The Golden Cow- Part 2

Part 2: Wrestling with the Gods

Sarah placed their 4th alfajor pastry on the bench and sat next to Tomas. This was their favorite cafe in Buenos Aires. It was a tiny place with no tables and a huge glass pastry display that shined as if it contained gold. The regulars would pick up their pastries to go, but it was cold out and Tomas and Sarah needed to rest and fill their bellies.

They preferred to sit next to each other at restaurants because the width of the table always felt too distant. They liked to feel they were up close-personal, not sitting across, opposing each other like dueling debaters, but rather enroute, heading to their destination together.

“Is that what you mean? Whatever happens, happens--”
“Let’s not talk about this now,” she cut him off.
“Okay. Well then when?”
“We can talk about it on the way to the ruins.”
“Why not now?

She said, “Right now, I can’t. It’s just that I don’t want to think about it. I mean, it tears me up inside,” like the ground is caving her into a landslide, “every time I say goodbye and now you are leaving soon and I don’t know what to do. Man, at least Sasha’s coming; there’s so much to see. I have ‘ta keep going.

“I’m sorry. Is this okay. It’s just too much.”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” he said holding back for a minute. “But I know. I know we can make this work if we really want to. We know how we feel about each other, right? That’s the only for sure thing. If we focus on that all the how’s and where’s and everything else will fall into place.”

“Yeah but…” she pauses. “I know. I‘ve never felt this clear about anything before and it’s so confusing.” Her eyes turned down into her lap filling with tears. She looked at their hands holding. She took a deep sigh. The inhale stuttered like the air was sticking, catching on the way in, clawing not to go there and get stuck, anywhere but there—in dark the light. “I can’t keep thinking about this, I’m making things worse,” she thought. “I got to get up,” she said restlessly. “I’m going to the loo.”

“Shit,” he thought. “Did I just fuck it up? Why do I have to say everything I am thinking? Fuck!“ He was thinking about the book he read before the trip, The Microscopic Truth. “It said I was supposed to say everything I am thinking and feeling, but what if it’s wrong? Are there some things that shouldn’t be shared? What about my doubts? My fears? My thoughts? I’m 33 and I haven’t had a willingly stayed in a relationship this long before in my life. The only thing I know is it feels so much better to get the shit off my chest. Merrily, merrily, merrily. For years I have been holding it all in and it hurts so bad. Do I have to trudge it along with me everywhere I go? The caution is rusting my boat. I row, row, row wearily, but is she going to be able to handle my honesty? Will she turnoff? from “her man”? What if it makes her more worried? Or she finds a better man who’s not all sad.”

He tried to feel grateful for whatever of herself she chose to share with him, but when he left Argentina she would be darting off again. It took Herculean Might to not let the jealousy and envy and all the looming unknowns taint what few precious moments they had together. Argentina felt like their anchor pulling the ocean of possibility in around them warm and tight. Everywhere else was a probability, dim and dispersed.

Their feet had taken them everywhere. Tested by time’s curiosity, the new language, bus schedules, unmarked detours, dark villages on the edge of nowhere and stretches of days off the map. They had one last trip and this one too led off the map. She still had six months to go and who knows where she will end up when her money ran out.

He needed this time alone while she was in the bathroom. He felt himself spiraling out of control. He tried to hold his composure, but he was lost in the bush with nothing with which to orient himself. Home was 100000000000000000000000000s miles away, not even a background thought, but he was reaching for something. He just wanted to be good for her. Say the right things. Be honest. Kind. And love her the best he could. Sometimes he would muff the balls she so gingerly tossed him. He wanted to soar, but his wings looked sour, shrunken and deformed. All the cues he missed, chances to listen instead of speak, all his advice, some long imaginary list in his head for which he harangued himself. This list, like a scorecard, he worried was building up against him so that soon some morning he would wake up in some strange bed in some forgotten place with no one and no way back home.

He reminded himself how he had gotten past her metal detector. Every guard, defense, 100 mile fence, tense obstructions, and dense constructions, all that she held up against the world he had slipped thru, past somehow, deep into her confidence. She let him pass through where she didn’t expect anyone again. Past the cordial, merry, conjoining face of grace that was so warm and agreeable to everyone into the place of genuine concern where the dawn considers the light. Now she didn’t know what to do.

She returned from the loo and sat down next to him at the table sitting sideways facing him. After a long silence with them looking into each other’s eyes, he said, “I’m trying not to be obtuse. I just need to know more, but I don’t know what, how to--”

“Ask! You don’t ask me anything.”

“I know, but…” He pauses. “Part of me thinks I should just get to know you better by letting the conversation happen naturally, instead of interrogating each other trying to hurry up and figure out if we are each others soul mate, besides if I ask something I just start judging you. I don’t know… uh, oh- I am thinking out loud again.”

“If you want to ask, ask. Don’t worry. If it’s important to you then-,” Sarah said.

“What do you think is going to happen with us. I mean, what?…” He paused. “I want to be with you after you finish your trip and I know you don’t know what will happen during these next 6 months but what’s… Do you want to be with me? Do you think it’s possible? For us?”

At times Sara said stuff that Tomas didn’t know if it was really some deep ass shit or if she’s just pulling shit outta her ass. Either way it left his head spinning. 6 months later and the words will still reverberate in his head.

“Do you trust me?” Her 4-worded response to his worry and impatient tasking her premonitionary powers. Into my dazed silence she struck, “Deep down You know.”

His mind was stuck in between the imaginary world and the real world. It tried to conjure his perception of his ideal of her at violent odds with what reality was so directly screaming. In these moments there was little fusion. Everything stuck out.

“Wait, what? Wait,” he thought. He needed her to slow down and explain. His mind rolled it around, “Another fucking 4 words.” No, he didn’t know, “What are you saying?” his head screamed 4 words back. But she said it with such conviction, such ferocious knowing, that it sent shivers down his spine. He had to know and he had to trust her.

He excused himself to visit the restroom, but now that he was there, safe shutted in his stall he doubted he take those steps back. His fears, insecurities, protections, all came forward in a storm. He must to know what she meant by that. “Trust me? What did she do to me? What is going to happen. Uh- Oh… I. I, I need to know. I’m falling apart. Where am I?” He washed his face and looked in the mirror. He looked exhausted, pasty white, opaque. It was noticeable again. He was not comfortable in his skin; he was sweating and he knew she could see right thru him.

Sarah communicated from her deep place of knowing. Not from her head, but rather her heart. She communicated so overwhelmingly directly in an open-ended language, speaking at multiple levels with feeling and intuition, subtlety, touching him like cascading chords on a piano. The messages were but clues, pointing at truth- his, their chained circumferences. Suggesting something more and challenging her lover to meet her where she stood. Neither here nor there. Everywhere, all the 6 senses & then some. In her feminine power, her 6 senses joined with an additional 6 more. All activated. 4 triads of senses that formed their own language, speaking in tonal harmonies. Mesmerizing initiates. And what could he do, but take it in. He listened and heard what he could and even tried to hear what he didn’t.

More than anything Sarah wanted Tomas to get her. Even if he didn’t get her he got her in that he got to be with her in ways that no one else would. And he got to be in her. Beyond the physical because she could have sex with anyone, but what they had, the chemistry, the deep knowing, the common understanding, the speaking what the other was thinking—that wonder and awe was only theirs. What he had in him, mixed with what she had in her, combined into a powerful solution that soothed and healed and brought all life to center stage. They became active participants in their lives, aware of the stage, the light, one with the enthralled audience, the dramatic orchestra, feeling the biochemistry of destiny pulsing thru their DNA. They immersed themselves in the play, forgetting their roles as actors, letting go of games, beyond the reach of both ands or buts, colluding with the antagonist and emboldening the protagonist, becoming so much more, in essential relevancy with the world. He did get her.

Ka. He calmed myself, took a deep breath, washed his face again and felt his feet more on the ground. He let his roots burrow in and went to get her.

He dove into a new world for joy, for love, for life. His safety, security, sameness passed him up. Knowing that that mysterious whisper would have kept calling him, he never could have stayed put eking miserably, without extinguishing that bright part of his being. This shake up, hissed an unknown destiny. He called himself forward out from under the rippling covers. Into a new home he slipped out the safe and into the wilderness of his love, swallowing him forever. He realized he could never have fully prepared for this deciding moment. This choice from which he could never really return.

“Life is a risk”, she thought. She wondered if she should have stayed home. She felt changed, if not transformed. She hovered over the thought ravenously doubting the change was for the better. So different, so alone. No footholds, no safehouse—Rolling stone or spinning alone? An Unknown. What’s next if tomorrow didn’t promise a next place to go? All the excitement was in the newness. Her life, this trip, spilled out so much wonder, but nothing stuck. She hated the word: but. She swore off taking photos, “Everything’s in here,” she fingered her forehead. “It’s still all the same shit, traversing me, fussing after me like a sad line of servants,” she thought. Just more intense and perverse. Some big, glad avalanche looked down at her, parenthetically, arms folded, “ALL THIS GALLAVANTING AROUND and NOW WHAT?”

Slow on the day, her face shown the ravages of the last couple of day’s indecision.

Where was the safe constant? The mathematical equation balanced to keep on churning out the same answers. With the same inputs one was assured the same outputs. Stability. Status quo. Mother’s wounded womb, exacted control. The steam engine and its conductor traveled along the same tracks with the same predictable destination. An orchestra and her conductor generated a million variations in tone, tunings, keys, and tempos. Together they swirled and tumbled through the piece into new heights and depths. And a jazz ensemble, with but a general idea of where they wanted to go, played off each other, improvising endlessly. They could play for hours and never tire or grow bored. They bridged known and unknown. The delight confounded and outgrew its own breath.

“Are we just interchangeable parts,” he thought, “passengers on a train getting off at our stops, just the latest occupants to check into this soft, glowing room,” he thought while watching her fiddle about the room like a hummingbird.

Sarah couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation she had last night on the phone with her mom, Electra. Afterwards she squirmed about anxiously, her skin crawling. Starkly driven, her eyes drowning, but she wouldn’t talk about it to Tomas. Her eyes doused silent warpaths.

She started itching in her sleep late that night after the call. He laid awake holding her. Eventually the itching woke her from another doomed sleep. She looked over at him, “I’m… sorry. Did I wake you?”

“Nah, I just woke up.” he tried to downplay it.

“Its just… I can’t handle it right now. I’m sorry Tomas. I don’t want to be downer.” But she couldn’t stop.

“Its okay,” he said sweetly, softly brushing through her hair. “Really, you can make it up to me tomorrow by buying mis alfojores, no?” He spoke the Spanish with a goofy French accent and a darling smile. “Try to get some sleep.”

“I can’t. Hold me will you? Please? I feel like I’m floating away.” Tomas knew Electra saw the high stakes involved in their trip together and had cranked back the blinds and pulled her up short.

Electra’s words, “DON’T START WHAT YOU CAN’T FINISH” whittled at Sarah’s mind. She felt so much guilt her stomach churned into a twisted wiry frame that contorted endless lists of weakness.

Sarah could make people go ape shit with one carousel step, one dash of eyelash, and that one wink stung for weeks. How her wings, when wrapped around the sun, could carouse lost perimeters and purse people’s hearts. She was a body snatcher, seat taker, leave you standing-room-only, floating for her dance floor. No further had you come forever. But not since from whence she was nowhere near that her.