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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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The Demon Who Wants to Make It All Better
The Next Day Magdalene called the next morning around 8:15. She wanted to come over and �hash out� what had happened the night before. I said okay. I got out of bed, brushed my teeth, picked up my wet clothes from the bathroom floor, made some coffee. I was still drunk from the night before. We sat and talked. Magdalene pointed out the bruises on my knees that I had gotten from kneeling on the hardwood floor of my apartment while we were sucking off Matthew. She said that bruised knees had been one of the hazards of being a stripper. I asked if they just covered the bruises with makeup until they toughened up.
As we talked, I recognized in Magdalene the same feelings of guilt and remorse that Matthew had inspired in me before, but I recognized this in a detached way, not feeling them myself. She suggested we figure out his enneagram number. She worried about his telling Phillip and I assured her that Matthew wasn�t going to tell anybody about what happened. She mentioned Rebecca and then called her. Rebecca wasn�t home, but Magdalene left a couple of messages, saying that she wanted to know about Matthew. We talked about Magdalene�s feeling that Matthew was detached enough to be violent toward her. I didn�t think it possible, but told her that other people had had the same response to him. She said that Rebecca wouldn�t have been with him if he hadn�t been capable of murder. I know that he�s detached from people, doesn�t seem to be able to empathize with others, but that�s more of a personality disorder that to me, one that doesn�t seem as though it would manifest itself in violence. �Sanity is an advantage and I�ve got it�And that gives me the power.� --Magdalene We spent a good chunk of the day together, talking about Matthew, picking apart his personality, wondering about his motivations and his response. Magdalene felt responsible, wondered if she had hurt him. I listened, having learned the hard way that there was nothing to be done about smoothing things over with Matthew until he decided that this was going to happen. But as I listened, I felt detached from the business at hand. I felt grateful that it wasn�t me agonizing over what might be going through Matthew�s head. Been there, done that. Magdalene called her best friend Ruth, told her a bit about what had happened, told her that she needed a �session with Dr. Ruth.� We met up with Ruth later, and, while deciding where to meet, I suggested Irysh Mac�s. Then I told her that maybe we shouldn�t go there because people there knew Matthew. Magdalene suggested that we go there for that reason. I agreed. I had vacillated all day between a kind of emotional detachment and wanting to do something cruel to Matthew just for spite. This seemed enough. So we met Ruth at Irysh Mac�s. John was working. Ruth was super cool, had her nine-month-old baby Ivan in tow. We ordered coffees and tea and sat on the couches and told her the story. She had some interesting insight into Matthew without ever having met him. (We showed her a picture of him�the picture I had taken earlier the previous day with the Milton crowd. She must have been expecting him to be hideous, because she said, �He�s not that bad looking.� Magdalene said, �Oh, no, he�s not bad looking. It�s just his crippling lack of self-worth that makes him ugly.) Ruth, hearing the story, suggested, without prompting, that he might have felt victimized�I knew it likely that he felt vulnerable�or that we had planned or plotted against him or were making fun of him. She was sympathetic enough to be a useful advocate on Matthew�s side, and reminded us that we were all responsible for what happened. Magdalene brought up that she was worried that he might tell Phillip and that she wasn�t ready to claim date rape. Ruth was like, �Wait, what? You can�t call it date rape. Didn�t you say that he stopped when you said no? Well then, it wasn�t date rape. There were three adults there, you all share some responsibility.� Her suggestion in the end was that we sit down with Matthew and tell him that we wanted to talk about it once and only once. And if he refused, we�d have to just let it go. Seemed sensible enough to me, especially since I knew that Matthew was not going to want to talk about it ever. Finally Magdalene had to go to work, so we left Irysh Mac�s. Ruth drove us to the library. We talked a bit more about it, and I said that Matthew might call. She said to give him her number if he did so that she could talk to him. I agreed. As the afternoon wore on, however, I knew he wasn�t going to call for whatever reason. I finally had to go and get ready for class. As we were walking out of the library, Magdalene spotted Lynch checking out a book. She walked up to him and said, �Boo.� He turned and greeted us, asking her how she was. She said, �You should have stayed to protect us.� And I kind of cringed, thinking she was going to stand there and spill the whole story about some drunken half-hearted sexual experience with Matthew, who had by then been raised to the status of potential date rapist. Lynch said, concerned, �Protect you against what?� Magdalene sensibly backed away from any kind of confession, instead pointing out that Lynch, while he had not been central to the plot, had provided some kind of thematic development in that he had not had a drink because it was a bad idea, but then the rest of the night, after Lynch left us, had been an illustration of how drinking truly was a bad idea. It was a decent save. I left them then, saying I had to change for gym. I went home and slept instead. Magdalene called at 4:50. I didn�t make it up in time to answer it, so I called back. I told her that I hadn�t gone to class, that Matthew hadn�t called and that I didn�t expect him to. We talked a bit. She said that if he did call that I should give him her number. I told her that if she wanted him to have it that I would call and give it to him. She asked if that was to my advantage. I was beyond thinking of what might be to my advantage, pointed out that I didn�t have to sit in a classroom opposite him all next semester, that I was graduating, leaving, and wasn�t thinking that I could salvage his friendship from the wreckage anyway. So I agreed to call Matthew and told her I�d call her right back. I hung up the phone and looked up his number in the phone book. Dialed. His mother answered and I asked for Matthew. A few seconds later he was on the line. The conversation was quick:
He answered with a very tired and depressed sounding, �Hello.� I said, �Hi, Matthew. It�s Sublingua. Magdalene wanted me to give you her number. Do you have a pen?� He said, �What for?� I said, �I don�t know. She just wanted me to give you her number. Do you have a pen?� He said, �No, I�m not going to call her.� I said, �Okay. I�ll talk to you later. �Bye,� and hung up. I called her back and reported the conversation. I asked her how she felt. She said, �Can you hold on a minute?� When she got back on, she said, �I feel much better. That�s Rebecca on the other line. I�ll call you back.� She called back in a bit, saying that Rebecca really wanted to talk to me about Matthew. I agreed, wondering about this ghost from his past. �Let me give you her number,� Magdalene said. �Let me get a pen,� I replied. Magdalene said, �Don�t believe anything she says.�
More lies:
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