Chapter Ten - Madison (Revisited) & Vitamin K
The next few days, I found myself worrying a bit about whatever craziness the bracelet had planned for me, but time and time again, its voice would drift across the back of my skull, saying one thing and one thing only.
Don't worry about it.
Around Wednesday, it decided to actually talk to me a little bit about what was going on. It was remarkably straight forward, most of the time, and maybe I needed that kind of honesty in my life at that point. It was just a sentence or two here and there, reaffirming to me that it wanted to help me, not hurt me.
I was driving home Friday night when the bracelet and I had our first real conversation since the concert, the long haul of fighting my way through rush hour traffic not exactly taxing my brain, people looking over to admire the Bugatti that Larry had given me a couple of months ago. I still didn't feel entirely comfortable driving the thing around town.
So what is it you want out of a partner, Deke?
"Aren't you supposed to
know
that?"
Let's just talk it out. The more you work with me on this, the easier it'll go.
I didn't have much else to do while stuck in bumper to bumper gridlock, so I figured why not? "Well, I want someone who's attentive to my needs without being overly clingy. Someone who's actually interested in me and what I have to say, instead of simply waiting for their turn to speak."
That's... remarkably insightful of you.
"What do I even call you? I feel like if we're going to have conversations, I need to give you some kind of a name."
Call me Harvey. I'm not a rabbit, but I'm sort of your imaginary friend, so it'll do.
I chuckled at that. "Alright, Harvey it is then. So, Harvey, in a lot of my past relationships, I've tried to be a good and supportive boyfriend, but I've always felt like I gave
way
more than I got, like I seemed to attract women who only wanted me around to listen to their problems, to help them out of whatever jam they're in. They didn't really give much of a shit about me, other than how could I help solve their problems for them."
Have you tried talking to them about this?
"C'mon, Harvey, I'm not an idiot," I sighed. "When something's bothering me, I'll talk about it for a few minutes, but given the first pause or lull in the conversation, my partners always seem to want to divert back onto themselves, like they've hit their quota for listening and now it's time to talk about them again. Even if I try to circle back to what's bothering me a few minutes later, it's almost like whatever I wanted to talk about is a closed subject now, and my partners don't want to hear any more about it. They have to get on with the important business of talking about themselves
even more
, usually to retell the same story they've told me four or five times again, or to complain about their problems haven't mystically fixed themselves."
This happens a lot?
"It's sort of my M.O. for what I get stuck with in relationships. I mean, I get it, dudes aren't supposed to be open books. We're assumed to be these closed vaults where we bury all our emotions, but that ain't me. I'm more than willing to talk through what's bugging me, but it takes two people to hold a conversation."
Didn't you also say you have a problem with infidelity in your partners?
I laughed bitterly. "Well, my last real relationship ended because she was cheating on me with
at least
four different guys, probably more. Two of which were coworkers. One of whom I'd thought was at least a little bit my friend. That's enough to feel justified in ending it, right?"
I'd say so, but that's just me, and I'm just jewelry.
"You asked me to trust you, so that's what I'm doing, Harvey, so if I'm doing something wrong, you gotta help me out."
I'm gonna help you out, Deke, I promise. I'm still just working through the best way to
do
that, you know? I'm magic, not a miracle worker. And figuring out how to get you the perfect match is a learning process, one that I get a little bit better at each time I try.
"So, wait, you don't
know
who my perfect match is going to be before you try?"
Do I look like Karnak the Magnificent? I'm making educated guesses and refining what I know about you each time I do. But I'll know when I get it right, don't you worry about that. I have a 100% success rate, and let's see you name anything else with that level of guarantee.
"Everyone you've ever paired up lasted forever?"
Well, within reason.
"That sounds suspiciously like an evasion."
Of my 200+ matches, a few of them have had the unfortunate luck for their partner to die not long after the match was made. I'm not all powerful and I can't control those kinds of things. It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.
"You know who says that?" I said to it. "People who've never lost anything. The pain of loss is brutal, agonizing. And losing the love of your life can turn you into a wreck."
You mean like your father.
I tensed up reflexively, grinding my teeth together firmly. "What the fuck do you know about that?"
Not much,
Harvey admitted,
but I know that whenever you think about your father, there's this weird mix of rage and depression that crosses your brain. You want to tell me about it?
"There's not a ton to tell, Harvey," I said, my fingers relaxing a little from the death grip I'd had on the steering wheel just a moment ago. "My mom died when I was two. Cancer. Came at her quick, so there wasn't even time for Dad to build hope that she was going to get better. She was in the hospital and three weeks later she was gone. Dad never remarried and had to raise me and my sister on his own, but the house was like a goddamn
shrine
to my mother, so that probably didn't help Dad move on either. When I went off to college, I was worried about leaving him alone, since my older sister had left for college across the country a few years earlier. Jillian, my sister, said he'd be fine."
You're tensing up again, Derrick.
"Yeah, well, Jill was wrong, and I never saw Dad alive again. Neither of us did. She was in her junior year at Cal Poly and I was in my first semester of freshman year at Seattle University when we both got a call from La Jolla PD telling us our dad had committed suicide."
Oh
shit
, Deke, I'm so fucking sorry.
"Me too, but life fucking sucks, so sometimes you have to learn what it's like to get pissed on by life all the time. Dad left a note saying he'd wanted to make sure me and Jill were up and running as adults, and that he'd originally wanted to wait until we were both out of college, but that the grief of constantly missing mom was too much for him, and that he just had to go now. He'd done it to make sure that the neighbors found him, so that me and Jill wouldn't have to see his body. And his note said again and again how sorry he was, but that he just couldn't take it any more. So yeah, that's why I say the pain of loss can be all consuming, because it can."
Just because it happened to your father doesn't mean it'll happen to you, Deke. Is that what all the walls are about? Are you trying to compartmentalize your heart, thinking that if you keep it walled off, you're never going to get hurt?
"I think you know me better than that, Harvey," I chuckled bitterly. "I'm just being cautious with my heart, because while I don't want to go through the loss that Dad did, I also don't want to go through what Jill did either."
What happened with your sister? Every time you've talked to her on the phone, she seems incredibly upbeat and happy.
"Well, sure.
Now
