But what if this wasn’t about Elvis—what if this was about me, and the desire I may or may not have felt for backup singer number two—not too mention backup singer number one and backup singer number three? I don’t know what I was thinking—and I don’t know why I was thinking it. Was there a flaw in my relationship with Mary Lou? It was tempting to think of sex as a mere exchange of emails—a way to connect without having to do any of the work, or face any of the realities, that come from willfully trying to sabotage everything that you’ve built your life around. In an ideal world I wouldn’t have felt any interest in these back up singers, showing off, as it were, what they had to offer. Couldn’t I just be happy to be around them? Why would I want to take things to another level, and how was I supposed to choose? But the question, I suppose, is asked and answered—I couldn’t choose between them without feeling some degree of remorse at having ignored the other two—and that remorse would overcome any natural attraction I might’ve felt for this one.
That was how things were supposed to be; if I’d taken things any further I would have been trying to communicate in a direction that opposed the direction I was going in—I wouldn’t just be changing course; I would find myself instantaneously going in the opposite direction—every covert action would be a step from Mary Lou. When I died, or left this world, I’d find myself alienated, to no small degree, from the family that gave me a reason to live, not to mention a sense of purpose and joy.
Lesbian sex is the safest sex you can have, and, because of that, I might’ve asked myself, in spite of all this, what the harm was—but that was exactly why everything was so dangerous; without the possibilities of children, and the probabilities of disease, what did I have to lose? But that’s what I’m talking about—I’d find myself lost at sea—or in the woods, without the security that you feel when you’re having fun—on, or off, a handful of stimulants and depressants. I didn’t want to turn something off at my partner’s expense—I wanted everything to be where my partner could find it—and that was how things were supposed to be. If the temptation outweighed your relationship, then your relationship was also going in the wrong direction, and so, without some soul searching, you were finished.
I was relieved, then, when I found myself declining a glass of wine that might’ve reduced my inhibitions—which, in the real world, were there to protect me.
We were approximately six months into Silas’s term as the so called leader of the free world. I never expected him to win—Mary Lou should’ve won, and, if there weren’t so many people protesting their government by choosing not to vote—or simply finding that they had to do their laundry or go to work on the off-day that they were supposed to vote, Mary Lou would’ve won the election. I guess, however, if Mary Lou did win the election, and votes for Silas were votes against everything Barak Obama had done, then there might’ve been a backlash that really derailed the country.
We’d gone to Stockholm a couple times—with some misguided need to feel at home; and I’d endured countless lunches with both Silas and Elvis. I thought the world of Elvis, and I don’t care what anybody says, the guy was a great actor—you wanted to watch him do his thing—perhaps to learn from him or perhaps because you were attracted to him—the result was the same. I learned, however, that Mary Lou, after a while, didn’t like me having so many lunches with Silas—and, because of that (I was furious that she never said anything, but, in hindsight, perhaps I should’ve known better) she’d had a one night stand with a blond that worked for Fox news. Suddenly I felt that I was with a complete stranger—and I was a little angry to learn this after turning down one, if not all, of Elvis’s backup singers—if not Elvis himself.
The next time I met Elvis I considered not eating one but perhaps three peanut butter and jelly and bacon sandwiches—especially since I was happy with my weight, and I figured, sometimes, you just needed to hurt yourself to make a point. But I remembered telling Mary Lou, “what you do to your body is your business,” before having stormed off to my studio—where Elvis had been waiting for me. I asked him, with vengeance curdling in my veins, where the back up singers were, and he said he had brought them along to make a point. Apparently, he already knew that Mary Lou would chase after some woman working for Fox news, and he wanted me to make an informed decision before I said or did things that we couldn’t come back from.
I was of the opinion, however, that if that happened, and we couldn’t come back from it, then we weren’t supposed to. We just weren’t meant to be together—at least not in this life—and because of that, and the pain that was involved, I found it unlikely that, once in heaven, if I believed in heaven, great pains would be waiting for me. When I discovered how much time I had on my hands, however—or, that is to say, when I discovered how bored and or disabled I was without Mary Lou in my life, I considered making things right by getting together with Elvis—if I could. That would probably hurt Mary Lou about as much as her shindig with a Fox news blond, who, in all likelihood, had been hired by Silas to ruin my relationship.
Elvis warned me, then, that he was mostly interested in approximately eighteen year old women that were looking to raise a family—this was after his relationship with his fourteen year old wife came to an end. He hurt my pride, and I asked if he might make an exception because I couldn’t have sex with Mary Lou without balancing out the equation. But he said that I was meant to go down in history as a painter, if not Mary Lou’s partner, and, because of that, I needed to stay with Mary Lou. So I did. Life without Silas wasn’t as exciting as it used to be—and that was how I knew that I might’ve been going for the limelight more than I should have been—I might’ve been taking advantage of Mary Lou. Every day after that I was a little more sober than I’d been before, until I was one hundred percent determined to retreat—to avoid those that wouldn’t or couldn’t help me when I needed companionship—to my painting, which, as a partner, could do no wrong.
Atheism didn’t make quite as much sense once I found that I needed to go on learning and improving forever; anyhow, for sure, changing up my reality made me realize that there were too many unanswered questions in life to rule anything, such as an afterlife, out. When I discovered that Mary Lou felt the same way, the fun in life slowly returned, as did a sese of security that came from a sober analysis of Fox news blonds: it’s not that they were stupid—in my experience most blonds are pretty smart, actually—but, some, not all, but some, such as Mary Lou’s friend, looked down on you for falling for it—as if they never wanted to be blond, but became that way because of ambition, as opposed to any real desire to find their soulmate.