"Chimera" - A Prologue

By Arthur Brewster

PROLOGUE

[NOTE: The reader is welcome to skip this portion of the narrative, which contains Mr. Brewster’s somewhat eccentric personal observations about sex. I have included the essay at his insistence, but against my better judgment. To paraphrase the oft-ignored editorial tag line, "these ideas do not represent those of the ghostwriter." MPB]

Men have little appreciation for the depth of the power women have over us. I’ve spent a good part of my life trying to deal with this fact, to recognize it, understand it, and, finally, to overcome it. I’ve tried to be scientific and rational in my approach to what is basically a very emotional — and perhaps even a spiritual, problem. I have reached certain conclusions.

I should confess that I am not a scientist; I see myself as more like one of those 19th Century English gentlemen, a self-educated naturalist, who simply observes, reads a little -- my modern equivalent is the Nature Channel -- and lives long enough to reflect on experience and reason. I have done all of that with curiosity and a drive to understand my life, especially as it relates to the women who were part of it. On this topic, I am frequently, as you shall see, simply a rambling fool, as are most men on the subject.

Nevertheless, I have come to believe that this power women possess derives from the needs of evolution. Women surely will be offended at this hypothesis, but I have observed that most female mammals were designed to await the roaming male and to lure him, then decide whether to mate with him. The male seems to be attracted to almost all females and will mate with any or all who will accept him. Females, it appears, are far more selective than males. The basis of their selectivity among all mammals was and, among humans, still is somewhat influenced by the genetic imperative to determine whether the male will make successful offspring. In humans, this has become slightly more subtle than with pigs, or even chimpanzees.

Primitive human society divided the roles of the sexes according to practical necessity. Generally, males being bigger and more aggressive, became hunters, or perhaps the cause and effect were the other way around. No matter, it is a fact. Females were child bearers and therefore had to stay put, became gatherers, and thus, accepted the burden of establishing the patterns for domestic social life. Males banded together, left the females with the elderly, the infirm, and small children, and went off to chase their dreams and to conquer their nightmares by killing them. They returned to tell tall tales of their bravery, to paint them on the walls of their caves, to heal their wounds, to eat, to rest, and to make new children.

All of this resulted in females needing to develop a subtle understanding of human emotions and the psychological underpinnings of sexual attraction. Female humans were not born with plumage or musk, were not seasonally in heat, but could mate far more frequently than other animals. They needed to compete for the "best" males and devised strategies for success.

From these meager facts and dubious theories, I have deduced that the pleasurable aspects of the sex act — including seduction, foreplay, infinite acrobatic positions, the wonderful variety of non-reproductive acts, the concentration on duration, multiple simultaneous orgasms, as well as cuddling afterward — were all advances invented or encouraged by the female for several purposes.

First, athletic sexuality in her mate was viewed as an indicator of virility, a necessity for evolution to progress; second, all these devices contributed to the bonding the female hoped would keep the male interested in her and the incidental goal of procreation; and third, because of her understanding of the male’s need for competition and the perpetuation of his illusion of his own sexual power. This last purpose shows the sophistication which females developed in understanding the power of emotional dominance.

Whether my theory is true (and I have no basis in scientific expertise to support it — just an accumulation of my own wry observations), the fact is that women have a far greater comprehension of their own emotions. Most men have a primitive emotional vocabulary. When faced with the need to articulate feelings, we men tend to express ourselves in terms of what we think, even when we use the words: "I feel."

Let me give you an example, which you will surely recognize, with but few variations. When in the course of a serious discussion crucial to a relationship — a conversation which the woman has begun, usually while the man is in the middle of doing something really important to him — like watching the seventh game of the World Series, or something educational like a re-run of "The Man Show" — the woman will ask: "How do you feel about us?"

If the man has lived for any length of time in the world of women — and the given proposition that he is in a relationship posits that to be so in this case — he will have a vague sense of mild alarm that something may be at stake. He will make a face, shrug, and after some thought, will say something like "I feel like we need to communicate more," in the hope that such words will placate the woman and show that he is "sensitive." His ear will still be tuned to the TV, but he will be ready to shut it off if absolutely necessary.

She will then insist: "But how do you feel about us?"

He knows enough to now aim the remote — and at least press mute. He will grope for words, perhaps take her hands in his, look deeply into her eyes, and say something like: "I feel that we are doing okay in general, but that we have things we need to work out. It’s probably my fault."

It now seems to the man that he has made a breakthrough: he has reached deep down and dredged the truth, revealed something about himself, making himself vulnerable, and therefore has shown commitment.

Not even close. He has expressed what he thinks. But the woman doesn’t want that. She has been crying, maybe whining, or screaming. She is nauseous, hyperventilating. She hurts as if she was punched in the stomach. She is in a dizzy panic as her life ebbs away. She wants to know if he feels her pain.

This, obviously, is how Bill Clinton became elected — gained the votes of more women than any candidate in history. He had the vocabulary to speak to women. It apparently made him very attractive — whether on TV or under the desk in the Oval Office.

Many men asked the logical question: How could the President of the United States risk everything for a blow job — from Monica Lewinsky, who isn’t even very attractive?

For most women, the last two clauses of that question are irrelevant, and many would cite their inclusion as evidence of male depravity. But for men, they are necessary conditions.

If the question was modified to: How could the President of the United States risk everything for a blow job — from (for example) Claudia Schiffer, who is the hottest babe on the planet? there would be no need for an answer.

Actually, Clinton’s actions were completely normal for a man. The answer is instinctively understood by anyone who knows how men behave when faced with sexual arousal.

Some scientists refer, somewhat sarcastically, to the existence of two brains in men’s bodies: the little reptilian one, which is, at such times, dominant over the larger, but more uncertain, thinking brain. Whether such an organ actually does exist, or is merely a metaphor, it is apparent that men react sexually on the most primitive level, over which our rational minds have no control and little comprehension.

Men have no long term memory about sex. No matter how many times our internal computers have crashed from being led around by our penises acting like dowsing sticks, the next hard-on always deletes the file containing the last bitter experience. In a similar way, women forget the pain and misery of pregnancy, childbirth, infancy, and, eventually, want to do it all over again. It is all chemistry, designed by Nature for the very logical purpose of ensuring procreation, and developed by the human species for far more complex, but equally natural, purposes.

The result is that when a man — whose rational mind requires law and order, truth, justice, loyalty, fidelity, and other promises he truly intends to honor — when such a man sees a woman with a jiggling rack with firm round nipples defined in the cloth of a blouse, hormones are triggered like saliva in Pavlov’s pooch, and images invade his brain unrestrained — at least for the time it takes for the synapses to fire and spread from his reptilian depths to the lobes responsible for rationalization and then action.

Many times the larger brain can wrest control, and the man goes about his business, filing away this rack among all the other racks he has encountered since his mother began nursing him. His natural sense of logic and order grades them, puts them in perspective and he goes on about the business of hunting — which in our advanced society means the hunting for business, i.e., making money.

Actually, this reaction doesn’t require a "great rack" for most men. It may be just any set of breasts, whether they are boobs, hooters, titties, or boobies. They may be a tiny pair owned by a pimply teen running for a bus or a middle aged overweight postal worker sorting through the mail resting on her ample bosoms.

No matter whether men think of themselves as "calf men" or "ass men" rather than "breast men," it is scientifically clear that the earliest and most primitive of attractions was the breast. This makes sense because it is usually the first thing that feeds them, tastes great, feels warm, and has a pleasing shape (something like an egg?). Of course, female babies also suckle, but I haven’t quite worked that out yet. I’ll leave it to K.D. Lang to explore the issue, for the time being.

Parenthetically, this phenomenon of breast attraction has occupied gobs of my thoughts and I have come up with another junk scientific theory to explain it. It is not because large breasts are indicators of fertility or better nurturing, because it seems that size in this case does not determine the ability to feed infants or the quality of the product. It may be that the fat cells of larger breasts suggested greater resistence to Ice Age chills and provided comfort in an era before the invention of the pillow.

Whatever the reason, it is clear that men have — generally, I admit — preferred women with larger breasts since time began. Ancient art, including fertility statues of the oldest civilizations, strongly suggest the case.

The logical result, assuming the preferences of genetic selection, was that women with large breasts were able to mate with less need for conniving, while smaller breasted females had to be wiser in order to attract and keep a mate. Mendel’s and Darwin’s laws inexorably yielded the result that in a thousand generations, the dumb females with small breasts gradually all but died out (at least became a rare recessive characteristic), resulting in the modern phenomenon of smart small breasted women being numerous, relatively speaking. Because large breasted women did not have to be as smart, dumb broads with big racks are more numerous and continue to thrive, especially in L.A. and parts of the Midwest.

Parenthetically, cosmetic surgery may change the entire future course of evolution and eliminate the need for genetic engineering.

On the subject of "ass men," which seems to be the second most popular obsessive preference, the prevailing theory (not mine, but I have heard it from other men who have their own theories) is that rumps trigger some ancient memory of primitive sex, because "doggie style" was the preferred position for most mammals, including early man.

I have already explained the popularity of other sexual positions, and it should be apparent that a wise female generally prefers those which permit her to keep an eye on her mate without getting a stiff neck.

Back to the main theorem about male attractions. Males do not need to be aroused by breasts alone; it might be an upper arm, or lower lip, a color or texture of lipstick, a gently curved or muscular calf, a pointed or lip-moistening tongue, any sort of hips, shoes which reveal a heel or toes or which elevate the calf and firm the rear, a color or style of hair or the complete absence of hair, a shape of nose or eyebrow, a dimple, an ear lobe, a shoulder, an elbow. Or it might be something as ephemeral as an offhand gesture: a yawn, smile, pout, a look back at her nylons to see if there is a run. Of course, it can even be a voice — I know a few "voice men" who can get a hard-on when hearing a husky woman’s purr from across a noisy restaurant, or when speaking to a disembodied female-sounding voice on the telephone — and who spend fortunes for the pleasure.

The point is that men are slaves to these powerful drives without comprehending them in the least. Women who sense this have great power — and all women do to some extent. If they haven’t learned it long before the day after puberty began, their mothers, older sisters, friends, teachers, every female they encounter, all provide ample role models.

Art, literature, media, celebrities, and certainly, advertizing, are all so pervasive and obsessed with the subject of what will arouse a male that it is the rare female who is not fully apprized of the available arsenal by the time she is out of the crib.

When females decide to join the fray to lure males — which in modern society now starts in earnest no later than in sixth grade (around age 11), females fully understand the purpose and subtleties of eye make-up, push up bras, tattoos, nose rings, giggles, dancing, notes with hearts drawn on them and all the other, and ever imaginative newly invented means to their goal.

I remember almost the exact moment when all this began to affect my life, though at the time and for many years afterward, I did not have the least notion that it was happening. I have now developed a theory about that, too.

The best moments of a man’s life, when he has the least stress and the most freedom, occur when he is about 12 years old, the day before the occasional boner — which since infancy has been merely his most available toy — has suddenly become a purposeful and incessant annoyance. Before that instant, the boy’s needs are few, his problems are simple and uncomplicated — the needs met by, and the problems handled by, the adults who care for him. The typical boy has few compulsive drives, hence little need to learn, to impress, to earn, to spend, to entertain, to plan. Friendly competition and comradery are all he lives for. Eden is an understated metaphor for this state of boyhood.

Suddenly, like an overflowing bathtub, his hormones reach the flood stage and can no longer be stemmed. From then on, he begins a race he can never win or even end of his own will. He will wistfully yearn the rest of his life to get back to where he was when he was 12. Finally, when his lifelong hunger gradually recedes until it disappears, he no longer needs to work, to impress, to spend. Adults and children will once again take care of him. If he is lucky, he will have the wit and the time to reminisce, and when Spring breezes blow skirts in the park, he will, as my grandfather once wryly noted, "still look and smile, and barely recall the reasons why." And then he will die contented, having returned to Eden.

The gun sounded for my race when I was almost 13 years old. Up to then, as I recall, my life had been manageable, if not ideal in every respect. I had two parents who took care of my needs if not all my selfish wants. My father was not a world class hunter, but he provided adequately. Food was on the table for dinner and in the fridge all day for other meals and snacks. My mother was no great cook, but I was so used to the tastelessness of her cooking that I preferred it to the meals and snacks set out by my friend’s parents when I visited their homes after play.

School was no problem for me at that age; I was a fairly good student, getting good grades with little effort. I made no connection between school and the necessity to earn money, felt no real drive to learn about the world. School was a place where my friends congregated for most week days during most of the year.

In my society, I was "popular" enough, sometimes accepted as a satellite of the most popular kids, but really more comfortable in the "B" flight, even recognized as a leader among that lesser group. I had friends with whom I shared the important aspects of relationships among boys my age. I had developed enough skill in sports so that, while not being the best athlete, I was also not the last one chosen for the games we played on our street. Our games were seasonal. We played stickball, touch football, basketball, roller hockey, "It."

And we had fights. Arguments about sports often led to fights, and I had established my position within my society when it came to this critical occupation. I was respected, even if not feared, by all but the most psychotic of our tough companions. In Autumn, we had fights in piles of dead leaves; in Winter, we had snow fights; in Summer, we chased each other around the beach and into the water. Between the end of school and dark, I was out on the street, playing. Brooklyn, New York in the 1950's might not have been Hanibal, Mo. in Twain’s time, but Huck Finn had nothing on me when it came to barefooted carelessness.

At dark, supper was on the table. During supper, I often quarreled with my kid sister, not realizing that she was using our disputes to test her nascent feminine power. My parents were not impartial referees: "Don’t be mean to her," they scolded me. "You’re older — and you’re a boy." I objected that "She started it," resented her ability to cry on cue, using those blue eyes my parents loved, to secure her victories. Much later, my sister became a born-again Feminist and told me that she resented our parents’ favoritism more than I did, because it reduced her to "only the girl," thereby discriminated against and diminished as a person.

I was flabbergasted that my sister was able to turn my gripe into her cause; even more amazed that she had managed to make me feel guilty for my part in her loss of self-esteem. I have since given the matter more thought and have come to admire my sister’s ability to use her power for any side of any issue to make her point. It is an awesome proof of my theories.

Back then when I was twelve, after dinner there was TV, little homework, the pleasant chore of oiling my baseball glove while listening to games on the radio. When he was out, I sometimes read my older brother’s Playboy with faint amusement; like a cat watching TV for the movement of the images, I had little understanding then of the implications of what I was looking at.

In seventh grade, I fell in with a group of friends who wanted to stay after school to dance in the auditorium. Blackboard Jungle had recently provoked panic among adults about the newly coined evil of juvenile delinquency. The dance program was the brainchild of a progressive teacher who, thinking to keep the kids off the streets and out of mischief, brought a portable record player and encouraged kids to bring their rock ‘n’ roll records, and to socialize.
I did not understand until it was too late that the concept of socialization was a feminine euphemism for taming the natural bucking of colts, so that we could be ridden in comfort and safety. This socialization process never ends. It employs phrases like "use your words" when fists or hammers are sensibly raised by toddlers during disputes, proceeds to toilet training (which continues after marriage with the repeated warning to "put the seat down"), advances to table manners, and becomes deadly serious when applied to gift giving, thank you notes, flowers, treatment of in-laws, swap meet shopping, decorating, and similar activities which are necessary to break the spirit of the colt and keep it broken long after he is a sway back nag.

Dancing was the tool which led to my socialization. From the time I could walk, my mother had often bragged about winning a Charleston contest when she was a teen in the 1920's. She loved to sing, mostly to the radio playing swing music, and had a collection of 78's, the thick vinyl RCA and Decca records of Frank Sinatra with Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Harry James, and her favorite group, the Andrews Sisters. My mother would sing along with Ba Mir Bist Du Shoen or Harry James blaring And The Angels Sing, and she taught me to dance the Lindy Hop, which I sometimes performed with her at family occasions to the delight of grandparents and other antiquities.

At first during the after-school gatherings, I stood on the sidelines watching the dancing, joking with friends about the girls who were mostly dancing with each other in their poodle skirts and saddle shoes. Then I noticed that the dances they were doing — to Elvis’s slurring Don’t Be Cruel, or Jerry Lee Lewis’s thumping Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On, or Little Ritchard’s squealing Tutti Frutti — were a lot like my mother’s Lindy Hop, but with a few updated skips which I later learned had been modified in Philadelphia and popularized on American Bandstand.

So I tried it and quickly became the most popular boy in seventh grade — to the girls of the seventh grade.

This turned out to be the turning point of my life. As soon as I put my arm around a girl’s waist, held her hand, noticed that she followed with glee my every suggested move, something began to stir. The juices — aroused by Jerry Lee’s suggestive, rumbling piano, and the snarling words: "Come on over baby, we got a chicken in da’ barn-a ..." were unstoppable.

Someone brought some slower dance songs. The first was innocuous enough: The Stroll, which was a line dance, but had a growling sax line that vibrated deep down and forced the girls to make movements that I found strangely pleasing without knowing quite why, or how they did it. This led to another plateau: Johnny Mathis, singing Chances Are and Wonderful, Wonderful.

At first, the slow dances done to these songs seemed boring; there was no athletic skill and rhythm required as in The Philly, now my forté. Also, I was shorter than most of the girls of the seventh grade, and was self-conscious about standing face to face with them to emphasize the point, which was irrelevant when we were moving faster.

Then I danced with Sonya Shearson. She liked to Philly and became my best partner. We seemed to have a natural rapport. She always knew when to twirl under my arm and when to come back and never missed a step. She laughed at my feeble jokes, and when I missed dancing for track practice a few times, she mentioned it in class and said she missed me. One day, when a slow dance was played after a long series of sweat inducing fast ones, Sonya didn’t let me walk back to my friends who were standing near the juice table. Instead, she drew close and we started to dance the way I had seen them do on Dick Clark’s show.

I knew how to do the steps to slow dances, and Sonya followed, moving backward as I swayed and stepped forward in time with the song’s gentle provocative rhythm. Something happened there while my face was close to Sonya’s kinky thick black hair. I smelled her, and, unknown to me, pheramones wafted, and hormones were triggered, and synapses flashed.

My next memory is making out in her finished basement, humping desperately, one ear attuned to the window nearest the garage door for her mother to come home. Apart from that one ear, the rest of me was intent at learning the skills needed for unlocking mysteries that now seemed far more crucial than how to hit a curve ball.

I did not have an inkling then, but the gentle curve of Sonya’s budding breasts were a slippery slope that I would never recover from. Soon, I would be thinking about buying her gifts, gathering the courage to ask her to go steady. I planned for an ID bracelet, and a necklace with a silver dollar cut in two, half for each of us, to seal the deal, as was our tribal custom. I had to get an after school job to save up for these tokens, this tribute that was needed to pay for the favors I was seeking.

In no time, I was obsessively concerned with my looks. Every new pimple gave me cramps. My hair required taming; I needed presentable clothes. This required more money and led to unbearable stress, but had rewards. Sonya became my "date" at my bar mitzvah, and all the miserable pinching by aunts and cousins, the misery of learning the Hebrew, and fear of looking absurd in front of the entire world, all of that was forgotten during the party afterward when we danced to all the slow songs, and made out in a dark corner, and I felt like I was at the center of the known universe.

That was in June. Sonya spent the summer with her parents in the Catskills while I spent it watching the Dodgers win the pennant again, and delivering clothes for a dry cleaner on my bike. By September, I had saved enough for the ID bracelet (engraved "To Sonya with love, Artie"), and the silver dollar necklaces. I hid them in my drawer and waited for Sonya’s return from summer vacation.

Of course, you’ve guessed the rest. By September Sonya had metamorphosed into a more advanced creature, now surrounded by a sensuous but vaguely ominous glow. She was unapologetic about the high school guy she had met during the summer and the fact that she was hopelessly and giddily in love with this older man.

I kept the gifts in my jewelry box — among other obsolete artifacts from that bygone era: cuff links, tie clasps, collar stays — until I was well into my Forties and approaching my umpteenth move and my second marriage.

If I had been sensible, able to think rationally with the larger, but less potent, brain which evolution had provided, I would have learned the lesson from The Sonya Disaster that might have saved me. The misery of her rejection was crushing enough to scar me for life; I would never be so naive and trusting as to assume a female was thinking or feeling as I was.

But rather than giving up the whole enterprise as I had given up baseball when I found that I was not good enough at it to allow me to feel good, I entered high school and ran smack into girls who had matured to another level of being, and reeked of chemicals far more formidable and omnipresent than Sonya’s had ever been.

And the one that changed everything, Penelope Miller.

Conversation With A Finch

Long before there was such a thing as a blog, I kept a journal. Not every day, not even every month or every year, but I’ve been doing it now and then, off and on since junior high school.

Recently, I found this entry.

July 6, 1988.
Last weekend I relaxed, doing so with a tense determination that is so characteristic of my attempts at relaxation. The few moments I was able to loosen up were attributable to a finch. Or a sparrow, some kind of common little bird. He forced me to relax. I think it is impossible not to relax when having a conversation with a little bird.

I had slipped out to the patio early Sunday morning, while Greg was watching wrestling and Bijou was doing the Times crossword. The sun was beginning to burn the moisture from the gray morning overcast. By noon there would be just enough smog to filter the color from the sky.

I was getting some time on the new patio chairs — we bought the ones from France, $1,000 worth of plastic, but stylish plastic, and I had to admit, comfortable plastic — at least when I had the chance, as now, to steal a few moments to sit on one of them. I had adjusted it to one of its four hundred and twelve positions, settled in and put the coffee mug on a napkin on the plastic table when I noticed the sparrows or finches or whatever they were. I’ll call them finches because it types faster.

They were flittering about the yard, about six of them as near as I could count as they swooped and perched, darted from tree to roof to fence. I also noticed a mockingbird back there and a crow that thrashed clumsily in the top of the palm in Al’s yard next door.

There were no airplanes, no helicopters yet. We were near the flightpaths of most of the airports in L.A. County, a feature of the property that the realtor had neglected to emphasize, but the winds must have been wrong because this morning the windows did not rattle even once.

I was sitting, thinking about the cost of the patio furniture, looking out at the yard, estimating the next expense, fixing the coping of the pool, musing how the new wooden back fence already needed another coat of waterproofing and stain, when the finch hopped over and perched on the wrought iron fence that enclosed the patio.

It was a male, I guessed from his fluffy little red breast. He was about ten feet from me and I kept very still. He stared at me a moment, cocking his head in that jerky way birds have. I could see he was nervous about my presence, but he was gamely hanging in there. He whistled, and soon another finch, a brown-gray one, hopped over to the patio just outside the fence. She — I assumed this was a female because she was so drab — looked up at the male and chirped. He didn’t look back, but he responded with a few whistles, and he hopped up to the spider plant.

The spider plant was on a a ledge within the patio area, a few feet closer to me, but a bit higher than the top of the fence. From there, he looked at me again, then at the baker’s rack that held twenty or so potted cactus and succulents. That’s when I realized what was happening. Last Spring a mockingbird couple had built a nest in a bush near the breakfast room. At the same time, a dove couple had squatted in on of my onion plants on the ledge on the wall opposite the spider plant.

We had watched the progress of the two nurturing families. Each had hatched their offspring: three noisy yellow beaked mockingbabies, and one very quiet, well-behaved dovebaby. A vagrant white tomcat had murdered the mockingbabies in their beds one night just for kicks. I had found their ravaged little bodies in various parts of the yard one morning. The dovebaby had matured and flew away, leaving me with a massive clean-up for my onion plant.

The drama had been traumatic for Bijou. She had first seen the saga as a “learning experience” for Greg. She had read books about the mating and nesting habits, from which she had recited each morning at breakfast. Greg, of course, was underenthused; it was too much like first grade. When the tragedy occurred, Bijou was quite shaken. She grieved for weeks. Greg was riveted by the gruesome details.

When I noticed the twigs this Spring in the wandering Jew on the baker’s rack, I immediately dumped them and moved the plant to a low shelf. Recently, I had moved it back to the top, where there was more sunlight. I now realized that the new nest had been the finches’ project. They had returned now to try to rebuild their property.

The little fellow was perched on the spider plant, spurred by his nagging mate, peering at the purple wandering Jew, at me, back to the inviting plant-home. He was as close to me as he dared come. The plant was a few feet from the $200 chair I was using as a foot rest. The wife chirped at him. He chirped back, telling her that he dared not come closer while I was there. She insisted. He implored me, cocking his head and whistling.

Bijou appeared at the patio door and both birds flew away.

Later, when she had gone, the fellow returned, alone this time. He sat on the wrought iron fence and whistled to me. I knew what was happening. He was apologizing, man to man, for invading my privacy and for being so pushy. I knew what I had to do. I puckered my lips and whistled, sucking in air, trying to imitate his song. At first, he seemed startled by this, but he held his ground and whistled back. That’‘s when we talked.

“Look,” I said. “I sympathize with you. I’m married too.”
“Yeah, he said, blinking. “I saw. I like her red hair.”
“Me too,” I said. “Your wife’s nice, too.”
“She’s okay.”
“But I can’t let you nest in my plant.”
“It’s cool,” he said.
“It was too traumatic, the last time. I won’t go into a long story, but ...”
“Hey, you don’t have to explain. It’s your plant.”
“And there’s the bugs that come along, these tiny flies.”
“I know.”
“And the mess. And it doesn’t do the plant much good.”
“I guess,” he seemed to shrug. “I hadn’t thought about it.” He whistled for emphasis. “Well, I just thought I’d ask. You know, she was pretty set on it.”
“I could tell.” My guilt feelings were obvious.
“Well, forget it,” he said. “It’s not like this is the only tree in the forest. So to speak.”

There was an awkward moment and Greg stormed out to tell me he had nothing to do because mom told him he couldn’t watch wrestling. “She says its too violent, but I told her its not real. Tell her, daddy, its not real and its okay to watch.”

Of course, the finch was gone by then.

I haven’t seen him since and it is pretty late in the Summer I imagine for nesting. But maybe next Spring....

Becoming My Father

It seems that

No matter how much a man tries

to avoid it ...

It is almost impossible ....

to avoid

becoming his father...

"JAWALI'S DREAM"

ONE ...

TWO ...

THREE ....

FOUR ....





















FIVE ....






















SIX ...


















SEVEN ,,,























EIGHT ...






















NINE ...

TEN ...



















ELEVEN ...




















TWELVE ...


















THIRTEEN ...


































.... THE END

© 2009

© 200

9 M.P.Borenstein

Bombay aka Mumbai

Between August, 1974 and July, 1975, Bijou and I travelled around the world. We spent about a month in India. From the daily journal I kept at the time, these are our experiences in Bombay, now Mumbai.

5 September Thursday New Delhi to Bombay
The contrasts of India are very evident here— what is beautiful good and pleasant, and what is ugly, evil and unpleasant.

We checked out early and tried to get a taxi, several of which were near our hotel, to take us the few blocks to the Indian Airlines office where our airport bus was waiting. In every city in Asia, the taxi customs differ. In Delhi there are meters but the drivers try to set flat rates. Many refuse to go by the meter at all, especially on short trips. We have haggled and by and large, have gotten our way. But now we were over a barrel with our bags to shlep and bus to catch. We paid through the nose and it started our day on a sour note.

We carried the bags off the taxi, painfully dragged them to our waiting area and later dragged them again in the stifling heat to our bus. A porter picked them up and put them in the luggage compartment a few feet away. After we got in, he came round and demanded 50p for each bag for everyone on the bus. One Indian became indignant, seeing in the practice all that is wrong with India: "People expecting pay for doing little or nothing."

Another passenger was an absurd looking Westerner: he wore a white sun hat over his shaved head, a red shirt and sarong, sandals. He was hefty and hairy-armed but had the manner of a sad "faigele." Later we chatted with him. He was on his way to an ashram to study yoga. He showed us the mosquito net he’d gotten and offered us a Dunhill. He was an Australian and called the porters "Johnnie." As he paraded through the terminal, he got stares from Indians and Westerners— he was a very unlikely person.

The flight was routine, hampered only by the worry of going into a city without hotel reservations. In Delhi we had spent the good part of an afternoon trying to get Pan Am, Indian Air, or a travel agent to help us. Pan Am referred us to India Air, who shrugged, a travel agent would only help if we wanted a 4 or 5 star hotel. India government office was polite but no help.

On our arrival, Bea went to fetch the bags and I found a hotel reservation desk but the phone was out of order, not unusual in India. But he was pleasant and we amiably chatted away and hour. Eventually, we found a room at the Y. The usual scruffy little guy tried to porter our bags, hail us a taxi—of which there were dozens in line. We gave our directions to the driver with the usual uncertainty about whether he understood and was using the meter, refused to tip the scruffy guy for the aid he had offered which we had declined, and were off.

After a 45 minute ride through and around the "suburbs" and the city—which has several peninsulas and harbors— we were in the vicinity of our Y. This I knew from following the landmarks on our map. But the driver couldn’t find it. He would stop for directions, each time a cabbie, doorman or cop would chatter in Hindi and point and he would drive and fail to find the street—which is a major thoroughfare in the heart of town. After 3 or 4 of these stops, I got out and stopped a passerby and by prodding and urging we finally found it.

The cost was $3.00 which I angrily paid, though trying to be philosophical—ever try to get a cab in the rain in NY? The Y room was a delight: clean, airy modern and with continental breakfast which cost the same as the dive in Delhi. We relaxed, then consulted our guidebook: the Taj Hotel, nearby, had a buffet lunch for $2.50, it said. Also in that hotel was a Pan Am office and government tour office.

We set out. Architecture was English, the streets crowded with auto traffic implying affluence, shops of all kinds were enticing, there were the usual calls to change money or to help, some begging children and some raggedy men sleeping in doorways. But nothing like Calcutta or even parts of Delhi. It was only mildly annoying. We found the Taj Hotel easily—we could hardly miss it—a tall Miami type luxury hotel on the harbor near Gateway to India Arch. We strolled through the terrazzo floored lobby and took the lift up to the ballroom. By its elegance and quiet we could see we were in financial trouble.

We took a menu from the captain’s desk. The fare was expensive Indian and Continental. At the front we could see the large columned room. The price was not enticing: 28 rupees, with tax the total for the buffet was about $9 for two. We moaned and so did our stomachs; our stomachs won.

Buffets are always intimidating. You want to get your money’s worth and there are so many good looking things set out—you want a little of everything and you end up stuffing yourself and enjoying it less—maybe a metaphor for world travel. Of course the pastries were a fabulous special treat for both of us—we were tempted to stuff a few in Bea’s huge purse. The knowledge that the leftovers from the diners here could feed half the city was a bit disconcerting and the vapid string orchestra playing benign waltzes and reels added to the aura of unreality.

Bea became furious with me when I complained about the experience and resorted to her well-worn hyperbole: "You always struggle over making a decision, then always regret it and never enjoy the experience you chose!" I became angrier because ... it always hurts when it strikes the mark, and too deeply, especially from her, someone— the only one I care anything about what she feels about me. Which of course I didn’t say—didn’t even get at the time. We let the moment pass, but it was on our chests as much as the pastry.

Now stuffed and logy, we went to Pan Am and had to leave our precious air tickets so they could see about our desire to go to Kabul—there was doubt about whether it could be done without extra cost, and we would have to wait until 4. It was now 2 p.m. and we decided to nap. We had spent a restless night. We both still suffer coughs from our lingering colds and the past days have caused increasing tensions between us.

Bea fell asleep and I read until 4. I dressed and let her sleep. I went out to do our chores. I went the same way to the hotel, being accosted only a few times, seeing a man in rags compete with a pigeon for nuts fallen from a vendor’s roaster, and another whose wracking cough brought phlegm to a hole in his throat. At Pan Am after another bout with the dim-witted worker I got the tickets for Kabul. It meant a 7 A.m. flight on IA back to Delhi and then a 1330 Afghan Air flight to Kabul. Monday would be dreadful, but ... The clerk was annoyed but agreed to try to reserve a hotel room for us there.

I then changed money at Cooks—I could get a better rate on the black market but I am paranoid about that. I have never been "smart" about money. I bought some Indian cigarettes and inquired at the tourist desk for the Elephanta Caves tour. The caves are sculpted Hindu Gods on an island across the harbor. Boats leave every morning from Gateway Arch—except during monsoon season—when they often don’t go at all—May to mid September.

So again our timing is awful. It has become clear what we suspected before we came to Asia—this was the absolute worst time of year to travel. The intense heat and humidity are draining, the rains depressing (as in Kathmandu), difficult. It is off season for tourism, which is a plus in some ways: easier to get hotel room, rates are lower. But empty restaurants are often dreary, and waiters with no one else to wait on are annoyingly attentive. Transport and activities are curtailed. Add that to the usual difficulties of any travel and especially in the East— strikes, like the one of Air India; and international politics—which prevented our visits to Taiwan and Korea. We still worry about Turkey / Greece / Egypt / Israel on that score.

Plus the rigors of suitcase life, the close quarters and being together constantly, with the ever present money worries, and our different personalities, all these have added to the tensions between Bea and I. It has opened old salved over wounds caused by our differences, now sore and bleeding.

It is of course a test and we are today at a low ebb, but we can muddle through and survive and are determined to do it.

After my jaunt I fell into a coma-like sleep and was only dimly aware of Bea’s insistent call for food. I put her off—"in an hour, Okay?" ... "another ten minutes" ... Then I finally admitted that I would rather sleep than get up and traipse about looking for another cheap meal in a dingy restaurant. Bea demurred, but after a while—during which I immediately fell asleep—she insisted on eating.

I grudgingly stirred, whining all the way. This annoyed her. She dressed in a huff and stormed out alone. At first, I was angry enough to let her go, if that’s the way she felt. But soon my conscience woke me up and I went out after her. The streets were dark and filled with strange faces. I became frantic with concern for her safety ... and my loneliness ... after what must have been only a few minutes but seemed to me to be much, much longer. Bea with her white pink skin, light hair and long thin body has been an attraction everywhere in Asia, especially here in India, with children, other curious women and particularly the men who already have a fascination with Western women as proved by the many advertisements pointedly using them to sell everything.

I found her at a greasy spoon open air restaurant nibbling at a yellow sandwich and sucking on a lime. I sat with her and groggily chatted. She was sore as hell, but I think a little relieved that I had come. I ate some salty fried fish—they had a big menu but only fish and coffee were available.

We got into a conversation with a man from Ceylon who was stuck in Bombay trying to get to Teheran. We had the same problem—prevented from doing it by the Asian Games there, which made accommodations scarce. He was going to Europe to stay with friends in Berlin. He worked in the tea business and had lived for some time in East Africa. We talked about food. They eat locusts, grasshoppers, roaches in Africa which he had tried. He seemed somewhat shocked that the French eat snails and frogs legs. In a Masai village he stopped short of drinking the local thirst quencher: milk and cow blood. It turned out he was also staying at the Y. We all strolled back together.

Bea fell asleep before we could resolve our spat and I stayed up to finish Maugham’s "The Razor’s Edge" which has always had something to say to me in an unreal, romantic way.

A note on Hinduism: I have been studying as much as I can about it and talking about it with as many people as I can. It is a remarkable religion—in its complexity it is all things: a faith, a world view, a philosophy, a psychology, an ethos, a mythology. It allows for intellectuality, mysticism, spirituality. It is dark, joyous, witty and somber. It is ascetic and sexual. It is strongly symbolic but provides concrete idols to worship. It contains a panoply of Gods, each with traditional functions and personalities, yet at its heart is monotheistic or in some modes, pantheistic. It is distinctively Indian, but has survived by absorbing the beliefs of many other sects and other major religions. To the pious it provides a faith in eternal peace and a satisfactory if tortuous means of attaining it. To the casual or even agnostic Hindu it provides a sense of community with holidays and festivals, an identity in its rituals, and justification of a way of life.
In my examination it seems to be a perfectly fine religious system.

Then why is the country in which it is practiced so fucked up?
Does the religion which defines the value system hold responsibility for the society it serves and influences? Or maybe there is nothing "wrong" with India fundamentally. Maybe it is merely "backward" because by accident of history, climate, or geography, it joined the "modern" world too late. Am I putting too much stock in my own ideas of "The Good Life"? If Hinduism is right, then life on earth is the hell and will always be so even with our comforts and "progress" which are only superficial and transitory and obstacles to the search for true "Goodness" and Peace of Mind.

6 September Friday Bombay
A few words about food. When traveling to different countries a major interest for us is eating the local foods. In the States we were used to some Asian foods: Chinese of course, Japanese, and even Indian "style" cuisine. But eating is always an adventure, a sample of local customs which reflect to some extent the personality, degree of wealth, the eccentricities of each place.

Some friends who had preceded us on similar trips advised that Asia is for buying, Europe is for eating. I am sure this is true; as Bea insists that nothing compares to French cooking, even in the commonest of kitchens. Of course, Italian food we know and love. Perhaps these foods will not be as strange, exotic or adventurous as the foods we have eaten in Asia, just as Europe itself is less alien to our experience.

Tonight we strolled along a broad cool avenue to a restaurant where we ate a meal in a style which was new to us, even here in India. We were brought various vegetarian dishes served in metal bowls on a silver metal tray, a "tali." (Phonetic spelling, to my ear.) There are light breads and rolls called "puris". You tear a piece and dip into a bowl with your fingers and eat. You must only use the right hand (awkward for me) since by custom this is the clean one. The waiter hovers and refills your bowls. He leaves a pitcher of water because the dishes are spicy. At the end he dumps rice on your tray if you wish and you pour the leftovers in the rice, mix it together and eat with your fingers. So now we have eaten with chopsticks, spoons, spoon and fork, and hand.

I have also noticed a definite difference in the rice served in the countries we have visited; though it is the staple of all— the grains somehow all seem a little different, whether from the type, or the preparation, I don’t know. I remember reading that sushi chefs in Japan study for rice for a year as part of their education. The rice here seems particularly hardy, rich and fluffy when at its best.

We must rest now because we are stuffed like little pigs.

7 September Saturday Bombay
It is funny how days that begin inauspiciously have often ended with our best experiences. This day we began listless, without much ambition. We have been at low tide for a few days now; our energies seemingly drained. We have slept away huge chunks of days and lain in bed reading and dozing for hours. It is partly our colds which linger annoyingly, the ever present heat which causes malaise and the let down of spending our last days in India.

We decided quickly that Bombay had not much to offer—it is a bit prettier, its architecture a bit more exotic, new skyscrapers, art deco apartments, cathedral like public buildings. It has a harbor, the usual hectic smelling bazaar, a great deal of traffic on its wide avenues; but not much of the tension of the other cities. Of maybe it is there but we have simply gotten used to it. Even the child beggars here seem better fed, their hearts not really into their pleas.

We supped continental dinner, lobster thermidor, and strolled back ready to read—I bought and began "War and Peace" of all things to read on holiday! Then we got into a 2½ hour discussion about Hinduism, Sikhs, prejudice, travel, etc., with two young Indians: the guy who is the night clerk and a young woman who is an engineer. It was friendly, funny and informative. They were intelligent, witty, tolerant, worldly, fine people.
It reinforced my notion that there is nothing particularly mystical or threatening about India. The people are different only in custom and superficial mannerisms; but they want the same things, have the same frustrations, prejudice and ignorance about the way things are and ought to be. It gave me a much warmer feeling for the country and people than our first impression.

I guess that is why India is so "difficult" to figure out. You have to "get past" the first and most vivid negative impressions in order to see more deeply into the vast complexity and discover—not The truth—but other truths.

8 September Sunday Bombay
We have spent our last full day in India in an enjoyable and worthwhile way, visiting Elephanta Caves on an island 6 miles from Bombay. They contain sculptures of Hindu Gods which are chiseled from the solid basaltic rock of a mountain in the 6th or 7th centuries. As a monument it is in the category of the Taj Mahal, the Gold Buddha of Bangkok and the Great Buddha in Nara (which was created around the same era) in awesomeness and achievement.

All four are interesting to me because of the effect they have—and were meant to have—on the viewer: respect, for the skill of the artisans, sure, but more, respect for the power and wealth of the patron religion or ruler which ordered its creation. Imagine the impact over the Ages of the visitors to the shrine of the Gold Buddha, 52 tons of gold, in a society which is poor beyond our conception. The huge statue in Nara in the solemn shrine must have inspired enormous awe at the power of such a symbol.

Ironically, the Taj Mahal is the most awesome because of its intrinsic "artistic" beauty, but also because it is a tomb, a shrine to one dead person in a world in which millions live in anonymity. As a romantic symbol by a man of enormous wealth, power and arrogance created as a monument to a woman he loved, a miraculous extravagance.

9 September Monday Bombay to Delhi to Kabul
Today we believed that our flying luck had finally run out, after so many flights, including those on exotic airlines like Indonesian, Royal Nepal, and now Indian Air.

Our jet taxied to the runway at Bombay airport and sat there in stifling heat for what seemed like an eternity. The cabin temp felt like it pushed way over 110 as we sat, without cabin air conditioning, either because of a malfunction or in prep for take-off. Peering from my seat in the second row through the open cockpit door, I could see no planes ahead of us in a cue which might cause such a long delay and for a long time there was no explanation.

The Indian businessman across the aisle sat in his business suit trying to look business like reading his wilting newspaper while stains of sweat darkened the collar of his shirt.

The stewardess finally opened the door, which allowed the temp to lower a few degrees as new air drifted into the cabin. Bea, who always nears the boiling point as the thermometer rises, had been getting redder around the nose and ears. I fanned her with a magazine while I was not craning to see if the pilots were still alive.

Suddenly the pilot announced that there was a "slight mechanical problem" and that it was nothing to be alarmed about and that it would be repaired shortly. A ramp appeared at the doorway and a workman climbed the steps and entered the cabin. He wore Indian Air overalls and carried a toolbox. I watched as he entered the cockpit and kneeled on the floor behind the pilot. He unscrewed a plate, and began to probe what looked like wires and cables.

After another long period, during which I watched Bea closely for signs of faint, my attention was jerked toward the cockpit by a loud "clank, clank" sound. The workman was on his knees pounding with a hammer at the works under the plate. My eyes became huge.

After a short time, he rose and left. The stewardess closed the door behind him. I expected her to tip him. The engines whirred and we began to move.

I held Bea’s hand tightly and kissed her fingers. I told her I was glad we had this brief time together and that I hoped we would spend eternity in a cool place.

We grasped our hands until we landed in New Delhi.

Now we only had to survive our next flight on Afghan Air to Kabul.

We found that our flight was canceled, and we had to wait for hours in the airport for a seat on the next one.

Haunted Heart

In the night, though we're apart
There's a ghost of you within my haunted heart.

Ghost of you, my lost romance,
Lips that laugh, eyes that dance.
Haunted heart won't let me be,
Dreams repeat a sweet but lonely song to me.

Dreams are dust; it's you who must belong to me
And thrill my haunted heart,
Be still, my haunted heart.

Music by Arthur Schwartz with lyrics by Howard Dietz, 1948.

Suicide: A Love Story [1st Draft]

In a mental hospital, a patient sat in a chair in front of a therapist’s desk. He was very calm, amused and curious about the decor, the photos and things that told him about the therapist.

The patient was Mark Abel, 53, an apparently successful and contented man who made enough money to retire earlier than most. He had a wife and two children. His wife left him after the children left the home in their mid-20's. She remarried and has raised her second husband's child. Mark had several relationships since then, but none lasted very long. His daughters have their own lives. One is close to her mother, the other is detached from both of her parents. She married an Orthodox Jew and moved to Israel.

Mark had been hospitalized because he attempted suicide by ingesting pills. He was discovered by a housekeeper in the morning. He was rushed to the hospital and was in a coma for three days. Eventually, he recovered. The hospital psych recommended transfer to the psych unit after Mark casually stated that he would “do it better next time.” Mark had willingly committed himself after being assured that the commitment was for no longer than 14 days.

Mark began to think about dying because he lost interest in life. His mother died a year ago of cancer after suffering from Alzheimer’s for 5 years. His father had killed himself 3 days later.

But those facts were only the spark of his decision to end his life. He had not disclosed the true reason. Maybe he didn’t really know, himself, what it was. But he had made up his mind.

The shrink was Marilyn Asher. She was 47, twice divorced. Childless. She had married in college to a medical doctor, and settled into a suburban existence, considered herself a trophy wife. Bored, she had affairs and divorced after a minor scandal. She returned to college, earned a degree in medicine to prove to her ex-husband and his friends that she could surpass him. She gravitated to psychiatry after her second husband, also a doctor, left her for a younger version of herself. She became depressed, self-medicated and became addicted to anti-depressants. She had suicidal thoughts and one weak attempt. She underwent therapy and when “cured” returned to do her psychiatric residency.

The first therapy session went something like this:

Marilyn
Why did you try to kill yourself?

Mark
Why do you want to know?

Marilyn
So I can understand you.

Mark
What if you do?

Marilyn
To help you.

Mark
To help me kill myself? No, of course not. Sorry.

Marilyn
You still want to.

Mark
No comment.

Marilyn
You were heard to say, 'I’ll do it better next time.'

Mark
You think that means I’m going to try again to kill myself?

Marilyn
Doesn’t it?

Mark
Maybe I meant that I’ll do better in my next life.

Marilyn
Okay, is that what you meant?

Mark
What do you believe?

Marilyn
I’m afraid you mean to end your life. The question is why.

Mark
Either way you pose a danger to me.

Marilyn
How so?

Mark
For one thing, if I say my life sucks,you’ll diagnose me as depressed, and prescribe anti-depressants. If I say that I am tired of life and expect to do better in the next life, you’ll find another category which amounts to being insane and you’ll have me involuntarily committed. But if I just don’t say why, then you can’t do a damn thing.

Marilyn
I see.

Mark
Okay. Now you’ve got me pegged
as hostile, and that goes against me.

Marilyn
Not at all.

Mark
Bullshit. I am hostile, at least
to the way you see your job."

Marilyn
How do you know how I see my job?

Mark
Now, who’s hostile?
Anyway, you’re trying to save a life.
That’s noble, I suppose.
Taking your Hippocratic Oath seriously.

Marilyn
Shouldn’t I?

Mark
Well, I don’t care to get into a philosophical debate about quality of life or dignity.

Marilyn
Isn’t it about those issues?

Mark
Not interested in issues.
I don’t want to be an issue or a cause.

Marilyn
Neither am I, really.
I’m not here for a cause.

Mark
Are you pro-choice or right to life?

Marilyn
Do you mean as regards abortion?

Mark
What’s the difference whether we’re talking about the start of living or the ending of it? It’s still about choice - except the sperm or foetus doesn’t get the choice. Should I have the same choice as a foetus?

Marilyn
I suppose. But it's not the same, is it?

Mark
Well, I think I have a good enough reason to want to end my life. I always hated those movie biographies about famous people. You know, complete lives don’t make great drama. Ray Charles became repetitive and irrelevant. He just got old, so they wisely ended the movie half way through it. Same with Johnny Cash. Imagine what the bio of Brando or Orson Welles is going to look like.

Marilyn
You think the rest of your life is irrelevant?
Or that you’ve become grotesque?

Mark
Maybe I’m just bored.

Marilyn
Okay, so its about love, then?

Mark
I’ve had all the love I want or need.

Marilyn
Have you? What if you meet someone tomorrow?

Mark
I don’t want to. Don’t have the energy to go through it again. No snappy comeback for that one? Could it be you’re kind of feeling the same?

Marilyn
We go through periods of feeling that way.
It doesn’t mean I want to end it all.

Mark
Fair enough. That’s okay for you.
If I were you, I’d probably feel the same.

Marilyn
Why?

Mark
I just have the sense that you’re going to find someone or some thing to keep you interested. But if you dont in say 10 years, you may tire of the game, too.

Marilyn
Maybe

Mark
Okay so there I am.

By the end of the session, Marilyn knew that she was desperately in love with Mark but didn't know how to tell him.

In the middle of the second session the next day, the answer came to her. She told him that if he dies, she will die, too.
When Mark was late for his session on the third day, Marilyn went to his room. She found him there. He had swallowed half of the pills in a bottle. Marilyn took the rest.

They were both found and taken to the hospital and he was revived. He discovered that she was also alive. He went to her room, sat beside her bed. She awakened, drowsily saw his face.

Their conversation went like this:

Marilyn
Where are we?

Mark
Not heaven.

Marilyn
I was hoping.

Mark
It's okay. You win.

Marilyn
Win What?

Mark
Me. For whatever that’s worth.

Marilyn
How did I win?

Mark
I tested you and you passed.

Marilyn
That's nice. How?

Mark
Suicide attempts are a cry for help, aren't they?
That's what you said?

Marilyn
Yes.

Mark
So I called for help -- before you came.

Marilyn
You knew that I would find you.
But how did you know what I would do?

Mark
I didn’t. But I had to find out.
You had 3 choices. You could have done nothing,
respecting my choice to die.
Or you could have tried to revive me.
Or you could have done what you did.

Marilyn
You bastard.

Mark
I know. It was a risk.
But some risks are worth it.

Soulmates - A Dialogue

AIDAN
Do you believe in ... uhm, whatchcallit?
When you die and come back?

Evie
Reincarnation?

Aidan
Reincarnation, yeah.

Evie
I’m not into Eastern stuff.
Not really. Do you?

Aidan
Well, not the hindu thing,
where you keep going up and down
the ladder based on performance
-– worm to dog to human
and back again if you screw up.
I mean, what did the worm do to
get to be a dog?

Evie
You’re right, that’s hard to swallow.
You really think about these things?

Aidan
Well, not all that much, you know.
I’m really a live for today kind of guy.

Evie
Yeah, me too, I guess.
I mean, it would be nice to
believe in some kind of future.

Aidan
Sure.
But how can souls keep recycling?
There’s billions more people
living than ever before.
So where did all the new souls come from?

Evie
Exactly.

Aidan
But there is this theory.

Evie
Who’s theory?

Aidan
I don’t know.
I heard about it somewhere.
What really happened is that
when the first people died,
they had huge souls see,
and when they died,
their souls split apart into pieces.
And the next generation got only a piece of a soul.

Evie
Oh, that’s a funny thought.
So, when you meet someone
and you fall in love ...

Aidan
It’s really because you each
have a small piece ...

Evie
Of the same soul?
And something inside of you,
what, senses that?

Aidan
Yeah, that’s why it’s hard to see, sometimes.

Evie
But wouldn’t there be a lot of people
living who have a piece of the same soul?

Aidan
Well, sure, but they might be
spread all over the world.
Maybe one is in Tibet,
and another in Africa or Iceland.
You’d probably never meet them.

Evie
But some people fall in love
more than once.
It doesn’t seem likely that
you’d run across more than one part
of your soul during your life.

Aidan
That’s what I think.
So, I guess you can fall in love
with somebody who doesn’t share your soul.

Evie
Maybe that’s why it fades so fast.

Aidan
But if you do find someone who does,
you don’t throw that away
cause its as perfect as its ever going to be.

Evie
I didn’t know you were such a romantic.

Aidan
I’m not. I’m only saying.

Evie
But you are. More than I am.

Aidan
That’s okay.

Evie
But what if you have to leave
your soulmate ‘cause, I don’t know,
say you’re not ready.

Aidan
Well, that’s what’s so great about this idea.
There’s another chance out there somewhere.
More soulmates.

Evie
Pretty risky, though.

Aidan
Life is risk.

Evie
I don’t know.

Aidan
Look, let’s say we’re soulmates.

Evie
What? You and me?

Aidan
Yeah. Just what if.

Evie
Ok. What if.

Aidan
And we don’t connect.
We fly by and zoom off like ...

Evie
Planets?

Aidan
Comets, yeah.

Evie
Okay. In separate ...

Aidan
Directions, yeah.

Evie
That would be ...

Aidan
Sad?

Evie
Sad.

Aidan
But not really a disaster.
If there is a you,
then there must be another you out there.

Evie
And a you?

Aidan
Sure. I don’t think I’m all that unique.

Evie
I never met anyone like you.


Fin