I'd Come Running

I have never been alone on Valentine’s Day. In 40 years of life, I’ve never been alone. Prior to being of a certain age, sixteen, let’s say, I had always considered my mother to be my Valentine. But one year, in the middle of all that Oedipusian convolution, I considered Ellie May Clampett of The Beverly Hillbillies as my Valentine because, well, for the sake of decency, I will abstain from further explanation. “Don’t be ashamed of it, son. It’s no different than playing solitaire. It’s like naked cards,” some creepy old man in a barbershop once told me. Some other old guy told me I’d get pimples. “Jack bumps, they call’em,” he said. He had old-faded tattoos of naked women and anchors. I don’t know how they knew about Ellie May and I, but they knew.

Regardless, I had never been alone on Valentine’s Day, but this year was not looking very promising. Last year, I spent it with a Russian at a Red Robin in Galloway, a day or two after moving out from living with an ex. We made Russian bot jokes and I made her laugh so much that her face hurt and she squirted vodka out of her nose. We shared a love of Vladimir Putin and open displays of affection. But in less than two months, I managed to sabotage that affair by not getting over the girlfriend before her and saying terribly nice things about her when I was drunk. Apparently, in Russia, that is a crime and I was cast off immediately from her affections and thrown in a loveless gulag with all the ne’er-do-wells that came before me. And it was the Russian, this Ruski, whose name I hardly remember, who threatened to shoot me for leading her on. I didn’t know that I did. I thought we were only having fun. But she wasn’t the way and she wasn’t Mrs. Peacock.

This year was looking bleak, to be honest. I hadn’t the faintest idea of anyone to ask to be my Valentine and so I was getting anxious. There were no obvious choices, and frankly, the older I get, the scarcer legitimately decent people seem to become. It is as though they are going extinct like Siberian snow leopards, or Dodo birds.

In my defense, I was engaged to be married, but dumped a few weeks prior, so I couldn’t have foreseen this dilemma. I had assumed I had found my permanent Valentine. But just as eager people clutching their boarding passes were once sure the Titanic wouldn’t sink from under them, I was tossed back out into this cold and perilous world like a stray dog dumped on a lonely country dirt road. And like that stray dog, I longed for the boot that kicked me out for a short time, hoping that car would do a U-turn and come back, which further delayed my search and landed me at the start of February, still, all woe is me and forlorn, writing sappy letters to Dear Abbie and making rash purchases. February 2 was to be our wedding day. It came and went like three World Wars, a holocaust, and an atomic bombing, all in one night. But she wasn’t the way and she wasn’t Mrs. Peacock.

It isn’t as simple as finding an old shoebox and pasting it with red and pink construction paper, and ribbons, and lugging it to school with all your super-hero Valentine’s Day cards for every kid in your class. Even for the ones who are mean and nasty and don’t deserve a card from anyone. But you get everyone a card because you have to in order to give a few special ones to the pretty girls, of course. You might have taped some gum or a heart-shaped sucker to the inside. And your name was in your best print, as though that would matter, or with a “sincerely,” attached to it, or if you really dared, some very bold Xs and Os – which everyone knew to mean “hugs and kisses.” Declaring hugs and kisses is bold at ten. But not anymore. It just isn’t that simple now.

People have mortgages and kids. They are jaded by life and cynical by a cheating ex, or disillusioned by how difficult life has become, or worried about the dwindling sand in their glass. Society profits on our fears and insecurities, so they bomb us with them as often as they can, in whatever clever and subtle way they can think up. People live in the pixels of television, convenience, in thirty-second commercials, with pills, and on schedules and money that is spread too thin. Everything is disposable. Even them. They have learned to be. They have been beat to hell and back by somebody sometime and all you can expect from someone else is what’s left over. There are dating apps and social media sites for people to meet these days, and on nine out of ten profiles there are bitter warnings of what not to do to them. They weed each other out. They find someone that will do. Someone pretty enough. No one puts out a box. And nobody but kids are hopeful enough to give cards.

We are unfaithful from the beginning. First to ourselves. We are never faithful to anyone after we lose our virginity. When it was time to lose it to someone who was not worth it. It was time to experiment, they said. To come of age. To find yourself, though they never tell you that you’ll never find yourself in someone else. But you very well may lose yourself. It is time to cocoon and die as a child and be born as an adult, like a moth. We are never the same. We’ve all been with this person and that, and that person and this, and we have been screwed and blown seven ways to Sunday, drunk or sober, in beds, cars, dorm rooms, on tropical vacations, at Niagara Falls, all by people we don’t even know anymore. By people who packed their things and left us. Or who we left without leaving a forwarding address. People we should never have been with at all. And each of them has left some psychological bitemark and has taken a little piece of our soul away in their teeth, leaving just a little bit less for the next person – the next Valentine who will stumble into your life to see what remains to pick through.

Maybe that is what happened to me this year. That jaded avalanche of realization came down upon me so fast and hard that I never had a chance. No one I have ever been with has been exclusive to me, nor I to them. That is a fantasy. Sure, I have not cheated on most, and most have not cheated on me during “our time” together. Our lease with the option to buy. But from the beginning. And to the end. And absent an overwhelming sense of love that makes you feel that you have surpassed and replaced everyone that has come before you, and that no one will ever replace you, you are just a temporary body, if you ever think of it. Her man right now, or his woman right now. Like last year’s card in a box that got lost in twenty-seven others that quickly became fifty-four, then eighty-one, and gone altogether. You became a ghost before you could even blink.

I don’t have any of my cards that I had when I was a kid anymore. But I remember some that were sprayed with their mother’s perfume that I would hold to my nose and imagine thoughts I didn’t yet have. Some that had hearts and Xs and Os on them, bold declarations for the time. But I don’t know those girls anymore. I don’t know where they have all gone. It doesn’t matter, though. They weren’t the way and they weren’t Mrs. Peacock.

On my way home from work in that dull gray and cold lifeless drive, I stopped at the “adult store” and bought an inflatable woman for 24.99. She came to twenty-six something with tax. I wasn’t going to be alone this year. Not ever. She wasn’t inflated, so I’d have to do that at home. I’d have to hope she wasn’t punctured, but if she was, she came with a little pack of patches and adhesive. She was in a clear plastic pack and all I could see was her face looking at me. Big blue eyes and yellow hair and bright red lips shaped like a perfect O. The man said they were having a special on their transvestite dolls, half off, but I said I don’t swing that way. He said no judgment here, as though he didn’t believe me. He also said they have dolls that look like Marilyn Monroe, and Wayne Newton, and Kim Kardashian. Big plastic asses. I shook my head and chuckled and told him I preferred someone more anonymous, more unique. He said they have dolls with both sex organs, but I just looked at him and didn’t say anything else. He must have got my drift because neither did he. He was just doing his job.

I refused a bag and carried her out under my arm and opened the door for her and gently placed her on the passenger seat. I didn’t have to buckle her in. She would be my date this year, I decided. This perfect plastic anonymous woman with no past and only a future as grand as I made it. She would go out to dinner and have drinks with me, and maybe to a movie if I wanted to. Maybe to a hockey game and we could be on the Kiss Cam. Wherever I wanted to go, she would come along. Whatever I wanted to do, she would do. We would put the top down if it wasn’t too cold and cruise the town. Or maybe we would go up on the mountain and make-out like teenagers. I’d buy her a scarf that would whip about in the cold wind. I’d buy her perfume. I would tell her everything I needed to say and she would listen to me. If I wanted more, she would be alright with that. If I wanted to call it a night early, she wouldn’t mind at all.

I got her home and took her out of the pack and unfolded her. She rolled out easy and I turned on the TV and watched some mindless hospital drama while I found her air valve. And then I began to blow, pinching it in my finger. It was only February 12, but I figured we could get to know each other for a few days before the big night. I had a lot to ask her. I wanted her to know a lot about me, too.

I couldn’t blow her up though and I sat there, feeling defeated about it like those sad men in the Viagra commercials sitting on the edge of their beds with their consoling wives patting them on the back. She lay limp in my lap and only her head had a little air in it, so it looked as though she was run over by a steamroller. A friend stopped over and asked me to go out for beers. He was the empathetic kind and figured I was still reeling from being dumped by my ex-fiancé. The doll was on the chair and he laughed seeing it. He thought it was something I meant to hide, but I had no intention to hide her at all. When I told him that I couldn’t blow her up, he said he would give it a try because he blew up a lot of balloons in his day.

“She’s not a damn balloon,” I snapped. The thought of his wet mouth on her valve made me cringe. His tongue in her hole. I stood between them.

“She’s plastic and, well, she kind of is. You put helium in her, she’ll float away.”

“You’re not putting helium in her,” I shot back.

He chuckled back, “Settle down! I was just saying.”

“Well, damnit, this is important.”

“How long has it been since you’ve been laid?”

“What?” I asked holding the flat woman.

“How long has it been, Kyle?”

“A month, maybe.”

“That’s all? Man. It’s been a year for me. Last Valentine’s Day, as a matter of fact,” he said. “With a fat ex, no less. So why the blow-up girl?”

“I don’t know. I want to try something different. This might be the start of something special.”

“You need help, Kyle,” he said. “You need help.” After I refused to go out for beers, he left and I went to Walgreens and bought an air pump. I stood there for a long time looking at it, wondering if it would work, wishing I had brought the doll with me to try it out. An employee, some teenage girl who squeaked when she talked, came up to ask me if I needed help and I was about to ask her what she thought before I realized it was a hard question to ask. Especially, to a teenage girl who wouldn’t understand because she was hardly past Valentine’s Day cards and first kisses and all of that goodness. No one probably had even felt her up, I felt bad for thinking. Maybe they had, though. What do I know. But there was no part in her that was yet jaded and it was all new and wonderful and I didn’t want to have any part in ruining that by explaining to her that the pump was for a blow-up doll that is to be my date this Valentine’s Day because the Russian and the folk singer and the single mom and the stripper and the accountant and my high school sweetheart didn’t work out as planned for me. So I just bought the pump on faith and lo and behold it worked. The doll was blown up in no time. And there she was. So beautiful and pretty with perfect posture.

I thought to name her Karen, or Kelly, or Sandy, or Natalie, or Natasha, but I realized I had been with girls by all those names before. In some car, or hotel room, or dark bedroom, that don’t really exist anymore. Like they don’t really exist anymore. So looking at her, and as she looked at me, I decided to name her Bernadette. It was a beautiful name, an old Motown song, and the name of a patron saint of something or other. Maybe that could be the topic of conversation when we were out on Valentine’s Day night. I would surprise her with candy and flowers and my wealth of knowledge of the origin of her name. Everything I knew about St. Bernadette, or any Bernadettes before her. Maybe, I’d slide the bartender a five and request Bernadette to be played on the pub’s audio system.

I had grand plans. And it all started by getting her some clothes. A new dress and some lingerie. I took her to the mall and straight to Victoria’s Secret. I told the girl I didn’t want anything too slutty because Bernadette isn’t that kind of girl. Then I took her to JC Penney and bought her a classy red dress and a fuzzy-white sweater. Something a school teacher would wear because Bernadette teaches fifth grade Math.

Over the next few days, I decided not to talk too much to her because I wanted to save it for the big night. When we were at the pub, sipping martinis, and eating calamari. And I could tell her that octopus joke that Daniel from the office told me. But the night of, when I was taking a shower, I forgot it. I got Bernadette dressed early, then put her in another room so when it was time to go, it would be like I was seeing her for the first time. I put on some Frank Sinatra in my apartment and knocked on her door. She waited for me to come in and I did and she was sitting in a chair watching television. And I swept her off her feet and we danced to The Way You Look Tonight. She danced heavenly, as though she had helium in her feet and nitrogen in her soul. Maybe, I thought, she was really the one for me. Maybe, I didn’t have to tell her about my past and we could both be new and perfect, fresh out of our plastic pouch, filled with new air.

She looked so savvy, so sophisticated, yet, so reserved. What a doll. What a dish. What a beautiful woman. Dressed to the hilt in JC Penney’s finest with Victoria’s Secret underneath. I would be lying if I said I didn’t think of skipping the calamari and martinis for a night in. To put Bernadette on that illustrious list of names – a list I once so dumbly exalted for its diversity and wide spectrum, for the obscurity of some of the names. I was once attracted to girls for the uniqueness of their name, or the precariousness of their situation. The hitchhiker, the nurse on a cigarette break, the hooker on the living room rug, the cheating wife with three kids. I strayed a hell of a long way from Valentine’s Day cards and boxes. From hugs and kisses. Irredeemable, I often felt.

But I was no longer a mutt, a scrub, a scab, a fiend, a junkie, a joke, a dope, a louse, a low-life. I was saved years ago, and this righteous path on which I walk led me to here, and the ability to make better choices was strong in me, as the force was in Luke. And Star Wars is the perfect analogy of my transition, if you can imagine Yoda as Christ and Han to be the father I never really had. I had gone from the father to the son and what darkness was once in me was cut down by he that I am. Luke. But no transition of such a magnitude can ever be so perfect to not leave some residue, and in my head these colossal thoughts, these dark spirits, sometimes battle still, but they are battles that are never manifested into real life.  

Despite the coldness of Valentine’s Day, the subfreezing temperatures, Bernadette asked me to put the top down and I said sure, Bernadette. And she asked to stop at Walgreens for a pair of sunglasses and a silk scarf to cover her hair and I stopped. But she stayed buckled in the car and said, “any old thing will do,” and I told her if anyone tried to grab her to honk the horn and she agreed to do so. I’d come running, I assured her. She smiled and said it was the nicest thing anyone has ever said to her. I bought her flowers and chocolate and a cream-colored silk scarf with red and pink hearts on it, and a pair of black Jackie-O sunglasses. And though it was dark already at 7, she put on the sunglasses as we drove off then up and down Main Street so she could see the tall buildings and the neon lights which reflected off her sunglasses. She looked like a movie star, though I reminded myself that she taught fifth grade Math.

After a dozen times up and down Main Street, we drove to the pub and she hung onto me as we walked in. We were seated at a table close to the bar that was nice but for all the busy servers that blew by on their way to the kitchen and back to their tables. It made it kind of hard to hear Bernadette and I thought to ask for a different table, but there wasn’t a table open. So I smiled and nodded and laughed when she laughed, but I drifted and thought about the one that came before her, the folk singer, and before her, and before her, and before her. And just a half a martini in, I started to realize love is a paper-heart chain we made in elementary school and it is all an imitation or an exaggeration of the first. The true first, if ever. And if never there was for you, then there is nothing to regret for you cannot regret nothing. But ever there was for me. Ever there most certainly was.  

I wasn’t here. I was anywhere but here. I had been so woefully scattered. It wasn’t Bernadette, it was me. And it didn’t matter what or who I dated. It could have been Marilyn Monroe, or Wayne Newton, or Kim Kardashian, or anyone in the world, and it wouldn’t have made a difference at all. Bernadette was beautiful. But she wasn’t the way and she wasn’t Mrs. Peacock.   

But I made the most of it. It would have been rude to walk out or to call it a night so soon. And I remembered the octopus joke and told it and she laughed until her martini came out of her nose and she said her face hurt from laughing so much. Then I started to tell her about Saint Bernadette, all that I knew, and she smiled and sat there and listened as though I was the most interesting person in the world for a few minutes. But then she started to cry and I immediately consoled her. She said she knew it was going to happen and that it wouldn’t work between us because, in the end, she wasn’t flesh and blood. And I said flesh and blood doesn’t matter to me and that plenty of people who are flesh and blood don’t have the soul she does. She cried buckets of tears and said she didn’t want to be deflated and put back in her plastic pouch and so I swore not to do so. She seemed a little cajoled by the promise.

“You ought to be proud of being you, Bernadette!” I consoled her, leaning across the table to speak in a loud and intense whisper. “Your namesake is the patron saint of bodily illnesses; Lourdes, France; shepherds and shepherdesses; against poverty; and people ridiculed for their faith. She asked for a chapel to be built by a cave, or something, where she twice saw The Mother Mary, or Our Lady of Lourdes. Since her death in nineteen-hundred-and-thirty-three, her body has remained internally incorrupt, without a blemish. And although some people called her simple and doubted what she saw, she never wavered. She was steadfast, and she very likely, I think, died a virgin.”

But just like that, she went away. She sat across from me looking back with those big blue eyes and that perfect circle mouth in the lost and confounded way she had when we first met. She no longer moved. She no longer said a word. She no longer cried. She sat there as cold as a crocodile and I knew I had lost her for good. My paper-chain had cut itself yet another heart, but a heart that I hadn’t in anyway defiled. Perhaps, I bored her to death, or what life I had infused in her with a few breaths, I had extracted with my sudden withdraw from the possibility of what could have been between us. I ate my calamari while hers got cold on her plate. The server asked if I wanted a box and I said, no, it never heats up very well. I finished my second martini and the rest of her first and sat there like a damn fool, on Valentine’s Day of 2019.

I put her sweater, her silk scarf, and sunglasses on her, paid the check and we left. The top was down and it was still cold, but it didn’t matter to me. I could hardly feel a damn thing. I looked over at Bernadette, thinking she would come back at any moment. Maybe that is why I left the top down. Maybe I was hoping for something that would never be, foolishly as it may seem. Something that I saw and had so briefly for a moment of time that was gone in the blink of an eye. We stopped at Walgreens and I took her inside with me. I took her to the back where they sold Valentine’s Day candy, fifty-thousand cards, and heart-shaped Mylar balloons with kittens and gorillas on them.

“I’m sorry, Bernadette,” I said as I squeezed her air valve. She collapsed in my arms, though her dress and underwear remained in place. The kid across the counter just stared at me and looked around as though for a manager. But no manager came, so he just stood there. Then he looked frightened so I tried to smile at him and he smiled back, awkwardly. And when she was entirely flat, after about six or seven minutes, I held her out and passed her over the counter to him.

“Fill her up,” I said.

I suppose I said it in such a way that the kid felt he had no choice in the matter. That he was left with no feeling that he could refuse my request, despite it being unusual and assuredly against store policy. I told him to fill up ten of the biggest heart balloons he had as well, then I laid out a hundred-dollar bill on the counter and he got to work. First, he filled up Bernadette with the helium and gently handed her back to me. Then he filled up the ten heart-shaped balloons and handed them to me one at a time. When he was all done, he nervously asked me if I would like a weight, and I said, “No. Not at all.” I told him to keep the change and he said he wasn’t allowed to, but I walked out without taking it.

I carried her up the mountain where I thought to go to make-out with her. Where I had made-out before. Where I had “made love,” as they call it, once or twice. But it was love because it was with someone I loved. Someone who floated away once upon a time. You can never replicate anyone, rightly, despite the pattern. Everyone is different and it is hard to tell if the pattern is made first, or made later, because you never know in life who it is you will meet. And you never know who you met in a past life, or who you will meet in the next. That is the beautiful part of life. The wisdom of Forrest Gump and his box of chocolates. But she is neither here nor there. She is not anywhere, and it is too late in this life to say who she is, or if she is at all. A man must keep some secrets. No one is entirely an open book, as much as they claim they are.

On top of that mountain I looked at Bernadette and tears stung my eyes. Maybe it was the subfreezing temperatures, the altitude, or the emotion of it all, or all of it all together, but I stood there with her very dramatically, hoping she would say something again. Anything. Maybe just a thank you. Something simple. But hopefully, no I love you. Not this late in the game. Or maybe just a wink, or a blink. But she didn’t. She said and did nothing at all. I had those ten balloons wrapped around my wrists and I unraveled them and tied them to her arms. I stood there and looked upon her one last time, then stepped out on the edge of the cliff where I let her go.

The Four Tops were singing Bernadette loudly in my head as she drifted off into the cold night sky. It began to snow fat flakes that fell slow and soft. I might have imagined it, but for a moment it appeared to me like she waved as she disappeared from view. Another Valentine, gone. I went back down the mountain and the pursuit of next year’s Valentine, and hopefully my forever after, would begin the next morning. I have always been the most hopeful person I have ever known. And I'd come running, if only I knew which way to run.