Oblivio: Stories and such by Michael Barrish

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Inscription | Jul 13 2004

A WEEK AGO SUNDAY, Independence Day, at about two o’clock in the afternoon, I checked my email on my girlfriend Teresa Gardstein’s computer. When I was finished checking, I closed the browser and then went to close AOL, when I suddenly noticed something strange, something that made me stop what I was doing.

Teresa had left her AOL In Box open, and near the top of the list of emails she had received, I spotted what immediately struck me as a strange and disturbing subject line.

thinking of you…

Who besides me would write such a subject line to her?

I glanced at the “From” field. The address there began jmk@.

J, I thought. Who does Teresa know whose first name begins with J? No one but her cousin in Kentucky, however her cousin’s last name begins with G, not J, and anyway her cousin in Kentucky wouldn’t write such a subject line.

I scanned down the list of emails. Teresa’s In Box was peppered with emails from jmk, all of which had, as I remember it, suggestive or semi-suggestive subject lines, none of which I remember. The only one I remember is the first. Still, the others must have been similar enough to the first to convince me to do what I did next, which was that I clicked on thinking of you…

Suffice it to say, I had never done such a thing before, not to Teresa or anyone. It is not the sort of thing I do. In this case, however, I didn’t hesitate.

Teresa was in the kitchen. I was in the living room, at her desk. One can see her desk from the kitchen, although it’s at least fifty feet away, at the other end of the apartment. Teresa computer, a laptop, faces sideways in relation to the kitchen, by which I mean that the screen faces sideways. You can’t really see it from the kitchen, or at least not much of it.

jmk’s email was brief and to the point. It read: …as I listen to Hooverphonic.

That seems fairly benign, doesn’t it? One can imagine such an email being written by an old friend upon stumbling on a CD you both loved back in college.

thinking of you…
…as I listen to Hooverphonic.

The message is not benign, however. Not even close. Hooverphonic has a special meaning for Teresa, one that points in an entirely different direction.

Hooverphonic is sex music. Teresa likes to play it when she fucks.

*

I began seeing Teresa eight months ago. We met through the personals on nerve.com. Her headline read, Give me liberty or give me chocolate. In her photo she sat grinning before a luscious-looking chocolate dessert.

On our first date, we ended up kissing for three hours on the stoop of her former apartment in the East Village. She lost track of time and missed the last train back to Long Island, where she was temporarily living with her parents. I suspected—or perhaps hoped—that she had missed that train deliberately, as a ruse to get me to invite her home.

I invited her home.

Since the only place to sleep in my studio apartment is my bed, I made a pledge to Teresa to not take advantage of the situation. In the end I honored that pledge, despite the best efforts of Teresa, who had made no such vow. It was the only time I refused her.

In the morning she did something I’ll never forget. She said that she wanted to try it with me, meaning to try a committed relationship, and that she didn’t want to pretend otherwise or to play any games. She cried as she said this, and I held her.

Later, during more difficult times, she would sometimes regret her candor that morning. “I shouldn’t have let you know so soon,” she would say.

Each time she said this, I winced. She won my heart by being vulnerable and honest and direct. It was the sweetest and sexiest thing I could have imagined. I said yes and never regretted it.

*

I read three or four of jmk’s emails.

His name is James or Jim. Both, I suppose.

In an astonishing feat of self-protection, I have forgotten what James or Jim wrote to Teresa. All I know is this: The evidence, whatever it was, was damning but not conclusive. There remained a chance, however slight, that James or Jim was merely coming on to Teresa, merely trying to seduce her.

Actually, there is one thing I do remember. In one of James or Jim’s emails, he said that Teresa was going to love what he planned to do to her next time. James or Jim did not say what thing he planned to do next time, but even if he had, it wouldn’t have proven that Teresa wanted him to do it, or worse, that she had permitting him to do such things in the recent past. This is despite James or Jim’s use of the words next time.

James or Jim had written at least a half dozen more emails, but I stopped after three or four. I don’t know why I did this. The way I remember it, I was afraid of being caught, although it’s possible that I’m remembering wrongly, or more likely that I’m remembering rightly only it’s not the real reason I stopped.

When I closed the third or fourth email, I noticed that there were checkmarks next to the emails I had just read, and that these emails were the only ones with checkmarks.

I know a great deal about email programs, but in this moment I forgot what I know and panicked, imagining that the checkmarks were permanent and that Teresa would see them and realize that I had read her email. I scanned the screen for a solution, but there was none to be found. Then I saw it—the “Mark As Unread” button. I clicked it once for each email I had read, closed Teresa’s In Box, closed AOL, flipped down the computer screen, and sat there for a few minutes trying to think.

Then I walked to the kitchen.

*

I believe I’m a good actor. Acting is a kind of storytelling and I have a gift for telling stories. The role I played this day, one of the more difficult roles I’ve ever attempted, was called The Man Who Doesn’t Know A Fucking Thing.

In the kitchen Teresa was making tuna fish sandwiches. She wasn’t the same Teresa she had been just a short time earlier. She will never be that Teresa again. It was my job to act as though I didn’t notice.

We had agreed to spend the afternoon in Fort Greene Park. I asked Teresa when she thought she’d be ready, and she said soon.

I had a plan in mind, of a sort. My plan was to talk with her in the park, after we ate our sandwiches. I would start by asking her about our relationship, about how she felt it was going. I wouldn’t mention the emails.

This, believe it or not, was my entire plan. Looking back, I honestly don’t know what the point of it was. Mainly, I think I was in shock.

*

The last time Teresa and I had talked about our relationship was in late May, the night before she was to leave for a week-long vacation in the Caribbean.

I can’t remember what she said that night to set me off. I only know that it happened as we were walking along Henry Street to the promenade, having just crossed Atlantic Avenue. Whatever it was she said—and in a sense it doesn’t matter—her words finally pushed me past the limits of my patience. Turning to her, I shouted, “Enough! I’ve had enough! You have no idea how unreasonable and uncaring you are!”

I tried to leave then, to walk away (something I’d never done before), but Teresa grabbed my arm and pleaded with me not to go. I had never seen a look like that on her face. She was afraid of losing me.

We talked for many hours this night, pacing the promenade in both directions and wandering into Brooklyn Heights. I told her two very hard things which I had previously said only to my closest friends. In a sense these two things are the same thing. In a sense I have only ever had one thing to say to her, and I’m still saying it now.

I said that I felt she didn’t care about me, or that if she did, she didn’t know how to express it. I also said that it seemed that nearly all our time together was spent focused on what she was thinking or feeling, or on doing what she wanted to do.

There is a price one pays for saying such things, just as there’s a price for feeling them. I don’t think I fully realized either price at the time. Actually, I know I didn’t.

Her cab to the airport was due at five the next morning. We stayed up together that night, talking quietly. When we made love, everything felt like tears.

Afterwards she asked me to tell her why I loved her, the reasons. I listed everything I could think of, but what I wanted to say is that I loved her because I loved her, not because of the reasons. The reasons hardly mattered.

*

Fort Greene Park is about a mile from Teresa’s apartment. We zigzagged through Boerum Hill, turning at every corner. Teresa talked the entire way. Fortunately for me, she didn’t require more than an occasional acknowledgement that I was following what she was saying, which of course I wasn’t really doing. I couldn’t. I was also having difficulty speaking. I mean difficulty in the physical sense: I couldn’t get my mouth to work right. For this reason, I limited my comments to just a word or two at a time.

I see.

Yes.

Really?

As we walked, somewhere along that walk, something strange happened. I didn’t notice it at the time, but in retrospect it’s almost unbelievable, although it makes total sense.

I began to forget about the emails.

When I think back, I can remember having difficulty speaking as I walked with Teresa on Pacific Avenue. I know where we were at that moment; we were passing a playground. In my next memory, it’s about ten minutes later and I’m in a bodega by Fort Greene Park and I’m suggesting to Teresa that she buy a coke in a plastic bottle rather than a can because the bottle, which has a twist-off lid, will last her longer. Looking back, it doesn’t appear that the man in the bodega, the one suggesting the plastic bottle with the twist-off lid, knows about the emails.

We laid out our towels on the far side of the hill. It was a splendid day. Fourth of July in the park. Bright sun, cool breeze.

I ate my sandwich and waited for Teresa to finish hers. When she did, I discovered again that I couldn’t speak. It wasn’t a physical thing this time; it was fear.

I’m not entirely sure what I was afraid of. Was it of losing her? If that’s what it was, it was a strange fear because deep down I had to know she was gone. You can’t lose someone you’ve already lost.

When I finally found the courage to say what I planned to say, Teresa thanked me for bringing up the subject and confessed to having trouble taking the initiative. We talked for three hours. It was the best conversation we ever had about our relationship. I understand now why this was, but at the time I found it disorienting. I kept waiting for her to be unreasonable or defensive, but she wasn’t. She said—and I think I’ll always remember this—that she felt she couldn’t commune with me. Here she meant commune in contrast to communicate, which struck me as a beautiful and sadly accurate distinction. I said I felt the same, and I asked why it was we couldn’t commune. The answer, we decided, had to do with trust, or the lack thereof. I asked if there was a way to build trust, and she said she didn’t know. Then she told me a secret.

“I feel totally isolated and alone,” she said, crying. “I feel alone by myself, and I feel alone with you.”

Moved, I thanked her for telling me this.

“It gives me hope,” I said.

“Ah, but there’s so much more you don’t know,” she said.

This may be hard to believe—I find it hard to believe myself—but when she said this, I had no idea what her “so much more” could have been. It was as though I had slipped into another world, a world with no James or Jim, a world with no emails about anyone’s plans for next time, a world with no references to Hooverphonic.

I believe I spent much of the afternoon in this other world. Still, there were moments when I would slip back into the first world, the world of knowing. One such moment occurred near the beginning of the conversation. I brought up the subject of sex, saying that she didn’t seem as interested of late. I did not say, because it did not need to be said, that her relative disinterest was unprecedented in our relationship. From the start, sex was at the core of our connection. It was the one place, to use her language, we could always commune.

I said—and when I said this, I knew perfectly well what I was saying—that I had begun to wonder if there was someone else.

“There’s no one else,” she said.

She said this softly, and I watched her face as she said it.

I didn’t see anything there.

*

Sometime in January, I celebrated a friend’s birthday in a restaurant in Teresa’s neighborhood. After dinner, I decided to walk to Teresa’s apartment and surprise her. It was a spontaneous idea. Previously we had only seen each other at arranged times.

I considered calling first—I wasn’t sure if she’d be home—but then I thought it would be more romantic if I simply took a chance and showed up.

As I walked down Smith Street, a terrible vision came to me. I would open her apartment door and hear the sound of her making love with another man. Only I wouldn’t know what the sound was at first, so I would go inside to investigate.

There’s a scene like this in a film by the Polish director Kieslowski. I remember being horrified when I saw it. A man follows his wife to the apartment of another man, where he climbs onto the man’s ledge to get a look inside. We see him inching toward the bedroom window, all the time clutching some part of the wall to keep from falling to his death. When the camera finally pans into the room, we see his wife in ecstasy, gleefully fucking this other man. I felt like puking.

I didn’t actually witness Teresa fuck another man. That is, in my vision. The vision ended, thankfully, as I reached Teresa’s living room and realized what those sounds were.

However, despite being pardoned from the worst of it, I still felt sick—both sick and bewildered. I’ve never been a jealous person. I’ve never been the sort of man who imagines that his lover is cheating on him.

On this night, though, something possessed me. I stopped a block from Teresa’s apartment and called her on my cell phone. She sounded perfectly normal—not at all like she’d just been having sex with another man. I said I was the neighborhood and asked if I could come by.

The reason I called in advance was to her give her time to get the other man out of her apartment, presuming there was another man. I knew this was ridiculous, but I couldn’t bear the thought of experiencing my nightmare in real life.

Later that night, I told Teresa what had happened. She was touched. It was as though I’d given her a bouquet of roses.

“I didn’t think you got jealous,” she said.

“I don’t,” I said. “Or at least I didn’t use to.”

This vision never returned, mercifully, but there were other things.

Teresa writes stories, most of which concern or involve sex—often casual sex or sex with multiple partners. These stories aren’t pornographic; they’re serious works of fiction. It’s just that sex is usually central.

Many of these stories are based on Teresa’s own experiences. She’s always been open with me about this, and I’ve always been supportive of her work. After all, I write stories as well—at times somewhat explicit stories—and these too are often based on my experiences. Writers understand this.

However, whenever Teresa read one of her stories to me, I would find myself becoming increasingly upset and even distraught. I tried to hide this from her, feeling that it was wrong—and not only wrong but embarrassing—but it was difficult to pull off. As Teresa read to me, my breath would get shallow and I’d start to feel as though my face were burning.

It didn’t occur to me until today that the majority of these stories, including her first novel, feature a protagonist, invariably an attractive young woman, who is cheating on her boyfriend.

None of these women ever get caught.

*

Leaving the park, Teresa and I walked south on DeKalb. At Flatbush we came to Junior’s, a landmark Brooklyn restaurant famous for its cheesecake. I knew that Teresa had never been there, so I suggested we give it a try.

Nothing of note happened during dinner. We had a lovely time. I believe I spent the entire meal in the world of not knowing.

When we stepped outside again, it was dark. Our plan for the evening was to watch the fireworks over Manhattan from her rooftop. We heard them begin as we hurried back.

Teresa’s roof is connected to a series of roofs which stretch to the corner of her block. We moved to the corner roof to get the best possible view. Teresa lit up a joint.

It had been my idea to watch the fireworks from Teresa’s roof. Teresa hadn’t known she had access, nor that the fireworks could be seen from this distance. Now, standing close to her, I could feel her happiness.

As the pot took effect, I felt the need to sit, so we moved to the front ledge of the roof. The ledge was about a foot high. We sat side by side, my arm wrapped around her.

Sitting there made me uneasy. Three rooftops over, a small group of people were watching the fireworks. What if one of them decided, for god knows what reason, to run over and give one of us a push? Or what if we simply lost our balance in reaction to the fireworks? We would fall to our deaths. I thought of what that would be like, to fall together. Would I keep my arm wrapped around her?

I said nothing of this to Teresa. Instead I asked if we could stand again, which we did.

The fireworks, doubtless augmented by the pot, were stunning. I found myself sighing the way I sigh during sex with Teresa.

And it was like sex, in a way, each burst a burst of flowering pleasure.

Teresa began to respond to what I was feeling with her sighs of her own. And then it truly was like sex, with each of us finding new, deeper pleasure in the pleasure of the other.

When the fireworks were over, we started to kiss. Soon Teresa indicated, I have forgotten how now, her desire to fuck on the roof.

We’d never done anything like that before—nor even strayed from having sex in bed, now that I think of it—but the way I looked at it was, if your incredibly sexy girlfriend wants to fuck on the roof, you fuck on the roof, no questions asked. Naturally we might be seen up there—people were standing on rooftops all over Teresa’s neighborhood—but that was part of the point. In fact while we were looking for an appropriate spot, Teresa said that she hoped others would see us and get ideas.

“I want to start a chain reaction of fucking that will spread over the entire planet,” she said.

Unfortunately, there was nowhere even remotely comfortable to do it. In the end, I sat on the pebbly rooftop surface with my back against a chimney and my shorts down just far enough to expose my cock. Perhaps because she was stoned, Teresa didn’t bother to remove her panties but only lowered them to her ankles. This made it nearly impossible for her to straddle me. We gave up after a friendly but fruitless struggle. I’m not sure I ever made it inside her.

Leaving the roof, we took the fire escape down and climbed through her kitchen window.

I don’t know what Teresa did next, but I went into the living room to look for a CD to play.

I felt good. I knew Teresa was happy and that we were going to have sex and that it would feel as intense as always and bring us closer.

Teresa’s CDs are arranged alphabetically in a tall stand. I started at the top, at the A’s, and made my way down. Because Teresa has so many Beatles CDs, I was almost a third of the way from the bottom when I finally reached Hooverphonic.

I suppose I passed from one world to the other then. Or maybe I stood at the border, one foot on each side.

When Teresa walked into the living room, I held up the CD for her see.

“Mind if I play this?” I asked.

As I said these words, I looked directly into her face, watching.

She flinched. It was a small flinch, but I caught it.

“Sure,” she said.

I put on the CD and went over to the couch. After one song, Teresa asked if she could play something different.

At this point I must have drifted back to the other world, the world of not knowing, because the next thing I remember is being in bed with her and making love.

Near the end, as she was about to come, she asked me to come with her. As I did, just before it happened, I felt the compulsion to thank her. I resisted this of course; she would have found it bizarre and possibly disturbing had I blurted out thanks at that moment. But afterward I told her about it.

“I’m glad you didn’t say anything,” she said, chuckling.

“But I felt it,” I said. “I wanted you to know.”

A bit later, she said she was thirsty, so I suggested the lemonade in the refrigerator. Earlier this day she had showed me a special bottle of lemonade she’d bought. She picked it because of the bottle, which was tall and sexy and had the kind of complicated metal lid contraption used on old-fashioned milk bottles.

We stood naked at her kitchen counter and tried, both at once, to remove the lid. It wouldn’t budge. Finally I asked her to let me do it. After much confused fiddling, I realized where to push. The lid slid off with a resounding champagne-like bang.

We drank a glass each, then a second. Admittedly I was stoned, but it was also really good lemonade. Between gulps, I came up with a sexy tagline for it: The after-fuck refresh-me-up. Teresa loved this, and we took turns saying it like actors on television commercials.

When we returned to bed, I told her that I wanted to write about what had happened with the lemonade, and I asked her to help me remember the tagline. She said she would.

This is the last thing I remember her saying: that she would help me remember the tagline. Then we fell asleep.

*

I woke the next morning at eight-twenty. I know the exact time because I got up and walked around the bed to get my glasses, which were resting next to Teresa’s on her nightstand. After putting them on, I glanced at the clock.

We had gone to sleep at about one. Most likely Teresa, a late sleeper, would remain in bed until at least ten. I had wanted to sleep late myself, but for some reason woke early.

I stood gazing at Teresa. The sheet was wrapped around her and tucked under her body. It made her look like a woman-sized candy in a blue wrapper. I studied her face. It was puffy with sleep but no less dear for that.

I walked into the living room and sat down at Teresa’s computer. Then I clicked on the Start menu, opened the control panel, and turned off the computer’s sound.

The reason for this should be obvious: I didn’t want the sound of the modem dialing up to wake Teresa.

I started AOL and opened Teresa’s In Box.

What is most interesting to me now is that I didn’t consciously plan any of this. I didn’t even think to do it until I woke. However when I did wake, I knew exactly what I needed to do, and I went about it in a calculated, almost cold-blooded manner.

I had one rule, and this rule had a name: court of law. I would read Teresa’s email to the point at which I found evidence sufficient to convict her in a court of law, were transgressions such as these considered criminal.

I started at the top of the list, at the emails I’d read the previous afternoon, and worked my way down.

There were several moments when I stopped and asked myself if this or that thing was sufficient. Each time I made myself continue. Court of law, I kept saying in my head. Court of law.

It turns out that Teresa was betraying me with more than one man. I don’t know how many exactly. I just know that at a certain point I switched from reading James or Jim’s emails to reading Greg’s. I picked Greg because he’d sent a lot of emails.

Greg was also the one who gave me my evidence, and for this, oddly, I feel grateful. Lord knows how many more emails I would have had to read if Greg hadn’t come through.

The clinching email was simply about plans. Here Greg sent Teresa a short list of nights he was available to see her.

This wouldn’t have convinced anyone of anything, but at the bottom of Greg’s email, I finally found what I’d come for.

It was the email that Teresa had sent to Greg, the one in which she had asked when he could see her, the one that Greg had replied to above with a list of his available nights.

Teresa has a characteristic way of signing her emails. This is what I noticed first. Teresa had taken her name and appended something playful to it, so that it read something like Teresychedelic, only it didn’t read Teresychedelic because that’s one of the playful names she used with me. The one she used with Greg I don’t remember anymore—not that it matters. What matters instead is that this was proof, if proof was needed, that Teresa had written the words above the signature, the ones that followed her salutation of “Greg.”

Among those words, near the bottom of Teresa’s email, just before her signature, she wrote the following: “I can’t wait to have your cock inside me again.”

Or maybe she wrote, “I still remember having your cock inside me.”

Or maybe she wrote something similar but different. The only thing I know for certain—and this, sadly, I would swear to on my life—is that she definitely wrote the phrase “your cock inside me.” You don’t read a phrase like that, in a context like that, and ever forget it.

*

I closed the email, closed Teresa’s In Box, closed AOL, and closed the computer. Unfortunately, these things were much more difficult to do than usual, given how much my hands were shaking.

As I had done the previous afternoon, I sat at Teresa’s desk and tried to think what to do. It was a surprisingly easy task this time, considering.

Question: Do I break up with her?
Answer: Yes. What she’s done is unforgivable.

Question: Do I wake her to tell her?
Answer: No, that could get ugly.

Moving quietly, I crossed the room and got my clothes which were draped over the arm of her couch. To reduce the chance of being heard as I dressed, I carried the clothes to the kitchen.

Once dressed, I grabbed Teresa’s collection of handbags—she has three in all—and brought them into the hall outside her apartment. There I searched each bag for her keys, without success. I carried the bags back into the kitchen, and as I walked in, I noticed her keys in a little dish by the front door. My keys, the ones to my apartment, the ones I had given her only two weeks after meeting her, were on a separate key ring which was looped through Teresa’s larger ring. I removed my keys and placed them in my bag. Then I slipped out of the apartment and walked with my bag to the ground floor of Teresa’s building. Here I took out a notepad and pen and sat on the stairs to write my letter.

*

I am a careful writer; I try very hard to say what I mean. However, saying what you mean means knowing what you mean, and knowing what you mean takes time. But time, in this case, I didn’t have.

As corny and absurd as this sounds, I found myself thinking of the letter as a kind of spiritual test. The words I would write would be inscribed on the gravestone of our relationship. Could I find it my heart to remember her heart and leaven the letter with kindness?

The words came slowly but they came. When I finished a draft, I read it through from the beginning, made a few edits, and re-wrote it on a clean sheet. Then I walked up the stairs to Teresa’s door, where I stopped for a moment and listened for sounds from inside. There weren’t any.

I took a long breath, laid my set of Teresa’s keys on her mat, and slipped the letter face-up under her door.

*

I arrived home at nine-fifteen. Teresa called an hour later. I didn’t answer. Instead I dialed my voicemail and deleted the message she’d left. I didn’t listen to it.

Five days later I received a letter from her which I returned unopened. I also signed up with a spam filtering service, in part so that I could put her on my “bad sender” list.

These are extreme measures, and there is, I confess, an element of revenge to them. I don’t want to give her the opportunity to apologize. I want a wall to come down between us. I want to say, by allowing nothing to be said, that she doesn’t get to kill something part way.

This is the ugly side of things. The other side, ugly in a different way, is about fear. I am afraid that if I allow her to speak, she will begin by apologizing but then somehow manage to whittle down her apology, bit by bit, until nothing remains. I have good reason to fear this, and I will not allow it.

I have been thinking a lot these past days about forgiveness and healing. I have come to the conclusion that healing is a kind of forgetting. We never really heal; we just move further from the moment we were hurt.

This said, I believe that I will forgive her in time. However, I will never allow her to hurt me again; I will never allow her the opportunity to make excuses for what she did.

Assuming of course that I remember what she did.

Here is what is inscribed on the gravestone:

Teresa,

Our relationship is over and I will never see you again. You have lied to me and betrayed me in a way that is not forgivable.

As I write these words, you lay asleep in your bed. I looked at you one last time before leaving the room. I wanted to kiss you but was afraid to wake you.

I would like to leave you—and to remember you—with kindness. Life is good, as I often say, but it is also hard. I care for you, and I want you to find happiness.

I ask that you not try to contact me by any means. I do not mean this harshly, but I must warn you that I will ignore any messages you do try to send.

Do you remember the words that came to me last night, just as I was about to come? I say those words again, Teresa. Thank you. Thank you for all you gave me.

Love,
Michael

p.s. I have taken my keys. Yours are outside your door.