This begins with a text message. I received one. It said, and I quote:
"Tonight is ur last chance to see ME :) in the vagina monologues @7 at the rio grande! 10 for students. 12 otherwise. ill c u there!"
It was my friend Stephanie and I had yet to go see her perform. So I dragged my hollow feeling body down there for the last performance of Vagina Monologues in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
When I get to the theater I can't stop thinking, Eve Ensler would be proud if she knew what I'm feeling.
At the ticket booth I encountered Renee, who took my $12 and said hi. We have had some drunken, party nights. We have spoken energetically about writing. We made out once, drunk-yes in a dark hallway. It was not really a kiss, it was me flying from the terrible horror that was my relationship of the past year and one half.
As I walk inside the theater with my ticket, I see a woman who I know from El Patio bar, which I have been frequenting since the painfully slow break-up between Jaymie and I. This woman, I had not really taken notice of in the few months at El Patio Bar. Then she danced. She danced to the cheesy, roadhouse-style band playing 1-dimesional versions of Stevie Ray Vaughn covers. But as she moved, she became Venus. She captured my entire passion. She was the snake charmer and I am a snake, I guess. So as this woman, the snake charmer, took my ticket, we had a flash of recognition. I have in the past, told her on a couple beer-induced occasions that she is an amazing dancer. So there in the theater she took my ticket, wearing this absolutely stunning red dress, just blazing like fire. Beneath that dress was a reality I could not even imagine. And I have a great imagination. She dropped her ink pad as she stamped my wrist. I told her, "Oh, you and the red, ink pad match." I picked it up and handed it to her. She said "Thank you." I don't know her name. But I've seen her dance. And I can tell, y'know- I can tell.
I walked inside. The theater was packed with elbows, jackets and shoulders too-wide. I floated down the isle to the front. It was dark. They were already on stage. 3 women. Ensler's 3 muses intoning the opening of the portal. Opening the great vagina for the evening. I floated down the isle, deep into that opening and sat on the end of the row, barely hanging there, seemingly.
A few moments of the performance here and there captured my fancy, but nothing special. All the actresses seemed very young and there was a desperate fear in their performance. Then a 15 minute break. The lights came up and I felt alone. With all these beautiful, artsy, theater people bubbling around me, I felt ugly. I felt the lights reflecting off my misshapen, bald head. My un-smiling lips covering my crooked, yellow teeth. My crooked nose accentuating every turn of my head. So this is what love makes me feel like? Then a conversation filtered out of the crowd from behind me. I heard a woman say something about how she wants to quit smoking because she never gets to work through her emotional fits if it gets stifled by a cigarette. She needs to feel the pain and let it work itself and cry. This, to me, is like a revelation. I can hardly believe that someone, anyone, any human is left on Earth that has this kind of insight into themselves. I find myself falling in love with someone through their voice only. Why love? Because of Jaymie. Yes, Jaymie.
Here you should know that my vision is getting wet and blurry as I type. But when it comes to Jaymie, my vision was always blurred. Jaymie could have been perfect at first, except she was and is totally wrong. She was 13 years younger than I, and completely un-self-aware. She was full of energy, literally bouncing off the walls. I didn't pay much attention to her because I never thought that our paths would collide. I told a friend once, "You see that young girl over there? Well, that one could get me in a lot of trouble all right." I was so right.
Love? Where do I start? Where does it end?
Jaymie told me she loved me with all her heart. She told me she wanted to marry me and have a bizillion kids. Meanwhile everytime I left her apartment, she would call another guy and have sex with him. She had sex with at least 8 different guys during our relationship. Numerous times. I would help her with her resume. I would drive her to job interviews. Endless hours spent driving her back and forth from job interview to job, to apartment hunts. She got fired, always. I learned later she got fired from one job for trying to have sex with her 15 year old co-worker in the bathroom. I dropped her off. I picked her up. A whole other world bursting inside of her head. (No pun intended) In a daze of honesty she told me she sometimes wished that I was "bigger." The last guy she cheated on me with, she said had 9 inches. I will never look at a cucumber the same again.
I have been obliterated. This is love for me.
But our love was there. Somehow it shone through the cracks. We clinged to each other. She was finding herself. She was trying to awaken from the robotic nightmare of her small-town, media-induced programming. I understood that. Patience. Understanding. That's what I tried to have. Such an abundance. Through all the pain she was laying upon me. Our sex was desperate longing, grasping, frantic screaming into the universe of "it shall not be." We both knew it. I, more than her. There was too much damage. The wound she gave us was fatal. It would never stop bleeding. She opened a mortal wound in my heart. I tried to forgive. I tried to put the images out of my mind. They would only come back with a vengeance when I was weak.
I went to jail because of a public fight we had. She took my best friend to my house that night, drunk, in my car. This was after he told her how his "huge-one" would feel so good to her. Then she took him home and wrecked my car. Then she took off to another city to be with her family. I had not even gotten out of jail yet. No explanations.
Why did I get caught up? Well it is because in this town that I live, is terribly unbalanced. 3 males to every female. The general attitude is: "You are lucky to even experience love or sex, no matter how horrific it is, because there are so many others destitute and ready to die alone. Take it where you can get it."
I wrote a poem once:
I found a putrid hot dog rotting in the gutter
So I choked it down
And as the tears rolled down
gagging on the verge,
I thought
But what else am I to do?
I am fucking starving to death!
That is the feeling. Yeah. So now I am surrounded constantly with bright, beautiful women. But I am always their hang-out buddy. I give them relationship advice and tell them which guys seem the best pick. I have become one of the girls.
Jaymie never saw me as that. Even if she was with all those others, she always wanted me like a woman wants a man. This is what I miss. I miss cuddling. Holding her was like holding a little bird. Jaymie showed me a dark underworld where people are having crazy fun in bathrooms and while their roomates were asleep. A world where if you lust, you get. And get it hot. A world I will never be a part of. Not that I want to be. But I didn't realize I was missing out on so much lust.
There has never been an adequate romatic outlet for me.
So Stephanie took the stage. The Vagina Monologues. She started her line: "My vagina is angry!" Tears welled up in my eyes. She had command of the entire house. She leveled the packed crowd. Every word was a lightning bolt striking at darkness and fear. The crowd roared as she walked off stage. She totally destroyed. Not one mind nor heart could have been left unturned.
She came to the bar later that night. Michael and I hung out with her a bit. There again with a beer, she was just Stephanie. But I had seen her up in the clouds. So I knew now where she could go.
She knows Jaymie. She was the only friend who wanted to help me with Jaymie. But Jaymie can't be helped. I fear she will never wake up. Jaymie lives the program. And a bad program at that.
Even though I know all this, the pain still crashes down, crushing me at intervals.
I am no longer the guy with the cute girlfriend. I am now the weird, alone-guy. Same facial expression. Same clothes. I am now the third-wheel like usual.
What does it take? Confidence? The way "confidence should be served" seems contrived, fake, and disgusting.
So like they say, the path is more important than the destination. I wait for karma to gift me my hefty deposit back with interest.
So far-
This is love for me.
-Rico Dominguez. February 17th, 2009.
And I wait for the one who when I meet, it is:
All the stars do weep and fall out the heavens
Every drop inside the ocean runs dry
All the birds and bees they move in your direction
Time itself gets lost and stops in your eyes.
On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 5:33 PM
