Get It Over With and Sign....August 26, 1999

Get It Over With and Sign....August 26, 1999

Note: This evening's entry is being written by Maude, the ghost that inhabits Highlands' house. The reasons will be made abundantly clear. It has been a while since I have written anything, so, please be patient and understanding...

Prologue

Approximately 48 hours ago...

It had been a long day for Highlands. While not particularly fruitfull work-wise, nor terribly productive otherwise, it was terribly hot, sticky, and humid. It was the kind of day where the heat seemed to make time creep instead of crawl, where every breath seemed a labor of life, and where not even a shower on the hour would relieve one of that perpetual sweaty, grimy feeling.

Thus, at day's end, Highlands had a spent sombreness about him. The heat had him beat, so to speak. With a wipe of his damp brow, and a heavy sigh, he resigned himself to fulfilling the one task remaining before the bell tolled midnight, before he could rest his heat-weary carcass. He had to call his betrothed, who, since their engagement last fall, was counting down the milliseconds remaining before their ceremony of committment. She was also apt, at that particular moment, to be sitting on a chair in her candle lit room, tapping her foot impetuously, cigarette after cigarette to moist lips, wine in hand, a glazed stare of annoyance on her mug fueled by some man hating femme screaming angst on CD, wondering why he is taking his sweet time calling, and rehearsing excessively the chewing out he so righteously deserved.

While normally an occasion he looked forward to, tonight he felt like he was more doing his groomly duty than anything else. He loved her, mind you, he loved her madly. It was just still too hot to even think straight, and all he really longed for was to stretch out on his waterbed and let the fan breeze him to a comfortable slumber.

Her evenings and weekends free of corporate goudging, he finally dialed her, let the phone ring once, then hung up. It was their secret signal, akin to the secret handshake. Their love, indeed, a club with only two lifetime members, and no new memberships will be welcomed at any time thank you very much.

He counted, five.....four....three... two.. one.

Then the phone rang. Because he was feeling slightly antagonistic, he let it ring twice, but hurried to pick up the receiver before the third ring. He knew his limits, despite the hazy confusion of high humidity.

Her evening's pent up hostility was displaced with the mere sound of his voice. As they said their hellos, the battle raged on with their spirits instead. She convinced herself he is ignorant of the initial warm facade. He inwardly praised her for learning to choose her battles wisely.

After a short while, though, her heels are cooled genuinely, and she is herself, the woman he fell in love with. Their conversation, as always lengthy, was rather one-sided. He listened to the latest wedding plan updates (adding his news of a rather hurtful declining R.S.V.P.), her comedic excapades at a two day work seminar, how she was looking forward to finally returning to work after a back injury she refused to let heal, and how she had a song she wasnted him to listen to that could perhaps wait until tomorrow. With a "yes" here, and "oh my" there, he invisioned his fan with the relief that came with their mutual "I love you" that signalled the end of their conversations. But alas, she asked yet one more question,

"Is there anything wrong?"

Not wanting to delve into what he felt was the obvious, wedding woes, finances, wedding finance woes, heat, humidity, and exhaustion, he said

"No, nothing. I am fine."

Which was not too far from the truth, be it known.

Nevertheless, brevity, especially of the discrepant kind, is rarely satisfactory to this particualr member of the female gender. It plainly serves to validate what she knows she knows. And if Highlands innocently does not know what she knows she knows, rest assured, she'll tell him.

"Are you sure?", she queried.

"Yes," he valiantly countered, while the vision of his high speed fan became ever more clouded.

"Well, you seem rather quiet, are you SURE you are alright?", she prodded.

"Yes, I am fine, but I dare say I may not be if...," he asserted, refusing to let go of the conjured fan.

A faked "okay" and genuine "kisses" later, he hung up the phone and was off to float upon his bed while the fan and Enya lifted up and carried his spirit off to a place of quiet serenity.

Roughly seven hours later...

Highlands awoke with the usual compliment of "We have to pee" slurps from the hounds. While doing their business, he checked his phone messages. There was one, the only one, from the phone company, eluding to the horrors of disconnection should he not give them something by that afternoon. Cursing capitalism, cursing himself for getting into the financial nightmare of self-employment, he called his Goddess at work, despite being half asleep still, and before the coffee has finished running through..

"Hi, sweetie, how are you this morning?", he mumbled.

"Oh I am fine," she contended while sounding tired.

Since she was at work, he staved off the expected snuggle bunnies and immediately proceeded to explain the phone bill situation, and asked if she could possibly give him the money back he sent to her a week and a half ago.

"It will be a stretch," she admitted, but stated she should be able to. He told her he will phone her back with the account number she never seemed to keep.

And then, it started again.

"Are you SURE you are okay?", she inquired rather more insistently this time.

"I won't be if you keep asking me that," he stated with annoyance.

"Well, it is just that you know denial used to be a pattern for you, and you sound as though something is wrong. I know we have been dealing with a very heavy duty issue the last couple days, and also that you were hurt by the person who is not attending the wedding," she asserts.

"I-am-fine," he insisted with annoyance. He cursed her to himself for her belief that she is always right, and for her refusal to actually take it in and process it when he says he is okay.

The conversation ended on a sour note, and the bitterness permeated his semi-comatose senses to the point where he was wide awake from abject annoyance. What a way to wake up, he thought to himself, with the phone company and his partner both demanding from him what he does not have.

In the course of the day, Highlands' sister was able to lend him the funds for the phone company. He was not terribly keen to take his Goddess' last cent, after all. After running that errand, and others, it became too late for him to call his bride back at work. She would have already left.

After a quick, but much needed nap as a result of his miserable morning, Highlands ventured out in the early evening to take a client to the movies. Returning after ten, he resigned himself to posting an entry to his online journal before the inhumane climate drained his creativity fully, and yet again forced him to succumb to bed.

Between reading and responding to email, and writing his entry, a couple of hours raced by. On a couple occassions in the interim, he disconnected from the 'net to signal his lover that he was ready for her call. He received no response. Before putting an end to the day, he called her once more and let the phone ring, ignoring the added cost he would incur once she answered. She did not answer, however. With a thought of 'how odd', he hung up the phone before the machine kicked in. Minutes later, he went to bed.

Present Day

Highlands rises from a deep slumber with the blaring, static laden tones of a local radio jock reciting mundane happenings in the city from the night before. After allowing the hounds to perform their duties, making a pot of coffee, and insuring the canines and felines had adequate sustenance for the day, he ran a bath. Drying off, and getting dressed moments later, he begins straightening up the house in anticipation of the client he looks after over night every Thursday. He begins by cleaning up the obstacle course of trash left by Moo's midnight ramblings (reminding himself, yet again, of the benefits of a covered garbage), moving on to vacuuming, then the dishes. He then settles into the couch and waits for the client's arrival, which turns out to be minutes later. While the lad watches television, Highlands catches a quick nap, awaking in time to send his temporary roommate to the store for something for lunch.

The afternoon passes with Highlands and client, together with the hounds, joining Quincy and Co. at the park. He does his best balancing act between enduring the heat and ensuring his client is entertained. As the sun slowly traverses the sky, Highlands is oblivious to the torrent brewing a thousand kilometers away. Nevertheless, the storm hits just after dinner.

The phone rings, and caller id determines it is his betrothed.

Picking up the receiver, the thunder roars in his ears, and the lightening sears his grey matter. He endures more than a few minutes of,

"Blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah BLAH blah blah...blah BLAH blah blah blah blah...".

For those who are femme-ese illiterate, the translation is along the lines of,

"You have had me worried sick 'cause I KNOW there is something wrong with you because you have been so quiet earlier this week since I have tried getting hold of you for DAYS now and you never return my calls and all I get is the answering machine and I have had to sit here worried to DEATH that something is happening and it has brought me to TEARS on more than one occasion and it is not fair to put me in this position since I am so far away and there is nothing I can do and it is making it hard to work and giving me a headache....".

Highlands extends the receiver, stares at it with a dumbfounded expression, and hears yet a few more minutes of a now muffled,

"Blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah BLAH blah blah...blah BLAH blah blah blah blah...".

He feels the final layers of his sanity being stripped away and devoured. They are his sustenance layers, the real meaty ones, all the outer protective layers having been eaten over conversations involving dress sizes, how she just will not be a beautiful bride, bankrupt hotels, accommodationless guests, her insistance that we spend the morning after the ceremony with her familial guests only (and deciding that it may be an idea to spend some time with his familial guests, if still in town, later that day, only after he suggested it), and, let him not forget, his blatant lack of financial prioritizing in seeing the need to pay for tux rentals before paying off some of the debt he owes to her mother.

Finally, there is silence. He carefully returns the receiver to his ear, and starts talking before another tirade ensues.

"First of all, I have told you several times now that there is nothing worng with me. But there is now. Secondly, I spoke to you on the phone just YESTERDAY morning. Furthermore, I tried calling you last night and there was no answer!"

Still donning her all-that-hat, she seethes,

"Can you go upstairs so that we can have this conversation privately?"

Looking at his client, who was coming off his ritalin, and scoping out the pets, he sees an out, a way to avoid muttering one of the thousands of things he so desperately wanted to say that would only serve to make the situation worse still, and answers,

"No, I can't."

"Oh, well then..."

"Call me back at ten tonight.", he offers.

"My time or your's?", she demands.

"Mine", he replies coldly.

"Fine"

Click

Sitting there, listening to dialtone, frozen in his place from crazy hostility, Highlands hears from beside him,

"Are you FINALLY ready to go outside and play catch now!?"

Inside his loosening mind, his scream is something primordial.

His nostalgia for composure forced him to put on his shoes and head to the back yard as opposed to figuratively ripping his client's head off. With every toss of the football, he imagined in was his Goddess' head, crown intact, being chucked back and forth. For this reason, he went so far as to fake a funble or two. After a half hour, he was a bit calmer, his client even more hyper. At least he was in a better head space to deal with it.

Halfway through a rented movie, he called his bride-beast, ready to resume his place on the relationship front line, even though it was almost an hour before the decided upon time. When she answered, he gave her little time to start another ranting session. He very firmly told her how angry he was that she would not listen to him when he said he was indeed feeling okay, that because she got an idea into her head, she was automatically right. He went on to chastise her for exaggerating the length of time it was that she tried to reach him, and for her insinuating that she did not believe he did not call her back last night.

Whether it was the anger in his voice, or that she had time to cool her boiling piss, when he was finished, she was sobbing. He was not going to lose his reserve, he reminded himself. That would merely reinforce the insanity she was subjecting him to. He heard fifteen minutes of,

"Wha wha wha, whaaa, whaaa, whaaa, WHAA WHAA WHAA, whaa whaa whaa, sniffle, whaa whaa whaa...."

Yet more femme-ese, translated to be,

"B-b-but you used to do this (sniffle) get all silent and not t-t-talk to me and it did mean that there was (sniffle) s-s-something wrong and I did lose my temper because I do that when I am upset and (sob) w-w-worried and I know that the stress of the wedding is getting to you it is getting to me t-t-too and I have had a long day at work and we have been dealing with some b-b-big issues and you sounded like there was something wrong and I am (sniffle) s-s-sorry for losing my temper I didn't really mean it and of course I should trust that you are okay when you say you are okay but we have been (sob) b-b-best friends for ten years and I got to thinking how hurtful it was that you c-c-couldn't tell me when something was bothering you and there is the (sniffle) s-s-shower coming up on (sob) Saturday and I thought I (sob) would (sniffle) not e-e-even h-h-have any-any-anything to c-c-celebraaaaaatttteeeeeeee (sob)!"

Five minutes of heavy sobbing later, in all her wisdom, she asks,

"Are you taking your medication?"

Fuck, how he hates that. He detests it when every time he is feeling blue, or upset about something, it all boils down to his depression. It just would not be normal for him to be stressed about money, pressured about the wedding, feel the tenuousness of self-employment, or riled about the audacity of his bride. Oh no, he is just supposed to go through life with a gleeful smirk on his face 24/7. One tiny little happy-paxil-pill is not going to stave off how one would normally feel as a result of the everyday trials of life, and it certainly does not have the power to thwart his betrothed's agenda to drive him clinically, stark raving mad.

Given that she, too, takes paxil for obsessive compulsive disorder, he felt it more appropriately to return with,

"Are YOU taking YOUR'S!?"

"I am saving them for you."

She then went on to explain that she is saving the increase she is supposed to be taking for him. Why?

"So that I don't have to worry that you will not have them, I know how expensive they are, after all."

Oh, the bitter, bitter irony.

She has dragged him through a month of blahs and whaas, and she is saving her meds for HIM?

He told her to call Frieda and that he had to let her go.

He had to defer her to the matron of honour. It was her responsibility to be dealing with this aspect of the bride, after all. He just could not go on. He was hyperventilating. He felt the few dangling, shredded threads of his sanity being stripped off and used as pickings....

Epilogue

Late this evening, well after his conversation with The Goddess, after his client had long drifted off to the solitude of sleep, Highlands wrote me a letter. I will close this chapter in his life with it for, indeed, it says it all....

Dear Maude,

I beg someone, anyone. Just troddle me out to the nearest pasture and shoot me. It would make my life so much easier. I am coming to the conclusion that it is also the only hope I have of thwarting the evil bride-beast's plan to drive me clinically loonie all in her own good time. Better dead than frothing.

It better be quick, too, for I fear I am already ninety-nine percent there. I wonder if even Her Royal Highness, in all her diabolical brilliance, thought her plan would be so expedient. After all, she keeps telling me she is looking forward to a lifetime together.

Perhaps this, too, is just part of the agenda.

Arrgh...the mere consideration of this pushes me further still into the throes of haldol popping, depends undergarments, and a steady diet of my own arm hair.

I am off to the Emergency Room. Please, look after my client until I can make arrangements for someone to come over and get him. More importantly, I beg you to write this evening's entry in my journal. It is my hope that someone, somewhere, will read the documentation of my trials. If it is her signature on the committment papers....

....Blessed Be