Krazy Krazy Krazy's Open Salon Blog

Myra's Magnetism

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:09:50 -0400

When I was a little kid I got a gyroscope for Christmas. The packaging said it was a “magic levitating” gyroscope, and once you got the gyroscope spinning between the two magnets you could carefully remove the base and for a couple of seconds it would magically levitate. For an eleven year old boy at Christmas, this was only fascinating enough to hold my attention for about a minute, and soon the gyroscope was forgotten, overshadowed by the bigger and better presents.

I haven’t thought about that gyroscope since I was a kid, but I’m thinking about it today. I wait until Myra disappears into the gas station to pay before putting my forehead against the steering wheel and screaming as loud as I can. I fill my lungs again, once, twice, three times, and I slowly raise my eyes and watch the color come back to my knuckles as my grip loosens on the wheel. After hovering in the air for a couple seconds, the gyroscope always succumbs to the pull of gravity at some point and comes crashing back down on the table.

A couple months after we broke up Myra and I got drunk at a party and hooked up in the back of her car. She was beautiful that night, vivacious, and when I woke up the next morning I could still feel the electricity on my skin. We never talked about it after that, but that night the alcohol had upset the delicate balance that was both holding me together and pulling me apart.

Fifty percent of the cells in my body are huge Myra fans. They love being around her, they love her smell, they love her laugh, her taste, her energy. They love how her body is one long serpentine curve. They love how she gets jokes that other people don’t. They love how smart she is. They love how dangerous she is. When Myra walks into the room, these are the cells that make me want to discreetly check myself in the nearest reflective surface, and they’re the cells that try to make my body jump up and run, slow motion, arms wide open, across the room to her.

My body doesn’t jump up and run, however, because the other fifty percent of the cells in my body are firmly anti-Myra. They hate her passionately. These are the cells that remember crying with the shower running, they remember waking up and feeling the cold spot in the bed where Myra should have been, they remember laying in the dirt under the fallen tree. These cells are holding a grudge, and when Myra walks into the room these cells try to get my body to run for the door on the opposite side of the room.

When Myra walks into the room, civil war erupts. It’s neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother, a colossal tug of war and I am the rope. But Myra never sees the tug of war. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen someone simultaneously running towards something while also running away from it, but to the outside observer the result looks strangely cool and collected. Looking back on it now, I really don’t know why I agreed to come on this trip with Myra. All I want out of this life is a little love and a little adventure, and at the time I guess I thought this might be an adventure. Fifty percent of my cells were probably also rooting for a little love, perhaps aided by our old ally, Mr. Booze.

I glance up to see Myra coming out of the gas station. I quickly get the gyroscope spinning again, with half of me pulling down while the other half pulls up. She smiles at me as she slides into the passenger seat, and it is then that I see that she is also carrying a case of beer. The gyroscope falters slightly as the pro-Myra cells let out a little war whoop, but all Myra sees is a body looking over it’s shoulder, reversing out of the parking space, and then turning to smile back.

Myra's Mind

Tue, 9 Sep 2008 15:09:39 -0400

Myra is probably one of the smartest people I know. She has a fantastic range of knowledge spanning everything from classical music to quantum physics, and she can hold her own in any conversation she might find herself involved in. I remember a long time ago, well before we were dating, getting into a discussion with her about the nature of intelligence. Whereas I thought the single most important quality of an intelligent person was retention, she felt it was organization. I would later find out how revealing these answers were about each of us as a person.

I personally have a terrific power of retention. If I care to remember something, I usually do. If the teacher says it will be on the test, I’ll remember it. That doesn’t mean I was a good student. Far from it. Homework, an educational tool designed to reinforce the day’s lesson, served me no purpose and I refused to trouble myself with it. I also had little respect for teachers who taught for the test and little patience for busy work meant to fill time. Life’s too short for busy work, I’d say. And although I was fascinated by subjects that interested me, I often found myself in inferior classes with a teacher teaching down to the slowest students in the class. This was a result of my middle-of-the-road grades, which in turn was a result of my contempt for homework and the like. Public school was by no means the ideal environment for me, yet I still to this day remember much of what I learned, and I still managed to graduate with honors, mainly to appease my parents.

Due to various quirks in my nature, however, I’ve used this knack for remembering things to develop a terrific mental database of entirely useless information about my friends. Middle names, for example. I love middle names. Everyone has a secret second name, and you can be very close to someone and know their deepest darkest innermost secret hopes and dreams, and still not know their middle name. Myra is a perfect example. Myra Edith. I can’t think of another person besides her dad who knows her middle name.

Most people who know Myra socially are usually surprised to see her in her home. Myra may dress like a rock star and party until dawn, but when she comes home the rock star outfit gets folded in the hamper and washed the next day. Her sock drawer is organized by color and her book shelf follows the Dewey Decimal System. She irons everything, and her desk is so maddeningly ordered that I sometimes think she suffers from a mild case of OCD. Even in her “drugs and guns” phase, her mini-arsenal was carefully polished and cleaned daily while her pills were kept in neatly ordered rows in a cigar box under her bed.

But while Myra’s mind manifests itself in her neat and ordered surroundings, my mind reveals itself to the world in the chaotic, disordered mess that seems to surround me everywhere I go. If you invited me to your house for a game of poker, by the time I’ve left the poker table would be in general disarray and their would be crumbs on your couch, even though I never sat on it or ate anything while I was there. I like to joke that I want all of my worldly possessions out in the open where I can see them, but the joke is never really funny to the visitor trying to clear a place off on the futon or trying not to step on anything too important while navigating my bathroom. Ask me for a book, though, and I know exactly which pile to get it from. If I want to wear a certain shirt, I remember exactly where I took it off and exactly which door I draped it over. The phone bill? It’s in the back pocket of my gray corduroys. I still have a week and a half before I need to pay it. I doubt that a person without my awesome recollection could live the way I do and maintain their sanity, but in my opinion slovenly living sure beats wasting time cleaning. Life’s too short for cleaning, I say.

I still don’t quite understand how Myra and I came to be living together. I promised to keep my bedlam under control, and she promised not to get too uptight about it, and for two kids in love that seemed like enough for us to get by. For the most part I thought I was pretty good at keeping tables and counters relatively neat, and for a while she seemed content and happy with slightly cluttered surroundings.

After we broke up, I kicked myself for ever agreeing to live with her. That, in my mind, could have been what pushed her over the edge. She might have still been dissatisfied in the relationship, but at least she could have retreated into her own organized sanctuary and wouldn’t have had to come home to a new mess of papers all over the bed. If we didn’t live together, I might have still have had a fighting chance to convince her to stay. When we signed the lease, I thought, well, for better or worse, we’ve got to make this work for at least a year. But for Myra, life was too short to try to save a sinking relationship. She abandoned ship and cut her losses. I moved out.

Myra bounces back to the car and hops into the driver’s seat. Even though I assume she checked her hair in the bathroom, she checks it again in the rearview mirror before pulling out of the rest area and back onto the highway. She glances back with disgust at the backseat, which is cluttered and messy as a result of my time back there. She runs the engine hard in third and jumps straight to fifth to gun it into the passing lane. She once told me that cleanliness is next to godliness, but I think everything is next to godliness, if you care enough to pay attention.

Myra's Lesson

Thu, 4 Sep 2008 15:09:38 -0400

One day when I was six years old I got on a school bus and attended my first day of kindergarten. When I was eight, I put on a blue uniform and attended my first day of cub scouts. When I was fifteen, I kissed a girl for the first time.

I now know how to do long division. I can also read a novel and then write a report on it. I can tie a bowline with one hand, I can sew buttons back on my shirts and operate a sewing machine, I can identify both poisonous and edible plants, I can calculate both the area and circumference of a circle knowing only the radius, I can point out a dozen constellations, I can identify about a dozen birds just by hearing them, I can read music and I can read Latin. If you don’t believe me, my parents have turned the wall space of my old bedroom into a record of my achievements, yet among all of my framed diplomas and awards and accomplishments, there is no record that I have ever learned how to function within a relationship. Not even a certificate of merit. No honorable mention.

There’s no training course available for kids in love. You can watch your parents, you can watch other kids, but for the most part it’s all trial and error. After college I spent a year substitute teaching, and I was always shocked to see children holding hands and kissing. Children! Middle schoolers, barely even teenagers, barely aware of the power of creation coursing through their veins, yet their bodies are developing fast while their minds are still catching up. One day they’re spending recess playing tag and the next they’re making out in herds under the monkey bars.

Myra was an early bloomer, and became sexually active when she was thirteen. When I think of this, I get a mental image of a Myra who looks pretty much like the Myra I know, only a little shorter. Maybe some braces. I imagine her the way I remember other kids my age when I was thirteen. But when I see an actual thirteen year old, live and in the flesh, all I see is a child. Thirteen year old kids seem to have gotten younger since I was that age, and I’m amazed that some of their parents let them out of the house dressed the way they are. Do you hear me? Do you hear this stuff I’m saying? I’m turning into an old man! Pretty soon I’ll be complaining about their music, and before long they’ll be playing Smashing Pumpkins in elevators and grocery stores.

I’ve taken to stretching out in the backseat when it’s Myra’s turn to drive. My head is on the passenger side, and from this angle I have a good view of Myra’s breasts. Well, actually just her right breast, but it’s been holding my attention for the last 50 miles. It’s frustrating, I want to look at something else, but there’s really nothing else to draw my attention away. Her tank top is tight and from the bra strap I recognize the bra. Most girls seem to have a built in radar that tells them when someone is checking them out, and Myra’s is either blasting full tilt or is offline. Maybe her guard is down, maybe she doesn’t care, or maybe she just doesn’t know what to say. Or maybe she enjoys it. I try to go back to my Sudoku book, but the highway is too bumpy for a book and just the right amount of bumpy for a boob.

No one ever taught me how to break up with a girl you don’t want to date anymore. No one ever taught me how to tell if a girl wants to kiss you, or wants you to kiss her. I was never taught how to initiate sex or how to identify a fake orgasm. I’ve never read a book on how to live with your significant other, and even though one probably exists I probably never will. It’s all been trial and error, and I’m still pretty shaky at almost all of it. To some extent girls still give me those queasy butterflies, and no matter how cool and collected I am with friends, once I take an interest in a girl I become a stammering idiot. It amazes me that I ever manage to get myself into relationships to begin with. But the sun goes up, the sun goes down, and the miles are disappearing beneath us. Seven years ago I may have graduated with honors from high school, but today my teacher is Myra, and today I’m learning how to conduct myself properly in a car with my ex-girlfriend. We hit another bumpy patch. Let’s just say I’m still learning.

Myra's Lighthouse

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:08:26 -0400

We’ve been riding in silence for an hour and a half now, and I’ve been mentally cataloging all the various ways Myra has fucked me up. I know this is a dangerous game, strapped to our seats inches apart and hurling down the road at 70 mph, but I can’t help fiddling with the fuse.

When we broke up, Myra told me that she didn’t like feeling guilty if she was out having fun without me. The discussion stemmed from an incident that happened about a week before, when she called me from a bar because she was drunk and needed a ride home. Some of our friends from out of town had dropped in unexpectedly on their way to a conference in New York, and they had all gone out to one of our favorite spots to hang out and catch up. I couldn’t believe Myra hadn’t called me, and I told her so on the way home. It probably wasn’t the best time to get mad at her since she was tired and drunk, and I ended up locking myself in the bathroom and running the shower so she wouldn’t hear me cry. They picked her up at her office, she said, she thought I was busy with my work, she said, she didn’t want to disturb me, she said, but I still felt like she was having more fun without me and didn’t want me to be there. I was hurt, but Myra was so insistent that I was being irrational that I couldn’t help think that maybe she was right.

Myra cracks her window and I crack mine. She lights her cigarette and passes me the lighter. Although I’m close enough to touch her, it feels like we’re on two separate islands, miles and miles apart. I can’t see her, I can only see her smoke signals. She blows the smoke out her nose and stares straight ahead. I wonder what she’s thinking, but I know better than to ask.

A year after we broke up I was invited to a birthday party for a girl I had a crush on, and the entire night I found myself constantly leaving the room when she entered it. I was making myself miserable, and I wasn't entirely sure why I was doing it. I thought it might be because I didn't like competing for her attention (which it partly was), but when I got home I realized I was displaying a trait that I had now subconsciously labeled as "positive". I was told that wanting to be with Myra when she was out doing fun things had had a repellant effect upon her, that I had suffocated her and it had made her want to get out of the relationship, so there I was, like a peacock strutting my plumage, leaving the room to show her "Look! I can let you have fun with other people! Aren't I desirable?" Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

Myra flicks her cigarette out the window and puts her seat back to take another nap. What poor, disheveled beasts we are! Every human out there is a fucked up and complicated creature, living out dramas that we're barely even aware of, bumping up against others in the night, running mental mazes and trying to find the other soul that will fit like a puzzle piece against our own ragged coast line, not knowing what their coast line looks like, and sometimes not even knowing our own, just crashing the two together and rubbing them back and forth, hoping to find a point where they snap together in place, but often times only succeeding in eroding the coast even more, giving it a new broken shape. Is Myra a different person now because of me, or is she just making the same mistakes over and over and over again? Am I? Why did I agree to this trip? Maybe I died years ago and this is what hell looks like: a white Nissan Sentra with Myra sleeping in the passenger seat. My own Sisyphean hell. I pull off at the next rest area and get out of the car, just to prove to myself that I can.

Myra's Middle Name

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:08:48 -0400

Myra looks like a Myra. I won’t even bother describing her, because you can imagine yourself what a Myra looks like. The name evokes purple swirls, dark and strangely exotic. So does Myra.

Her full name is Myra Edith Madison. Her father wanted to name her after his mother, but they both really liked Myra and decided to make Edith her middle name. Her grandmother was pleased and honored, which is funny to me because Myra never ever tells anyone her middle name.

I’m glad they picked Myra. She looks like a Myra. I glance over at her sleeping in the passenger seat and try to picture her as an Edith, and I just can’t see it. Edith evokes crochet and mothballs, and Myra is definitely purple swirls.

Back when we were living together I had gotten her a pop-up Kama Sutra book for her birthday. That night we stayed up until sunrise with it. By the time my birthday rolled around a month later we had worn out the binding and inadvertently crushed the popup on pages 8 and 9, which was our favorite. For my birthday she had found me a book of 1970’s porn scripts, which were as hilarious as they were short. Apparently you can make a full feature length movie with ten pages of dialogue. We would act out the various scenarios, complete with costumes from her costume trunk, and we broke her old coffee table more than once during our visits to the doctor or explorations of the jungle.

But is Myra purple swirls because everyone has treated her like purple swirls? If she was an Edith, would she have been treated like crochet and mothballs? Would I still have dangerously flipped Edith over into a wheelbarrow in the shower? If Edith came to my office after class begging for an extra credit assignment, would I still have assigned her pages 8 and 9 from the text book?

The original Edith Madison was a devout Christian. I forget what denomination she was, but she was an elbows off the table chew with your mouth closed dear yes ma’am no thank you ma’am crochet and mothballs Edith. A text book Edith. She had two children, and Myra thinks she only had sex twice in her life. Joyless mechanical sex, for the purpose of procreation. I like to think the young Edith hid a fiery passion behind her prim and proper exterior, and that when young Grandpa Joe came home from work Edith was waiting with the beds pushed together, wearing only her frilly strawberry apron. But Myra is probably closer to the truth. I’m sure Edith and Joe probably had sex more than twice, but only in bed, at night, with Grandpa Joe on top. A whole generation of sexual repressed adults, having sex in bed, at night, in the missionary position. A mere fifty years later, Edith’s namesake was getting nailed on the balcony of her apartment in the middle of the afternoon with a crude popup sex book propped open next to her. If Grandma Edith were still alive, she’d probably hail a story like that as sign of the downfall of Christian civilization, and I’m not sure I’d be able to disagree. Is this how it always is? Each successive generation seen by their parents as the destroyers of the moral fabric of society? The kids who grew up on Duke Ellington’s pot laden devil music hated Elvis’s gyrating hips, and I’m sure all the Marilyn Manson kids I went to high school with will hate whoever pops up in the music scene ten years from now. I’d like to think this cycle has been repeating since the dawn of human history, but my bones tell me we’re perched on the cusp of something big, a massive shift of consciousness and we’re accelerating towards the edge of the cliff. Maybe our whole generation is going to hell, but I’m not getting any younger or better looking. Life’s too short for the missionary position.

Myra wakes up, stretches, and stares vacantly out the window. Something stirs in my chest and I suddenly realize how angry I am at her. The last month of our relationship she spent with another man. There were late night calls, afternoons when she wouldn’t come home from work, and of course the excuses and alibis. I believed every single one. An honest man is easy to lie to. I was completely oblivious to it all. The only indication I had that there was anything wrong was our sex life. The last month of our relationship we only had sex twice. It was joyless, mechanical, and missionary.