If you’d never gotten close I wouldn’t have noticed when you were far away But you filled up my nights and then emptied my days There are girls who can be helped and there are girls who can be had But you helped me and then had me
And now fish I need help again I need help real bad . . .
But, like the fisherman said, there are plenty of fish in the sea And maybe someday some sweet salmon will come and swim away with me
When we talk it’s not merely idle chatter
We discuss things that really don’t matter
We talk of love and god and pain
To life’s never-ending song
We add yet one more refrain
And as the pace gets more and more frantic
The words get more and more pedantic
We leave no sophistry unturned
As our rhetoric becomes more intense
Using our very large vocabularies
To disguise our very common sense.
The words get longer and the plot gets thinner
Another discourse to discuss at dinner
There is no feeling we can’t analyze
Seizing each chance to intellectualize
Talking in the past and present tense
We’re making a lot more noise
And a lot less sense.
She: I love you.
He: What?
She: Nothing . . . never mind.
[Pause]
He: Is something the matter? I mean, you seem sort of uncomfortable.
She: Me? . . . No, I’m fine . . . I feel like a water lily floating on a Chinese lagoon.
He: You what?
She: I said, I feel like a . . . Oh, never mind! Everything’s fine—I’m fine.
He: You sure?
She: Yes. . . . I’m just a little wired that’s all.
He: You want anything?
She: Anything.
He looks at her for a moment then stares off into space nodding.
She laughs.
He: What?
She: Mmm?
He: You looked like you were about to say something.
She: Did I? I always look like that, I guess. It’s kind of a twitch.
He looks off into space.
Sheila and Hugh Resting in arms
Testing your charms
Repeating a ritualized “I love you”
Sharing a fight
Or a kiss in the night
Shrugging when friends ask “What’s new?”
After the wedding Her hips started spreading His hair line began to recede They remained together
Out of habit now
And not out of any great need He’ll show up from work Showing signs of strain
While her day was spent cleaning Letting the soap operas wash her brain . . .
He reads the evening paper She calls him in to eat
They share their meal silently She’s bored, he’s just beat Then they climb the stairs Multiplying the monotony With each step they take The hours spent sleeping They find more satisfying Than those spent awake
He removes his work clothes She puts on her curlers and cream Hoping the sheets will protect them From the demon of daily routine Then he clicks off the lamp And the darkness holds no noise For in the dark you can be anyone Housewives will be girls And businessmen boys
. . .
“I love you, Sheila”
I love you, Hugh”
But she’s deciding on dishes And his thoughts are all askew And the sheets supply refuge For this perpetual pair
Neither really knowing anymore Why the other one is there
I act like someone in a bomb shelter trying to raise everyone’s spirits.
He’s far from a fool, nowhere near. I’m quite near. I can feel the fool that’s so far away from him breathing down my neck.
I would like to not be able to hear myself think. I constantly hear my mind chattering and jabbering away up there all by itself. I wish it would give me a fucking break. Write, don’t think, write. You’re not thinking properly, Ms. Fisher, I suggest you write.
If anyone reads this when I have passed to the big bad beyond I shall be posthumorously embarrassed. I shall spend my entire afterlife blushing.
I’m scared. Scared that I’ll let Harrison hurt me. That I’ll change plain old leaving into abandonment again. It’s no mean feat. Hurting might be familiar but it certainly isn’t fun. It’s a bit pathetic to set yourself up to be humiliated or passed over or whatever and then at the last minute deciding it really wasn’t what you had in mind—perhaps you could show me something in rayon.
None of us have been really given the opportunity to explore the possibility that, given our own situation, we might not choose to see one another. We’re thrown together and we make the best of one another if for no other reason than convenience. Would we still seek out each other’s company in “REAL LIFE,” when we regained our temporarily suspended perspective? I don’t think we could honestly say at this point. We could very easily be deceived by the sheer convenience of one another and the seeming absence of options. At this point your main objective would be to find someone—anyone—as long as they were close, willing and this side of the grave. (It’s not difficult to live up to those qualifications.) Something handy, immediate and as human as possible. We aren’t really in the position to be choosy. The real test is being in a situation where it’s not just convenient—where there are a substantial number of alternatives to the more than likely possibility of coming down with a case of 24-hour loneliness.
Anyway as George’s wife Marcia says, we’re gold in the same place (referring to the theory that we look for people that are gold in the place where we’re shit and shit in the places where we’re gold), so instead of picking up where you leave off, we pick up and leave off in practically the same place (that place being somewhere between high school and Gilligan’s Island).
I do not want to take part in my life. It can just go on without me; I’m not giving it any help. I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to talk to it, I don’t want it anywhere near me. It takes too much energy. I refuse to be a part of it. If you have a life, even if you get used to it ruining your sleep, spoiling your fun, requiring your somewhat undivided attention, what overwhelming relief one must feel when it finally skips town.
I don’t like having to keep the spinning plates spinning on top of all their various and sun-dried poles. From now on they can fall off the poles and break for all I care. I censor myself and where the fuck does it get you? Gussying up your thoughts and putting them to paper.
A woman’s place is in the home
Seated by the telephone
Men sow their wild oats
And women are sown
Here I am again
Making the same mistake
Instead of learning my lesson
I just establish a new record to break.
What’s the riddle?
Me talking so much
And saying so little
She: One of us is boring.
He: Why do you say that?
She: Because . . . well, we’re just sitting here, not talking.
He: What’s wrong with that?
She: Well, I don’t know. Probably nothing—it’s just that we don’t need each other for it.
He: For what?
She: Being quiet.
The itsy bitsy spidered his way up my water spout
He little Jack Hornered his way into my corner
And now I can’t get him out
He ate all my porridge, sat in my chair
Slept in my bed, washed himself into my hair
Hey, all you king’s horses!
Whether you’re horse’s asses or men,
Could you pretty please piece my heart
Back together again?
Love has made me what I am today
But as to what that is I really couldn’t say
One thing’s for certain
I am quite alone
Cause there are none so quiet
As those who will not phone
And there is no one as far past caring
As he who just don’t care
I’ve washed that man right into my hair
He’s sat in my chair and slept in my bed
He’s eaten all my porridge and climbed inside my head
Maybe no man is an island
But some might as well be
The type whose bats
Always seem to get in your belfry