Lent. I’m meant to be in self-denial, abstaining from my habits in observance of grief. I’ll have to call her back, tell her I’m not coming. I don’t want to, though my reasons are no longer about sex. I already made the date, and I’m minutes away now. Damned regret. Always happens in the minutes following the decision, when there’s time enough to think. It shouldn’t be like that. Instead, it should be like magic, like a burst across a threshold into a bathed red-lid room. You’re in, and there’s nothing left to think about until it’s over, after which the thinking is all downhill. I’m going to hell. Anyway, this isn’t like that yet. This is still ripe with anticipation and surging dread. The picture’s still in my head of my would-be date laying enticingly on a bed against the base of a camera phone, peering into it, upside down, assuming a position below the viewer’s gaze, summoning from her void with her gravitational pull. The picture from the site reveals where she lives, where she stays for hours upon hours, waiting for a hungry text, an appeal. Is she available? Of course she is. Give her a minute, she says. Give her ten. Then come right over. That’s how long it takes her to splash on some make-up, deodorize a crevice or two, and then appear within a shadowy entrance behind a frayed screen door. Does she have a cancellation policy? Does her business model attend to regret, besides squeezing the time between contact and consummation, ever narrowing the gap, making it an exact science. Get ‘em in, get ‘em out, before they change their minds. That will have been the training. The real pros, the elders of the schema will have taught how to deal with buyer’s indecision and remorse.
So, it’s an obligation now, not just a pleasure activity. Actually, it’s not much of a pleasure, now that I think of it. When and if I think of it. I feel nothing as I approach rendezvous: no excitement, not even fear. Just a dull buzz creeping in my ears as I pull into a space and reconnaissance the scene from a nearby parking lot. White noise in my head, I look out: just a strip-mall with a liquor store, a smoke and donut shop, plus a condo spread, practically attached: a blur of commerce and cheap living where the ring cameras outnumber the people and the whiff of cheap weed permeates the neighborhood. The abodes are across an iron fence divide, on a second floor overlooking an unkempt garden quad. Dry vegetation covers a dirt patch that no one has serviced while an adolescent palm tree sprouts hopefully through its center. Debris is pooled in a cemented corner, slipping down the cracks of broken stone that protrudes because an eruption of some kind once occurred and then just…stopped. A woman passes my car, shoots a glance at me, then again as she moves past a tattoo parlor, heading towards the housing units. There’s a hint of a smile on a taut face, possibly a come on, or a knowing smirk. Is she my date? I wonder as she enters a gate to the complex. Or is it a disapproving neighbor? She turns disinterestedly and makes no further eye contact, which puts paid to the first idea. If she was waiting for someone, she’d have looked a third time, I figure. Instead, I look up to see whether a curtain will stir from a window, revealing a pair of eyes spying on the lot, waiting on a visitor. I want recognition, then a sign, a further invitation, like a crooked finger gesture, plus a shifty look elsewhere to indicate risk and thrill.
Two gallant duties come to mind: firstly, to complete this act, perform due diligence. It’s only fair, after all. This is how one faction of the other half lives, how it makes its living, and who am I to tease with opportunity only to then back out due to moral neurosis. But the other voice is strong also, knowing that thought number one is merely guilt displaced from its proper source. It’s saying it’s that time of year, to sacrifice pleasure and observe pain, and then feel its grim satisfaction. There’s justice to be served here of an ancient kind, plus an old penance to be paid. The church is only blocks away. Still time to turn on the ignition, back out of this space, and have no one mortal be any wiser except yourself. That curtain will stir and those waiting eyes will watch you back away, and tsk in stolid disgust, but you have blessed comfort and sanguine wishes awaiting. The incensed ambience, seminarian dignity, and fraternal order is welcoming, and promissory of sanctum. The glances there will be modest and kind, not cynical, opportunistic, and there will be no crud gathered in the corners of a doorway, and no acrid taste in my mouth. So, I’ve made a decision. The desire for this other thing is gone now, for now. I feel its leaving, like it might as well have absented itself days ago. There are weeks left in Lent, and maybe I’ll face this battle again before the season’s over and the feast begins anew. I get out my phone and text, “sorry, can’t make it”, with no explanation, knowing it wouldn’t matter. Minutes later I’m at the church, feeling like I deserve to be there, and there’s no pause between my turning off the car’s engine and opening the door. As I exit, I feel the buzz of my phone and glance down to see the terse reply of my disappointed date. “You’re an idiot”, she writes.
Graeme Daniels Psychewriter 