MICHAEL BRODSKY
229
tell her that it was not her fault, that I was incapable of feeling need. So
I was wooing her, as was my wont, with new evidence of my incapacity
to sustain a relation. I am bad at relations but at commentary on the
failure of relations I am a master, second to none. Perhaps my ecstasy
in presenting my flaws masked my rage, at her, for making me run
back to her, for making me need her without knowing if and why I
needed her. I was running toward her with proof I did not have to be
angry with her. Because the culpability was all mine and if she would
only be patient I would rehabilitate, double quick. I seemed to be
running toward the future but I was locked in the past. And the
rehabilitation assigned me a future, with which I was most comfort–
able, especiall y when it was a long way off. In a sense I was running in
no fixed direction with the news of myoid flaws, I was running in all
directions at once, laden with hymns
to
her beauty or to my ineptitude,
dissipating my energy by running. By the time I got to her I was
huffing and puffing and too tired
to
feel my need or its absence;
whatever was more painful at the moment. I expected a reward, some
tea, for being so swift a harbinger of my own flaws. And with a little
time I would let them all unfold, before her very eyes. In a sense I was a
travelling salesman. She took me in, as women do. But she shook her
head sadly to show me it was all against her better judgement. But she
reeked of decorum and would never evict me in the manner of F. As I
drank my tea, gu lping it, scorching my throat, martyring her to my
babble and gurgle I found time to say, I am in need, or I need you. I
thought something would happen once I spoke. I thought speech
would be the envoy of all that was stored inside me. Instead it only
catalyzed my cleavage from myself. The eternal question confronted
me: did I say, I am in need,
to
invoke, in my omnipotence its opposite,
or did I say I am in need, because I really was, or did I say, I am in need,
to suppress the opposite feeling fermenting inside me at that moment.
Or did I say, I am in need , to bring the need itself into being, to get as
close to it as I cou ld, to live in the syll ables that seemed to emit a little
of the stench of need. But speaking took me further and further from
need, front all feeling, or perhaps it frightened the need away, for feel–
ings are vigi lant as ca ts in certain climates. Again and aga in I proved
eloquence deadened me to my own resources or lack of them. But
when I spoke I felt I was on the way
to
rehabilitation or something
whereas I was in fact only stalling for time. She merely shrugged as I
spoke. She distrusted words. She was willing merely to live, with me,
without words, and take pot luck. I needed some kind of truce in
advance, some kind of understanding, some kind of phantom eviction
