Friday, February 03, 2023

Love Has No Pride

“Behind every beautiful thing, there's been some kind of pain.” ~Bob Dylan

Love hurts, doubly so when you are the one causing the pain.

Years ago, I got a phone call from someone I used to work with, a lover I had recently dumped. She was not her usual non-committed self—her personal style was akin to the Eve Kendall character in the film North By Northwest—this call was full of emotion.

It has often been said that one should never work with your lover. If things goes bad, one or both of you may have to get another job. I had already gotten another job, so that wasn’t the cause of this break-up. And it wasn’t a sexual issue, lord knows problem we had was weiner-burn. It was just her mein: neutral, non-committal, reserved. I went with her for six months and didn’t know a thing about her background, her non-work friends, her aspirations, her medical history, her family. I tried to introduce her to my friends (I’ll admit that it was at a pretty raucous party), she was appalled by them. We did go to a movie once. No reaction on her part. I had been in another dysfunctional relationship previously, I was beginning to think something was wrong with me, if that was so she was better without me.

That’s why I found the phone call so strange. She said she wanted to see me. She wanted to touch me, to be touched. To not be alone. She was crying at the end. It was the one time she actually showed her true self, but it was too late. I got over her, I’m sure she got over me. Then she vanished—left her job, someone we used to work with said that she had moved to Superior, Wisconsin.

Now, a half-century later, there is no trace of her on the internet, not even her last name comes up on searches. What I did find, however, was a song that accurately expressed her feelings that day:

By Professor Batty


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