On the road again May 11, 1983
Fran’s gone again, this time north to Vermont rather than
southwest to Texas, in search of blue sky, green trees and some inner satisfaction
she can’t find in this neck of the wood.
The lure of the road outweighs all other considerations,
even love, a lure that sends Woodstock children like her and my ex-wife scurrying
to remote places on the planet. Even Suzzanne, my brief college lover, could not
resist, seeking to find salvation in the mountains of Colorado and the next
step in her intellectual career, but perhaps more about escaping beyond her
parents’ reach.
All the women in my life consumed with their upbringing,
just a bit ashamed of their roots, Louise with wealthy parents who adopted her,
Suzzane, with her blue collar father and a compliant mother (who became a
symbol of what feminists like Suzzane so opposed), and Fran, whose father haunted
and perhaps abused her).
All with other men in their lives, with whom I had to share,
the not-too-successful artist men who could not make a life out of their art,
and settled for booze or worse, yet, whom these women could not completely
abandon, even when professing to be with me.
Fran punishes her father by making no secret of her sexuality,
going much too far and never failing to tell the man where she’s been and with whom
and for how long, often bringing up my name to him as if I am the worst person
her father could imagine her being with.
And yet, Fran craves independence from him, from me, from
the other men with whom she frequently makes love, although is not so bitter as
to completely reject her father. She came back last summer because of him, to
help him recover from some illness.
Now she has her brother, a rather helpless rag that is tied
to her more firmly than any other men with whom she has sex, someone so dependent
on her, she will abandon us to be with him, and part of the reason she goes to
Vermont now, to find a secure place for him, her great white whale that will
eventually drown her, and me, as well.
She is never happy chained to any of us anyway, joyful when
she is on the road, far from anyone who might otherwise tie her down, but creates
a vacuum in my life I can’t manage to fill, even more potent than the one my
ex-wife created when she left for her “career” of datebook male friends, or
even Suzzane’s flight to find academic importance beyond the blue collar life I
live.
All of this saying something about my choices, too, who I
pick to love.
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