Escape Artist

Now's The Time

For several weeks I’ve posted newly sliced and diced excerpts from “Diary of a Heretic,” (the novel) while rewriting three serial stories that first took shape here during the past year. Some posts needed so much rewriting it embarrasses me to think so many mistakes appeared here. But that’s built into this blog: the risk of writing in real time. So: Time to dive back in. Weekdays, watch for either a nice little stunt or a belly-flop. Weekends I’ll continue to put up tapered excerpts from Malcolm’s diary.

Escape Artist

When am I gonna learn? As soon as Emma and I buckled our seat belts for the flight to San Jose, the pattern cut me up like a jigsaw puzzle. My friends had warned me. “Bad habit, Scott.”

But I shrugged ’em off. What I was doing wasn’t a coincidence exactly. But falling insanely in love with some babe, especially—or no, always—when I had to compete for her, felt genuine.

So here’s the thing: Whoever it is already has a boyfriend—and then these last few years, sometimes a husband. I connect with her as if no one’s experienced truly cosmic love but me and her. When I want a woman, I give it all I’ve got. 

Just act sick over her. Flowers, notes, and a lot of all-out begging. “Please, baby, please.” And then, apologies for coming on so strong. But no real promises to back off, because it’s so out of control. You’re sorry. You know you’re interfering. But honest to God, you can’t live without her.

When I get like that, it feels like forever. We share a love that transcends anything ever known. Like if other people had experienced the love we shared, the world would look a hell of a lot different. Two people creating their own universe.

But once the woman’s abandoned her whole life to be with me, I lose it. She’s totally under my spell and then fast or slow, sooner or later, I want out of it. Out of it, into thin air.

Makes me mean if you look at that way. But I believe the story every time. So why am I choking on my own poison now, when I’ve done this blind since high school?

Maybe turning thirty-four woke me up to my stupid little game. Sitting in the aisle seat next to Emma, who still steals my thoughts and owns my every sensation, and realizing I’m almost half-way to seventy and she’s just out of college. Maybe that’s it. Emma still looks like a girl, all long limbs and perfect, fair, lit-from-within pixie-face… Talk about wide-eyed, talk about words from the mouth of a babe! Right now, I can listen to her talk nonstop. Chances are, though, a few months secluded with her on the Osa Peninsula, jungle and ocean side by side, and even the sound of her breathing will rub me the wrong way.

This time, possibly more than the other times, I really don’t know who she is. Ten to one, she doesn’t know who she is, either. Not yet.

I know what she likes in bed. She likes how I look, walk, and talk. And she’s gonna love Costa Rica. I love the way she sings and dances. And, specifics from my past downfalls, I checked—and love—her toe nails, her nostrils, how she brushes her teeth. All that tiny shit, which in the past, drives me out of my mind so bad that my fixation breaks apart. Bites the dust. That little shit, that’s what makes “forever” impossible.

So there’s a difference. I love Emma’s insignificant little traits. I love her hygiene routine. So who knows? Maybe I’m not so bad. Maybe this time, I’ll stick with her.

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