The Cha Cha of Relationships

13 April 1994 and 19 May 1994
Lincoln, Nebraska

I came across a couple more letters that I wrote to Paula N. before I moved back to Illinois. They’re a matched pair of letters, with one referencing the other. At that time, I had been trying to get more social by going to a Unity church – which focused on quiet, meditative spiritual growth. They were kinda like the Unitarians but also like the Quakers. It wasn’t unusual for people in this group to discuss spiritual development and human relationships.

Anyway, a guy from the church who teaches stuff about human relationships, talked to me about “the cha cha of relationships,” in which one party approaches the other and the other party steps back in reaction and defense. Then, when the person who had reacted recovers from the other person’s perceived invasiveness, he or she approaches the other party and this time the other person reacts and draws back. It’s the CHA CHA OF RELATIONSHIPS. Get it? I have some more text I can use to write a little more – a bit more eloquent – but this is the basic back-and-forth dance.  . . .

"One person is attracted closer and closer to the other person until the first feels that he or she is starting to be absorbed into the other's personal sphere. Person #1 freaks out at the potential loss of his or her self-identity and then breaks off to recover sense of self. 

After some recovery, person #1 might then get interested in person #2 again and try to get close again, but person #2 might think, by this time, that he or she doesn't *want* to get close again and so may back off . . . etc. etc.

Thus, we dance the Cha Cha of Relationships.

Work?!

One time in the 90s I went to a publishing conference at which I met a couple who worked at the same publisher. They went on and on about how great their jobs were, and wasn't that what it was all about?

I thought, "These people are nuts!"

References:




https://markmanson.net/passion

Hands across the Decades

October 16, 2019
Bloomington, Illinois

I was working at the library today in a quiet area when a stealthy patron suddenly exclaimed, "Clarksdale! Doesn't get any more authentic than that!" It was a fellow traveler from the 60s and early 70s stopping to comment on my Ground Zero T-shirt. "Have you been there?" I asked the white-haired and -bearded geezer.

"No," he said, "but years ago I hitch-hiked through Mississippi and I know about the blues tradition around there."

"Through *Mississippi*?" I asked. "When was that?" "Oh, about 1974," says he. He was from Tulsa and he described hitching through Mississippi as a long-hair beardo, which was quite a surprise since at the same time I was hitching through Oklahoma and getting refused service at cafes and restaurants that forbid both long hair and beards.

He allowed that he'd had a few scares but no actual harm came to him, and I averred the same and threw in one touchy moment when several good old boys picked me up somewhere between Indiana and South Carolina. They assured me they would take me to my destination, but one feller, the loud-mouthed driver, said he had to go home first and pick up a "nigger whacker" - an axe handle. I became decidedly nervous after that, but I didn't see a way to back away from that particular peer group. I hoped to be rid of them soon enough, but for the time being I was stuck. We left the interstate and went to the guy's home, where he picked up the aforementioned axe handle. To show what a great weapon he had, the guy swung it and smacked it against a stout tree. Thereupon the handle broke and flew into a million pieces, which scattered everywhere and set off a round of raucous laughter from the guy's buddies. If only such a fate would befall the sons and grandsons of those same guys today.

Suzanne Nightmare

September 17, 1992
Streator, Illinois

Extremely disturbing dream that begins with a false start: Suzanne comes to see me in Streator, where there are only me, Pat, and Mike. She comes to see me in my room, and we go at each other intensely for a bit, then have to break it off because Pat is coming. Suzanne vanishes or goes to another room. I'm sitting there literally half-cocked: i.e., halfway through ejaculation. Pat assumes I've been beating off and makes some very frank reference to it, like "Think I'll go beat off myself."

Heavy and Cool

I relate a lot through music, and I wish I could upload a playlist to see if anyone relates in a similar way. For example, this one: https://youtu.be/zAVU3LNzsrw?list=RDzAVU3LNzsrw. My playlist includes The Traveling Wilburys, Bob Dylan, the San Francisco 60s groups, The Byrds, Tom Petty, and many others.

I am a bit of an entertainer and a hambone. I'm also relatively new to town after being under the radar for a couple of years and also being kind of stove up. (I was in a bad car crash about 50 years ago, and it caught up with me a couple of years ago.) I'm still pretty stove up, but I am looking to rebuild myself physically as well as spiritually. If our trips happened to coincide somehow, that would be great, but it certainly doesn't have to be heavy all the time - sometimes it can just be cool.

Some people say life is a highway, and I hope to be back driving down that highway soon. (I don't drive because of a problem with vertigo, but I'm hoping to get back to it soon, as the problem appears to have been a fluke.) I also don't relate to sports, so now I've really let it all out, like Neil Young in "I Believe in You."

I live in downtown Bloomington within walking distance of some nice places to eat and drink. I'm also into going to movies and am looking for a date with whom to see the latest really good movie or just have coffee or dinner or talk. I am a big talker and I like women who like conversation and who are smart and witty. A bonus is someone who knows what "heavy" means and also knows what it means to get your sh*t together (both back in the day and throughout your life). This is *not required,* but being able to get it together is always a great trait.

I love to talk with people and learn their life stories. But specifically I want to enjoy the company of a nice low-maintenance gal and learn all about her - where she's from, where she's gone in her life, what kind of experiences she's had.

Take care and Peace Out until we meet again.

Around Town in the Star City

Summer 1993, Lincoln, Nebraska

On my way to the library I passed a cute little Harley-Davidson sitting in someone's driveway. It was like a big Harley-Davidson but in miniature: very unusual. On the way back I saw a guy in bib overalls whom I took to be the owner of the bike, so I stopped and complimented him on the bike.

He got a kick out of my interest and proceeded to tell me how he had rebuilt the bike from a jumble of parts ("It came in a box," he said) over the past few years. He did a great job because the thing looked brand-new. I lost him on a few arcane details, but basically the bike - a Harley-Davidson Sprint - was built in Italy in or around 1967, at a time when Harley was trying to compete with the huge influx of small Japanese bikes and their ilk. The guy used the term "entry-level" to describe the general type of bike, but while other companies produced "step-through" scooters and whining 2-strokers, Harley simply produced a scaled-down version of a Hog.

The guy says his Sprint is the only one he's seen in Nebraska, and he plans to "take it up to Sturgis" and show it off.

AIN'T GOT NOTHIN' TO SAY

October 2, 2019 - Bloomington, Illinois

I was out on the street, looking good, etc.. when I saw a guy at the street corner holding up a sign. I figured he was asking for money or maybe going somewhere, but as I crossed the street and looked to read the sign, I couldn't make out anything.

So I asked the guy what his sign said, and he held up the sign - a piece of cardboard - to show it didn't have anything on it. I said, "How come your sign is blank?" He replied, "Because I AIN'T GOT NOTHIN' TO SAY."

Stove Top Woman

March 24, 1995

Dream:

I am with a young woman whom Rob has introduced me to (he's there, sitting on a couch at her place). The question comes up of how she likes to have sex, and she describes it to me, using the kitchen stove as a major prop:

Referring to her boyfriend, she says, "First he removes the [pan support thing], then he spits in the ring, then he just puts that aside. Then he props me up on the stove and comes all over me." [This is a pretty loose interpretation, but that's essentially what she reports.]

I make some remark about how that seems a pretty strange way to have sex, and she looks at me very directly and says, "Well, I don't know if I can do it any other way."

Nazi State

Monona County, Iowa 1995

The guy was wearing blue jeans, an army jacket, and a baseball cap. He took off his cap to reveal close-cropped graying hair. His face was lean and muscular, and his eyes were bright.

“Do you want me to strap in?” he asked as I buckled my seatbelt. I said yes, and as he hunted for the belt, he said, “Never use ‘em myself. I was in the paratroopers in the war, and I don’t like to use ‘em. If I’m on a plane, I want to sit in the back and not wear a seatbelt. If something happens, I want to get out of there fast. Ya know, they can’t force you to use one. Most plane accidents take place on landing or taking off, so what I do, I just go up to the first-class section.”

“You mean on a commercial airliner?” I asked, noting that he had put the shoulder strap over the wrong shoulder.

“Yeah,” he said, and then adjusted the strap after I pointed out the correct position.

The guy then started rapping about how he was going to Fargo, North Dakota, to join a pro-life church group called the Lambs of God. He said some of the head guys were in jail in San Antonio for trying to rescue babies: i.e., to prevent women from entering abortion clinics, most likely. He said, “They don’t like it in Texas when you go in and try to disrupt their industry. And that’s what abortion is – a baby-killing industry!”

He said he was a construction worker and had also worked in the steel trades in Pennsylvania, where he was from originally. I told him I was an editor, originally from Illinois.

“When I was in prison,” he said, “I met a guy who was a good writer. He’s originally from Germany, and he saw all his family killed by the Nazis. He wrote a book called Acquiescence to Slaughter. Yes, that’s the name, Acquiescence to uh . . . Slaughter. It’s about the state of things in America today. You can see a connection between a Nazi state and the way things are today.” [Here he is referring to Martin Wishnatsky, whose book is available at http://www.goodmorals.org/mw/13%20199110%20ATS.pdf.]

I thought of things Walker Percy had written or said about the connection between the Nazis’ ideas and practices of “purifying the state” and euthanasia, and present-day practices of abortion, but I didn’t say anything. This guy scared me some, and I wanted to get off the subject he was riding hard. Then, out of nowhere, he mentioned talking to Colleen Dewhurst, and that was my opportunity.

“Colleen Dewhurst! She was married to George C. Scott! You met her?” I asked.

“Hell, yes,” he said, “Right on a park bench in New York City. You’re liable to run into anybody down in the Village!”

“Ah,” I think to myself, “A former steelworker who has hung out in the Village and talked with Colleen Dewhurst. Pretty interesting."

“Hey, ya know,” I said, “I saw this great movie that Colleen Dewhurst was in—.”

“Queen of the Rebels?” he interjected.

“Nah, it was a movie where George C. Scott played a guy who used to drive a getaway car for the Mob in America, but he retires to Spain. The film opens with him driving a sports car . . . "

“The Last Run!” he says, “Yeah, I’ve seen it. It’s a good movie.”

“Yeah, well in that film Colleen Dewhurst plays a prostitute that George C. Scott visits when he gets restless, and also there’s another woman that he gets mixed up with. He actually had an affair with this woman and he dumped Colleen Dewhurst and married the other woman, whose name I can’t remember.”

“Trish Van Devere,” he says.

“Yeah, that’s it, Trish Van Devere!” I say. (Obviously I’m pretty excited at this point. I don’t often have such scintillating conversations on the road.)

“I remember her because she’s better looking than Colleen Dewhurst!” he says.

“Well,” I say, “I like Colleen Dewhurst.”

“Ah, she’s O.K., I guess,” he says. “I was standing in line to see Queen of the Rebels in New York, and I saw her sneaking in the, you know . . .”

“The back door?” I asked.

“Yeah, the back door!” he says, “I thought of accosting her, but I didn’t. Later on, when I actually met her, she struck me as being one of these types, ya know, they look down on you . . .” He makes a gesture of looking down his nose.

“A snob,” I say.

“Yeah, that’s it! A snob!” he says excitedly. “She was a snob!” he laughs.

NOTE: The name of the production was The Queen and the Rebels (a play).

. . .

From this we go into more movie talk. His favorites: Triumph of the Will, by Leni . . . what’s her name? "Eisenmueller?" I say. “Riefenstahl,” he says. “Yeah, and what about the 1936 Olympics?”

“Hmmm,” I say. “I thought maybe you meant that D.W. Griffith film about racism in America [Birth of a Nation].” “No, don’t know that one,” he says. “How about The Little Emperor, Chaplin’s last film? It’s great – he plays five different parts.”

(NOTE: He means The Great Dictator, in which Chaplin played the dual roles of a Jewish barber and the Hitler-like Adenoid Hynkel.)

“I’ve seen the part where he plays Hitler and dances around,” I say.

“You’ve seen the movie then?” he asks.

“Nah, just the part where he plays Hitler and dances around and stamps his feet.”

(NOTE from future self: Sounds like Trump.)

. . .

Somehow we got into famous last words, and I told him a lot of stuff about Tolstoy and about The Last Station (a fictional description of Tolstoy's last days)—about how Tolstoy fell into a suicidal state in mid-life and came out of it only after seeing that the Russian peasants were happy and content with their religion.

I tell more about Tolstoy’s own development of a radical Christianity and about the fight for his copyrights and how he and his wife read each other’s diaries and how he finally couldn’t take it anymore and just left one night with a flashlight and a fur coat, . . .

“With nothing else on?!” the guy asks, “Just a fur coat?” he laughs.

“Nah,” I say. “He had on his union suit.”

 . . .

He tells me about his times in Hollywood, where he trained to do or be something – perhaps a broadcaster – at the West Coast extension of Columbia College in Chicago, which had been founded by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater.

More film talk. Then he says, “I got a buddy who says films can’t portray two things correctly: combat and sex. Now, I tell ya, if you saw two people going at it out in that field, would you stop and look?”

I looked out on the big stretches of dirt and corn stubble. “Yeah,” I said, “I’d stop,” thinking about the pagan practice of copulating in the fields to ensure good fertility in the soil.

“C’mon,” he says, “You’d stop to see somebody screwing?”

“Yeah,” I said, my face reddening, “I’d stop.”

He laughs. “Well, at least you’re honest!” I got a buddy who tells me all about peeping at people having sex when he was a kid. And he names names!”

“You mean, like, the people he was peeping at?” I ask.

“Yeah!” he cackles. “The old man stickin’ the salami to the old lady! And how he sniffed panties hanging on the clothesline!” I notice that the spittle at the corners of his mouth is collected there, building up froth.

“Hey, ya know?” he says. “You’re a good conversationalist, ya know that? Some people just talk about themselves, ya know? They get into, what do ya call it?—a diatribe—ya know? They just talk about themselves!” He laughs.

. . .

Here’s the turnoff to Onawa, thank God. This has all been quite interesting, and I tell the guy that, but sniffing panties and watching the old man stick the salami to the old lady are about my limit.

I pull the car off the road and put on the hazard lights, and we go back to get the guy’s gear out.

“Ya know,” he says, “It’s been said that ‘Big people talk about big things, and average-size people talk about things, and little people just talk big!”

And I’m not sure whether he’s got the quote right, or how it flows from the conversation we’ve had about cripples being ultra-sensitive and carrying chips on their shoulders, or about Karl, a “sawed-off German actor” he knew in Hollywood, or the snobbery of Colleen Dewhurst or the neo-Fascism in America today, but I shake his hand and he’s off down the road to Fargo.

  

The Divine Vagina

May 29, Conception Abbey, Conception Mo.

I went to Mass in the big church - a basilica, really - this morning. It's Trinity Sunday, by the way, which doesn't mean much to me; I never understood the Trinity any more than anything else about the Catholic church. But they have in the front of the church a great painting of Mary surrounded by her aura. I've been here before, and I refer to this painting as "the Divine Vagina," because that's what it looks like if you squint.

I also went into a room at the back of the main church that I had a heavy experience with two years ago. The only thing in the room was a picture of Mary - not the divine vagina but a typical Mary-in-the sky-on-clouds. When I was here before, I felt that the room had a strong spiritual charge, like a force field. I didn't feel the force this time, but there was a book of Scripture open on a little altar in front of the picture, so I went up and read a passage. It was about being lonely and not having a wife: "A man without a wife will always be a restless wanderer." I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. Remind me to tell you about my experience of  a statue of Mary at New Mellery Trappist Monastery outside of Dubuque, Iowa.