Before: Late Spring, 1994--Hickory Hills

David sits at the computer desk and ignores everything around him.

He surrounds himself with bits and pieces of wire and hardware, ashtrays overflowing with Marlboro Light butts and dozens of dirty dishes--cups crusted with dried milk, plates with ends and remnants, empty soda cans. I get up in the morning and he is sitting at the desk as I leave for work; I come home in the early evening and he is back at the desk. Somewhere in between, he sleeps and--allegedly--showers.

I have given up on cleaning the apartment, at least that part of it. There are papers to grade and lessons to plan, and now my new obsession-that-is-not-an-obsession.

"Call me," JP tells me one night as I am leaving. We are still platonic, if passionate kissing can be considered platonic; if seismic wanting can hide behind that quiet, classical word. "Call me EVERY DAY," he clarifies. "I mean it. Promise." There is an urgency in his voice that has nothing to do with me, and so I promise even though I know that the real world will get in the way, and that I have no right to promise such a thing.

For over a week I keep the promise. I sneak into a closet-sized office during my planning period and dial his number and dream my dreams. Once or twice his roommates answer the phone and tell me JP is "sleeping" and can't be woken; most days he comes to the phone and talks to me for the full forty minutes, and I go back to work smiling a little.

I go home to David every day, watching him in his fog of computers and self-deceit. He and his friend have started a business, he says, to anyone who will listen; he tells people they are equal partners and will share equally in the spoils. If that ever happens, I know, it will be Jason's largesse that brings it about; far from being a partner, David is more of a stubborn hindrance to the progress of the business. Jason is the one with the business sense and his feet on the ground; David is...David is David, all big ideas and bigger boasts, a truculent child when he does not get his way.

And yet. I am married to this man. Somewhere in there is someone I fell in love with, the silly, funny side of David, the creative side; somewhere in there is the man with whom I've made an entire language and what seems to be a fairly-stable life, looking in from the outside. I have not been angry enough long enough to abandon those memories completely, and so I try.

I cook and clean for him, and do his laundry. I invite his friends and my friends over for dinner parties where I make elaborate meals and try my best to be the scintillating hostess, a role which goes entirely against my nature. And I try to forget JP, try not to call him, try not to dwell on what might have been.

One night it all comes crashing in somehow, some tiny simple thing that sends me spinning. An unpaid bill or an overdrawn checking account; some small meaningless argument about dishes unwashed or trash left sitting. My normal calmative--a walk to the White Hen for a soda--does nothing to heal my indignation, and so I glare at David's back when I return, put on my headphones, and flop belly-down on the carpet to listen to Nine Inch Nails, Pretty Hate Machine.

At track 9 it all breaks loose, all the confusion and the anger and the fear and the rage and the pain, all the might-have-beens and never-will-be's all coagulate with Trent Reznor's voice into a poison ball in my throat, and I lay my head down on the carpet and cry, gasping sobs with no falsity or drama or even real reason behind them.

Sitting at the computer, David turns for a moment. He gives me a blank, gray look, then goes back to his chatroom.