05-JUL-C-2

ARRIVAL FROM LONDON TO BAKU, AZEBAIJAN CAPITAL

ON THE CASPIAN SEA

July 25, 2005

I am in transit through London Heathrow, where I am watching the Brits go through a ritual of breast-beating over the tragic double problems of loss of life by married irrational fanatic suicide bombers and the hair trigger shoot-to-kill response by formerly peacefully patrolling London police. As in any matters of security, it cuts both ways, as I had written of in the troubles in South Africa, that people were being killed by their own heightened security systems that prevented their own escape from their burning houses or the inability to get their car out of a doubly locked parking lot-as had happened to me. A loss of trust and any benign interest in someone who is from a different background or diverse culture is the first and biggest loss of the “security culture.”

VULNERABILITY, AND THE DANGERS INHERENT IN IT,

OR IN PROTECTING ONESELF FROM IT

And extending from the subject of my prior discussion on a personal loss, this heightened security is a tragic loss when it prevents an open-handed and open-hearted commitment to another in a cagey damage limitation. What a way to live! In public or private, reactionary retrenchment into defensive bunkers severely limits life. Any rational adult would recognize that exposing oneself to vulnerability will in some instances would eventually reap the reward of being taken advantage of—and the only caution would be to check out the prior experience of those also exposed in this adult’s experience. Virginia has repeatedly asked me “Just think of what role you have played in driving your Virginia into the arms of another” since her view is that all such treacherous and tragic relationship destructions are composed of equal parts blame on either side.

So, I will have to confess, I loved unguardedly and unconditionally, despite her abundantly clear past history despite current disavowals that she would never repeat the betrayal since this was so very different—the very first time she had been really deeply in love. So, I turn out to be not so different after all and I have joined the ranks of those equally treated by her fickle mood swings. I could justifiably be called “Unwise” in this free choice of mine. As Kay Sadighi had said “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

The difference seems to be that she is interested in seeing if she can maintain a relationship of friendship of the “smartest man she so admires more than any other she has met,” since the last ones so betrayed have cut away from her completely, quickly substituting a more mature and stable substitute for her relationship with them, except for one who retained vindictive bitterness on top of his disappointment. I should know about that preceding victim, since she came to me when married to him—and now is ever so proud to announce that this time, at least, she was not legally married despite solemn and sacred vows, so this betrayal of me could not technically be called infidelity.

So, she is not guilty, and she wants me to know that I certainly am, of some as yet unspecified major contribution I have made to the loss of our wonderful relationship. She will hold this belief and practiced pattern of self-justification for the inevitable failure of the next relationship. She had described her now “current relationship” (only last month on departure for Italy called a big mistake that was over) as a “very slow man, who is very cautious.” Well, he has good reason, of course, and I would add her own self-description of what she was to me for him, “I am pure poison for you.” But, in the superficiality of socially acceptable circumstances he makes a better fit: he is younger, he must be handsome (she had apologized for putting that high on her list of priorities since “I am so vain” and described that in the number two position for me and was the number one feature of her prior husband), but, of course is not nearly as smart (since I seem to outrank any other she has ever met in her number one criterion) and am far more humanitarian.

But, she can look good on his arm at the Huntsman’s Ball, and after all, he helped her get her colors for her collar, so she can proudly “ride to the front” of the pack. It must, therefore, be worth it all, despite what she has done to me, her previous “good men” and to her own perpetually repeating characteristic cycling mood swings. And, it won’t take long for this one, on a much more shallow foundation than our relationship, to be discarded on the next whim.

The artificiality of vanity in pursuit of the fashions du jour from breasts to her boasted artistic aesthetic sensibilities will guarantee impermanence to her fancies and immature selfish choices of her “Pampered Princess” strapped by her impecunious circumstances as a small town college voice teacher from living the grander lifestyle she wants to indulge. The bigger trailer, truck and Indianola house extended to a grand design for Derwood and for me, as she said “Not her prize, but her project,” yet she admired how little consumerism mattered to me in the endless desire for shopping after materialism. She recognized the reality of our work in service to the poor, and wanted to have both, the latter because it “made her a better person.”

But, the modern chick can “have it all.” And she now has quite a number of the trappings 1) The “doctorate,” 2) her own house where she is “living on her own,” 3) her own horse and other livestock, to which she is much more emotionally attached than the part-time attentions of any man in her life as they change with the seasons of her moods, sex on demand, at her call and under her conditions with a fashionable accessory, 5) and an admiring circle of friends whom she can attract and who envy her accumulation of everything quite ostentatiously visible, at whatever cost in the sacrifice of the real. So, I will have to serve as the special purpose friend, no longer her lover or financial guarantee for life, but at least the guru who will carry her out and sponsor her in the rewarding and mollifying service to the poor which assuages the Pampered Princess’ guilt about the more regular events of “being serviced” with regular luxuries, sipping the right vintage in the bubble bath and with an always available man to service her other desires at her beck and call.

Service should not involve sacrifice. And, she called me selfish! I presume all the other men with whom she has shared intimacy in all her relationships that ended in her moving in immediately with another were somehow selfish also despite the fact that each were faithful to her despite being cuckolded? She is right, that there is no point in arguing that, with her perspective already unassailable. I do know my future, which she said on my departure call, I had to guard against anyone else being in control of my happiness by being so foolish as to give my heart to another, “especially me.” I also know her future, from the predictability of the pattern from her past.

And effective August 5, she is getting a little anxious that she is no longer the young chick that can always attract a man in the supporting role of hanger on. She was proud of having inherited her Grandmother’s skin tone, which would have her looking youthful and perky a bit longer, and, her breasts, at least, will retain a youthful look. There should be a maturation into something very real by the passing of her forty-fifth birthday and her menopausal period—another early inheritance form her grandmother—but she has rejected a rather vital and faithful man devoted to her since, he is now “just too old,” and is more like her father than a man she wishes to be identified with as a “couple.”

After she has used up the “current relationship,” she may have to replace him with a handsome fellow still younger than she. And although handsome stable boys have offered, and a profane Irish fellow named Michael O’Shaughnessy whose Dodge 2500 Ram Diesel truck I helped her buy is over a decade younger and, as she was fond of repeating, “has offered to father her children.” She had gone through some real agonies with me in the decision about motherhood, saying that Margeaux was the ideal resolution of her wish to have children and her one shot at it, since although she would love to have children of her own with me particularly, but her “eggs are all too old.” And, she resolved that would not happen now, but she did not want to visit the twins in San Antonio with me for two reasons: 1)-“all it will do is make me want desperately to have a baby—and I would love to have your child with your genes,” and 2)—“Michael and Judy will see through me at a glance and realize I am waffling on my commitment to you now.”

Now, when I mentioned that decision point when she was most passionately in love with me after listing all the criteria that made for an ideal “husband material” (although I had spoken of the first two—smart, handsome, athletic, but she also said, “I am sorry I am so crass, but the man I marry must be well fixed to support me in a lifestyle I would like to develop above where I am now.”) I had discussed the desire she had for children which Greg, vasectomized and unwilling to adopt an infant, had frustrated. The forced adoption of a teenage Margeaux had cured her of the urge to adopt, and she did have a pause for a period to say about “our child” as desperately as she would like to bear my child—hopefully a little girl she had said—it was her age and not mine that convinced her that this was not to be. When this was mentioned on the call at departure on Friday, she bristled, since apparently this may have touched a nerve when brought up with her “current relationship” with a “younger man” and her desire to come off the pill. Especially is it significant if he is as she described such a “Slow and cautious man” with respect to commitments, and I do not know of his previous reproductive history, but it seems that this tender subject was rubbed raw again and she has not come to terms with it as thoroughly as it had been described as resolved when she was requesting me to write her a script for birth control pills—an interesting event to explain to her then husband who was not having sex with her and had had a vasectomy before marrying her.

So, I am back to a fundamental fact: Virginia had made a choice. A bad choice, in my opinion, for her, and she probably will agree with that eventually. But, it may be the right choice for me, though I have no inclination to accept this at present, let alone be the one who proposes it. But, I may also recognize this, eventually, as the right thing to have been done for my sake.

Yes, as the family members independently remarked who have also suffered through the unconditional love I have for her, she is the easiest and hardest person to love, and the toughest and most fragile soul, in a body she is accentuating to substitute for a deeper more meaningful life. And, I now have to reluctantly agree with the professionals I had consulted on her bipolarity, she is also most likely incurable. This repeated pattern of character disorder has served her in always attracting the attention she craves, and she does not seem inclined to ever honor a solemn commitment since she never has.

I envy the senior Croskerys’ half century of unquestioned devotion which has required a lot of compromise, mutual help and synergy, with a reverent appreciation of the miracle it has been. That love resulted in the production of a family that has also produced the youngest rebel woman who might have been the love of my life—if only it were to be as promised in the first half of our now violated previously sacred dedicated relationship. What God has joined together, let no man’s willfulness or woman’s whim sunder. I must trust in God for what was real in what we had, and for healing wholeness for each of us and both. I have hoped that she might achieve it, and that I might too, and that the timing may yet happen in our contemporaneous lifetimes.

Virginia’s response to only the second unconditional love she has experienced in her life was a long list of conditions under which she would consider privileging me by accompanying me on a medical mission I would sponsor for her. Reg’s outraged response to this list was “What planet is she coming from?” My more measured response is that Virginia is deliberately sabotaging whatever was left of trust and goodness in our relationship, perverting it to her own selfish ends, by making outrageous demands with nothing to lose. She is now triumphing in “making a fool out of the smartest man she has ever met---again!” What would she have to lose now by “shooting the moon” in preposterously demanding preconditions—look at each of her foreign trips, vehicles I have sponsored, and then, look at Derwood.

In a long litany of my faults I heard her recite again on Friday, beginning with my age (which is hardly under my control, and seems moot when I had run ten times further than she had each of the prior five weeks) I did not hear certain features that if alleged she might rightfully despise. She did not say I had cheated on her, lied to her, deceived her and betrayed her, while taking advantage of her. Just whom would such a list of unenviable features characterize in this relationship? Before, she had an excuse: “I have an awful disease, and my illness is making me do all this.” But, now she has claimed to be cured and whole, so it is no longer a culpable illness that is making her push beyond any conceivable limits of love or even tolerable friendship in taking full advantage of me again. My only real hope for her and her character and its future after experiencing how she has treated the “love of my life” is that she is even sicker now than during her previous two years of deepening and desperate mental illness.

It is a measure of my patience with her, trust in God’s healing mercy, or my foolhardiness to point out a significant milestone. Remember her aborted visit to Derwood on the first of June last year, her last visit despite many broken plans and promises. She and I were on our knees in prayer for a healing of our dedicated commitment, even though she had denied me any intimacy for the previous year as she continued to deny any other distraction—later confessed as having been ongoing for over a year even then. This uncharitable milestone has just passed to be scored against her “best friend” whom even at Christmas she pleaded to be patient with her since she first had to sort out her ambivalence about us before she entered any intimacy with me or any other (already ongoing for eighteen months as she pleaded with me with tear-filled eyes for more time at my fifth Christmas visit with her at Highland Park):

She has now been sleeping with David longer than she had previously been with me, despite our five years of my total commitment! She now acknowledges that it is and has been frequent, regular, automatic and going on for a longer period than she had even confessed to earlier, and is under her control, at her call, in her house, even though she depends on him heavily for subsidy of luxury events and occasions. So, of course, with her list of five criteria of what she demands in a man to support her, (notably absent the new one that came along with me about spiritual growth and enhancement) she is convincing herself that “she is falling in love,” and maybe this one will have to do until the next one comes along for her to exploit. It has worked before, and may be she can count on it to work again, although she is getting a little desperate about the physical wear and tear and passage of time, having given up “the greatest and deepest love of her life with her only soul-mate” since he is not very stylish. “I think I will try to forget all about that and invite David over again who makes me feel good about myself.”

I already know what my response should be if she is really conniving and in control of her own outrageous demands now. If this really is the re-newed real Virginia, I want no part of her. She is rather repetitive in explaining now how she is basically such a good person and kind and loving, and her demons must have been making her do all this. As I pulled out to leave for Dulles airport on this trip that Virginia had requested to be on to volunteer for the poor under my total sponsorship to make herself feel better about herself in the deep funk she was in when she did not get what she wanted in the Alabama gig that was canceled, I passed her “other life.” I felt a revulsion and relief upon setting out on this trip and passing the trappings of a whole entourage of the horsey set setting out to their conspicuous elitist display of frivolous consumption and felt a gush of overwhelming relief—that I had missed a bullet.

I also have a worrisome vision in a copy of the one that is always running in the back of Virginia’s mind with the epitaph “at least I died doing what I want to do.” She and I both fear some tragedy befalling Virginia in a serious horse accident as the kind in which her friend Melanie was killed—which seems almost a propulsion toward a death wish that she does not have to initiate as when she went to the garage with the plan of turning on the diesel engine and closing all the doors. I also have been sitting on this aircraft with eight audio channels on board, and would ordinarily listen to the lyric soprano, just as I had bought a bottle of Hungarian Soprani wine. I turned off the soprano and will give away the bottle of wine chosen for her Derwood visit—since now is not the time to torture me with what might have been.

If the wonderful love we shared (and she agrees, saying it was an ecstatic reunion in monthly increments, but she would be driven crazy by trying to live daily with me as a couple) is to be trashed and then thrown away in a deliberate discard, (“It was all just an illusion of a very sick woman” she says now) at least it is not I who am doing this sabotage in an attempt at violation of “Thy will be done.” I will have to accept as a fait accompli what she has done to us, until and unless there is a change of heart---and I should not wait expectantly for God’s will to look anything close to what I had wanted so much, nor what she is now saying she wants—for this moment, which too, like life, shall pass.

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