My attention is immediately caught by the two women walking along the sidewalk as we wait for the light to turn green.
They walk together. Slowly. Measuring steps with legs physically touching as they progress. Arms wrapped around one another awkwardly. Upper bodies turned in toward one another as though they have been interrupted in the middle of a kiss and then forced to walk forward. But still . . . their bodies want that kiss.
I study them. One of the women is clearly in charge here, and closer inspection reveals that she is irritated with her companion. Embarrassed at this awkward display and strange closeness. She is abrupt and rude in her movements, and her partner cringes.
The second cringing woman does not see the shame and irritation on the other’s face. She turns her head toward her companion all beseeching and weak, her whole posture a question . . . a request for reassurance. She is like a newly born puppy, with unseeing eyes . . . straining to have needs met. Blind.
Of course, she’s wearing a blindfold, so she may not be quite herself.
My stomach hurts for her, for what she cannot see . . . how disgusted and annoyed her partner is at her yearning helplessness. And also? I hate her for her stupid weakness, for her willingness to put herself in this helpless position.
Or perhaps I am projecting.
Ahem.
I have issues with trust.
“What’s that about, you think?” Mark gestures at the women as the light turns green and we negotiate our way through the intersection.
I decide not to share the stomach-churning reaction I have had. I play at being normal, “Probably a class of some sort . . . one of those trust-building exercises.”
Mark turns and glances back at the women as we drive, “Can you imagine? What if you got a bad partner? Someone who shoved you into traffic? What then?”
I giggle.
He pantomimes a huge shove with both hands above the steering wheel, “Here! Right into traffic. That’ll teach you! Here’s your lesson!”
He laughs, “And the lesson? Is don’t trust anyone.”
He yells this lesson into the space of the car at top volume, “Don’t trust anyone!”
Snort!
Plus also?
Exactly.
Sigh.
Ever since Hitler broke his non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, I just haven’t been able to trust anyone.
Stupid Hitler, ruining it for everyone.
Snort!
Hitler was always lovely to me.
This is why whenever anyone wants to know who I spend all of my time talking to these days? I tell them Eva Braun.
That usually shuts them up.
Does Eva help you out with your photography?
She has skills, I hear.
What I mostly like is how she agrees with me all the time and doesn’t think that my idea to invade the Soviet Union in the winter is a really bad idea.
Women are so wonderful when they just sit there and don’t get all uppity.
Be careful . . . the quiet ones are sometimes all obsessed and crazed as they sit there quietly.
Next thing you know?
She’ll be running things.
This sounds suspiciously like someone I already know.
Weird, that.
Don’t go outing me to the world.
Your image will suffer.
Love, Eva
Come down to the bunker with me.
I’ve got something to show you.
After, we’ll have a nice little fire up in a ditch.
You’ll love it. Trust me.
I trust you.
And also?
I have this cyanide capsule.
In case you are too slow in your efforts.
sometimes it hurts my heart to read things you write that are so. very. just. you. and speak to those horrors in your memories i can’t bear to know but want to hear desperately.
‘sometimes,’ i say, when ‘every time’ i mean.
and why you got married? is mark.
How much do I love you?
So very very much.
And yes.
The reason I got married?
Is Mark.
blindfolds?
not so much.
silk scarves tying me to the bed?
bring it on!
Silk scarves?
Way fancy!
Men’s ties do the trick.
And a blindfold?
Can be lovely.
Your Mark?
Most excellent. Most.
It’s all in the name.
I mentioned before that I have known some bad Marks.
You and I?
We got lucky.
I have mostly un-remembered the bad Mark whom whom I briefly tangled.
Not worth the space in my crowded thoughts.
We did get lucky!
Yay, us!
You’ll have to teach me that un-remembering trick.
I would like to have that skill.
I was just over on Twitter and saw people couldn’t read your blog…well I’m here and I can read it. Yay me. No technological/internet-y crap happening for me and you at present.
Trust. I am generally a trusting person. Until it’s blown, once, and then? The Great Wall of China has nothing on me. I forgive but I don’t forget. Even if I wanted to. Stupid memory.
Exactly.
Stupid memory.
Stupid untrustworthy people.
Big walls.
Perhaps this is because I didn’t take my alertness medicine today, or just because I’m me, but the whole time I was reading this, I was caught by the image of two people all arms around waists and walking slowly down the street. And I just wanted to punch them in the back of the head.
Look at you!
With your random and unreasonable hostility and tendency for sudden violence!
Swoon!
I am all sorts of unreasonable hostility and tendency for sudden violence when it comes to slow walkers. I am not a slow walker.
I am a super speedy walker.
I annoy the crap out of people.
What with my need to get from here to there.
Quickly.
7th paragraph in:
“Perhaps I am projecting.”
Perhaps you are projecting???!!!!
Perhaps???!!!!
Lady, you kill me.
xoxo love you till the end of all things xoxoxo
Snort!
Snortity snort!
Sigh. Yup, that’s about it.
At some job training thing more than a dozen years ago, we were doing one of those blindfolded trust exercises and I flat refused to participate. I was happy to guide, but I wasn’t covering my eyes with anything. That didn’t go over well, but it wasn’t so much that I wouldn’t as I couldn’t.
Stupid trust-building exercises. They should have don’t-be-an-asshole exercises and figure that’s good enough.
I have never been asked to do one of these blindfolded trust exercises, which is good.
Because my answer?
Would be no fucking way.
And not because I am obstinate, even though I so am.
But because I just couldn’t.
Not ever.
Love you, woman who is much like me.
Love you.
I trust and get hurt and swear that I’ll never do it again. But some people? They just seem so good. And trustworthy.
Plus, who would I hate if I never trusted first? And then what would I do with all that hate-free-free-time?
I have such a hard time with trust.
I always read unspoken hostility behind people’s smiles and easy words.
Sigh.
I am working on that.
It’s very difficult for me.
Trust issues suck.
The good news?
1. You’ll probably never give a million bucks to some TV preacher.
2. You will never participate in one of those stupid trust fall things and end up hitting the pavement.
3. You won’t listen to people who say that pleather red jackets are back in style from the early 80′s.
See, trust issues?
Not so bad, eh?
You are a glass-half-full kind of woman!
I need you in my life!
Stay!
i trust everyone.
how does it go?
“i have spread my dreams under your feet.
tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.”
ACK!
The sight of your words makes my stomach hurt!
How can you go through life all open and vulnerable?
ACK!
Not that I would ever hurt you.
Ever.
Sigh.
this tendency has been problematic from time to time.
i trust you. don’t hurt me.
Ooooh . . . with the little letters?
It will be hard to keep from squeezing you.
Just a little.
squeezing? doesn’t hurt.
says the little letters to the question mark.
Happy sighs.
And squeezing.
Not hugs . . . squeezing.
Just to be clear.
hugs? never.
OK, then.
Love you.
I am with Miranda…slow walkers? Make me stabby.
And also? I don’t completely trust many people either. As much as I over the moon love all my internet friends? You COULD all be 70 year old hairy dude weirdo perverts sitting there in your underwear in your basements just woo-ing me until you can rape me of my online banking and credit card accounts and feed your cat fetishes by getting me to post pictures of my cat.
Or you could just be who you say you are.
Then I will love you forever.
But until then? I am all shifty eyes at you and all your little friends.
or not. I am pretty lazy.
Yes, that’s why I provide no photos of myself.
Snort!
I’m with Miranda and Katie. Slow walkers? Get the fuck out of my way. People who take up the entire sidewalk (as I’m assuming they did)? Get the fuckity fuck out of my way! And slow walkers that take up the whole walkway? Well, you can imagine where I’m going here.
I love Mark. He cracks me up.
Mark cracks me up all the time.
And you people?
With your hatred of slow walkers?
Are making me giggle.
A lot.
What is it when you stop hoping?
Is that a lack of trust?
It’s never felt like a lack of trust, but possibly, that it is what it is.
Because in the not hoping is the not being disappointed.
Disappointment is weakness, which makes my stomach squirm.
I am very, very bad with disappointment. So bad that a certain level of loathing accompanies it. So bad, that I would a million times over simply not hope.
Because in the not hoping is the not being disappointed.
Someday, when I have the mental energy (perhaps when my kids move out) I will spend some time trying to figure out why it is that I could NEVER be that woman with the blindfold. (I’ve always hated those trust building exercises. Trust is built over time…not in the span of a stupid 30 minute activity.)
My default is to believe that the joke will be on me…that someone is around the corner just waiting for me to be stupid enough to believe that it’s not.
Exactly!
And then you pushed into traffic, just like Mark warned!
Don’t trust anyone!
Snort!