Barbara Silkstone
Author/Speaker
527 Naked Men & One Woman
Relationships
Why are we so curious about other people's love-pain?
~ Joe, I'm leaving you. I can't bear to speak to you
in person and so I've left a recorded message at
this number....Liz ~
Would you call the number if you saw it in a personals column? Would you want to listen to Liz say adios to Joe?
Years ago I was challenged to prepare a marketing campaign for a large condominium project. The real estate market was soft and my budget was less than two dollars. I decided to spend my money on an ad in the personals column of the local newspaper.
The ad read: Joe, I'm leaving you. I can't bear to speak to you in person and so I'ved left a recorded message at this number.... I wrote a script for the recording and had one of my sales ladies read it in a sexy voice. "Joe, by the time you hear this, I will have left our little apartment and moved into a condominium at Casablanca Condos - where guess what, Joe? They let me move in for only $500 down and payments of ...etc. etc."
The ad ran one day in the classifieds and drew four weeks of continuous - 24/7- calls to a dedicated line in my office. A landslide return on a $1.80 investment. Snooping? Or are people in love-pain desperate to know they are not the first and not alone?
Why is it so hard to give up the ghost of an old relationship?
The ring of the phone drags me from my writing. I answer wearing my Daffy Duck pajamas and cradling a glass of chardonnay. A voice I haven't heard for a decade speaks. It's Michael!
A woman can forget most of the bad things a guy might have done, especially if she's been carrying in her heart the ghost of her love for him. I force myself to recall our last moments together - Michael and I standing, our arms tight around each other, sobbing in rhythm. Two hearts broken by one deed.
I had discovered Michael's cheating through my sixth sense, intuition, and a series of very detailed dreams. In my nightmares a strange woman came to me and told me not to worry because she was "taking care of Michael." I couldn't see her face in my dreams, but the letter "K" floated serenely in and out of each episode. What did the "K" stand for? On a yellow pad, I listed all female names beginning with "K". I weeded out the Karens and Kristas and zeroed in on the most popular, "Kathy."
When Michael bopped in ready for dinner and hugs, I quietly accepted his neck kisses as I stirred the stroganoff. Then I asked him, "Who is Kathy?"
I will always remember his gasping reply. I thought he was having a stroke. "You can tell me," I persisted. "Just be honest. I can handle it."
As Michael scrambled to collect his belongings from my front lawn, he cried out, "I thought you said you could handle it!"
Months went by before I stopped torturing myself with visions of Michael and Kathy spooning in bed, laughing at how they had tricked me. I played this scened over and over in my mind like an info-mercial in a dentist's office:
"This is how we set about to hurt you." Pretty soon two years had passed and the pain was less and in four years it was just a place to kick myself.
Now Michael called. All I could remember are his broad shoulders, chiseled profile, nut brown hair, and other bodily things. I tell myself in the interest of my love investigations, I must see him again. Very soon Michael is at my side. We hold each other and cry softly. I realize he is at once a stranger and a part of me. It's good to feel him again. It's like coming home after a long journey.
I notice the time-changes in Michael. When we parted he looked like a young Kurt Russell, now he resembles Orson Welles. He pads around my house wearing baggy golf shorts over his pregnant-like belly. His nut brown hair is gone except for two tufts that sit like goat horns on his noggin. I cried over this? I simultaneously curse and congratulate myself.
Michael and I spend two days in wordless sex. What once fit so comfortably is now all angles and edges. He smells of mushrooms, a musty smell. Why did I not remember he was a selfish lover? I recall the delight, but not the direction in which it flowed. We are here today to make Michael happy.
On the third day I try to tell him about my adventures as The Love Investigator. I am now regarded as a "great listener"...so talk to me.
Michael stares blankly at me as if I were disconnected cable television. I am white-sound. He is flummoxed. His bartender-quick wit is untrained in conversations of the heart. He has no words for his feelings and yet strangers have been able to pour their hearts out to me.
"You hurt me when you don't share your thoughts with me. That' what broke us up before."
Michael looks at me. "No. We broke up cause I cheated on you."
"Thank you for reminding me," I tell him.
Michael came into my life at a time when I was hungry for light hearted romance and bedroom Olympics. I now understand that it was the idea of Michael that I loved. Sometimes we have to revisit the scene of the haunting in order to give up the ghost.
