Casually Compromised - Book 1

Fantasy's Bitter Aftertaste

A true part of fantasy is the omission of reality, my own self compromised by design.

I had another evening, it was blurred and I was home in my favorite rocking chair, debating the nights events, listening to music.

Music was my favorite medication.

I would create a number of playlists to encompass moods I wanted to explore. My genres of choice were packaged into quadrants of sound and feeling. EDM or what I would prefer to call techno, tech house, deep house would be the stage of drive, the attitude of go, the action of now. It was manifestation music. Jungle, drum and bass was possible, everything future music. Trip hop, acid jazz and world music was the landscape of whimsical, allure, desire, chill, get down. Dark ambient, was out of focus music and industrial took me to my roots, unclean, broken, raw, distorted.

The past 48hrs I had experienced an arc of everything's fine to i'm royally fucked.

I was disappointed with my cocktail of choice lately- the club and the erosion of my soul.

I felt like I had tripped up fallen for the delusion just because it was all too convenient to do so. My home life with Ally was increasingly complex. She was in a challenging time of her own, family troubles plus a degree of lost direction in her own right and she was slipping into a place setting up barriers walling herself and her lack of confidence from me.

While I was working more and more, throwing myself into the drive of work and while succeeding also eroding as I battled my restless boredom twinges. Our intimacy was complicated. Love, absolutely but my work had made me want more and more. While my mind created a constant fight and flight response I wrestled with the realization that it was largely all false.

My journaling had increased. My music intake upped. I dabbled in a new cocktail creation or two- I could feel the urge to get lost, to be stupid.

I was overthinking everything. Then came the anger of that realization.

I am in the league of the unfortunate.

My mind spinning up the fabrication of something yes but not and the question of whether it was. Outside of work I was a fucked up person I thought to myself. I saw the sympathy in it, I saw that in reality- many people lead this life really. Drawn between two souls yet realizing both are simple mile markers on the highway of life. I thought about everything far too much. But this was the barren landscape before me, outside of work not much else was interesting to me.

I had troubled thoughts.

I recall a conversation with Ally early on in our relationship, both of us in bed drinking wine and enjoying dinner. We'd love these moments together camped out in my bedroom watching TV shows and thinking as if we're in a hotel room. The show had two lovers discussing about the compromise- don't compromise the girl said to the guy. Ally looked at me at that moment and said the same thing to me- as if to reaffirm what we we're feeling for each other. We weren't married yet- that would come about a year later. But I play that moment back in my mind..

"Don't compromise Parker.." she said sipping a glass of wine, sitting with her legs crossed in the bed.

You want this right? That's what she was telling me. I did want her. It took me years to find a girl that got me, all of me. Ally and I met on an electronic dating site. She and her friend found my profile one evening drinking in their apartment scouring sites online for would be men.

Ann her friend found my profile and said "this guy doesn't appear to be a total loser..". I liked how I elevated off the stack of losers somehow.

My profile pic was a picture looking up at me, wearing a Hawaiian shirt with a gas station in the background. I liked the pic. Ally of course, didn't have a profile picture. She didn't like her picture. She doesn't see herself as pretty. She didn't like herself in many ways I think.

By the time she pinged me on the site I had gone through about half dozen dates. On a spree to find a girl that could connect with me both physically and mentally. My bar was pretty high I guess. I recall dates meeting a girl and knowing in 10 minutes whether or not I wanted any more. Often leaving and getting yelled at in the parking lot.

Perhaps I wasn't compromising then. But was I compromising now?

"Don't settle Parker..." she said again, leaning close for a kiss.

Her black hair was fantastic, soft, her moves were slow and alluring. She grabbed the wine glass out of my hand, drank some of it in a classic "this is mine too" fashion, and placed the glass on the end table. She pushed me down on the bed staring into my eyes. Waiting for my response.

My dark brunette lovely. Ally is a mystery to me at most times. She has a vast and complex mind. Hilarious at ever turn, she knows the pace of a well delivered moment. She doesn't consider her self pretty at times. But I've seen it, and the way she accepts me is the beauty I see.

Don't ever settle isn't a question of settling it was one of tolerance. Can you tolerate being alone?

I didn't settle for Ally, she made the cut in series of dates, she made it and then some. But I was also simply a human. I didn't want to be alone any more. I wanted love. I wanted to feel. I wanted to protect. I wanted to build. I wanted to grow old with someone. I wanted someone to get me. I wanted to feel wanted. I wanted to know someone who knew me. I wanted to expose it all and be accepted.

How much loneliness can you take?

I didn't want it any more. Much like the now as I started to feel the alienation between Ally and myself, our life complication issues distancing ourselves- my complex and her own, both waged against us as the restlessness built up within myself, I didn't want to be alone, using Vera as a crutch, no matter the cost.

I was in an elevator, trapped between floors, Ally below, Vera next, and the psychosis of choice that wasn't real at all stripped me to the bone. I started to hate myself.

The music in the playlist shifted to angry industrial music. Music that took me back to my just out of high school days, attempting to figure women out, my insecurities in who i was, I had no idea who I was then. I just wanted the raw noise, the destroy all time and space destruction of the moment.

My mind listened.

It had created an endless pool of feeling. I was feeling it all. I enjoyed a nice depression. Only to be reset in the morning, back at it, work to be done, things to do. You trade one torture or treatment for another- society and the business cares little, whatever you need to keep at it Parker, whatever you need to do to get by. Where does my spirit reside- intermixed on mile marker 11, and unfulfilled?

The music stopped. I had run out of power on my mac. It was 4am. I should sleep. Still seemingly tortured in my mind- and angry I left it manifest this landscape of emotional feeling I commanded it to do so.

One of my many me's caused this, I thought to myself.

I recall my time with Vera and Ally in side by side installments. Both equally powerful. Enjoy your moments Parker, they are limited and fleeting in the availability of the now.