NOW AND MAYBE TILL FOREVER [An Account of my Love & Pain]

We were so very young then, and now, so very soon, so fast, already—twenty-three years had past. But the scenes and the passionate dialogue from that evening, were as fresh in my mind’s eye, at present, as if it were just yesterday. And I was fully convinced at this juncture, that it would always remain so: reliving itself now and again. It was an evening so poignant in sentiment, that I’d never forget it, no matter what amount of time should ever pass. The little place where we lived together then, at West Jordan, Utah, in the greater Salt Lake Valley, was cozy. It was in the springtime: the middle of May. And the evenings were always dry, warm, pleasant and tender; and lilacs and lavender were in full-bloom, their alluring fragrances intermingling and wafting through the mountain air on these gentle, persuasive nights. And where at the encroaching of dawn, the bright stars one by one gave a final twinkle and went out, as the rosy pink light of yet another spring’s daybreak, swiftly replaced the cobalt night that was ever evanescing across the western space.

There was but a glimmer of light, I now recalled, coming from the lamp in the far corner of the room, creating a shadow on the wall. The atmosphere was quiet, and I was very still, almost imperceptibly so, she later told me, that I was barely noticeable in the sparsely lit room, except for the shadow of light that reflected, dancing against the side of my face. I sat sluggishly on the sofa clasping my hands, resting my head on the back of the sofa, as I stared intensely through the semi-darkness at the ceiling, my legs spread apart. And to any passers-by it would have been well-apparent in the gestures of my posture that I was ill-at-ease; but yet, I was well-aware of every little influence of energy in the place. Jodi, standing at the threshold in the backdrop of this scene, paused—then, smoothing coyly her long brunette hair behind one ear, a gesture I knew all so well; something she only did when a tad unsure, was straining to listen at the foot of the stairs before advancing any further. I could feel her tall, elegant and regal form; the sultriness of her presently subdued energy, suspended in wait: to make up. Her stealth and unobtrusive manner just then, displayed so much modesty, almost to the point of aloofness; like something that desires to forever go unseen, lurking in the shadows, seemingly half-afraid,—that alone: in my estimation—made her love so obvious.

“What are you doing?” she finally asked at length, breaching the silence of the place in a soft, velvety voice as she came around the corner into the room where I was sitting.

“Nothing,” I said curtly, my posture unchanged.

“What are you thinking about, then? Would you like for me to turn on some lights? she asked, waiting near the light-switch.

“It’s not so important. No, leave it like it is. I like it when it’s dark,” I said. “Jodi, you know that.”

“Don’t be silly. Of course what you think: it’s important to me,” she said. Her smile was warm and acquiescent. But I didn’t see her; only felt the gesture that I knew all too well. She took her hand down and moved away from the switch where she was about to turn on the light. “You’re important to me. That’s right, I forget . . . . you do prefer the dark.” Then pausing momentarily, she began to quote ever so softly aloud to herself, something that I’d once read to her, that T. S. Eliot had at one time written,

“So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

I was at once rather pleased and moved that she’d not forgotten that verse. But still yet—I didn’t respond to her; I don’t think—I did, if my memory, and the fragments of that night, jotted down in my diary the next day, and for some time afterwards, bit and pieces, now serves me correctly [which memories, and diary entries for the catharsis of it, usually, always do: concerning matters that one regrets and wishes they could do all over] I think that I only continued with blank, brown eyes, my fixed, abstracted gaze up at the ceiling.

“You’re always thinking,” Jodi said, as she took a few steps approaching nearer to me. “Even little things you ponder intensely. So—Taylor, tell me: is there anything you’d like to talk about?”

We had quarreled earlier, and afterwards, feeling that we should have a bit of distance, she’d gone upstairs to the bedroom. I’d not said much during our little spat, only grumbled coarsely at what my deeper, concentrated senses perceived as an invasion into its territory, and moved onto the sofa, when she had approached me, while I was reading with an intense focus at the table. Now, looking back twenty-three years, I know that I could sometimes be so carried away in thought, that the slightest interruption would annoy me, much more than it should’ve. Thankfully, it was something that years of seasoning, remedied. Sadly, those same years brought many a tragedy: the price for experiences’ sake.

Although not much had been said, yet for Jodi, this had been the worst kind of arguing; the silence: where she felt me shrink away from her emotionally, was helpless torture.

And it was embarrassing now, to think of how my youth had been rather unyielding, not willing to just let go of a thing, but rather, with over-zealous persistence to sweat the small things.

“No! About what?” I huffed. “I don’t care what you have to say, now.” I raised up venomously, from my earlier posture. Jodi told me, some time later, that she could sense rage, when I finally looked at her, and it made her tremble. The way I raised my head, it frightened her, at first. But then, she quickly realized that there was nothing in me to fear. As she saw beyond the surface, and the stubbornness, something charming and graceful.

“I don’t want to talk about anything” ; I said most impetuously, “hasn’t there been enough said?” I resettled back into the sofa.

“But I do,” she had insisted then, easing ever closer. “Taylor,—I think you took what I said out of context. Now you’re offended, aren’t you?”

I only wished now at the recollection, that I might poke my head into the sand for how foolish and caddish and impetuous I’d behaved, then. And wondered if Jodi still remembered that lone, tragic evening, out of all the other blissful and wonderful innumerable ones . . . . tragic, I say in the sense, that it could not be ‘unlived’. And coming to mind now, Tennyson’s assertion, that:

“It is better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all”

Did not assuage the heaviness of what I presently felt.

“Out of context!” I sat up again. But this time my manner of being wasn’t as alarming to her. “Offended! How else was I suppose to take it!—was there another interpretation? Why should anything I think about be of consequence to you?” I said, being complete lost to any sense perception of reasonableness.

“Because it is, to us—of great consequence,” Jodi said awkwardly, still not knowing how to take me. I could tell though, that she wanted to move closer to me, and perhaps even have caressing contact, but she was nervous. Her breathing was hurried and uneasy.

Outside, a night bird made an unusually loud, eerie squawk as it passed like a zephyr close over the roof of the house. And in that moment, out of instinct, she was startled closer to me, when she heard the strange noise.

“Can I ever have anything just left to myself?” One tiny thought, maybe?” I had rotated my head without lifting it from the back of the sofa and again looked at her briefly and then turned away.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and sat down next to me, facing me, with one of her legs tucked beneath her. “I would never purposely try to invade you. Never would I infringe on your space. You have to believe me, Taylor. Can’t we not fight?—Can we not ever fight? Yes; whether good or bad: be honest about how we feel, but let’s not ever fight again.”

“Fight? I’m not fighting! I’m just saying how I feel.”

“Okay.”

For moments, profound silence echoed in the room.

“You know,” she mustered up the courage to put her finger on my arm. . . . “that I’d never do anything purposely to upset you.”

“I always thought that, J.”

“And now?” she said, feeling a little more at ease, because I only called her J, in the most sensitive feeling times.

“It simply doesn’t matter, now,” I suggested then, coolly, removing her comfort. “You would be much better off without me.” This comment haunted me more over the years than any other I remember from any experience, in any time period, now when looking back over the decades. Some insecure, fiendish possession took hold of me that evening, and did not want to be exorcize. And having the details jotted down verbatim in my journal, was like carrying around a cursed object all these years. It seemed a foreshadowing that I could not out run, nor out live. . . . perhaps now the only course of act—would be to destroy the very pages of the journal in which this tale was scribed. It was like all nefarious objects that held one under mocking scrutiny, leaving a permanent scaring, no matter what would be done henceforth. My words spoken that evening did not return unto me void, as Isaiah had prophesied in his Metaphysics. But did indeed accomplished that which I pleased. And summoned forth, conjuring as it were, many a situation in relationships that were most certainly not of my wont. And always in some fashioned, ‘being much better off without me.’

“That hurts. How can you be so cold and callous? That really does hurt. And not just on the surface where all the prying, nosy eyes of the world, and everyone can see. No! But where only I can feel.” Tears began to trickle down in heavy drops on both sides of her face. But somehow she still managed to hold onto some composure. Later she told me, that she’d thought in that very instant: How could he believe such a thing?

For awhile afterwards she didn’t say anything, only watched the lamplight as though she studied over what I should’ve not said. Finally, with thrusting vigor, she said:

“No, never could I be better off! Earlier, before I went upstairs, you were right, I can’t keep my hands away from you.” With her other hand she wiped her face. My recollection of every little detail of the evening was flawless. As I followed the instructions of my mentor, George R. Clay, who had been the student editor of the Harvard Review in 1942-43, before going to war.

“You should always keep a daily journal. It’s not always the easiest thing to do—but you must. It’ll give you future directions. But moreover, if you decide to write, it’ll give you lots to write about,” George had said to me as we lunched on one of our usual Thursday noontime luncheons. He had been right. For every sliver of detail in recalling this night, was right in front of my eyes, in my own writing, just as it happened.

I gave a glance at her other hand now resting on my forearm.

“You know—your hand—” I stammered, paused—“it’s only when I’m trying to work,” I said, falling under a spell of being half-soothed.

“You know, I’d do anything for you.”

“No—please don’t say that. Don’t!” Like a fever, my earlier irritation had revived. “Just don’t say that to me.”

“Well, it’s true. I love you more than anyone, ever. I’ve never been made to feel so close to anyone,” Jodi had said. But the pleading tone of her words served to further row me.

“But I don’t want to hear it—not now. Don’t over-love me.”

“Why, because you are thinking about ending this, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t say anything,” I said. “I’ve only been thinking, about what I didn’t say.”

“You don’t have to. You won’t even look at me. That in itself says enough, says all. And you want to go away from us—what we have together,” she said. “When?” she began to sob bitterly, looking directly at me. The thoughts and images of then, still chills me at core, that I could have caused someone I cared for such tremendous agony. I turned and faced forward and away from all her sadness and pain; yet it didn’t alleviate what I was now regretting. “When, Taylor, are you going to leave the Salt Lake Valley?”

“It’s just so different. Life!—It’s not how I dreamt it would be. I thought this would be it, us. I don’t know; maybe. . . . I’ll go away. I didn’t say.”

“It could be,” she had looked away in the direction of the lamp. “Will you ever come back, if you do leave?” I felt sorry, truly. That I’d reduced her to a display of neediness. But still yet, I was hampered by some innate, wayward pride preventing me from being more tender at that moment in time. I looked at Jodi and then once more turned away. I was rendered inept, by the feral feelings of youth, untamed.

“I don’t know anything anymore. Lately, it seems all we do is quarrel: silently, mentally or emotionally by unseen tension, or physically. This isn’t at all how I wanted it. I wanted it differently, this time. You seemed to have understood me, my passions.”

“You know plenty. You’re an intelligent person; one of the most understandable. And the quarrels—well, I don’t much like them, either. But we’re fairly new, at so many things—we’re learning—learning so much in stride. It’ll get better. You’ll see.”

“Perhaps. But I know nothing as I once thought I knew, of love. And, as for thing improving: I’ve heard that before. And I’ve seen it in others just like us, who’ve said it to each other before. But it only got worse once it’s begun,” I said. In truth, I was rather clueless. I had only known a few others, and with them it’d never had the potential that we had; and had never lasted nearly as long. And I had never lived with them. So my inexperience and the flood of emotions of that inexperience scared me. “Jodi, I’m not comparing you to anyone. I’d never do that. You know that. You’re not like anyone I’ve known. But maybe it’s all me. I’m no good for you. I’m just not sure of myself anymore, in so many ways,” I concluded.

“It’s you saying it. Where did all of this begin?”

I remembered now the silence that ensued here, echoing like a gong and made me edgy. I got up and walked past her, past the little table and into the kitchen and over to the window and looked out at the Oquirrh Mountains range. Then for some reason my mind was suddenly drawn back inside and my eyes over to the table. I had forgotten about the book that I had left there, lying with the open pages turned face down, marking my place, and my trusty, ever faithful Moleskine beside. And then again, I looked out at the Oquirrh range, thinking about what Jodi said: Where did all this begin? Then my attention drifted back to the book.

There must be something deeper underlying. How could something so benign—cause such a row? I said softly aloud, again looking outdoors. The sky was darker now. But the mountains were still very visible towering like sentries in the backdrop. With few trees in the valley, the encroaching night sky appeared so big, almost threatening towering as it seemed over space and time.

“I know it doesn’t make sense,” Jodi said, almost startling me as she had come up behind me while I watched out the window. “It’s just that we haven’t been together for too long. That’s why I was upset at your reading, your writing. You’d not in the eighteen months, ever seemed so far away. You seemed completely carried away to another place altogether, and were so contented being there. Like you were in want for nothing else. So it made me jealous. Your silence and seemingly desire for nothing; how peaceful you looked. . . . I found it threatening. I know, I know—it was foolish.” I listened with intent: though I never turned round. She went back to the sofa. I spoke from the window.

“I wasn’t trying to hurt you, or avoid you, or distract myself from you, or to make you feel unwanted. But this raises so many other concerns.”

“I know that now. That you weren’t trying to ignore me,” she said, rising from the sofa and coming again towards the kitchen. I was then coming back, we met halfway. “I was selfish, and I’m sorry. I know that you need your space. Heck, we all need our space. But you do know for the two and a half years that we’ve known each other, and for the eighteen months that we’ve lived together, we’ve been completely inseparable, when home together.”

“Yes. I know. And I can see how it could be like a culture-shock. That I get. But this whole episode frightens me. That can’t be all there is to it; there must be a deeper issue here.”

“There’s nothing else. Relatively speaking, it’s early for us: on so many levels. It’ll be good. You’ll see. You know how I feel, but—” she paused, locking her fingers with mine as we stood there in front of each other— “it’s just, we’re getting to really know each other.” I remembered our eyes meeting at this juncture, and seeing only a vagueness of what we wanted to see, no matter how intensely we searched each in the others eyes; and the most poignant meaning of what was transpiring, that only the years to come could show us; and now I could see clearly the tragedy in our young loving eyes now, that so evaded detection then.

And I thought now in recalling that evening: Was hindsight really a phenomenon to be so revered, for revealing tragedies, when looking back?

“It’s strange. It’s like pieces of a puzzle moving in my mind, trying to be assembled, but nothing is clear, and pieces moving but not coming together. It’s all scrambled. . . . ‘what should I do?’ I ask myself. I’m afraid. I don’t want to lose something valuable; something that means so much; or, rob from you. Once it’s gone: that sense of self, you’re never the same again. It’s like you forget who you once were; or, who you might’ve become,” I said. “I’ve known people who it’s happened to before. That’s why I feel I should just be alone. What if I can’t give you what you need, what you deserve—all the time?”

“So far you have,” Jodi said. “And I’d never purposely try and make you feel that you couldn’t be your own person. I know that means everything to you. I also know that love should be trust and freedom, not suffocation.”

“No-one ever plans it: it just happens. It’s just not how I dreamt it,” I said, detaching my hands from her warm caressing comforting hands and going back over to the window. She didn’t follow me, but instead returned to the sofa.

“So, you want to go away for a time?” she asked, seated but a small distance away, that seemed a chasm apart.

“I’m afraid of hurting you. . . . . and of losing myself.”

I can only imagine now, what she must’ve of thought in that instant. Because now I see how strange it was, that I should talk to her on such serious matters, and stare out the window and not at her.

“I’ll take my chances.”

“I know how you feel. But it’s more than that.”

“What then?”

At this point I came back and sat down, but didn’t look at her, and resumed staring at the ceiling in the sparsely lighted room. Why couldn’t I look at her, the one that for me had no rival in substance or beauty? I wanted to look at her, hold her, love her. But something held me back.

“I’ve felt in me, and someone I mentioned it to, said that if I continued to think it, believing it, it might actually happen.” This I had spoken in such a cavalier-manner, that it really made her angry, this unknown.

“What might happen?” she fumed about this mystery. “What have you felt?”

“It’s just how I’ve felt—that I only have ten, fifteen, twenty years at most to live. Before the light inside of me burns out.” I was at a stage in life where since, I’ve seen so many young men arrive at at a time, where the need to have instant answers are just so far away, to a point where there’s a sense of defeat for all the unknown that crowds around from the unseen world; that only time and living can ever truly answer. So this was the feeling of overwhelm that possessed me, the only hell and devil of our world. All the thoughts of loving Jodi and not letting her down; and perhaps progeny to be responsible for, and careers, and all the other, limited few, human-things that one is taught will be their defining points,—out of a vast universe of endless possibilities. Just the mere sensing of such a thing, was a thwarting prospect to me. How was one to ever choose and to know, unequivocally?

“Why do you feel such things? And why say those things to me?”

“Why say those things to you? I’ll tell you exactly why. Because you should know. Because this is how I feel,” I said. “In many ways, I already feel my light has gone out, —it’s just my body that refuses.” I sincerely think now, that what I was feeling as of late, then, and sincerely wanted to express as articulate as I could was, I wanted to grow and know me. The real me—beyond societal’s model and structure. And I felt then, as I continued to do so for a long time afterwards, that one knew his mate, his progeny, his neighbors, all the things he was taught to know, but never really himself. He worked, he played, he participated, he knew the outward appearances of so many a thing—but of himself, at core, hardly anything. Young though I was, in my early twenties, still yet: I’d garnered enough mental wherewithal and understanding, and, personal fortitude, that this did not bode well from within. And in a sense, I was imploding. And was that not a kind of death? To live a lifetime, in the duty and service of just going along with what was right for everyone else. . . . without thinking it through for oneself, and following one’s own intuition?

Though she did not want to hear any of it.

“I don’t want to know that. Not now, not ever! Don’t ever say these things to me again,” she said, with anger, which I believe was trying to cover up her own fear of the unknown. She had spoken with her face in the palms of her hands. “You’re not going to die!”

I was now sitting up on the edge of the sofa. She reached over and touched my shoulder. “I’d much rather have you, what we have now—for a day, than be elsewhere with another, forever.”

“It’s simply not worth it.”

“To me you are. Just because I may have you now and might lose you later, doesn’t mean I’ll be upset for having known you—part of you!” she exclaimed. “Why are you so obstinate on this matter?” I remembered her jumping up and going into the adjoining room. And thought of Lord Alfred Tennyson’s assertion, on loving and losing came streaming to mind. So her point was not without validity. As our place was quaint, I heard her talking softly aloud to herself:

“Maybe everybody, in some fashion or other, had to move on someday. Still yet, it’s a hard thought—the reality of it.” How many times did I read in my Moleskine, these words’ of Jodi over and over across the time and space of two decades. . . . and to be filled with such sadness and pain?

Standing up I admired her elegant and wanton figure, that was always so accommodating. How could I be thinking of going away? I thought. Our loving is perfect. Is carnal bliss, not enough—for now? I’m still yet young: twenty-four and Jodi twenty-three. Should not the ‘other' Perfected aspects of relations between a man and women be worried about later? Why worry about what may or may not happen, in some distant future? Are we not blissfully pleased every evening; and in the tender hours before the dawn? Sure, we are young, but for the Salt Lake Valley, in some regards, we could be considered late bloomers. There are people that we know who have been wedded seven years, that are our age. But you crave for more, don’t you? I asked myself.

Slowly, I made my way the few steps over to her. She stood at the table thumbing through the book. It was my mentor’s book, “Tolstoy’s Phoenix, from methods to meaning in War and Peace.” I had read War and Peace a few times, over the years, in anticipation of studying George’s theory, as he told me much about it, as we dined in the Faculty Club. Jodi had met George, as she’d come east to attend the Harvard Extension School. There on the Yard, we had met, and in a short frame of time, became very well-acquainted, and later on I returned with her to the Valley, which was her hometown.

She stood there crying.

“Don’t cry,” I’d said, feeling guilt. “I don’t like it when you cry; don’t even think of it.” I moved ever closer to her. Still to this present day, I don’t think she cried to curry sympathy, but was sincerely distraught.

“I’ll try not. But it’s hard.” She turned the book over onto the open pages marking the spot where I had left it.

“Not to cry?”

“No,” she’d answered. “That part’s easy.” I didn’t truly realize then, but the years have shown me ever since, just how intrepid were her words then.

“What then?”

“Not to think of you going away, that’s hard.”

“I see.”

“I’d do anything for you.” She moved quickly away, and went and stood by the sofa, somberly. Feeling so much guilt: I couldn’t help but be right there with her, like a magnetic connection. I wanted to touch her, hold her, caress her—but I couldn’t raise my arms, and it pained me so, and that pain has ever remained.

“Because you love me? I asked. The question was feeble, and needed not be asked.

“That too. . . . but really, because I know that you’d do anything for me, anything! And I trust you.”

“I still say, Jodi—I’m no good: not even to myself.”

“What makes you think this way, after all this time, and now. . . .why now?

“Reality. Old fashioned reality. You know: it hardly fails. The stuff, reality.” I knew now, twenty-plus years afterwards, that having seasoned mentors and mature friends hadn’t been the best thing for a young man in love—and needing to learn things for himself. As they’d gained experience: by mistakes, and for brotherly-love of me, and not wanting me to be set-up for hosts of failures, had endowed me with the minutiae’s of their Perfected lives, being passed on in hindsight. So much of my thinking then, had been passed onto me from out of ‘their’ past realities; yet, I was receiving this insight, fifty-years ahead of time. Later, I’d realized these thought-models of imitation, were a form of idolatry on my part.

“What can we do? It’s the way that we live. One day at a time. There’s no other way.”

I didn’t speak.

She looked at the blanket and pillow at the far end of the sofa. “Are you going to sleep here to-night?”

Again, I was speechless. She sat down.

“Come on,” I said without so much as a thought, and helped her up.

Once we were in bed, I pulled the covering over my shoulders, and glanced over at her. She lay half-exposed. I covered her flesh. There was definitely something going on. I knew not what. But for now we were at strange amiable states, and the armistice that existed between us, as we lay so closely, seemed like a truce between two different species, whose calm was more that of curiosity than that of understanding. I stared up at the ceiling. What did I see. . . . ? Jodi began crying again.

“J, don’t cry. I’m sorry. Please don’t cry. I’m here now. We’re here together. And who knows about to-morrow,” I said, feeling love and pain.

Then, she said: “To-morrow,” sounding wholly bewildered. “And we’re here together. And who knows. . . now and maybe till forever,” she concluded, in a trance-like state, that I’ll always remember, as though from somewhere very far away, not really envisioning anything.

T. M. Boughnou was drawn to the writers and thinkers of the ninetieth and early twentieth centuries. After years of a dedicated reading and writing regimen and journal-keeping of his thoughts and observations of his daily routines and personal travels, he began to write. He splits his living-time between Davenport, Iowa and Boston, Massachusetts.