest full of wonderful things."

She snuffles through her tears, and in a tiny cracked voice says, "and you're a tree."

"What?"

"Like you said yesterday, you wanted to be a tree that I climb sometimes. You can be a tree on the path."

"Exactly. That's exactly so," I said, warmth and sadness colliding in my chest. "A tree along the path."

I search my backpack and find a pen, and a tape insert with some notes scrawled on it. In an open space I write "Stability is a path in your head." I show it to her.

"This is the tape insert that Andy made for me when I didn't have The Wall on CD," I explain. "I played that tape over and over in the car until it broke, and I kept the insert in case I ever dubbed it again. Since that time, I've written various notes on it. There's notes on this insert from at least three different times in my life. It's at least eight years old ... I think Andy made me the tape back in 1992. See that symbol? That's his special symbol. That one is mine. It's a 5.25 disk with a square, kind of like a Star of David with two extra points. These symbols show how to change the refresh rate of your monitor in Windows 95 without looking at the screen, so you can do it if your screen's messed up. There's a lot of me on this insert."

I turn it over and write some little sentences between the song names and scrawl. "You will be Miss Kitty always." "Your fears are not you." "I've seen you happy. Can't fool me!"

I show it to her, and she smiles. Before she reads the back, I put it in my bag. I'll give it to her later.

She cries that she has nobody to eat dinner with, that eating alone makes her feel too isolated and loveless.

"Well, I was planning to either eat in the dining hall, or go somewhere off campus and then end up back at work. If you want to eat together tonight, that's fine by me." I toss aside the possibility of meeting Cassi. This is more important. Knowing that she has a companion for dinner gives Carolyn some strength, and we clean her up and walk into the weight room.

I pretend not to notice a red haired girl walking an adjacent treadmill. I really dig her hair - red hair is my weakness - but her face is set in that universal expression of a pretty girl who is sick of fending off assholes. One machine down, a short-haired french girl pedals a bike with Thighs of Doom while reading a glossy magazine. Carolyn is first in the row, and I am privately amused to be jogging next to a sexy triad of blonde, brunette, and redhead. Carolyn would probably be appalled that I had time to think about the other women in the room when I should be exercising, but it would take tremendous effort in my male brain to shut it off.

The workouts go quickly and the air is crisp. Outside again, we debate the dining hall and choose the buffet at Fresh Choice instead. She leaves to shower at home, and I infiltrate the men's locker room for my own shower, whistling showtunes to myself.

On the way to her house I shout along to Weird Al. She admits me while holding a towel around her waist. She has just finished her shower. "Hey, for once, you're waiting for me!" she says.

This is part of our legacy. I've been chronically ten minutes late or more to almost everything we've tried to do together. It helps that once I get where I'm going I tend to be very generous with my own time and attention, but the lateness is still a major source of friction between us, and I struggle with it.

I follow her to her tiny bedroom and she shuts the door behind me. The towel drops and she pulls open a drawer and rummages in it. I stare nervously at the sides of her breasts, swinging gently back and forth. Am I really supposed to be seeing this? She stands up and puts on a bra, facing away. Then she pulls on a long-sleeved shirt over her head and turns toward me, and as the neck pops over her halo of blond hair she says, "I'm afraid that you'll move away and I'll never see you again."

"Maybe that will happen, but I don't want the thought of it to ruin our time together."

"But every time I see you I'll be reminded of it. Maybe I have to get rid of all the things that remind me of you." Her eyes dart around the room appraisingly.

"Is that the answer?" I say, my voice low and gentle. "Is that what it will take to get over me?"

"I don't want to get over you!!" she says. Her eyes sharpen accusingly. "I don't want to!" She sits down on the bed, pulling on socks and pants.

"But you need to. You have to go through this; we both do."

Tears wet her face, and she adjusts her pants and then drops her head into her hands, smearing the tears away. "I don't want to!"

"But listen. It's a way of thinking that will enslave you. You'll be keeping yourself in a dynamic where someone else matters more than you do. You'll be holding yourself back. Trapping yourself. I know it's hard, and it sucks. You need to find your way. Carefully. Slowly. Calmly."

Look at me, all sounding like a new age guru. Once again I wonder if I should even be here at all. Maybe my presence is some kind of taunt. Maybe we shouldn't break up at all?

No. I can see my journey ahead like a set of train tracks. There is no switching station. No place to turn around.

I sit down next to her on the bed, and place a hand between her shoulder blades. Crying gently into her hands, her voice a bit muffled, she says: "Now nobody is going to suck my breasts any more. They're going to atrophy and fall off!"

I laugh. She laughs, into her hands.

"Okay now you're just thinking like a man; what's up with that!" I laugh. "Daaang, where am I gonna find some girlie to suck on mah dick? It's gonna shrivel up like a little cat poop and snap off!"

"Hahaha, ugh!" she says.

"You know," I say, "I'm pretty sure you can play with your own cleavage. I've seen how you look at yourself. You know you're hot stuff. Your boobs will have no trouble attracting hands."

We laugh some more.

In the back of my mind I think, "I must have some kind of newfound superpower. For some reason I'm not trying to parlay this into an excuse to put my hands up her shirt. What's happened to me?"

I can't quite connect the dots just then, but later on I'll realize that it's because I've already gotten intimate with Cassi. My needs are being met elsewhere. Carolyn's are not.

We take her car. In the passenger seat, I read about breasts from "Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom". We get into the restaurant just in time to nab the remaining food. At the table we discover that, even with discount coupons, the meal cost just as much as the dining hall because of tax. Oh well.

Over our salads we discuss the nature of relationships and psychology. A favorite area for us. She worries that she will never meet other people like me again. I tell her that I am beginning to see a pattern... Every time she gets depressed it's because she is worrying about the future.

"The future is full of good things too, you know. I don't know why you always focus on the bad possibilities, like they're the only ones. The future can be anything, not just bad."

For the fourth time today, tears come to her eyes. "But what if it's true!" she says, quietly but urgently, looking down at her salad. "What if I'm just unable to have a functional relationship, and I turn into an old lady sitting in her house alone!"

"It's not true. I know it's not true. The future becomes the present. If the future is only full of bad things,..."

I touch her cheek, and my voice cracks. "... I would never have met you."

She looks up, eyes wide. Reaches up and grabs my hand, and presses it tightly into her face. We sit there in a little halo of feeling, in the corner of the bustling restaurant.

I rummage in my threadbare backpack and take out the tape insert, and write on the back: "The future is full of good things too."

We pack up our muffins and I read her latest journal entry as we drive back to her room. Back at home she proceeds to worry about how ridiculous sex is. "It's so weird, and I don't know how I feel about it. And I don't even know if I'm really interested in it. I mean, sometimes I think I am, but then sometimes there's just this ... nothing. Everyone around me is really into it. I just don't ..." She trails off. Tears come to her eyes for the fifth time, and halfway through trying to cheer her up, my mind just wanders away. I freeze and gave a sigh, and bury my face in my hands. The sun has long set and the room is in shadow.

She perks up enough to ask what's wrong. I tell her that my brain is disintegrating again. I can no longer focus, or think straight.

"You've cried five times today. I've been trying to help. I just can't do it anymore. My brain is falling apart. I can't think of good things to say any more."

She lifts her hand, and slowly rubs the back of my head with it. "Yeah, it does seem kind of unfair. I guess I'm the one always collapsing."

"I just can't help you with your problems anymore," I say, braying the words out. "It's all we ever talk about. It takes up so much room. I'd like to talk about other things, but it takes up all the room."

She pulls me to the side, and I spread my arms across her lap, crying into the leg of her jeans. She takes on a sweet, calm demeanor, and we talk about other things in my life. About jobs and family. I feel somewhat calmer.

But while my face is pressed in her thighs, a clear, firm expression flashes across it, surging up from my inner mind. It's a nasty, mocking sneer: My own subconscious privately judging me for my behavior, demanding that I stop this ridiculous drama, and soon, because it's not doing anyone good. A few seconds later the expression drops. Feeling a bit ashamed, I let my tears dry.

I agree to meet her for a job fair on Thursday. We eat some chocolate together. She sits on the bed with her legs out, leaning against the wall of her little room, and I lay in her lap a while longer. Then she leans forward, squeezing my head a little bit, and reaches her arms behind her. I hear her unsnap and pull off her bra, and then after a complicated movement she pulls it out through one of her shirtsleeves. She leans back. Taking the cue, and somewhat cautiously, I raise my head and nuzzle her breasts for a while. The room is silent except for our breathing, and the vague bumps of housemates on the second floor.

We agree that things shouldn't get any more serious than that, though I can sense the reluctance in her voice. I tell her that it's probably the right move for me to resist, since otherwise we'd make things confusing. My body is raising hell but I overrule it.

"Yeah. I'd offer you the pad on the floor or something, but that would probably be too close for comfort, right? You should probably drive home."

She changes into pajamas and I tuck her into the bed. We've not going to give up that little ritual. I take out the tape insert again and place it at her bedside table. Voice hazy, she wishes me goodnight. I close the door softly.

Back home, a hot bath and some windowsill journaling have helped clear my mind a bit. There will no doubt be more trouble before this era closes. But today was worthwhile.