JANUS 14
The day before my return to Australia I received a voice message on my mobile. Elly was going to call me on Skype that evening. Nothing unusual there, we had been Skyping regularly in the three months that I was away. Usually we discussed the pharmacy business, left in the care of a colleague, while Elly resisted my attempts to steer the conversation to personal matters. But the tone in her voice told me that this call was going to be different. I didn’t like the vibes.
When Elly’s strained face appeared on the screen of my laptop, my heart started to race. I just knew that a painful decision had been taken and the strained lines around her mouth told me that I wouldn’t like what was coming. My instinct was to go for the tactical delay.
‘What have you done to your hair?’
Her hair was cut short, strands of brown tint were highlighted on the screen. As I expected Elly ignored my remark, she wasn’t going to be distracted by banalities.
‘I just want to tell you that I am not living at home anymore.’
‘What do you mean? Where are you?’
‘I’ve moved out. I’m sorry.’
‘Why? Elly, what’s happened?’
‘Just that, I’ve taken all my things. The house is yours now.’
‘But… but Elly…’ I was assaulted by swirling emotions: shock, anger, hurt, outrage, ‘you can’t just get up and leave all of a sudden.’
‘It wasn’t sudden. I thought about it. For months.’
In anger I flung my hand at the screen and as the fingers caught the upper edge of the Asus, it vaulted back and sat on the lid. When I righted the machine the image was gone, though I could still hear the voice.
Into an empty screen I spoke.
‘At the very least you owe me an explanation.’
The voice responded.
‘I’ll do it in writing. I’ll leave you a note on the kitchen table. That’s what they do in movies, isn’t it?’
She gave a bitter chuckle, then click! Dark went the screen and dark went my world at that point. I tried to call her back but of course she had shut me out. Technology is wonderful, it can bring the world into your living room, it’s a source of knowledge, entertainment and information. It puts you in touch with people you love in an instant, but it can make them vanish with the click of a button. Technology has turned us all into images, shadows, ghosts. Technology has made living more uncertain, more ephemeral, more surreal than ever.
The next day I caught the plane and arrived in what had been our family home, now empty. I saw the sealed letter on the table, but I didn’t want to read it, the mere sight of it, leaning against the belly of an empty glass vase, made me feel sick. I didn’t want an explanation, I wanted my wife back. Explanations are mere excuses, word games to justify unsavoury choices and bad behaviour. I slumped on the couch and closed my eyes to shut out the world. The air in the house was dead still. It was eerie. I didn’t want to think about anything that night. I took two Stillnoxes and slept.
I dreamed I had just woken up inside the cabin of a long-haulage truck. Outside was a landscape of incomparable beauty. Grassy slopes expanded all the way up to bush-clad hills in the distance. At the window appeared Elly, more beautiful than I had ever seen her, inviting me with her naked arm to frolic with her outside on the grass. Under her arm a tuft of curly black hair, which I found an irresistible turn on, beckoned me. I tried to open the door but it was locked. The more it resisted the more intense my desire. But the lock would not give. A hammer materialized on the cabin floor with which I attacked the glass. As the glass shattered I woke up with a start. The wall clock indicated 2.27 am. I felt a tautness in my groin. I rolled over on the couch to relieve the pressure and there I saw it: a veritable burst of an erection the likes of which I had not seen before. The erection of rigor mortis.
I died that night. When eventually, very gradually, I rose again, it was in a different form. Individuals have their own way of navigating life’s choppy waters, for me sex was going to be my saviour (or was it mere distraction?) And, of course it became my enslaver too. Life is perverse.
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Note: The commentators below are fictitious and form part of the narrative.
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Comments
Sushilover
I knew there’d be some good bits, if I waited long enough.
Salubrius
This is a depressing blog.
Cynic2
What awful melodrama! I don’t believe you, Janus, I think you’re making this stuff up.
Pascal
Your dream of the shattering of the glass is symbolic of you breaking into the homosexual space. The moment of transition is marked by the hammer hitting the glass.
Amby
Your dream interpretation sounds good to me, Pascal, except for the transition part. Janus has already said that his sexual interest in men started when he was a kid and not as a consequence of the trauma.
Pascal
Amby, I meant transition from latent to active homosexuality.
Salubrius
Janus, your story illustrates the unravelling of today’s Western societies, that has spawned confused, self-absorbed, insecure, lost individuals.
Lizzie 86
You’re talking about men surely.
Salubrius
Lizzie, I’m talking about people.