Gamophobia

A story as old as time, but not the story I ended up with.

It started off classic enough. 1969. New York City. Upstairs-downstairs neighbors running into each other, flirting, casual sex, calling the cops on each other. The usual.

He was a musician, full of groove and sperm, a smooooth talker. Lips wet, long curly bedhead hair and eyes that had seen the birth of worlds. And when he turned those eyes on her, he saw the flawless composition of her being, her body a symphony, her words polyrhythmic, her heart a steady metronome.

She was a magazine editor, all business on the outside and on the inside too. But inside her inside was a very tender spot that yearned to be trifled with. And she thrilled with the difference he brought to her otherwise tidy day planner. 

One day, he invited her to check out Yoko Ono´s show in a gallery where the artist had simply placed an A-frame ladder in the middle of the room. Coming closer, they noticed a magnifying glass hanging from the ceiling above the ladder and a tiny word etched into the ceiling. He climbed the rungs first and when he came back down to Earth, his face was reverent with revelation. He looked her in the eyes and whispered “yes”. Her tender spot was still reverberating with yes when they found out she was pregnant.

Musicians are the best lovers and the worst partners. They operate in absolute relativity to the times they ride. He was in the moment, playing all kinds of percussion and vibing with a motion-sensitive electric rod called a Theremin. As a drummer, he was in demand and played with a few bands, the most well-known being The Last Ten Words, playing to sold-out underground gigs at Max’s Kansas City and other clubs.

Editors are angry lovers and even more short-tempered as partners. She was hard-working and meticulous. A youth editor for Harper’s Bazaar making cutting-edge layouts that weaved provocative pieces from punk poetry, Mapplethorpe exhibitionist peepshows and naughty illustrations of flowers rutting. All the hip magazines copied and vied for her fearless eye.

When they met, all that raw talent purred into place. He and she would fuck and fight and not always in that order.

Sometimes he would fuck her friends and sometimes she would lock him out and break his instruments, but when the child came, they settled into a gentler pattern. The wild ride was reduced to calculated forays. They became risk professionals in the same vein as skateboarders, surfers, ambulance drivers, skydivers- who all know the ride can get too wild, too fast, too hard, but also know themselves and their tools well enough to hedge their bets.

He thought to fuck and frolic with some consideration to witnesses- later at night, deeper in the dark corners of the nightclubs he gigged. 

She got canny to criticizing him at the right moments when he was too tired or too excited to care, but alert enough to soak it in and nod. He gave her cheap maracas to break for when the rage rose.

One night, she came to see him play, his hands making wind around the sensitive theremin that wailed like a wraith to his teasing conjurations. They locked eyes then. The baby and the cat and their orgasms and their weeping and all these yearning moans climaxing in the strobe light. Their relationship cruxed. With their kid still in a clueless state at the age of three, they agreed the moment had come to decide whether to call it quits or merge lives. 

They took some time off, left the kid with grandma, and spent a week meditating face to face, eye-gazing, and breathing in sync. Only taking breaks to make the necessary gestures for physical survival. 

They both admired the performance art couple Abramovic and Ulay, and in mimesis, they had presaged the arc of that relationship which had culminated with them sitting in silence across from each other. 

So he and she sat, wordless densities swirling around them - a couple on the edge of changing history and herstory.

When their child was brought back to them on that stormy winter morning, their life paths were forking like the mute lightning in the distance. Anything was possible. Winds were buffeting in all directions. Zagging tines poked and prodded at very different destinies. And with the infinity of choices collapsing between them, she and he made their decision and held it gently into their hands. And with that, something viscous and toxic was transmuted into something clear and pure, sunlight at the source.

Grandma found them with their foreheads pressed together. They had committed their inner vision to each other. She was given the sight of living sound made matter from the void. He was given the sight of seeing the structures of chaos, the forms that could reshape lonely hearts.

And best of all, I was given the parents who figured out what to do with this pledge of flesh and soul they molded into me.

But as I mentioned before, that was not the story I ended up with. 

Maybe in another life, my parents would find me as interesting as themselves. But that might make for a boring story. And boring stories are seldom old as time. Stories without struggle are seldom retold, at least not the part beyond happily ever after. 

To be interesting or to be forgotten, that is the question. 

To be confusing has become my answer.

In this life, my gamophobia is full-blown. My fear of commitment has made me last four months with someone if we lived in the same town, maybe even two years if apart, but either way I would run before having to share my forehead with anyone. My inner vision stays within, tunneling fractal systems of roots, contained mayhem. When I visit my mother, we are two tight balls of humming potential, we knock against each other, knocking on our vacuum-sealed hearts.

Maybe someday light will burst from my eyes and illuminate the face of my beloved but for now, in the words of my father:

“The light shines forth from my eyes and illuminates the universe. And if I close my eyes, the world goes under.”