by Nate Allen
At an age when children are perhaps their meanest, he was stuck in what seemed like a decade long game of tag, and was “it” the entire time. It is a time in our development when we are developing friendships and honing social skills, and he was emotionally relegated to standing with his nose in the corner, while others were recognizing aptitudes and abilities and defining their image of self, his image in the school picture was not the image of the cute boy it had been, and the internal disagreement between the innately confident kid, and the unattractive one in the mirror damaged him beyond his appearance and would have long lasting effects in terms of self-confidence years after these events were in the rearview mirror, out of the conscious and even subconscious mind, but weaved into the fiber of his being, the insecurities of the boy residing somewhere deep inside the man. It would make him more durable and empathetic though, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger …or cripples you.
Those are the years that shape us. The clay of our DNA material sculpted into the raw form of the individuals we will be the rest of our lives, decide the paths available to us, reveal our natural predispositions, and affect how we will live our lives, the roads we will take, and how we feel about ourselves along the way. It wasn’t fair, life isn’t. Good things happen to bad people, bad things happen to good people, but from sad beginnings come happy endings, or so the fortune cookie said, and that was his mantra. There is no doubt truth to the saying “Children learn what they live,” and he had learned that while you can domesticate an animal, an element of the wild in the animal still remains, and in his teenage years, as the orthodontist’s braces came off, so did the psychological restraints, and as biology continued its work he would leave the cage and go on a rampage, making up for lost time and refusing to be denied what he thought to be his rightful happiness, even if it required some occasional artificial assistance.
He met a girl, fell in love, and it had all the beauty and tenderness that a first love should, and as the song goes, “The first cut is the deepest.” But he wound up being unfaithful to her, not because she wasn’t all the things he wanted her to be, but because at that point in his life, all the pent up need for acceptance was more than he could strangle. His infidelity had unwittingly invited a stranger into the relationship, guilt. And guilt is a rude houseguest, while the young woman never expressed any knowledge of it, the secret created an invisible third party to the intimacy of their relationship that tortured him, and like an iceberg breaking apart from the glacier, he watched as she floated away, a young man’s pride and the damn guilt prohibiting him from trying to stop her. But there’s a reason they’re called first loves, and that’s because we usually have subsequent ones and this one left the watermark on his heart by which he would come to measure every other relationship he had. And while he would be aloof, he would never be unfaithful to a lover again.
He found himself to be the hedonistic pleasure-seeking monkey continually pushing the button for whatever it offered in that caveman mentality of “Pain BAD, Pleasure GOOOD,” but he had grown up in a generation that was surrounded and defined by experimentation. And in that regard he was the rule and not the exception, at an early age he began to use drugs and alcohol. For a time they appeared to be the bridge between who he was and who he wanted to be, disabling his inhibitions, but he had not grown up in an environment of moderation, but one of extremes and like many such things, they were prone to abuse, and eventually, the things that gave him some strength and courage, became his kryptonite, not a remedy, but another source of woe, and trouble would find him frequently as a teenager and young man. He developed a reputation, and ironically was all at once the boy your mom warned you about, and yet the one she hoped you’d meet.
Labels were applied as is typical, but sometimes labeling individuals and behavior is inappropriate and ill-advised, as they can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it seemed the associations and negative connotations were ascribed to him by others so they could make sense of it in a safe, convenient way, when the truth was he was just a young man who came to the realization he had made some bad decisions as a kid, and decided it was not in his best interest to do so anymore. It worked for him. What more can you ask for? His relationship with his girlfriend was an unfortunate casualty of the period, and he left for Raleigh because he needed a place where people didn’t have preconceived notions about him, and he could discover, if not reinvent himself.
At about the same time his ego and confidence would be slowly catching up to the strength and physical aspects of the man, the inside not yet matching the now handsome exterior, but he had begun to have some success romantically, and by the time he moved to Raleigh at the age of twenty-three, he didn’t need to be too damn confident, women were beginning to present their intentions, and like a sisterhood of the falling pants, or pussy-mafia, they would make him offers “he could not refuse,” and he didn’t, like a malnourished dog prone to gorging when the opportunity presented itself and making up for lost time. In the scheme of things his game so to speak was that he was not a player, intelligence, a clever sense of humor, gentleness, and chameleon-like ability to adapt to the situation, his informal teammates. The shy self-conscious kid grew into the ultimate boy-next-door experience and an unassuming panty-dropping rainmaker, but as was to be expected the journey would be characterized by potholes, self-inflicted wounds, peaks and valleys, floods and droughts and long stretches of nothing in between, except his ever present passenger and companion …the static.
There are probably two main reasons people undertake the study of psychology, first because they wish to diagnose and understand the things they don’t like about themselves and rid themselves of them. Secondly, because they have a natural inclination towards it, the ability to read people and understand and recognize patterns of behavior and want to learn how to help people who need it, and he had done so for both reasons, but he had found at the conclusion of it that knowing where the stressors of his childhood had originated, didn’t represent a solution. Knowing how you had gotten some place didn’t change the fact you were still there, you need an exit strategy, or self-acceptance, and he would have to come to an agreement with himself, that he was who he was, and call it a truce …start looking down the road, and not in the rearview.
By the time he had gotten to be forty-five he had slept with more women than he could recall, literally, he hadn’t kept a running total, and to be honest their were periods in his life that he didn’t remember all too well. But he had only had two committed relationships in his life, his first love, and his second, Rene. Beyond that, if you take a single man, and allow him to have sex with a different woman every 2-3 months over a twenty year period, well there you have it, they start to accumulate. And while he had long periods without any interaction, he was a hard worker of the grasshopper variety …not the ant, accomplishing his feats in leaps and bounds, by the bushel and the peck, and simple as that it’s not difficult to imagine, many just “last call” beauty queens …but it had to be close to a hundred or more.
So many that the faces and recollections of the experiences were floating around loosely in the sexual library of his memory, their images occasionally popping up in his conscious mind, appearing like randomly drawn lottery balls, their names like newspaper word jumbles, when some song or circumstance summoned the memory of them, and he’d have to unscramble the letters to remember the names, sometimes going through the alphabet, A, B, C, …D, “Deana, and her D-cups,” and there was naturally a smaller contingent of women whose encounters he remembered for the animal-like attraction and the energy expended, women whose last names he didn’t know, they bypassed going to the movies, or dinner, just straight to bed and exhaustingly scrogged like critters, they literally had nothing else in common except the fact they both knew what was going down the moment they met.
Aside from the rank and file of these partners there remained a higher echelon of women he couldn’t forget, never far from the surface, a minority compared to the r
est. Women who had emotion if not a level of love attached to their time in his life, the aforementioned pair and a dozen or so short-term relationships, women whom he had been upfront with about his nature, and what they could expect from him. And who were all initially agreeable for a time, perhaps because they felt they were capable of persuading him otherwise. But understandably, most women want to be somebody’s someone, and he wouldn’t blink at that inevitable dénouement. The relationship routinely souring like that carton of milk that had expired, and he would become the asshole that didn’t show up at the picnic with her friends, the Holiday dinner with the family, or who simply stopped calling.
In a convoluted way he saw it as doing them a favor. Despite the abundance of good fortune he had enjoyed, he could more readily recall the names and faces of the opportunities missed, cursed with the reminder of the ones that were right before him that he had not pursued and wished he had. Forever “the glass is half full” optimist he thought, and yet discontented and fixated on trying to fill it.
His marriage stood as the sole attempt at a long-term relationship in his adult life, and after a few years he was realizing maybe it was unfair to the woman, the child that had grown accustomed to being isolated, became a solitary man, and while he would not cheat on his wife, he wouldn’t have to. What remained wasn’t enough for her to subsist on, and she would eventually grow tired and leave. But she had given him a son, and in time the boy would prove to be the anchor that kept him from floating away and ceasing to exist, and for that he would forever be grateful, and like the ties that bind, it would require them to remain friendly, if not at least civil.
At this point in his life he had the appearance of a Mickey Rourke-ish cad, somewhere between the 9 ½ Weeks and The Wrestler visages, not literally of course, but he had maintained a very good physical specimen, not just for a man his age, but in general, however 20+ years of working outdoors had left him with a leathery complexion, and he looked his age. Nevertheless he had long since adopted the attitude “I ain’t good-looking but I ain’t shy, ain’t afraid to look a girl in the eye,” from that Bob Seger tune. Though it was often accompanied by a degree of difficulty and verbal constipation in its application, he managed to articulate himself in a way that was foreign to his appearance and the contradiction of the man he was and the man he appeared to be was like catnip to the kitties. His accomplishments lent themselves to a well-earned confidence, and not its ugly cousin arrogance. He was remarkably humble and appreciative of every woman he’d “met.” So to be clear, he was never the best looking man in any room, but he was often the most examined, and women found him sexy and curious, as if they couldn't decide if they wanted to sleep with him or not. And in that “hesitation kills the squirrel crossing the road” moment of indecision, he would take his best shot to get the nut, and succeeded with surprising regularity.
He understood his behavior wasn’t normal, not in an aberrant way, but nothing to brag about. It was more aptly a sad reflection of the fact he had come to some acceptance that he was simply not of the monogamous variety, and had a strong aversion to the lies and drama that trying to pretend to be demanded. It was either that, or in a less flattering and more accurate sense, he just wasn’t very good at relationships except those of the temporary and disposable variety. And relationships are work, and he either didn’t have the energy for them, or the desire to be burdened with the associated responsibilities.
Whether by nature or nurture, he was definitely a bit of a stray, and one of the collateral side effects of his childhood was the fact that he had grown up to be a man who didn’t require the constant company of others. He wasn’t anti-social, he simply wasn’t uncomfortable being alone, but he was definitely a sexual creature, and one of the nicknames that Chunk had for him was Jake Dawg, and it fit like a collar. He came from a long line of prolific men, his grandfather and great-grandfather siring children well into their sixties at a time when the average lifespan of a man was probably forty-five, he almost seemed predisposed to an obsession with it.
So for better or worse, our boy Jake was a bit of a loner, and invariably for some, the hunt is more gratifying than the kill, the chase more exciting than the capture, the journey more enjoyable than the destination …the kill, the capture, the destination offering mere evidence and validation of the pursuit, but once satisfied and accomplished we plan anew. Set out to hunt another trophy for the man-cave, and Rae Anne Johnston had that aura about her, and he was tragically romantically dyslexic, an overachiever constantly pursuing the unavailable and unobtainable women, or those simply beyond his level of attractiveness pay-grade and she was the ultimate representation of all the above…
In the sum of things, what would become so magnetic about her was that he could have her in all manners of lovingly sordid ways …but he couldn’t have her in the way he would come to desire her most, entirely …she belonged to someone else. Like some obsession with capturing Sasquatch or the Loch Ness monster, it created a terrible paradox for the man, a seemingly endless, futile pursuit …to “want” something he couldn’t have, to “have” something he couldn’t keep. It was an emotional cluster-fuck that would require him to prostitute his self-respect in an attempt to maintain some proximity to her …like a drug addict, and make no mistake it pained him to do so.
If love is a drug, then affairs are its “crack,” the excitement surrounding the illicit nature of it, the limited availability, the episodes and trysts characterized by periods of short intense highs and long periods of anxiousness and “jonesing” between fixes. And always on the clock, just as he imagined a crackhead to be, conscious of the fact it was going to end the moment it began, already thinking about the next time she would call. And as contrary to his code as it was, he would contort himself to maintain some value and utility in her life, and manipulate hers to keep others out of it. And just like an addiction, unhealthy, it would unavoidably have a negative impact on all other aspects of his life, and the decisions he would subsequently make. Not to state the obvious, but in some cases gettin’ what you want ain’t a good thing, and that reality would come to aggravate the situation and he’d find himself off the proverbial reservation. He would lose sight of who he was, and it would not be pretty for anyone concerned. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves talking about something as if it’s already happened …like Wilfred Brimley narrating a movie.
Bottom line, the path he had taken to her doorstep, to this point in his life was about as crooked as a stick in water, and he thought he had a pretty good GPS of himself as a man, but he didn’t know if he had taken the road less traveled to a common destination, or a common path and somehow arrived somewhere uniquely his own, but he felt at that moment, like he had wound up exactly where he was supposed to be. And while that’s a whole lot of backtracking, and a bit of foretelling, it was necessary to say a little about where this was going for you to have an appreciation for where we are, and important to understanding the significance of the moment in his life, to this retelling of it, and essential to understanding where it would take the man as events unfolded.
He showed up characteristically punctual, his focus on the task before him made an excited determination of his usual nervousness, like a fullback preparing to punch it in the end zone for the go ahead touchdown with one second left on the game clock, or a fireman running into a building when everyone else is running out, the “static” was his friend on this occasion. He had danced this doorstep dance countless times, bedded more women than he could remember, but tonight was notably different for reasons he could not explain, he felt special, carefully chosen, as if 1) Resume accepted; 2) Interview concluded, and now; 3) Hired to perform a very pleasurable service. And with the innocence of a schoolboy’s desire to please, and the confidence of a well-traveled man, in the manner he’d become accustomed he was gonna “do it right,” and in so doing exceed all expectations, including his own.
Like an overgrown teenager he had brought a mix-CD, yep, and Eminem’s “
Lose Yourself” was playing in his head as he walked to the door, it would have seemed terribly cliché if he’d had the opportunity to watch it unfold like a scene from a movie:
“If you had one shot, or one opportunity To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment Would you capture it or just let it slip?”
But if it had been a movie, despite the dastardly nature of his visit, he was such an “everyman” there was a reasonable chance that the regular guys in the audience would have been quietly applauding him, while measuring their girlfriends’ and wives’ reactions with a heightened interest. Like a prizefighter marching to the ring with accompanying music to amp himself up, the song continued in his head…
“You better lose yourself in the music, the moment You own it, you better never let it go…”
“You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow This opportunity comes once in a lifetime…”
He paused for a moment unnoticed, admiring the view as Rae sat visible through the door’s window, a glass of wine atop the piano she sat playing, donning reading glasses …as if it were even possible for him to turn back at this point:
“You can do anything you set your mind to man”
“But will I be able to live with myself afterwards?” He asked himself, “I think I won’t be able to live with not finding out…” Then he rapped twice on the door, and waited for her to let him in, and just like that the guy you would’ve trusted with your wife and kids became the guy who stepped inside another man’s house with bad intentions, and as all men are dogs of some fashion, in so doing he metaphorically cocked his leg to leave his scent, unaware in the process, his life would be fucked for the unforeseeable future.
