Hello, My Name Is: Awake

She comes once a week to water the plants.

The lower floor of the library is like a jungle, dripping with drooping branches; the corners are stuffed with ferns. The high glass ceilings diffuse the light, like a film in soft-focus, tinted vaguely green. It is a greenhouse, punctuated by bookshelves and cozy sofas for reading. The administration has spent thousands of dollars on foliage. She comes to protect their investment. We would forget, they know it.

In her faded jeans and tank tops, she is nothing like my wife. Her hair is long, hastily swept into an untidy bun which always seems in danger of coming loose. Sometimes I watch, waiting for the movement that will loosen her hair and send it spilling down her back in a dark cascade. Miranda’s hair was curly, constantly in motion, each restless coil collapsing and expanding independently.  This woman, the woman who comes to water the plants, exists in smooth unbroken movement, like a vine snaking from limb to limb.

No, she is nothing like my wife. But she has that way of women who fill up a space with small, subtle things. Gestures and expressions and sighs. Movements of their fingers. A way of looking up at the sky and wondering if it will rain. A million tiny movements to weave a life around them, and suddenly it is your life, too, and you are in it, and the shrugs and murmurs are part of the symphony that urges you to eat, to shave, to open your eyes in the morning.

I have never spoken to this woman, but I know her name is Inez. On Monday mornings, I wait to see her battered pick-up truck dissolve into the shadows beneath the parking garage. I stare at my computer screen and wait to hear the water running in the break room, where she fills her sprinkling can. Through the glass walls of my office, I watch her moving slowly throughout the library, disappearing and reappearing from behind the stacks, a column, a ficus bush. She is completely absorbed. All around her, students swirl and eddy, ipods and cell phones jammed into their ears. She moves as if in slow motion against a high-speed backdrop, lovingly inspecting each plant, pinching off the dead leaves, frowning at the breaks at bruises her charges suffer at the hands of the careless students.

When she sees a wounded plant, a tiny,vertical crease forms between her dark brows. Her lips move slightly as the leaves of the plant pass between her fingers, and I imagine she is murmuring an incantation.

There has only been one woman since Miranda died, and I want it to not count. I have willed it from my memory; the details are but dark smudges. It was so long ago, it was not love or even sex, only comfort.  Helen was Miranda’s closest friend; they had been nearly inseparable since college. Helen stood beside Miranda the day we were married. The morning after our wedding, Miranda took the phone into the hotel bathroom to call Helen, locking me out. Our daughter, Michelle, called Helen “Auntie.” And for a brief time after Miranda’s death, Helen and I were united in our grief and longing for someone we both loved and could never have back.

Michelle was nineteen, a sophomore in college, when she discovered our affair. She came home unexpectedly one Sunday morning, lugging a canvas sack full of laundry. I watched disbelief and then disgust scrawl themselves across her face when she found us eating breakfast. Helen was wearing my bathrobe, like Miranda used to do.

Soon after, Michelle dropped out of college and got a job on a cruise ship. She lives in Baltimore now, with a man named Kirk. I am not certain, but I suspect she tells people that both her parents are dead. I have not spoken to her in at least two years.

I stopped seeing Helen after that. I was not sorry; it was not an affair either of us wanted to prolong. Helen got married seven years ago. She has a family now. I was invited to the wedding, but I was paralyzed by the RSVP card. Reading it, trying to decide which box to check, was like falling naked down a flight of stairs. At the bottom of the card was a handwritten note: Dear Norm, please feel free to bring anyone you like. I have also invted Michelle, seperately, so that she may bring her own guest.

I have spent the past ten years trying to make it up to my daughter. She would have me believe that I betrayed her mother’s memory, and for a while I believed her. Now, I’m less sure that what happened between myself and Helen was anything more than the collision of two people, deafened and blinded by the same explosion. Michelle convinced me that her mother would have been devastated, revolted by what I had done with her friend, and so I have been trying to make it up to Miranda, too. My sorrow and my solitude have been a pennance, a hairshirt I wear to illustrate the depth of my grief. I want to explain all this to Michelle. I want her to know my heart and forgive me. But she is my child; I also hope my lonliness will never be someting she can never relate to, something she will never understand.

And now.  When I watch Inez move between the planters, I feel as though I am waking from a long sleep. My heart is atrophied, but still it beats. Much of my body is numb with disuse, but it lives. There are dreams in my bones, ideas in my blood that I remember now, if only on a cellular level. I cannot imagine speaking to her; I cannot fathom what either of us would say. It is enough, for now, just to know that I am still alive, that things may stir within me after all this time.

Hello, My Name Is: Widower

This Saturday was the ninth anniversary of my late wife’s death.

The first few years after Miranda died, I marked the occasion by a solitary pilgrimage to the coast where I once sprinkled her ashes. Being her widower was my religion and the anniversary of her death was the high holy day; I prepared for weeks. But I’ve been getting sloppy. Being a widower is no longer a religion, it’s simply the sad state of things. Like being held prisoner by God while wishing you could just be an atheist. Where I used to pack the tent for a star-strewn rendezvous with her memory on the beach, now I just get a haircut, I put on a tie, and then I drink scotch until my guts dissolve and leak out between my eyelids into the powder-blue carpeting where she used to sit in her sweatpants and casually flick through Time and Newsweek like celebrity-gossip rags.

Two years ago, I settled for a stagger down memory lane with a bottle of scotch and a knee-high stack of overstuffed photo albums. Last year, I forewent the scrapbooks and settled for just the bottle of scotch. This year, I forgot altogether.

Until she reminded me.

R.I.P. Mr. Pibb

Well, it has been nearly five months since I’ve posted anything to this blog. It seems like a few people were reading it, so I apologize to those who were waiting with bated breath for the next piteous installment.

One would think that five months would equal an insurmountable pile of tales to catch up on. Not so. Here’s what has happened: I’ve been drinking at home since getting unceremoniously ousted from my long-time watering hole, years of unwavering patronage notwithstanding. It has been dull. I’ve been drinking less and reading more. Going to bed earlier. I had a birthday, so I’m 53 now. I spent my birthday with my twin sister, Norma (I know, I know, our parents were hilarious and clever) and her husband, Glenn. We each had a bottle of wine and a steak. Later, Glenn gave me some of his sourdough starter and tipsily impressed upon me the finer points of sourdough bread-making. So, I’ve been making my own bread for the past few months. Which is definitely a way you can spend a Saturday night without getting into any trouble. It’s been something of a self-imposed house-arrest.

Other news: Mr. Pibb has gone to that great fishbowl in the sky. I came home from work one evening in May, ready to celebrate the last day of the spring semester with another innervating evening of baking and BBC news. There were no bills or annoying circulars in the mail, it was payday, there was a mostly-full bottle of Johnny Walker inside; I was happy.

Then I saw him. Or rather, I didn’t see him. The fishbowl where for the previous 8 months he has presumably wanted for nothing was mysteriously vacant. “Mr. Pibb?” I called stupidly, as though I expected him to poke his bulging eyeballs from behind the little plastic castle I presented him with at Christmas, and answer, “Yes, be right with you, I’m just freshening up a bit.”

“Mr. Pibb? Pibby?!” I cried frantically into the afternoon gloom of the darkened living room. Bewildered, I sank onto the sofa. Maybe the cat got him, I reasoned. Only I don’t have a cat. And then something caught my eye, a blot of color peeking out from beneath the drapes. Something orange.

I’ll never know why Mr. Pibb leapt from the watery safety of his fishbowl to certain death upon the rug. Maybe he was terminally ill. Maybe he was rehearsing a new trick with which to impress me. I’d always heard that goldfish are blessed and cursed with shockingly short memory spans; each lap around the fishbowl is a new experience- they circle and circle in delirious oblivion. But a bit of internet research suggests that this is not actually the case. So now I find myself wondering if his suicide was somehow avoidable. Maybe he sought death as a means to escape the sheer ennui that I simply took for granted as a fact of his life. What if I had bought him a larger tank, more plastic plants, an aerating system that included a little diver with bubbles issuing from its old-fashioned helmet? Hell, what if I’d gotten another fish for him to mate with, play with, fight with? Poor Pibb. Did I subconsciously impose solitude and bachelorhood on another creature simply so the burden of my own wretched fate would be shared?

I try not to think of him gasping for water, the sting of the stale air in his gills as he flopped about on the carpet. But I keep having these nightmares about drowning in my own living room. I am sitting on the couch, but I am underwater, my lungs burn with hunger for oxygen. Panic gives way to resignation. So this is how I will go, I think to myself. And then I wake up.

My sister says I’m taking it too hard, to get another fish and move on. “Or maybe don’t get another fish, Norm. Maybe it’s not a good idea. You know, you’ve got your sourdough to mind, and that’s a bit like a pet,” she counsels. “Or try a cactus.”

But I can’t name my sourdough starter. Every farmer in the world will tell you not to name something your plan to cook and eat.

Hello, My Name Is: Public Enemy Number One

No one has a sense of humor any more. Or, perhaps a more accurate assessment of the situation is that no one shares my sense of humor anymore. My wife used to laugh (with me, presumably) at the weird shit I think is funny. But, now that she’s gone, I play for an audience of… well, zero.

Now, not only am I not funny, I’m also without a watering hole. That’s right: Last night I got kicked out of the neighborhood bar where I’ve been drinking for years, and it was suggested in no uncertain terms that I refrain from bestowing my future patronage upon the establishment. Sounds crazy, right? I mean, I’m a 52-year-old widowed librarian. I haven’t a contentious bone in my body- or at least that’s what you’d think if you passed me on the street, or worked with me, or processed my dry-cleaning order. I’m not by nature a belligerent person. The problem is, that when my wife died I lost my anchor to reality. After all, my wife didn’t laugh at everything I did; she was like a kind of personal censor, using her discouraging frown to save me from my most twisted and inappropriate ideas.

So whatever did I do to arouse such ire at the Hitching Post? Well, for starters, I drank too much. I wasn’t staggering or puking on myself, but I had consumed just enough alcohol to dissolve the mental filter that sifts out the really terrible ideas and relegates them to innocuous fantasy. Remember those two snotty girls that decided I was a stalker just because I tried to have a conversation with them? Yeah… still smarting over that one.

But it doesn’t pay to try to get even.

Hello, My Name Is: Crotchety Librarian

It’s that time again: Each semester I am sent a coterie of college students from the Work Study program to work in the library. These students perform menial tasks such as re-shelving books or maintaining their myspace page at the circulation desk so that I am able to sit in my office with the door closed and earn my paycheque doing other, more important things. Like reading online news reports about how the economy is headed for the crapper, or blogging about my miserable existence. I was informed by email that I could expect the Spring reinforcements to arrive at 8:30 a.m.

It’s not that I don’t like the students. I do. The students do all the crap that the rest of us have decided we’re above doing. Occasionally a couple of them develop a romance, which can be fun to watch. Sometimes they entertain us with outlandish stories about why they didn’t show up to work for a week. And last year, one of the girls brought cupcakes on Valentine’s Day, which was doubly nice because, even though I didn’t tell anyone, it was also my birthday. It’s just that I really wasn’t in the spirit to induct these kids into the art of library management this morning. It’s a cold, wet day outside, which always puts me in a foul mood because I walk to work. When I arrived, soggy and chilled, I discovered no one had made any coffee. In an attempted gesture of magnanimity, I decided to make coffee for myself and my coworkers. But, being a person that needs his blood:caffeine level to be at least 50% in order to accomplish the simplest of tasks, I forgot to put the carafe under the coffee pot. So, when the assistant librarian found me, I was kneeling in the break room wasting a rain-forest’s-worth of paper towels to mop up a veritable sea of wasted caffeine. “Uh, Mr. Saxon? The work study kids are here.” I looked up and saw her peeking apprehensively around the partially open door. I sighed. “Let me do that for you,” she offered. I stood up and walked out of the break room without saying thank you. I know- I’m an asshole.

They were loosely assembled in front of the circulation desk. None them were talking.

“Good morning,” I said without meaning it. “I’m Mr. Saxon, the head librarian.” They looked at me blankly, as though they were expecting a beam of light to shine down from Heaven and illuminate me. I wished it would. It would warm me up, if nothing else. “Well,” I said, when the beam failed to appear, “let’s get started on the tour.”

The five of them followed me to the elevators. We stood for a long time in silence waiting for an elevator to arrive. I felt like it was my job to be saying something, to break the ice, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. Not being able to think of anything to say is one of the hallmarks of my experience on Earth. This is also why I am a librarian.

In the elevator I was able to closely scrutinize the new members of my staff. They were:

DeVon: A tall, polite young man wearing multiple layers of grossly oversized athletic clothing, and an assortment of gold jewelry. The only one that said “good morning.”
Connor: A stocky blonde kid with his hat on backwards, and a faded camouflage t-shirt with some deer on it. Poster child for the American Anti-Culture Movement.

Katie: Petite, with spiky brown hair. A tattooed ring of tiny roses encircling right wrist. Black eyeliner. Cute, but seemingly world-weary.

Jessica: Overweight. Bad haircut. Tiny bookbag drawing attention to her size by being juxtaposed against her broad back.

Dave: One of those faces that’s easy to forget, hard to remember. Me at age 20. I’d go out of my way to be nice to him, but I’ll probably forget he works here.

Now that I’ve performed the requisite tour of the library and explained the functions thereof (in case these particular students happened to be unfamiliar with libraries), I’m safely ensconced in my office. I’ve left my door ajar to sub-textually communicate my openness to them approaching me and asking any questions they might have in regard to their duties. Next week, I’ll start closing it again. That will be nice. I feel weird with my door open. Exposed.

From my desk, I can see Katie. She is sitting at the circulation desk with her back is to me. She is looking at her myspace page.

Hello, My Name Is: Swingin’ Single Guy

Is someone spying on me or playing a joke on me? I just returned from a rain-soaked sojourn to my mailbox to collect my daily allotment of bills and advertisements with a surprise in my hands. But it wasn’t a juicy surprise, like a cheque for a million bucks from Publishers’ Clearing House, or a misdelivered box of prescription pain pills. Instead, it was an invitation to join a singles matching network.

Never once in the eight years since I’ve been a widower have I received offers of this kind. How did they get my name? I tore open the glossy, red envelope, slightly mortified by my own curiosity. Dear NORMAN R. SAXON, it read, are you ready to meet exciting, local singles? For just $59.99 per month, you can browse the profiles of hundreds of attractive, successful, exciting, singles right in your area! Or, if you prefer, you can use our compatibility service to put you in touch with singles we think would be great for you- at no additional charge!

Geez, I thought. How embarrassing. What kind of desperate nutjobs are willing to cough up sixty bucks just to be able to have a cup of coffee with another desperate nutjob? I can just imagine what kind of a woman I’d get set up with: she’d be a bald, three hundred pounder with a lazy eye and a mysterious outbreak of scabs on her face. But, being the nice guy I am, I’d say, “Hi, I’m Norm,” and I’d buy her a coffee anyway. Then she’d fall to the ground, have a seizure, and then get back into her chair and start clucking like a chicken and drooling onto her sweatshirt. Or maybe she’d shit herself. Anyway, I’m not that lonely. Yet.

Then I heard a little voice in my head. It sounded like my wife. Why are you being such a dick, Norm? said the voice. Meeting people is hard, as you well know. There are probably loads of perfectly nice, introverted women out there that are just as lonely as you are, and just want someone to have a coffee with. Anyway, you’re balding too, so get off your high horse, Mr. Pitt.

Shit.

Two minutes later I was filling out the personality profile. Still in my raincoat.

There were, of course the requisite questions about my age, build, and sexual orientation. Then there was one that surprised me. It asked me what my average annual income was, and gave a list of ranges from which to choose. Isn’t that a little personal? I mean, where I was raised, it was just plain rude to ask other people about their financial situations. I guess I’m just old fashioned. After all, the bitches want riches. I thought about selecting a range that would place me below the poverty line, just to see if I could get a date based on my winning personality alone. The little voice in my head that sounds like my wife cleared its throat as if to say, Don’t be a self-defeating moron, Norm. I relented and filled in the correct bubble.

Tell us a little bit about yourself, urged the form. Try to include information that other people would find interesting or charming, but remember- be honest! What the hell was I supposed to write? Charming? Moi? Let’s see- I could tell them about how I have a freckle where I part my hair- my wife used to think it was really cute. Now that I have less hair, you can see it even better. Is that what they mean? Or, should I tell them that I have a fish? Chicks dig goldfish, right? Or how about this: I have thirteen pairs of argyle socks. I have three socks in my drawer without mates, but for some reason I can’t bring myself to throw them out. My guiltiest pleasure is the entire Celine Dion discography. My favorite ice cream flavor is vanilla. I drink a pot of coffee a day. I eat a bowl of All-Bran every other day for regularity.

Get in line, ladies.

The sad thing is, I actually wrote some of this stuff down. Well, not the part about the socks or the All-Bran. After that, I drew a blank.

And then I crumpled it up and threw it in the trash.

Looks like it’s shaping up to be another quiet night at home with Celine, Mr. Pibb (that’s the fish’s name), and a bowl of plain vanilla. At least I know who my friends are.

Hello, My Name Is: Creepy Old Guy

Last night I decided to go to a bar and have a drink, just to have some kind of human interaction. I shut down my computer and realized it had gotten dark. Another sunset had blossomed and whithered behind my back, and all the lights were off. It was depressing. I shrugged into my coat, and turned on every light in my house just so it would be cheerfully lit when I returned. I might also be cheerfully lit, and there’s nothing like coming home to a cold, dark house to trample your buzz.

My neighborhood bar is patronized by quite a few college students. Actually, all the bars in this area are watering holes for the University, without whom this town would be nothing more than a dreary little monument to the late 19th century. The college crowd is both a blessing and bane. They’re easy on the eyes, but when it comes to exchanging a little small-talk, they’re remarkably disappointing. I don’t know why I keep trying. I suppose I could chat up some other lonely, old bastard. They say misery loves company, but my particular brand of misery loves big eyes, big butts, and big smiles smeared with lip gloss. So there you have it.

This time, I didn’t have to chose my victim, she chose me. Actually, she chose the barstool next to me, which is the same thing, in my book. There were two of them. The girl that sat beside me was a little fat, but she had a nice face, and long tangled-looking hair which was dyed black. The one sitting furthest from me was the prettier of the two, but chubby girls are usually friendlier than lean ones, so I was pleased with the arrangement. She ordered her drink (a seven-and-seven) and glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. I could tell she was trying to decide if I was creepy or not.

“Hello,” I said, and smiled my least-creepy smile. “I’m Norm.”

The corners of her mouth upturned into a tight little grimace. “Hi,” she said brusquely. The verdict was already out: I was creepy. Damn.

“What’s your name?” I asked her.

“Jennifer. This is Carly,” she said, leaning back on her stool a bit so she could gesture to her friend. Carly gave me a constipated little flick of the fingers that was probably supposed to be a wave.

“Y’all go to school here?” I asked. Of course I knew the answer, but the conversation was in its infancy- I wanted to feed it, to keep it alive.

“At the bar?” asked Carly. They burst into fits of laughter. Carly punctuated her laughter with unattractive little snorts.

“Yeah, we do,” answered Chubs. “We’re here more than we’re in class, anyway!”

The bartender brought them their drinks and Chubs then unceremoniously turned her back to me and began conversing with Carly in the giggly, conspiratorial manner of girls who want to be noticed but not approached.

About fifteen minutes later, Carly got a call on her cell phone. “Oh my God,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s Captain Shithead. Be right back.” She stood up and walked toward the entrance, her phone smashed between her shoulder and her ear as she rummaged in her bag for cigarettes. Chubs was visibly uneasy, and tried to pretend I wasn’t there.

“So,” I said to her, “What do you study?”

“Sociology.”

“What year are you?”

“I’m a sophomore.”

“Where are you from?”

“Dallas.”

It went on like this for a few minutes. My polite attempts at conversation were met with monosyllabic hostility. The benign interrogation came to a halt with Carly’s return. Wreathed in the stench of cigarettes, her blue eyes still rolling like marbles in her heavily made-up face, she plopped gracelessly onto her barstool and gulped the rest of her drink. “You aren’t going to belieeeve the shit he just tried to tell me,” she said to Chubs. Chubs turned her back to me and gave Carly her full attention. The recounting of Carly’s conversation with Captain Shithead was so corrupted by the overuse of the word “like” and unfamiliar idioms that I was denied even the pleasure of meaningful eavesdropping.

I had two more drinks. I thought about buying the girls a round, but decided they’d only see it as some sort of predatory gesture. They’d probably accept the offer, but it wouldn’t get me anything except more scorn and contempt.

The low point of the evening: I was finishing up in the john when I heard two familiar female voices in the cramped hallway outside the restrooms. The bathrooms are a one-at-a-time affair, so patrons frequently cluster in the hallway while waiting their turn.

Girl A: I know! It was like twenty questions or something! Seriously!

Girl B: He’s like, older than my dad!

Girl A: Sick! What if he’s like, a stalker or something?

Girl B: (snorting) Ha ha! He’s like, totally gonna be waiting for you in the parking lot! Ha ha!

I had to decide: is it more humiliating to be the guy that spends twenty minutes in the bathroom, or to face the people that have just been performing a character assassination on you within your very earshot? The bathroom reeked of piss, so I chose the later.

Chubs looked surprised and then embarrassed to see me emerge from the bathroom. I got a more diluted version of the tight little grimace she’d given me when I introduced myself. Carly’s lips curled inward like she was trying to bite down another round of uncontrollable snorting. I wanted to say something to them, to let them know what cruelty and unfairness they were guilty of. I wanted to say, “You know what, girls? I’m a nice guy. What in God’s name makes you think you have the right to act like such unmitigated bitches? So what if I’d like you to come home with me and let me watch you take your clothes off and make out on my couch? I’d never force you, and I’d certainly never stalk anyone! I just wanted to talk to you! What’s so awful about that?”

I wanted to grab Chubs’ hands and look imploringly into her big, brown eyes and say, “Let’s be honest, honey. I’m probably the best offer you’re gonna get all semester. Would you really rather waste your charms on some drunken fraternity member, and wake up with puke in your hair and an STD? Come home with me. I won’t even make you take your clothes off- just let me lie next to you and smell your hair. Let me hold you while I fall asleep. And in the morning, I’ll make you breakfast and coffee, and we can have a real conversation. I’ll show you my pictures of the South Pole, and I’ll drop you off at class on my way to work.”

But I didn’t say any of that stuff. Instead, I looked at the floor and mumbled “‘Night, girls,” as I shuffled past them.

Then I went home and jerked off thinking about the two of them engaged in a naked make-out on my couch.

I miss my wife.