Almost Fiction, West Virginia

THE MISAPPROPRIATION OF LITTLE WHITE LIES CAN MAIM AND EVEN KILL - Jonathan Swift

Cosima, New Age Princess

Cosima.  Lovely and wispy, pretty, dyed blonde, sleepy like a weepy willow on an autumn day.  Cosima, semi-conscious control freak, nearly anorexic, ever in fear of losing health or being sullied by unwanted disease, or heart trouble, or especially vitamin deficiencies.  Ponderer of Ottmar Liebert, a name derived from Otto, and a nominative for "wealth" and "fame".  Pretty boy. Plays guitar almost like a gypsy on a sunny day.  

Whatever. Cosima wakes me up one morning. I stare up at her.  Gawd.  So beautiful. 

Cosima, happy, enjoying herself in her new relationship, always eager to hit the nice restaurants in town, practically towers over me like a sea siren.  Amazing. She looks better than she did when I met her.  

"Baby, you're really filling up those jeans!" I say, complimenting how her figure is now slightly more fulsome than only weeks before.

"I need to lose some weight," Cosmia intones. 

"No.  Don't do that.  You look fine." 

"I pefer myself a little thinner." 

Sadly, only those who get an inkling of fully understanding the pretty blonde (actually a redhead) see this obverse of her New Age countenance.  Ever in fear of something, something lurking from her infancy or childhood, gives her a near-compulsive and definitely obsessive desire to contol whatever it is.  

Yeah.  We've all got that bug.  Once in a while.  But all the time?  I suppose I could tell all of you as we sit here in one of her outdoor restaurant favorites, "I think she's afraid of growing old." 

"I am too," one of you quips.  The rest of you: you're thinking that too.  New Age youthfulness?  Or Old Age shame and guilt?  Who's got the PhD to aid in making a surefire determination of this basically casual examination of Cosmia after the fact of her departure?  

Gentlemen don't tell.  Of course.  That's the honorable and loyal way to keep secrets.  But I'm puzzled.  Why?  

I could never do anything precisely enough to satisfy Cosmia, Princess of the New Age.  "You really need to eat this," she might quip within a vague tonality of demand.  "I like my men like that man."

Indeed.  There we were, sweating it out in The Container Store one cool-suddenly-turned-warm December evening near Xmas.  I had become her dress-up doll.  Not a bad way to cooperate with gentle coddles alongside any girlfriend.  Women like to turn out men, make men more presentable. But this? 

"See him? He owns a major restaurant here.  See how he's dressed?  You need to look more like him."  

I eyed the man closely.  No blue jeans.  Nope. Black ones. Tight ones.  And weirder, calf-high boots.  A velveteen black jacket, and a mane of near-wildish natural dishwater.  "Doesn't he look stylish?" 

Fine.  I'd try.  Maybe spill for a poet's shirt, one of those frilly, loose-fitting white jobs that make even the most mundane of creative characters look like chivalry all over.  I'd try, I thought as the man breezed past, a few brittle plastic containers riding the top of what looked to me to be a kind of man-purse.  

I did try to live up to the coddling, I tell all of you.  It's not quite dessert.  But from the looks of it, the egg custard pie is looking especially delish. 

"You know what?" I say.  "The role model in Cosima's eye turns out to be a transsexual.  No, go ahead and laugh.  I bet that guy has all kinds of control issues.  It's odd how the controllers seem to identify one another without even pausing to reach consciousness or reason."

One of you: "You're such an intellectual."  

Hey, people, stop tittering.  

"Do you see me as a fashion plate?" 

Why aren't my friends still laughing?  

Obvious.  I'm about as much of a fashion plate as any other aging slacker.  Which is the point.  I never felt like standing out, really.  Cosima, though, did have a point: When she suggested I begin wearing more colorful shirts--pretty rainbows, Hawaiian jobs, that sort of thing, while I didn't take the urging well at the time, I now see my choice of grays, deep blues, and unobtrusive appearances, nowadays I note that, indeed, my clothing choices at the time seem to have been a reflection of my sense of vulnerability.  

All that time in our relationship, I was white-knuckling it.  I drank a lot of anxiety and worry down the drain when alone.  In fact, I may have rebelled against Cosmia's directions mainly because I didn't want to call attention to myself.  

She'd call it "my inner child". Damn her. 

Was that an affectionate damn?  Or a futile one?  

I loved Cosmia, but Cosima would never reciprocate.  "I cherish you," she'd say as if she was an all-wise female Buddha.  What was that supposed to mean?  One idea is that, indeed, Cosima was a doctrinaire feminist.  A possession.  Women in general I suspect hate being possessions of patriarchal men.  Hence, in a classic round of uttered reactionism, I was a female's possession. 

Now I know why Cosima wanted me to be a bauble.  But even deeper, I always got the sense the New Age princess hid something.  Was I one of those second-raters in waiting?  Maybe some won't know what I mean.  Perhaps I was Cosima's prop until Ottmar Liebert came around to claim her, Cosmia the willing one for him.  

"I do cherish you..."   The soft croon.  Still itches me at times.  Within that croon hid a sense of unrest too.  Cosmia's digs were spotless.  I couldn't dare to track in mud.  She'd meet me at the door with a dustpan and a broom.  Shoes--off. 

Weird to be relegated to a restrictive identity as a sort of male geisha. A silk shirt.  She wanted me for one.  Hence, oftentimes around Cosima, I felt like a potted plant, a pretty (OK, I'm bragging) arm decorator.  Someone to stand in for the real one, the invisible one. 

How many times have people been locked into the fool position? 

Needless to say, Cosima wanted me to move in with her. The old bum rush for that too.  Pressure.  She even said something alluding to that desire of hers: Her mother wasn't happy that at 43 she wasn't married. 

Seriously? A doctrinaire feminist is worried her mother doesn't appreciate the fact she'd never married?  What adds up with some women anyway?  If we males fully understood the female mind, and vice versa, both man and woman in general would end up bored so thoroughly that the possibiilty of perpetuating the human race would in consequence become moot.  

So there's that. Mark up a point for "my side".  Want some Candy?

What happens when "my side" also has control issues?  I'd been controlled--fiercely--by my mother. I never liked it being told to slather Brylcreem or Dep on my already stringy hair as a kid.  Loathed that.  All the other kids in 7th grade were long-haired like their older brothers.  Or the dress pants in an era of tattered blue jeans.  Why would any parent of a college student buy him dress pants in a world where jeans are not only more durable and less expensive but also what fits the personality? 

Ponderousness.  The ding-bats of the so-called Generation Gap--home again after years in the dark.  

Cosima, on the other side of the proverbial coin, looked crazy hot in purple tights.  She'd been a dancer--maybe she was still dancing on another channel, I don't know--but where she worked, I'd heard, she could control some of the most powerful executives in the accounting firm that only thought it had her.  

No Nosferatu; no, not Cosima, New Age princess. If anyone was Nosferatu at the time, that would have been me.  I didn't want to be seen--by anyone. I wanted a cool dark place to brood and to ponder and read without all the noise of some creepy social setting where everyone has to be either attentive to the social or off to somewhere else.  

No, not Starbucks. Starbucks is fine. If the coffee company could shed its recently-acquired corporate riptide, it'd be finer than fine. 

Still, as long as we're looking for the corporate nature of "an inhuman but technically legal citizen that spews money like an ideological ATM at the drop of a suggestion", I began picking up hints: real estate development.  

Weird.  There we are on "a vacay", speeding through a desert of many interpretative dance moves, and all the while I'm of the mind of being pals in a sort of Bob Hope and Jack Benny mode of early 21st Century "The Road To Nairobi" television skit. 

What a put-on that must have been.  Something wasn't right.  Was I on a reconnaissance mission like a crash-test dummy?  Lingering thoughts. With an icy companion who, as mentioned, cherished me.  

Me. The good luck charm. 

Long, winding roads through the Mojave.  All the way to the LA coastline.  Where Cosmia dragged me after a long hot rental car trip--all to "be with" the Pacific. 

Wanna listen to the soft lappings of oceanic tides?  Then by all means plug yourself into your iPod and listen to New Age pigeon poop.  

By then, "evil" was lurking the testy heart of mine.  

Control issues? Some obey them.  Others don't.  I don't.  I rebel.  When someone tries to lasso me or force me into a doggy's lunge leash against my will, I'll explode.  Problem was, because I felt love for Cosima with little to no actual or verbal commitment to that, I began to sink.  And in lieu of not sinking, I exploded in volleys of angry language.  

Pent-up anger is horrific, not only for the addressee but also those who address.  A loud speaker.  I think I learned rebellion from my mom: She was backed into a corner almost all the time.  

She lashed out. That was terrifying yet also inspirational.  

So what's it like being stuck in a damp quonset hut in the middle of a party where a dancer doesn't want to get up and dance?  My hands were cold.  I was cold.  I felt lost, abandoned. Yet nope: Cosmia did not reciprocate. 

Cosmia had "too much on the line", I believe, and thus her need to control everything around in her own set of vulnerable moments meant "bauble off!"  

Life as a woman's personal "clap-on/clap-off electronic and hand-friendly nursery call device. 

I got sick.  Deathly ill, after the vacay of dank resort.  The winner of my discontent all over again. But I did break loose.  Walked straight-on the night she and I returned to level ground. I put her "on restriction".  Told her, "We need to see other people".  Wasn't about to have another lossleader put a bucket over my candle.  

Sometimes even a male feels as if he's been whored out.  I certainly did.  I went drunk for months.  Even when a much more wholesome woman at the firm came on to me--

I was a goner.   Sometimes you have to get gone again even when you're standing up for yourself.  I tell you folks this.  Standing up for oneself is often necessity: even when the choices of staying and letting go are almost abominable choices, one's gotta choose.  

After that, one of Cosima's bigger feminist friends announced to the entire world that I was a lout.  

Here ya go: Winning.