HELLO HEARTACHE

Hello Heartache
1788 words


He was Mushroom Turtle and I was Merry Berry. We were two children of the Sixties who knew no better than to get married at the age of 18. I think he hypnotized me to tell the truth. I can't believe today that I actually thought this loser was going to be the only man in my life who could ever love me. My parents were both alcoholics. Maybe that's how I came by my low self-esteem.

Also, he was helped in his quest to get me to marry him (when I wasn't even pregnant) by all the drugs we were taking in those days. When you're stoned clean out of your mind most of the time, it's hard to make good decisions.

The man was willing to go to any length to trap and capture me. In an attempt to win me forever, he built me an actual throne. It was an embarrassment really. It was made of plywood and it was painted with blue house paint. It also was huge. That sucker had to be nine feet tall. It was complete with a seat cover that looked suspiciously like a toilet cover--all pink and furry.

I was humiliated that he built it in his parents' house where he lived. (No, he had never been away from Mom and Dad--that's why he was so ready and willing to take the big step. He also had been diagnosed as psychotic.) I couldn't get comfortable with the fact that his parents had watched this nine-feet tall monstrosity being built. Like maybe I was the kind of girl who felt she deserved to sit on a throne when I came to visit. Kitchen chairs might be good enough for his family, but her majesty required a throne.

If that was the only thing he ever did to embarrass me though I'd of gotten off lucky. The man was an embarrassment from the raggedy-ass clothes he wore to look cool (not because he was poor; he wasn't) to his unwashed and uncombed long hair. Also, he sincerely felt he had the answers to the secrets of life (dope will do that) and was needed to pass these on to every unsuspecting stranger and acquaintance willing to stop and be bored out of their minds.

And he wrote bad poetry. He wrote me about ten entire books of poetry written on blank pages in a hardcover journal. Every single poem he ever wrote, and he must have written me hundreds, had the same theme: how much he loved me and couldn't stand the thought of ever being without me. His poetry made me feel I couldn't breathe in enough air to keep from suffocating.

Here's another embarrassing fact about Bob. One day I left for work and realized I had forgotten to bring my keys. I turned around and walked back to the apartment. He was home, of course, because he rarely worked: He didn't believe in working for a living, but he didn't mind if I worked to support both of us. Anyhow, I knocked and knocked at my door knowing he was in there. I bet he didn't answer that door for a good ten minutes and I was already late for work. When I finally got in and asked him what the hell was going on, he looked sheepish and wouldn't look at me. I had to make getting it out of him a project for some day when I wasn't late for work.

And that day came. He was stoned and drinking and I knew I'd finally have my answer about what was with the mysterious ten minute gap. It turns out, he didn't mind telling me then, that he had been busy dressing up in my clothes complete to underwear and nylons. I was a little surprised as he had always attempted to pretend he was a semi-gangster, street wise and slick. I began to see that he was a liar, a fake, and a sissy.

"Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be." Things in this child marriage began to get nightmarish. I kept flashing on how I stood in the little chapel on the hill in the woods in my wedding gown all alone in the bride's room. Their was a full-length window looking out at the woods. I wanted to run out that window, run through the woods, and head for the hills much more than I wanted to go down that aisle. But at 18 I still cared that I had relatives and friends sitting in that chapel waiting for my wedding. I felt obliged to follow through as planned. But for years I kept seeing that young girl in her cheap white dress staring with all her heart at the path leading to the woods just beyond the chapel window.

Anyhow, he was Mushroom Turtle and I was Merry Berry. Those were our drug-induced Sixties names. His friends called him Mush. He had mush for brains. I already knew that much. And I was not like any Merry Berry you might imagine full of joie de vivre and youthful enthusiasm. To say I hated being married at that age to that man is a supreme understatement. I didn't know what to say about my constant obvious depression and suicidal ideation, so I feigned PMS for my entire marriage which lasted five years because I felt too beaten down and broken to do something to make it stop.

Oh, and he played the guitar, wrote songs, and sang them. It's hard to say which of those three things that he did badly he did the worse. Because we lived near a college town we lived near a university and got to know some of the professors and students. Dale was an ethnomusicologist who taught ethnomusicology at the university. He himself loved blue grass and his whole family made up an informal blue grass band. They were really good. But he was chosen to be persecuted with an impromptu concert of Bob's bad songs sung like a scream and accompanied by the worst guitar beating you ever heard.

I was, as usual, humiliated. But then I didn't know what to think when Dale invited Mushroom to come to his classroom the following week and give a little one-man concert. I couldn't figure it out. Mushroom was thrilled with the invitation. He was so desperate to make it as a rock 'n roll star he would have performed on top of a garbage dumpster by flashlight if one other person would watch and listen. Naturally I had to go with him to the class because we made it a habit to pretend we were joined at the hip. He wanted my time and attention 24/7. I had learned to feel guilty if I didn't give it to him.

I went to the class and, if it was possible, he was worse than usual for the showing off. He really screamed out those ridiculous, repetitive lyrics about how stoned he liked to get. I watched how uncomfortable he was making the students. I think some of them were mortified that Dale had brought in this non-musical wreck to entertain them.

And sometime after that day at a party Dale confessed to me why he had had Bob come to demonstrate his musical inability to a classroom of people who knew something about music, many of whom were good musicians.

He told me that one of the idea he tries to get across to the kids is that they should never hide their light under a bushel basket. If someone asks one of them to play or sing they shouldn't make excuses. They should exercise their God-given talents and entertain the best that they could. Dale figured that by having a non-musician who insulted real music the way he did, but was so full of himself that he screamed, ranted and pranced on the stage as if he were the best musician ever, the kids would get the idea to loosen up. "Look at him. He's terrible, but he doesn't let that stop him from making his non-music."

It was because of that awful racket he called his music that I was selected to remain the sole supporter of us both throughout our marriage. A no-talent peon like myself could afford to be stuck bored out of her mind at some dead-end job so she could get money for beer and wine. An artist shouldn't sully himself with lame jobs. It got unbearable though when friends came down to us in Southern Illinois from Chicago. These guys, all of whom brought guitars, moved in and just let me support them as well. They, too, were too artistic to do menial labor. I was burned up.

So we finally, finally split up. I was a free woman at 23 and made a mad dash and got enrolled at the university as fast as I could get loans and financial aid. I was a free woman finally and I wanted to live with a vengence. He filed for our divorce himself. I hope it was legal since I have since remarried.

Years went by and I didn't hear anything about him or, thank God, from him. Then my mother called to ask if it was alright to give him my phone number because he had asked her for it. I figured what the hell. I wondered what he wanted after all those years. I was living at the time "in sin" with my next husband to be, John.

Bob called and explained that he had some papers he needed me to fill out. He wouldn't tell me what the papers pertained to but I said what the hell again and gave him directions to my apartment. It turned out that the Bob I had known, the agnostic high school dropout, wanted to get an annulment from the Catholic Church so he could become a priest. He had already earned a M.S. in theology. I was stuptified with this bit of news. Who'd have thunk it?

And that's the last time I saw him and, fortunately, that was a long time ago. I did hear a rumor from former friends who grew up in the same home town as we did that he was running a church somewhere out west. He was a sort of hell and brimstone Pentecostal-type protestant minister. His "flock" was the young pregnant women that he rounded up and tried to stop from having abortions. He felt very strongly about the sin of abortion.

I'd be humiliated, as usual, but I no longer live with him, and I'm free to live my own free, joyous life.