Savage Grace

Early the next morning I could think of nothing but Vanessa's messages as I watched her yellow shorts bounce around the track. She had taken to running these days. She looked so sweet, with her unassuming, innocent expression. She might as well have been Julie Andrews skipping upon a lush prairie in the German foothills. How seemly a wrapper for such indescribable wickedness. She was totally irresistible. Maria and Heather were a lovely afterthought as I tried to watch Vanessa trailing them on the track, binoculars straddling my nose.

By now the thrill of the previous day had disappeared. With Maria and Heather's help, a decadent fantasy faded to something harmless and insignificant. What anger or rage could possibly be required to push such things aside? I tried to convince myself of these things, I tried.

Flashes of the recent events surfaced; Heather's lips on Maria's breast, Maria grasping the other. It was just too real. My imagination could not inflate it. The opposite, actually. It was forgettable. In contrast, walking away from Jen and Linda had provoked a frenzy of speculation. I imagined the unknowable details. I wondered whether Jen would apply a light suction the way an old girlfriend did. I obsessed over the possibilities in Linda's office. They were inexhaustible. I had perfected each scenario without a moment of conscious thought. The illusion fed the angry beast inside like nothing in memory could. My delusions had elevated Jen and Linda into irresistible goddesses. My stark, matter-of-fact memories of Maria and Heather left them mortal.

I began to accept the disturbing reality...the unknown was my greatest nemesis. The things Linda would say, the way Jen would move. These were curiosities of devastating power. Denying them was futile. I came to understand that what I could resist in reality would invade and corrupt my mind. To save my mind I would risk an invasion and corruption of my actual life. I could no longer bury my head in the sand.

How easily a man can fall to an evil women, and harder to a saintly one. I would attack the beast within, accepting the dangers. I would not live in a chaste fantasy world of contrived perversion, but a brutal, impassioned world of harsh realities. Those realities required sound judgment.

Accepting just any women into my reality would be disastrous. So little did I understand about women, only enough to know which ones were pure poison. Lily was one. I had avoided such women ever since she took ownership of my older brother. But Lily could not take all the blame. If he had confessed immediately, his wife would have forgiven him. It was the ultimate mistake to hide from his wife and make Lily's secret a weapon capable of destroying him, which it eventually did.

I would forge a life of honesty, and to do so, I needed to find a woman capable of understanding the perils of honesty. They were considerable. Vanessa seemingly understood. Maria and Heather seemed to understand intuitively. I suspected there were other women were just as harmless. But, there was a problem...

I was in love with Vanessa.

This was not good. Love does not mesh well with reality. Harmless play with a kitten is one thing, a tiger can playfully kill you. Love is dangerous. But I knew that only I could make her a tiger, and I decided I would not. Such a burden was only possible through her own imagination. I would let it grow all on its own.

As for myself. I decided a free man must be allowed to love, but only to a woman capable of loving a free man.

Here's how I see it: The woman capable of loving this man does so shamelessly. She insists on loving him through impossible conditions, staring down insanity without a trace of doubt. She knows she can do no wrong in loving him. She does so effortlessly, as a black hole that drains him of sadness, anxiety, and fear. If she is true in doing so, what remains in him is love. Such savage grace completely evades the man who cannot conceive it and haunts the man who cares for nothing but proof that it exists.

Vanessa understood. She removed fear and sadness despite feigned disinterest. She did so for a man undeserving of such things. As such I could offer her nothing but dismissal and resistance. It was a weak, but honest attempt. Complete rejection was one of those impossible conditions she would be delighted to face...a measure useless to me.

I was pathetic. I knew it. And more so by pretending to deserve being the subject of her fantasy. I decided she deserved more than lies. I decided to reveal the true awfulness of my being. There was no question I wanted to be the man who deserved her, but it was a lie. I was saddened to have to disappoint her, but I couldn't allow her to sacrifice her love so foolishly. She would need to see, hear, and feel the embodiment of my true self...the self I was ashamed of. It sickened me.

This was not a collaboration. I needed to make these choices for myself. I would say goodbye to Vanessa in the same way I said hello...by being my true, unforgivable self.