My Crazy Love

He drew her form every night. Magic, mystery, charcoal, pen, paper. He searched his memory for the line, the curve of her most attracting beauty. It was everywhere; the curves of her floated like notes, like a song. He could hear what he could see. His drawings didn't exhaust her. He was determined to unlock her mystery, her never-endingness.

How can she go on and on? How can I never be at the end of her? If she would just stop changing, could I capture her, lock her in time with me . . . for this moment and the next? Would she care about my pleasure, my compelling need to hold her to me? Oh, how could I hold her, capture her, domesticate her?

I would lose her. She would hate me then. She must be free to follow her own whims, I know this now. I didn't understand it then. She had been my companion, my sex partner, and back then . . . even then . . . a woman of dreams and desires that were so free. I did at that time not even have enough imagination to imagine them.

When she left me, I hated her for a long time. I had given everything to her. I was her romantic and her lover. How could she dare to leave me? I went crazy for her. I am crazy without her. I thought I was protecting her. I had no clue to her kingdom and never understood her frequent travels. Where did she go without me? Did she have another lover? Everyone suspected it was so. Everyone warned me about her. I mistook her fragility. Yeah, I saw her break apart easily and often, but a strangeness about her . . . maybe in her unexplained travels, in the land where she imagined her existence, her fragility was a play of great flexibility.

She could re-create herself. Certainly she was an artist. I thought I could have her intimacy, if I could have her, and I would know myself and fulfill her even more. How vain I was. I was addicted to her excitement, I lived in it as my daily meal. I feasted every day and every night on her spirit of change and travel. She once told me that her life was art and that it was constantly being created. How could she come anew in each moment? How was it that my love for her designed a future without me? Was there no curve of my form that would draw her in, to delight her with the storytelling of my palms and soles? She did love me, I know that. She really did. How could her attention wander away from me then? Were the colors on my palette dulled by too many grey days of duty and obligation?

Oh, I am so mixed up when it comes to her. She pushed me too hard, too fast. I had to go insane to stop her, to hold on to her. She tolerated it for a while. I dug into my trench ready to wait out the war. No one could budge me. I knew there was a war going on out there. I lost my mind, but I would not lose my life. I protected myself with sandbags of memories that I cemented together with dosages of denial. I rewrote our marriage vows. I married my childhood and parents. I left her out. Out of the trench was enemy territory. If she wasn't here with me in the trench, I reasoned . . . she must be an enemy.

It's funny. In insanity, one worships the enemy; one lives in the hole of failure. I wish I could just be normal again . . . Father a girl, set up housekeeping together. It could be so sweet. She would look up to me, dependent on my understanding of the ways and policies of the world. I could do it. I have powers; I could do it. I could forget her forever. I could replace her. Insanity has something to offer everyone. You can twist yourself up so much that you will deny yourself what you love the most. How could she be free and be the symbol of what I blame and hate the most . . . and yet in my dreams at night I draw her form and dream of the future together . . .

A pencil and papers fall from space and the first thing I draw, try to call to conscious memory, is the curve of her breast. Am I fooling myself, is my insanity of little power? I haven't affected her with the power of denial. One look at that curve, my faked memories of denial fall away. One curve leads to another and I'm loving the paper, the pencil, the scratchy lines. I'm discovering her all over again. This time will I be strong enough to leave her alone and yet share with her the most real intimacies of my soul? Can I let her in? Can there be an end to my internal warfare?

I draw and draw her late at night. My comrades of pain do not suspect that their general is consorting with the enemy. I wonder if she thinks of me. I've got to get back to myself. I can't stay in this hole forever. God, I'm so, so afraid. I hate wanting her so. It isn't manly. I'm so afraid that I'll be found out and, as a woman in this crazy world, I will not have the rights and choices, power and privilege of every free man.

I often go to fortune tellers: the psychologists of my destiny. They read my shit and can tell me what I have digested and not digested. Pieces of her they can read. It's amazing, but they say they know her by my shit! They theorize that my diet and therefore my mind have been thrown out of whack by my too frequent meals of her. They assured me that I was experiencing a depression . . . a mental chaos that was a result of withdrawal from her. My mind would clear one day when the poisons of the drug of her were out of my system.

They prophesied great things for me when this happened. I would marry and have children. I would be able to watch television. I would be able to take strolls in the woods. I would be able to get a job. I haven't been able to work in years.

They write monthly reports on my improvement, exclaiming that my shit is losing that strange fragrance of dust, eucalyptus, baby powder and sea kelp breezes. My body odors are returning to normal. "I'm gonna be normal," they can read the future. They are very competent fortunetellers, with diplomas from very expensive universities in the east. They can see what would be good for me and are so generous with pieces and prices of their own destiny. They have given me so much of a darn good future that I haven't been able to tell them of my drawings. What is the harm in this secret indulgence . . . they have smelled the success of their treatments. I am obedient to their schedule of prescribed drugs. Their bills are paid and my addiction to her has been lucrative for them. What does it matter? The torment of my soul is money in the bank for them. One day, when I decide to stand in the open sun, to love outside the trench and the cities of conformity, they will have to face their withdrawal from me. It's not just money. I dream them. Their powers have been bought, mine have been dream-drawn from the depths of my mysterious passion for her. I have power over everyone . . . everyone except her.