Managing My Girlfriend

Managing My Girlfriend

My girlfriend Ruth moved away last December, and now I am alone. Granted she is a bit older than me, not quite double, but just 7 years ago would have been, but a gf is a gf and so are the responsibilities.

So in the course of our phone conversation – New York to Truth or Consequences – I came up with a running stream of what she needs to do. Now. That’s my responsibility.

She shouldn’t be worried that she was a bit sad, out of sorts, down – it’s winter and everyone is. Butch said he was so-so. Jason went into radio silence, Jerry mopes, my neighbor simply left winter, even Cornelius’s ebullience, so bizarre a sight to begin with yet enduring for months, has taken a dive back to normalcy.

Losing a bit of her sensory edge? Take it from me, I said, my short term memory is drastically reduced from 5 years ago. My eyesight has stabilized to slowly fading. My right ear has fallen a notch, and really, the problem is I hear it but don’t decode it anymore – especially speak in a noisy environment.

Did she not know she was going out West – I suggested she read Richard Ford’s collection of short story malaise, 100% Western, and trust me I lived out West for a long time.

After a quick plug of the holes in the dike, we went forward, or I should say I leapt to the schemes available to her. Marketing schemes for her paintings. Call the newspaper. Nothing like a photo of the paintings to help. Extort a bit more out of her paying buyers already signed up. Make sure she knows how much material she is running through, and price accordingly. Play off her own customers against the gallery owners.

Of course, these are my fantasies, my involved schemes of manipulation that exist in a void. My own fantasies float up to be severed at will: a marijuana documentary? Try getting people to talk about that! A Tiger Woods documentary? Nice for me, but the last thing he needs. A job with Bill Delaney? Me as a comic? (it does seem so easy lying in the bathtub --). So to with Ruth. My directions for her perhaps are more fantasies, but these fantasies remark to reality. Do they guide it? Build it? Who is to say, unless you give one a spin.

Perhaps this is the concluding observation. Ruth has her own plans, although she excitedly listens to my scheming. As she adds details about her circumstances, my schemes perhaps lose an element of practicality, that is, they exist ever so slightly apart from the real world. In the end, Ruth’s initial course of action always seems to be the best course. My schemes effect this: the aim of her actions now are perhaps a little broader, that dream has another log under it, the worlds of fantasy and reality blur, and the reality of choosing your fantasy is one step closer.