Allahna on the Map – Part II

Allahna on the Map – Part II

It wasn’t supposed to look like she came to visit because of a breakup, but the timing wasn’t up to us.  My girlfriend of two and a half years, the day prior, had ended the relationship by way of the telephone (things seemed tense when you came to visit, London’s so far, two years is so long; Jeff, I was just a sophomore when we started dating).  I didn’t cry, but I thought about it.  Instead, I called a friend within minutes, and we did laundry at my apartment while we drinking heavily.

Allahna showed up the next night; we met outside the McDonald’s in town the one landmark that in the late evening hours, when most guests tend to arrive at my apartment, isn’t easily missed, thereby sparing me disparaging phone calls (“What’s this shit about a rotary, Jeff?”).

We got out of our respective cars, hugged.

“That bitch,” she said.

“Now, now.”

“Good to see you, honey.”

“Good to see you, too.”

Having parked back at my apartment, a converted funeral home, we gathered up her things to bring in.

“I’ve been living out of my car.”

“I can see that.”

We tossed her bags into the bedroom, and, after showing her around the place, we got down to business.

“I brought my friend Jack,” she laughed, as she poured herself some bourbon and located the ice tray.

“Hope it’s okay that Rich and Mike are coming,” I said.  It was originally going to be just the two of us for the weekend, but the breakup’s gravitational pull apparently stretched to Boston, bringing two close college friends up to make sure that, along with the smoldering ruins of my relationship, that we also concurrently buried out sobrieties with near constancy throughout the weekend.

The intent, despite what might be suggested, was not sexual; it was to tackle the writing we had been wanting to do for months, in which I wrote the stories of her experiences.  The outlook, however, given the events in the twenty four hours prior to her arrival, was now quite different, much less serious, and a good deal more wobbly.

“It’s fine, hon,” bringing her glass over and toasting my martini.

By the time Rich and Mike made it to Vermont, we were already a few drinks in.

“How many have you had?” Mike asked.

“Eh,” I replied.

“Jeesh, good to see you,” he said, hugging me, complete with manly slap on the back, Rich following as soon as he slammed the door to his minivan shut.

As the two of them came in behind me, I introduced them to one another, and then began shuffling bags and furniture around, and went in search of a sleeping bag, which, statistically speaking, would probably be necessary.

I was pawing through my closet while Rich and Mike made drinks, and Allahna announced that she was going to change, and headed toward the bedroom.  Rich commented that that wasn’t where the bathroom was.

“It’s okay; Jeff’s seen it already,” she said, entering the room, as I pushed fallen items back into place after recovering the sleeping bag that had brought me there in the first place.

Then, briefly, I saw what I had already seen.

“Told you,” she said, to me, referencing her weight loss not affecting certain parts of her body.

“Hm.”

*

The next afternoon, while still in the process of rehydrating, Allahna sifted through some pictures, garnering opinions on which one or ones she should send to her de facto fiancé, Ryan.  We rifled through them, narrowing the selection down; I remember being a bit stunned with the sheer quantity of printed pictures that she had of herself.  One of the rejected photos she pinned to the refrigerator corkboard, where it still remains, her hips cocked out to the side and her tongue sticking out, escaping the smiling lips behind it.

I was struck most by the fact that the photos getting jostled all out of order and more than a few potentially getting fingerprint smudges on them did not cause her distress.

She took a moment to pause when we came across a picture of her with her face painted and glittered to resemble a butterfly.

“Remember the story I was telling you when we were having sex, and right in the fucking middle of it, Ryan jumped up and said ‘Baby, I need to take your picture like that?’  That’s the picture, right there,” she divulged, putting her finger on her naked shoulders in the picture for emphasis.

“Ah,” I said, remembering, and, looking at the picture, wanting briefly to fuck someone with face paint on.

*

Over dinner, to the three males at the table, Allahna recounted portions of her time deployed in Germany as a staff sergeant for the Army’s military police.  She taught us the proper way to hold an imaginary handgun (the ‘teacup’), the way that she, given her small hands, had to grip it, how to breathe when firing a handgun, and that you only draw your weapon if your intent is to kill.

“All that talk about ’shoot to maim’ is bullshit.  If you draw, it’s because your life is in danger, and you need to neutralize whatever’s threatening you immediately.”

I tried to think of an instance where I found myself in this situation; after a brief moment, I’d found one.

Inevitably:  “So, did you ever have to?”

“Once, at a bar; this drunk guy started threatening us, and pulled a knife.  I pulled a gun, but my buddies tackled him before I had to use it.”

We all nodded our heads.

Incidentally, the one time my life was legitimately threatened involved a knife as well; instead of having buddies save the day, however, I voluntarily lost my cell phone and cash, and watched as the mugger ran off and the cloud of my inebriation quickly dissipated into the gray of the Parisian night sky.

Our reactions to this story was similar to the one we had in the afternoon when discussing the various forms of martial arts that she, all five feet of her, knew:  we were in awe.

On the drive home, we were all quiet, weary from last night, resting before we had to rally again, to make me forget the fact that I was less that one week single, and less than twenty four hours sober.

As it was, however, once night two of our two night bender began to take off, Allahna turned in early (headache, maybe migraine), leaving the rest of use to raze our senses on our own, a task to which we too easily rose.

*

And then it was late morning, and after a breakfast which featured Mike flailing his arms in an impromptu game of charades (“What’s that animal, you know, that one that, um, does this”), and me identifying the amorphous creature as a platypus (“How the fuck did you get that?”), they were all quickly packed and ready to go.

So I stood at her car, imagining her life inside that four-wheeled home.  Her, then, to me:  “I do want to sit down at some point and do this writing thing.  I read what you sent me.”

“Okay.”

“Good; we’ll talk soon,” she said.

“Yup,” I agreed, knowing with some sadness that if past performance were any indicator, it wouldn’t be the commonly held notion of soon.

And then she was gone, driving back to Connecticut, speeding into another breakup, and, for the next few months, waning unintentionally out of my life, forgetting her flip flops as she headed south.

Allahna on the Map – Part I

Allahna on the Map – Part I

It’s been years since I’ve actually seen Allahna. Before then, it had also been years since we’d managed to get together. We met in high school, while taking courses over the summer at Central Connecticut State University. We’ve exchanged several phone calls over the years, but with her entrance into the army, our capacity to connect diminished rapidly. Fortunately, she hasn’t changed her e-mail address from the one she wrote down in late July in the university’s cafeteria where I managed to establish myself as a jokester. During our time there, we experienced a brief but pleasant incident.

The last time I saw her was while I was still an undergraduate, after my return from studying in France. We both, at that point, smoked. We met in West Hartford for coffee at the place where she used to work. As would be the case, I recognized her, years later, despite how much we had changed, despite how much we had stayed the same. She wore jeans and a pink t-shirt promoting a band I’d never heard of, but which was apparently quite talented. On the t-shirt, a woman sat on a gun.

We talked and fingered our drinks.

“I’ve lost weight since I’ve been in the army,” she said.

I assented.

“But I’ve kept it where it counts,” she said, indicated certain regions.

Again, I assented.

She had received a promotion. She wanted to take courses in Manchester. She was going to Germany. Soon.

A friend of hers called, and we ended up meeting said friend at a tea-themed place with a bar whose actual name eludes me. The reason I cannot remember the name is because I knew it as the Cosmic Bean when I was in high school and a friend (on whose girlfriend I had crushed since the fourth grade) and his band would often play there while we drank coffee and I stared at his girlfriend staring at him as he played the song that he wrote for her.

I ended up leaving before Allahna and her friend. The night contented me, but regrettably, due to personal circumstances, I cannot recall very much of what happened other than the fact that the two of us smoking aroused me. I remember being pleased to have seen her, disappointed that after years of an absence, hours in each other’s presence were supposed to offset the void which would be another set of unknown but countable years.

And then she was in Germany, and I was in Chicago. And then my year in Chicago was complete, and I had another degree and was bound for a horrifying ride on the campaign trail in Boston.

I sent e-mails off into the dark as I had in Chicago: random check-ins with scattered, poorly narrated information and tender closings.

In the summer of 2006, I violated one of the few cardinal rules I have; I answered my phone on the train ride home from work. The reason I answered is because it was an international number. Any domestic phone call would have been screened and silenced. But the international prefixes disclosed that someone in Germany wanted to talk. The three possible people it could have been contacted me so seldom via phone that I sighed, knowing that I was, at least for the moment, dealing in hypocrisy, and answered the phone.

“Hey sweetie,” said the voice. Only one of the three folks I knew in Germany ever addressed me as such.

“Oh my God, hi,” I said, overwhelmed, plugging my right ear as the train screeched to a halt at Back Bay station.

Indeed, she was in Germany, and recounted to me the unpleasant state of affairs regarding a boyfriend who terminated their admittedly turbulent relationship. The end result, the termination, was not bothersome; the methodology employed however, namely, a telephone and not a live meeting, was the source of anger and irritation.

“That sucks,” I noted, keeping a more vulgar sentence in check because I was, after all, on public transportation.

“Well, he’s an asshole,” she quipped.

I then remembered our discussion of that relationship and how tenuous the situation already was with him. And another girl. In Chicago. I think.

In any case, she was still in Germany, liking parts, not liking parts, discovering things about her job, her convictions, herself.

“You know,” she said.

“Yeah.”

Whenever we did manage to connect on the phone and rejuvenate those pleasant, scant, ailing memories of a brief summer years ago, the question always arose.

“When do we get to see each other again?”

“I’m done with this tour in June.”

“Then where to?”

“Connecticut.”

So, thus, the answer: a year.

The phone call was shorter than it should have been. Had I not had to worry about breaking one of my own cardinal rules, it would probably have achieved a more appropriate length and depth.

*

Into the next June our lives propelled. And there we were, still in our same places geographically, but as different as could be with respect to our states and frames of mind.

Again, there I was, casting off another hastily written e-mail. Essentially: Hi, it’s been a while, I’m mildly freaking out about every possible aspect of my life, feeling awash in a sea of nearly-not-missed opportunities and clearer past intentions unequivocally not coming to fruition. Love, Jeff.

This time, a response, complete with a phone number, and later, a confirmation that calling at any time of the day was fine, since the phone was on at all hours.

The same week that her short reply came down the wire, I received the news that I would be moving back to Vermont.

And so I called.

When I called, Allahna was somewhere, never revealed, where there was no dearth of alcohol. But:

“I’m not drunk,” she said, believably.

“It would be okay even if you were.”

She was not expecting my call; she shouldn’t have been. It was nearly midnight where she was.

The conversation turned heavier, more pensive and introspective once we waded through the genuine, but expected admittances of excitement over reconnecting, at least in a manner more personable than e-mails, and also over the fact that the number of days before she was back in the country was now numerable, tolerable, conceivable. And that time off could possibly afford a visit to me.

Allahna had been thinking about things, making decisions about things, since we had last talked. Analyzing decisions about things or perhaps simply pondering things: studies constantly deferred, the army constantly wresting those deferrals and placing them further out of reach, what it was to be an American in Europe in these times, what it was to enjoy beer, what thirty to ninety days of being ‘as un-army as possible’ would entail, what actions it would elicit, what consequences.

She meant it when she said she’d learned a lot, she’s gotten a lot, she doesn’t regret it. And the honesty of those statements are matched only by her honesty when she discloses that there are parts of it she hates, parts of it that are miserable, although those were not her exact words.

“I haven’t been reading or writing much,” she lamented.

We first shared our writing during the summer in which our two universes collided. Eager to expose, to consume. We had exchanged pieces since, but infrequently. I do not like to talk about my own writing, but suffice it to say she is an encouraging critic.

We talked about writing briefly – about my latest endeavors and then:

“We should do some collaborative stuff,” she said. “When I come to visit you in Vermont.”

She wanted her voice captured in my narrative style. Or, if not mine, at least not hers.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ve come to like creative non-fiction.” And then a few more things.

Two factors (her not being able to hear me well and the crowd with whom she was for the evening changing venues) truncated our conversation, but plans were made to call again, and promises to visit and to write during that visit were exchanged.

She hung up and proceeded to have a great evening.

I sat at home, got stoned, and wondered about and weighed the many ideas, demons, and other relevant symbols that this had meant and could mean.