Friday, May 20, 2005

 

ENTRY 179: THE END OF THE ROAD


I have often felt autistic in recent days, like light is too bright and sounds are too loud and grating, and I feel the loneliness even as I wonder whether I can stand human contact.


I harbor anxieties about a world that seems increasingly remote, about a job I think would be a vital turning point for me but about which I've heard nothing despite conscientious following up. I don't know if I've really dealt fully with my grandfather's death; I'm not sure I know how, and it is unclear how much of what I feel at the moment has its roots in that grief. In the midst of all this, I've unexpectedly met a guy whose artistic abilities and generosity of spirit have sort of bowled me over, and I find myself terrified of my own attraction to him, and of the possibility that he's interested in me, and of the distinct chance that he isn't. I feel so, so unprepared.


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Since the recent reappearance of Jane a year and a half after our falling-out, we have communicated and hung out on an increasingly frequent basis. There is still a tension, but, considering what occurred before, it's only natural. With everything else that has been going on this year, my resurrected friendship with Jane has remained largely in the background.


She called me on Wednesday afternoon. Her friend Holly's fiancé plays in a band, and they were performing at a downtown bar. Jane offered to take me to dinner beforehand. It was something of a relief; I was tired of evenings at home.


At dinner (lackluster), Jane talked, as she often does, about an uncomfortable topic. It is something that I have always carefully censored from the blog, because long ago, in the first incarnation of our friendship, I'd promised to keep her secret. But that was a secret about a specific relationship that no longer exists. Now she is engaged in a similar but different one for which she has exacted no promise of specific confidentiality from me. I have no interest in divulging the gory details, but suffice it to say that Jane has an ongoing side career in homewrecking.


I try very hard not to judge people for so-called "moral lapses," because, after all, I've gone through my slut phases (though not, at least knowingly, with other people's boyfriends or husbands), and I think forgiveness and understanding are ideals for which one should always strive. Peter, however, has never had qualms about expressing his disapproval of Jane's ways of doing things. "Why are you friends with such a mess?" he has often asked. My usual answer is that there was a time not so long ago, and perhaps even now, when I have been something of a mess myself.


But what I have come to recognize more and more lately is that when someone gives her life over to such things, every part of her life is affected. On some level, I saw this a long time ago, as you can observe by scrolling to the end of this entry.


In addition to her current affair (behind the back of the guy she currently lives with), Jane has flings with other guys she meets. At dinner she told me about a guy she'd hooked up with that weekend. She'd had so much to drink that she blacked out and woke up in his bed, with little memory of what had happened.


I was aware of Jane's tendency to drink, although I'd never ridden in her car when I felt she was incapable of operating a motor vehicle safely. But she usually buys a bottle of wine when we go out to eat, and will inevitably be finishing her third glass (and the bottle) when I'm just starting my second. This was exactly what happened on Wednesday, but it is such a frequent occurrence that I thought little of it.


We went on to the bar, where Jane forbade me from liking one of Holly's friends because Jane dislikes her. This annoyed me, and I talked to the girl, and found her inoffensive. Jane drank two beers while we were there; I had one.


"Where do you want to go now?" she asked, as we walked back to her car.


"Home, I think," I said. I was tired of my complicity in her dysfunctions.


She was annoyed that I wanted to throw in the towel when it was hardly 10:00, but I remained firm, and she started driving uptown. Her gas tank was almost empty, so she pulled into a station to fill up.


I sat in the passenger seat while she walked to the pump. From what she told me afterward, it seems that the pump didn't work, so the gas-station attendant told her to pull her car around to the other side. Instead, Jane took that pump and dragged the hose over to her side without moving the car. She and the attendant got into an argument over it, but not a loud one; I heard only faint words, even though her door was wide open.


When Jane got back in, she was annoyed and told me about the argument. I nodded absently, not really seeing what the big deal was. She started the car and began to pull out. The attendant passed in front of the car.


This is when my memory becomes less certain, because of the shock.


First, what I am certain about. Jane accelerated suddenly and strongly toward the exit as the attendant was still passing in front of the car, and we missed him by so narrow a margin that I wasn't sure if we had really missed him, and I was on the same side of the car that the attendant was. It was a matter of perhaps two or three inches. The attendant banged on my window, but Jane didn't roll it down. Then the attendant rushed to look at the car, and for a strange second I wondered whether he were looking for his crushed toenail or part of his heel. Jane said he was looking at the license plate. She zoomed out of the parking lot and we were gone.


Because I was so rattled, there are details floating in my mind of which I am uncertain. I hope they aren't true, because I have vague recollections of her saying, "I'm going to teach him a lesson," and of her actually laughing. I very much want to be wrong. But I don't know.


"What the hell was that?" I said.


"I wasn't going to hit him," she said.


"But you almost did," I said. "And he probably has your license-plate number." Not to mention, as I later realized, her credit card (assuming she didn't use cash) and, potentially, video surveillance footage.


"It wasn't that close," she said.


"It was," I said.


The rest of the journey home was silent.


It may sound strange or overly dramatic, but I feel traumatized by what happened. This person I thought I knew could so cavalierly endanger someone, coming this close to maiming or even killing. Though it always sounded cheesy when they said it in driver's ed, it's true: a car is twenty tons of steel, a potentially lethal weapon. It isn't a toy.


Peter, predictably, was having none of it when I described the incident to him. "There's something seriously wrong with her," he said.


"You're right," I said, and I expressed my concern that it could go to trial and I might be forced to testify. And I would not spare her; I could not. She would have to understand that her actions had consequences--though this time they did not, thank God, include a crippled or dead man.


I just can't comprehend what happened. No matter how much I might drink, I could never endanger the life of another human being and treat it as a harmless game.


I feel stupid for letting Jane back into my life, for thinking she could ever change her destructive tendencies, and this time the stakes were too high. She has always cost me too much. I don't think I can be in her car, or her life, ever again.

2:22 PM

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