I suppose I could provide a convincing rant about truth being stranger than fiction, or maybe some emotional outburst wrapped in a clever choice of words that was no more than a refined version of the gradeschool exclamation "it's true! It's true!"
To be brutally honest, The original post that began the whole thread was nothing more than a funny confirmation of information I had read in postings about motorcycles, and women. I found it shockingly amusing that the outward signs of the phenomenon were being supported to the letter, and I thought it an interesting subject for discussion in the forum.
My life with J has been... extraordinary, as far as I'm concerned, both good, and bad, and despite the unrelated first post, I found pieces of that life appearing in the following posts. They had an almost cathartic effect I found with each tiny bit that I offered, As I have even in posts other than this thread...
Writing is a tool I use to "get my head on straight". When I see something I don't understand, I write it down, and it becomes easier to digest. Like a Venn Diagram... or my life.
But I've never possessed the talent or insight to create something convincing, from nothing... and writing, for me, has never been anything other than "This is what I think I saw..."; Whether it be a description of a squirrel eating a piece of fruit pulled from a tree in my backyard, seeing a LifeFlight helicopter landing on the freeway to save a critically injured motorist... or my wife sitting in the car next to me, on the way north, trying to remember the words to a song she sang as a child.
I have no aspirations to be a writer, and in truth, I delete most of the things I write, with the exception of the journals I keep. They are precious to me in that I want J to have them after I'm gone.
Day 4, Mid morning
"Are you joking?", she turned to look at me sidelong from the passenger seat, both her hands were working behind her head on the hairclip she had pulled from her purse.
We had spent the last 10 minutes discussing the musically aesthetic quality of national anthems, and were at a sudden impasse.
"I think it's very noble, and very... I don't know, catchy", I unconsciously craned my head to peer as far as I could around the next bend in the road.
"It sounds like a war march and probably was too! German music is always so hard edged and mechanical, I like the Canadian anthem, it sounds more like a song."
"It's a good hockey opening anyway..."
I felt a sudden, and yet soft impact to the side of my face. Looking down in my lap, I saw the "stretchy" fabric hair loop ammunition that J had also pulled from her purse.
"Rude...", she muttered with an irritated, but amused tone as she reached to retrieve her salvo.
I grabbed it up just as she was getting a grip on it and held it out of her reach in a juvenile, yet sophisticated manner.
At that moment, another sharp bend came up in the road and with one hand on the wheel, I suddenly realized that turning as far as I could one-handed, was causing me to drift across the centerline.
J dropped back in her seat the moment she saw the look of panic on my face, saying my name over and over again quietly like an anxious mantra.
Negotiating the corner finally and easing back into a steady driving rhythm, I finally exhaled and tossed the culprit back over to her.
"That would have been death by stretchy item", I tried to sound completely calm
"Be careful please"
"Ya think?"
It was quiet for the next 20 minutes, with the exception of the CD player which J had previously had spinning an old KKSF sampler, but was now playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons, which she loved.
She was sitting silently and listening, turning the object of our near destruction over and over in her fingers. I wondered to myself how like a drive to some destination relationships actually were... Some people laugh and sing the whole way, some sit in torturous quiet, Some ride along in perfect contentment, with only a few "scares" along the way...
... some die instantly in a head-on collision that no one saw coming.
"I wish the USSR was still the USSR...", her words snapped me back into the 'now'.
"Remember the old Soviet Union anthem?", she began to hum the bars in perfect pitch and with surprising enthusiasm... She had a beautful singing voice and was accomplished on the piano as well. I reminded her laughingly on ocassion of the time that She sang and played the piano at one party, and, as a joke, I told her Father in that "male bonding tone", that she was well versed in the "feminine arts" to which he nodded in total agreement as if he seriously approved of my observation.
When she got to the refrain, which was truly poignant, she began to actually sing the words, in Russian.
I sat up a bit straighter in mild surprise as she continued and eventually returned to humming the bars after the refrain, apparently only knowing that one verse.
I had already had some humorous quip to offer at her suggestion of the anthem being the most beautiful and heartfelt, but after hearing it in her voice, the desire to be funny, faded.
I just smiled at her as she looked straight ahead, lost in her own thoughts, and I agreed silently. It was more beautiful than the other anthems.
Both of us knew the drive to Mendocino well, but J had an almost savant like skill at remembering directions and landmarks. I would always stifle my outbursts of astonishment when she would make comments concerning, "that bent 25mph sign around the next corner" or "There was a tree here somewhere that had a broken branch... Oh there it is!" even years back in time and hundreds of miles from home.
This time she remembered the small steel bridge with the red X spray painted on it to the left. It spanned the stony bed of the small river that wound its way below where the road cut its way thru the curving hillsides.
It came into view around the next turn, right on cue, and just as "The Four Seasons" was opening with the Spring Movement. I turned up the volume slightly with the wheel mounted control.
"Look! its the famous 'Springtime' bridge", I announced as the music crescendoed in the background like a perfect music soundtrack.
J laughed and was also tickled by the seemingly perfect timing of the music. Her laughter being so much more of an event than Erianna's, who almost made it a point of it being part of her everyday vocabularly. Eri had a wonderful laugh, but J's was more beautiful, because it was rare.
"die Brücke", she offered suddenly
"Sehr Gut!... 'Le Pont' ", I replied proudly
"Magnifique!"
But then, suddenly, something happened... almost in the echo of her mirth, she grew strangely still.
.
.
.
"I'm sorry"
"What's wrong, J?"
She undid her seatbelt quickly and suddenly wrapped my arm tightly with both of hers, leaning as close to me as she could from her side of the car.
"When I hit you... I'm so sorry...", she had her head buried in my shoulder, her words escaping just barely over the ambient sounds of the car.
"It's ok... I know how upset you were... Where did it come from? We've fought about that exact same thing before, and it was never that bad"
"I don't know... Maybe it was just a timing thing too... It always felt like...", she paused for a moment to gather her thoughts, she seemed detached and almost unreasonably calm.
"It felt like the other times it was just enough to shout, or swear, and that was enough to keep the rest of it from coming out."
She eased back into her seat, still holding my right hand with her left...
"Put your belt back on , ok?", I offered, still remembering the moment we had just recently... She reached over without releasing my hand and the *snap* of the clasp sounded almost like a signal of some kind.
"So it feels like there is alot you're still holding back?", I wasn't certain, and felt a rising fear, at what kind of response she would give...
"I think I'm like my Mother..."
"Your 'Mom' ", I chided
"My 'Mother' ", she said with the determination of a constant casual conflict we had over the virtues of calling one's parents "Mother and Father" as opposed to "Mom and Dad"
"She let your Dad get away with alot", I tried to present the well known family fact with as easy and respectful a tone as I could, but in any language, "womanizer' was not a complimentary term.
"Yes... Do I let you get away with alot too?", I suddenly felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and a strange tingling sensation in my chest.
"I don't mean to hurt you or shame you J... Nora didn't tell me alot, but it was enough to see certain things that I didn't know before, or maybe didn't want to see", It was an odd sensation I felt inside, not knowing at that moment if I was saying what she wanted to hear, as a form of my self-defense, or if I was really telling the truth I felt inside.
I was dwelling on that fact as she continued.
"I know, I know you haven't been with any other women... Gina was hard though, that took a while, but I really like her, and I don't think she would actually know HOW to have an affair"
In the split second pause, we both suddenly filled the car with a burst of laughter. It was all I could do to steer straight and maintain my speed. I noted a minivan behind us who probably surmised by my driving that we were both drunk.
"stop that! she's a great girl!"
"Girl is right...", she concluded
"We're ok, right J? I mean, sure you beat me into submission and all, and hurl objects from time to time, but we're doing alright..."
She smiled sheepishly and nodded a silent yes.
"I know how things look, but I've always liked socializing with women. Maybe its some weird ego boost, or maybe a neurosis, or maybe even just dumb-luck, I could never tell, maybe their conversations are just more interesting to me."
J, was listening intently, her eyes ocassionally looking down before returning to meet mine.
"Nora said something that made me think...", I said in sudden recollection.
"What was that?", Did I suddenly hear J's voice break a bit with emotion?
"She said I 'push things right to the limit' about the way I can be with other women sometimes..."
"Yes, you do that... In the beginning it got very bad, but Nora says more nice things about you then you know... She told me that she didn't think you would cheat on me."
I made a mental note to "smirk" at Nora the next time I saw her in the office...
"I never have J, and I know you haven't either..."
I meant it as a closing, as a reassurance so that we could move on to a nicer subject... But instead I felt my hand suddenly being squeezed harder...
I made certain to clear the next turn before I looked straight at J... Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but she never looked away from me....
Sunlight was rippling through the crestline of the lowering hills as the sun drew higher into the sky. The alternating light and dark punctuated the feeling that my life was roaring past me at break neck speed... A small dirt turnout came up at the side of the road and I dove the car toward it and stopped. The small minivan passed a few seconds after that and I wondered what other parts of my life it carried away as it disappeared around the next bend...
J, was crying openly now... and as hard as I repeatedly tried to pull my hand away from her, she wouldn't let go...
"I'm sorry..."