The Big King

To know I could wind my way through campus, under the interstate, past the golf course and through Park Boulevard completely absent is nauseating. I tell myself I can’t pass that house again, pass that stoplight, pass that crack in the sidewalk one more time- only because it doesn’t matter if I do or I don’t. The trip from point A to B is flush with the passionless air that moves this car, moves my feet, my hands to grab the groceries. I could cut through dangerous neighborhoods to catch my breath. I could drive to New Orleans and get drunk in a bar I’ve never heard of to remember myself.  No, I should say, I could have done such things and I used to.  I used to walk a tight rope in four inch heals with a cigarette in one hand and a man’s dick in the other.  And if I fell, what was the loss? Absolutely nothing of value; nicotine, cum or otherwise.  Now I am pregnant with my second child and have taken the long, anticipated crescendo down beyond the floor of beer bottles, below the mattress. Back to a self that cannot mask inadequacies with superficial entertainment, that cannot take the car off of the Mississippi River Bridge for laughs. I can’t walk around aimlessly in a place I’ve never been. I can no longer make excuses for not tolerating the gross repetition of the crack in the sidewalk.    He’ll read this and wonder why it isn’t enough to be where you are now. The only explanation I have is that “where you are now” is always a pending disappointment. Everyone knows this.  He, in his place, will be a disappointment, if he isn’t already. I will be one to him, this house, this job, this weather, the groceries will be a disappointment. The quickest and cheapest remedy I have found is to parade round all the misery-in-waiting in a false sense of novelty. You may argue that this gets you nowhere and to that I would say, “isn’t it enough to be where you are now?”