I feel like I've been raped by those flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. Yesterday we went to help begin the process of planting vegetable gardens at our friends' house. There was a lot of soil to be spread throughout the yard. Deep, rich, heavy soil. It was like the crystal-meth of soil, glistening with reflective particles, waiting to be activated. For several hours we shoveled the rich soil into a wheelbarrow and then dumped it and spread it throughout the various beds and planters. It was a lot of soil, 20 cubic yards, maybe more, I forget. I slept terribly and awoke with bruises where my bones and muscle used to connect.
No, it's not as bad as I claim. It falls just shy of flying-monkey-rape. But I'm a little bit sore, even my anus is, though that might be unrelated.
Hold on, I'll make a tea, and then we'll see.
Here, take a look:
I ate an enormous amount of fiber, suddenly and without warning, after having had a stomach virus for several days. That's probably why my anus hurts. It's difficult to say for sure. If I try to touch it to gather evidence as to what might have happened it announces its dissatisfaction throughout the halls of my nervous system. Only running hot water over it in the shower seems to make it happy at all. I've gotten old. The phrase "falling apart at the seams" has taken on fresh new meanings for me. I think a few stitches might have come loose back there. Rachel refuses to look at it. She views it as enema territory. Maybe she said enemy territory. I couldn't hear her. I was face down holding my ass cheeks open. My hearing's going also. Who knows.
No. I'm just being irreverent because it's Easter. If I have to listen to people talk about other people rising from the dead - after going to hell where Satan, death and sin were defeated - then the gates are pretty much wide open for me to talk about flying-monkey-rape and early morning Easter anus inspection.
The day does hold special significance for me, though not for religious reasons, or the reasons I've mentioned above.
Four years ago Rachel and I were trying to find ways to make our relationship work. We went to church together on Easter Sunday. To my memory it was the first time that we had ever walked into a church together. Over the course of the next year we decided, in various ways, that our relationship was not working. By the following year, three years ago, we were not speaking and I was dating somebody else. A woman that I had known for some time, from Orlando. She was the first person that I felt like I might be able to form a relationship with after the many years of dating Rachel. I had assured her that everything was over between Rachel and I, and it was.
We hadn't spoken in about three months, Rachel and I. I finally told her that I needed to move on and there was no easy way to do so with us still being in touch with each other, still seeing each other, etc. So, after leaving her apartment one day I decided that I would never go back, that I would stop calling her, that I would not respond to her calls. It worked. Within three months I was seeing a girl named Crystal and I felt like I had broken the hold that she had over me.
Crystal left New York on Easter morning three years ago with tentative plans to come back, even though I had an aversion to long distance relationships. I knew how misguided I could be in a relationship and I questioned whether forming a long-distance affair was what was best for me. Before she had even left New York I was hinting that it might not work. I was a little bit worried that it might not happen between us, that it was still "too soon." But we liked each other and had fun together and we had known each other for many years. There was a comfort factor involved. But the main thing was that it was the first relationship that I had had in many years in which I felt that it was possible for me to have feelings for somebody else. That's what I was trying to say.
Later that night Rachel texted me. Women have supernatural senses when it comes to this sort of thing. Rachel says that she had a dream in which she realized that she was losing me. I was at our mutual friends' condo while Rachel was at another's, just a few streets away. She was leaving there soon and she asked what I was doing. I told her that I was where I was and she asked if it was okay if she came over. Within an hour or two of her arrival, and shortly after leaving our friends' place, I had asked her to marry me, late Easter Sunday night, in front of one lone witness, her friend visiting from Canada. We decided that we would put all of this breaking up and getting back together behind us, once and for all. We agreed that we did one thing better than breaking up, and that was getting back together.
Telling Crystal was not easy. I went from hoping to see her again in a few weeks to being married to my long term girlfriend with whom I had claimed to be estranged, overnight. There was no way to get her to believe me. The story seemed too improbable and likely riddled with lies of one kind or another. But as improbable as it all was I was being honest. I swear to it. There were many witnesses.
Rachel and I went to the courthouse and got married. We texted our friends that we had done so and were generally met with support and happiness. There were some that were perplexed at such a sudden and drastic shift, others were unsurprised by it. Rachel never mentions our courthouse wedding as the actual date that we got married. For two and a half years now I have listened to her cite Oct. 17th as our wedding day. That was the day, six months later, that we had a wedding ceremony in Sonoma. Perhaps because she was wearing a wedding dress, surrounded by family and friends, and got her diamond ring... that day that makes it official to her. She sees that as the more orthodox version of our marriage.
The state of New York disagrees.
She is trying to get me to go to church with her and Rhys this morning. For an atheist, being at church on Easter Sunday is like being in a co-ed jail. You know you don't belong there, you have no respect for the judge, you're hoping to make bail soon, there is no beer, and everybody's wearing the same costume.
I will probably go. It suits her vision of Rhys' first Easter, all of us together, dressed nicely, enjoying the friendly communion of believers. What harm can it do, as opposed to the possible trouble made by not going? I hear people prattle endlessly about their horoscopes and various other nonsense, why not about a man rising from the dead only to forgive my transgressions against him? It seems fitting, all things considered. Without him we have little left but romantic memories and flying monkey rape.
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