The Stranger

Chapter 5

A lot of shit goes down in Spain, more fucking, a mysterious artifact is uncovered, more mind games with father, and a revelation that Pablito is your little brother.  I am so fucked, I have to go see my friend Suzan immediately upon returning.

Well either it's true or I'm losing it because I do feel he's got  pull over me, and when he appears I feel like it's as true as you sitting across from me right now. 

I mean even Carl Jung himself said that calling the devil by the name of neurosis didn't really get rid of the devil, but he didn't see people who weren't there.  He didn't believe in black magic.  If you really want my advice, Anna, here is what I suggest you do.  I suggest either you find a psychiartrist who can prescribe you the hard stuff that will make all the unicorns disapper or you break this spell the old fashion way.   You go out and find a real man, somebody with whom you can truly give yourself, and who isn't afraid of all the subselves you've got going on.  Then, if that guy still isn't the right one to make the Spanish fly disappear then you will at least know that you are gay.

Oh Shit, you're right, I say.  I've got nothing to lose by beginning the search for another man, and this time I'm not going to settle for someone who looks good on paper, but lacks chemistry.  This time I will wait for someone who can complete me.  Oh, Christ, did I just say that?  I sound like some dipshit from a romantic comedy, but you know what I mean, right?

Yes, says Miranda, I do.  Because I am married to someone like that, som

There is nothing worse than being in the frame of mind of looking for the right guy, because somehow, inevitably in this mindset he never appears.  This, of course, is how magic works, and something you probably knew all along, and so what do I do?  I immerse myself in something, in this case my novel because by focusing on some aspect of my life that doesn't involve men is my best chance for manifesting one in the magical sense.  But you can't pretend.  You can't fool the universe.

And Oh, what has my novel become!  Nothing more than a lurid mirror of my own situation.  The main character, Karen, is a warrior princess fighting the forces of evil along side a handsome prince with your hair, and uncanny ability to show up whenever I don't need him, and be there whenever I don't.  The evil wizard thwarting all of this is Karl Vizner, who is hell bent on destroying Karen, and holding court over the land of Zyzziva for now and forever blah blah blah.  The thing I hate about fantasy is that real life evil is so much harder to spot.  It would be so much easier to fight the forces of darkness if they all wore dark capes and had red, glowing eyes and weilded broad swords.  In real life evil doesn't appear so clearly, except perhaps in places of war, and dark alleys where addicts puncture their veins in those hidden hells traveled by the living dead that are too painfully real to write about to escape or too mundane to get anyone to believe that hell can be right here on earth.  The magic of everyday life, does exist however, and right now I am not sure if you are my ally or my enemy. 

I told you a little about my mother, and how she abadoned me when I was ten, but what I didn't tell you was that she was a cocaine addict, who chose drugs over her family, and the last memory I have of her is her driving away in our big green pick up truck.  She tried to contact me again when I was nineteen, right after my father died, but I was doing a few drugs of my own and didn't want to talk with her, and her how she miraculously got clean after being dirty my whole life. 

My father held it all together for me after she left, doing his best to make up for my mother.  He would fix me pancakes every moring, and made sure that every birthday I had was more spectacular than the last, but I think the strain of it was too much.  He would have hated you because he believed that real men didn't hid behind words.  He believed real men said what they meant.  He would have love Jacob. 

Now my only remaining family is my crazy Aunt Geneva who lives out in a cabin somwhere in the woods and who I have no real desire to see.  She is a rabid vegetarian, conspiracy theorist, and lover of all things in the woods. Remember you met her once when we went to Archy McFee's.  She bought a Fez, and a giant chair made out of a hand.  She told me later, in secret, she thought you were sexy.

My aunt helped me when my father first died, doing something she called "feeling therapy" which meant I was just supposed to feel whatever I was feeling for an entire week, laughing, crying, raging, whenever something came up, anything, and so I did.  I felt so horrible the entire week, when I left I didn't even thank her because I felt like she'd tortured me in some way, but the truth was when I left I felt much better, and I don't know how I would have survived without her.  At the same time I have avoided her ever since, not wanting to feel so much again.

Do you remember the first poem I wrote for you?  Those words still mean the same to me now as they did then.  The next time I see you I'm going to have to tell you what you're doing to me.  I can't go on like this when I don't even know where you are.