Sail Her, Don’t Sink Her
“Just a moment or two from now, not a mind will retain even a trace of the thoughts that I struggled to tell, and how our stack of cards just fell.
So settle this once and for all, the light no longer shows the cracks around my door, and I have no lantern to light your way home tonight.
You are not some saint who’s above giving someone a stroll through the flowers. You’ve got so much more to dream of. Oh, girl, sail her, don’t sink her this time” - The Shins, “Girl Sailor”, Wincing the Night Away
This time, I’ve had to walk out on Seamus.
The situation with Joe Picamosca has pushed the situation to the breaking point, much as I suspected it would. Seamus is constantly wound up now, and he sees trouble around every corner.
I haven’t posted for a while, and that’s because I took a bit of a vacation. I went sailing to Mexico, and I enjoyed the solitude that a couple of days at sea can provide, plus the enticements of exotic ports of call. Oh yeah, and somewhere in there, I turned 40 years old.
As I was sailing out of my home port on a Sunday afternoon for 7 days/nights of cruising pleasure, I talked to Seamus on the telephone. He had been unusually sweet and pleasant on the telephone lately. He continued to decline my invitations to go out on a date, however, which had been upsetting. He had only asked me out once in about three weeks, and then it was because he was drunk when he called. We never did go out because he had a hangover the next day, but we continued to spend considerable time on the telephone (about 1500 minutes in one month). Seamus was looking for a house, and he had included me in the decision making process, calling me for my opinion on certain houses that caught his eye. I was flattered that he would include me in something as personal and important as buying a house, and it was a balm for the disappointment I felt that he didn’t want to see me in person. I felt that if he was overcoming his distrust and paranoia (at least, with regard to myself), perhaps we were finally coming to a point where a stable relationship of some type was forming for Seamus, a genuine rarity in his life.
Anyway, we were talking on the phone as I sailed away, and he was behaving like a friend would: curious about the trip, the ship, what I planned to do, if I was going to take any pictures, and telling me that I should relax and enjoy myself. We talked until I was out of range for cell service, and then he was gone…for one whole week.
The first day at sea were consumed with thoughts of Seamus, with a keen awareness that my ship was bearing me ever farther away from him. The second day, I got a spa treatment and a massage, and I finally started to snap out of my obsession and see that I was on a pleasure cruise with an entire bevy of new people to meet, and that perhaps Seamus wasn’t my only option after all. By the time I hit Mexico, thoughts of Seamus only came every once and again, and I was able to enjoy my vacation about obsessing over him. Only one day went by where I thought about him a little more. That was Thursday, production report day at work, and I knew that Seamus would be in the same building with Joe Picamosca, and I wouldn’t be there to intervene or calm Seamus if something unfortunate were to happen. But, I figured a good friend of mine, Barbara, would email me if anything serious had happened.
When I returned from my trip, I was tired and went to sleep early on Sunday night, a full week after my departure. I needed to be ready for work on Monday (this past Monday). Monday came and went…no missed calls from Seamus. Then Tuesday came, and with it, Seamus showed up to do some office work. He tried, on several instances, to visit me in my cubicle, but I was still being inundated with visitors, so he didn’t get as much face time as he would have liked. I was wearing a summer dress, one that I knew was a favorite of Seamus’, and one that showed off my new tan very nicely.
I guess it must have worked for Seamus because he called me later in the afternoon and finally asked me for out for a drink. However, I had to decline because it was Tax Day, and I still needed to return home to put a check in with my tax return and get to the post office. Seamus tried to talk me into finding an alternative so I could go out with him, but to no avail. So, instead, we talked on the phone for quite some time. We talked again Wednesday, and he mentioned to me that he’d see me in the office on Thursday. Again, this was unusual because he never liked to let me know when he’d be in the office. His paranoia was such that he suspected that if I knew, I’d let his enemies know he was coming (whether on purpose or unwittingly) so they could prepare some sort of mischief for him.
I figured that he must be letting me know so I could keep my schedule open. After a year and a half of Phase Two, Seamus still had a hard time actually making plans. It was subtle signs that he left behind that clued me in to what he really was up to, and I had gotten quite good at interpreting those signs. It turns out I wasn’t wrong this time, either.
Thursday, however, had a rough start. It was my day to serve the public that came into our building, and I was downstairs and away from my desk for a good portion of the early morning. I knew Seamus had to have been looking for me to no avail. After a while, I saw him winding a circuitous route around the lower cubicles. Finally, he spied me, and walked by, but didn’t stop and immediately returned upstairs. I figured he was irritated that he felt that he had to go out of his way to locate me. Funny, too, was that was all he did…locate me and return to his desk.
When I returned upstairs, I saw our supervisor, who mentioned that Seamus seemed to be in a bad mood, griping about all sorts of things, even his ancient-history disputes with Marge and the Viking Wannabe. This didn’t bode well, especially since I was certain Seamus would ask me out again, but I was hesitant to go drinking with him if he was already angry. That usually was a recipe for disaster that ended in terrible verbal and psychological abuse, and the occasional bit of property damage.
I finally caught up with Seamus before he left the office for the day, and he did seem a bit hostile. He laughed a bit with me, but he was fidgety and constantly looking over his shoulder in either direction. His eye contact seemed limited, with his eyes making a rapid fire, side to side motion as he’d start to look at me, then look away. To compound matters, Joe Picamosca walked by as Seamus and I were talking. I tried to keep my face expressionless in case Seamus was suspicious. I didn’t want even the slightest change in expression to give Seamus the wrong impression that something conspiratorial was going on.
Lunchtime came and went, and when I returned to the office, Seamus was already gone. Not long into the afternoon, however, and my cell phone rang. It was Seamus, and an invitation to go out for a drink. His demeanor on the telephone was a little angry, as he excoriated some of his coworkers with vile insults or ridiculous, narrow-minded stereotypes. He continued to hold forth that since he had been treated badly by the masses, the masses deserved his rancor, whether the individuals he was insulting were directly involved or not.
This, I thought, did not sound as if it were going to be a pleasant evening, and if I had even a lick of common sense, I would have demurred again. But I so yearned to be with Seamus that I couldn’t possibly put up the pretense of refusing.
5:30 pm that day found me pulling up in front of Seamus’ apartment to pick him up. We went to a sushi restaurant that we liked to frequent because they had great happy hour specials on beer. As we were ordering our beer, Seamus mentioned that he had a little “pre-party” before I picked him up…he had polished off a six-pack of Corona Light. “Uh-oh,” I thought to myself.
And I was right. It wasn’t exactly a self-fulfilling prophecy, but combining Seamus’ existing state of inebriation with another influx of beer and my newfound rebellious nature was enough to make bring my misgivings to fruition. You see, I may have been an ingorant…well, fill in the blanks with one of those vile terms for the female anatomy that Seamus likes to use…before when I just went along with whatever Seamus said, but now that I actually had the gall to question him or his point of view, I was an evil f*king c*nt who wanted to f*ck the biggest monkey in the tree, a stupid f*king tw*t who devoted herself to sports, cars, and television celebrities (insults aside, none of these things are my personal preferences, nor do I attend to such trivialities in the least), and thus couldn’t possibly understand what he had been through as a Black-Irishman persecuted by the mongrel hordes of Nordic descendants who wished to see his kind properly subjugated.
Seamus became increasingly hostile as I continued to question his world view, especially when I brought up the fact that his father and his brother had both had successful lives, careers, marriages, and families, while they certainly must have suffered the same persecution since they, too, were Black Irish. I asked him how it could be that they had established good lives for themselves, whilst he still wallowed in his own self-pity that he couldn’t get married or have children, or that he was backed into a corner (of his own making) by these white devils.
Maybe I shouldn’t have pressed him so hard. But when I think of the kind of discrimination that ethnic minorities (blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asians) have suffered in this country, it’s extremely hard for me to accept that a Black Irishman would be persecuted to the extent Seamus claimed to be, and I felt that the point that other Black Irishmen had succeeded where he hadn’t was a valid point.
Seamus, however, got ugly. His eyes glittered with hatred and contempt for me, and he raised his hand in a backhanded motion, and told me “I’m about two seconds from slapping you right now.” The look in his eye told me that this was true. Then he started with the insults again… “You stupid f*cking c*nt, you ridiculous, morbidly obese tw*t.”
I’d had it by then. I said, “F*ck this, I’m out of here.” I got up from my chair and walked away. He called after me, “At least leave some money, you c*nt.” But I kept walking and didn’t look back.
The funny thing was, as soon as I was out of the restaurant, I walked back to my car keeping one eye over my shoulder lest I be attacked from behind. There had been mayhem in Seamus’ voice and eyes, and I was afraid he’d pursue me to commence violence upon my person or property. But I made it safely, got in my vehicle, and drove off, leaving Seamus to his own to find his way home.
Ah, he’s got enough money for a cab.
