publishes paperback originals, most of them about giant bugs and Viet Nam veterans out to reform the world with automatic weapons. Three days ago I found out my girl has left me for another man. Some response to this seemed to be required, so I tried to quit my job. No sense trying to go 65
into my mental state either then or now. It was none too calm to begin with, due to an outbreak of what I can only call Crazy Fever at work. I may elab-orate on that business at some later date, but for the time being the importance of Detweiller and Hecksler seems to have receded far into the background.
If you have ever been abruptly left by someone you did and do love deeply, you’ll know the sort of fugue I have been experiencing. If you haven’t, you can’t. Simple as that.
I keep wanting to say I feel the way I did when my father died, but I don’t. Part of me (the part that, writer or not, constantly wants to make metaphors) would like to make it into a bereavement, and I believe Roger was partly right when he made that comparison at the mostly liquid dinner we had the night of my resignation, but there are other elements, too. It is a separation—as if someone told you that you could no longer have your favorite food, or use a drug to which you had become addicted. And there’s something worse. However you define the thing, I find that my own sense of self-esteem and self-worth have somehow gotten mixed up in it, and it hurts. It hurts a lot. And it seems to hurt all the time. I always used to be able to escape mental pain and psychic distress in my sleep, but that’s no good this time. It hurts there, too.
Ruth’s letter (question: how many Dear John letters have actually been sent to Johns? Should we form a club, like the Jim Smith Society?) came on the eleventh—it was waiting in my mailbox like a time-bomb when I got home. I scribbled my resignation on a memo form the next morning and sent it down to Roger Wade’s office via Riddley, who is our janitor cum mail-clerk at Zenith House. Roger came down to my office as if he had rockets on his heels. In spite of the pain I’m feeling and the daze I seem to be living in I was absurdly touched. After a short, intense conversation (to my shame I broke down and wept, and although I managed to refrain from telling him specifically what the problem was/is, I think he guessed) I agreed to defer my resignation, at least until that evening, when Roger suggested we get together and talk the situation over.
66
“A couple of drinks and a medium-rare steak may help to put the situation in perspective,” was the way he put it, but I think it actually turned out to be more like a dozen drinks...each, maybe. I lost count. And it was to be Four Fathers again, naturally. At least a place for which I have no associa-tions with Ruth.
After agreeing to Roger’s dinner suggestion, I went home, slept for the rest of the day, and woke up feeling thick and dazed and headachey—that feeling of mild hangover I am left with whenever I get too much sleep I don’t really need. It was 5:30, almost dark, and in the unlovely light of a late winter dusk I couldn’t imagine why in God’s name I had allowed Roger to talk me into the compromise measure of making my resignation provision-al for even twelve hours. I felt like an ear of corn on which someone has performed a fabulous magic trick. Taken the corn and the cob and left the green shield of leaves and the fine yellow-white poll of tassel intact.
I am aware—God knows I have read enough to be—of how Byronic-Keatsian-Sorrows-of-Young-Werther that sounds, but one of the diary joys I discovered at eleven and may be rediscovering now is that you write with no audience—real or imagined—in mind. You can say whatever you fucking well want.
I took a very long shower, mostly just standing dazedly under the spray with a bar of soap in one hand, and then I dried off and dressed and sat in front of the TV until quarter of seven or
into my mental state either then or now. It was none too calm to begin with, due to an outbreak of what I can only call Crazy Fever at work. I may elab-orate on that business at some later date, but for the time being the importance of Detweiller and Hecksler seems to have receded far into the background.
If you have ever been abruptly left by someone you did and do love deeply, you’ll know the sort of fugue I have been experiencing. If you haven’t, you can’t. Simple as that.
I keep wanting to say I feel the way I did when my father died, but I don’t. Part of me (the part that, writer or not, constantly wants to make metaphors) would like to make it into a bereavement, and I believe Roger was partly right when he made that comparison at the mostly liquid dinner we had the night of my resignation, but there are other elements, too. It is a separation—as if someone told you that you could no longer have your favorite food, or use a drug to which you had become addicted. And there’s something worse. However you define the thing, I find that my own sense of self-esteem and self-worth have somehow gotten mixed up in it, and it hurts. It hurts a lot. And it seems to hurt all the time. I always used to be able to escape mental pain and psychic distress in my sleep, but that’s no good this time. It hurts there, too.
Ruth’s letter (question: how many Dear John letters have actually been sent to Johns? Should we form a club, like the Jim Smith Society?) came on the eleventh—it was waiting in my mailbox like a time-bomb when I got home. I scribbled my resignation on a memo form the next morning and sent it down to Roger Wade’s office via Riddley, who is our janitor cum mail-clerk at Zenith House. Roger came down to my office as if he had rockets on his heels. In spite of the pain I’m feeling and the daze I seem to be living in I was absurdly touched. After a short, intense conversation (to my shame I broke down and wept, and although I managed to refrain from telling him specifically what the problem was/is, I think he guessed) I agreed to defer my resignation, at least until that evening, when Roger suggested we get together and talk the situation over.
66
“A couple of drinks and a medium-rare steak may help to put the situation in perspective,” was the way he put it, but I think it actually turned out to be more like a dozen drinks...each, maybe. I lost count. And it was to be Four Fathers again, naturally. At least a place for which I have no associa-tions with Ruth.
After agreeing to Roger’s dinner suggestion, I went home, slept for the rest of the day, and woke up feeling thick and dazed and headachey—that feeling of mild hangover I am left with whenever I get too much sleep I don’t really need. It was 5:30, almost dark, and in the unlovely light of a late winter dusk I couldn’t imagine why in God’s name I had allowed Roger to talk me into the compromise measure of making my resignation provision-al for even twelve hours. I felt like an ear of corn on which someone has performed a fabulous magic trick. Taken the corn and the cob and left the green shield of leaves and the fine yellow-white poll of tassel intact.
I am aware—God knows I have read enough to be—of how Byronic-Keatsian-Sorrows-of-Young-Werther that sounds, but one of the diary joys I discovered at eleven and may be rediscovering now is that you write with no audience—real or imagined—in mind. You can say whatever you fucking well want.
I took a very long shower, mostly just standing dazedly under the spray with a bar of soap in one hand, and then I dried off and dressed and sat in front of the TV until quarter of seven or
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