Sputterpub's Blog

Lesley has always been gay, but Sam, who describes herself as bisexual, had only been with one other woman before Lesley. And she’s been with men ever since they broke up: three different relationships in ten months. Lesley now considers Sam a tourist.

Among other things. It has been nearly a year, but she continues to think of Sam when she rises in the morning and before she goes to sleep at night. She fantasizes about Sam’s clean blonde hair; she agonizes about the sweet spot where her long neck meets the angle of her shoulders. Her mind cycles through nouns: bitch, beloved, fool, friend, freak. She still can’t believe that Sam would throw away all their potential, their shared planned cat-cozy home and bicoastal future, and offer up no explanation other than exasperation.

When pushed, Sam resisted using words about it. She kept saying sentences were useless, and that only time would provide the perspective they both needed to understand. But Lesley was gently relentless. She left voicemail invitations to coffee and e-mail notes about talk. She forwarded jokes and sent candy. She even had me intercede. Finally Sam agreed to meet at the Starbucks closest to her apartment.

She told Lesley she couldn’t handle the way Lesley never directly answered any question. She said that because Lesley never said what she wanted, the full burden of their emotional relationship fell on Sam. Lesley listened intently (I can imagine her, leaning forward above the table and drumming the fingers of her right hand on her denim-clad knee). She said she could change and she probably sat back with that look of uncertainty in her eyes. Then Sam told her not to bother; it wouldn’t matter. She just didn’t love Lesley any more. That was eight months ago.

Lesley told me all that, but she said she isn’t accepting it. As passive as she can be, she insists that she and Sam just need more time.

She saw Sam yesterday. We took a walk today and she told me about it.

She’d been having a shitty day. She spoke to her sister in the morning and learned that her brother Ben was back in rehab. Then she accidentally broke her favorite coffee mug while talking to Ellie on the phone, which experience made their regular Saturday chat even less satisfying than usual for Lesley. Finally, when she started to make the chowder she’d agreed to bring to the book group pot luck, she found she was missing two vital ingredients, and she had to venture out, in the rain, to Safeway on a weekend afternoon.

She says she should have known she was headed for no fun. She’d certainly had enough karmic clues.

She rounded the aisle to the baking goods and was shocked to see Sam. The love of her life was about 30 feet ahead of her and coming her way, but she was with someone. Lesley turned and made for the adjacent aisle before Sam recognized her, but she took the vision with her like it was etched in her brain. Sam in jeans and a V-necked shirt, hair down, pushing a cart with a tall, dark-haired man, twining her arm in his and looking full up at him the way Lesley remembered.

It became Lesley’s mission to get out of that store without being noticed. She fetched the needed items like a gumshoe on someone’s tail and she selected the checkout line farthest from the area where she’d seen Sam. Her one break all day was that the line moved quickly.

She admits she was nervous and agitated when she got to the cashier. Her total came to $5.61 and she handed over a ten without thinking. Then she realized she’d reduce the currency in her pocket if she gave the cashier a single, and the cashier exhibited a little attitude about having to re-address the change drawer. Maybe the cashier wasn’t having a good day either. The fact is, instead of putting the five dollar bill and the change in Lesley’s hand, she laid the currency on the counter between them and dropped the coins – 3 dimes, a nickel, and 4 pennies – on and around the bill.

Lesley has well-trimmed nails. It was difficult for her to pry those coins off the smooth surface. She says she doesn’t know what came over her. She was conscious but it was almost like a momentary blackout. She picked up the coins with her right hand and the bill with her left, and then she hurled the change at the cashier.

She grabbed her bag and stomped out of the Safeway. The cashier voiced a “Hey!” behind her but did nothing else. Lesley was quite upset going home.

That was her report. I couldn’t not do anything. Once again, there was a necessary task before me and no one else around to do it. And maybe I’m the appropriate choice anyway. Lesley’s issues go back to the accident, and since my older brother Bill was the driver, I certainly understand all that. And of course I know Sam. I introduced them. Sam and I were together in college and for three years after. I can speak with authority about her. Gently.

I’d like to be gentle, approachable, sweet. But I can’t help myself: I’m always aware of how precious my existence is, and freshly determined to make the most of it, and I’m often the only person present who seems to even see the tasks lying on the floor before us like tackle for the horses, and who must therefore hoist the leather to my shoulders with a resigned familiar sigh, and saddle the steed, and ride.

It’s not so much that I want the work. I just understand that it needs to be done, and there’s no one else stepping up to do it.

My big question is: do the others see it and pretend they don’t, like when people cut into a line and act like others aren’t there? Or is the invitation to action really invisible to them?

“I’m so co-dependent,” my friend Lesley said sheepishly, confessing as if she understood the term. But she was referring to her custom of calling Ellie regularly, just to check on her. Lesley is the middle child in a large addictive family, and she has long habits of making excuses for her parents’ drinking and her siblings’ food and drugs. She is used to being accommodating and considerate. She’s a cream puff. But she resents it all a little. It’s gotten to where, whenever she gets no joy from doing something for another, she thinks it’s because of a failure in herself. She calls her old friend Ellie once a week but she gets no pleasure from the conversation. So she terms her act of calling “co-dependent.”

Lesley needs to be more selfish. She’s chronically depressed now, and variously medicated. But the world at large, the big audience, finds her attractive.

Her shoulders curve a little when she walks. It isn’t bad posture; it’s almost graceful, receptive. She’s pretty and she smiles often. She is quick to laugh at any joke and she tends to murmur at any narrative. Recently I’ve become aware that I wait for those responses when I make a pun or read her a story.

I worry a little that she might explode. She apologizes for the weather and the traffic. She makes the hotel bed before the chambermaid can get into the room. She bakes cookies and presents them to acquaintances on plates from Pier 1.

But she exhibits little criticisms of everyone. She smiles at strangers and then badmouths them, slightly, and she lavishes consideration on friends but afterwards makes cutting remarks, severely expressed. The strength of her criticism seems proportional to the depth of her love. I’ve seen her make hand gestures, middle finger upthrust or index finger aimed at a gagging tongue, while she’s sugar-sweet on the phone. I’ve watched her caress a visiting in-law and then, a second after departure, complain about the visit and the visitor.

Of course I wonder how deeply Lesley despises me when I leave the room. Who wouldn’t?

She lost a sibling when she was six. Her two-year old brother Will was run over in the next-door driveway. I can still see the harsh headline: “Neighborhood Nightmare – Teenager Accidentally Kills Toddler.” Both families, always friends, were thoroughly devastated (I know – I was there), but Will’s twin Benny was stricken, and in all the attention to him Lesley was overlooked. She suffered especially, because her busy mother had chased her out of the house when she complained of boredom, with a casual and careless assignment to look after the twins. Lesley hadn’t taken the command seriously, and her mother never regarded or remembered it, but afterward Lesley began to slump under the weight of her secret shameful responsibility. It didn’t matter how much we talked. She grew up fearful. She always follows rules.

And to hear her describe it, she and Sam were made for each other.

They met when they were 38. They have the same birthday – September 6th – and that was only one of the many qualities they shared. They both love to read, walk, and drink wine with dinner. They each hate jaywalking and littering, and like cats. They agree that astrology is worth study. It fascinated them that they share a passion for two mismatched vacation spots: Cape Cod and Disneyland.

Physically, though, they’re opposites. Although they are roughly the same five and a half foot height, Sam is slim and Lesley is solid. Lesley wears her dark hair cut short and blow-dried straight. Sam has long, classic, high-maintenance streaked blonde ropes down her back. Lesley is stooped and sedentary while Sam strides with obvious athleticism. Lesley’s face is naked; her nails are short and always clean. Sam is made up if she’s awake, and manicured every week.