This is the one nice thing about Time. It takes tyrants and terrorists away when we fail to do so.

The "unity" of America is a sickening myth. There is no unity. There is the South, which has ever been and apparently always will be rotten, smug, bigoted, and ignorant to the core; and there is Middle America, which is provincial and dim-witted, and then there is the West Coast and the Northeast, which, while not always in agreement with each other, at least don't have their collective heads up their collective asses, and realize there's a world out there beyond the Atlantic and Pacific. The Northeast seems to be the only place in America where people have a firm grip on sanity.

There's lots to eat here. Food is big at Cornell, partly because of the Statler School of Hotel Management. Anyway, it's yet another area where Cornell far outclasses the hated Syracuse University.

Back on the personal front: saw Betsy Sunday evening, at her request (not that I was against the idea, and in fact I'd previously asked her if she was free that night... but she phoned me up in the afternoon to suggest a meeting). Met her at the Carousel Center... went to the Pizzeria Uno there for drinks.

What followed was an hour's worth of flirting and coy behavior... then we made for her car. Outside of her car, a long and very intimate embrace. Then she gave me a ride to my car... whereupon things cranked up several notches... to cut the story short, things ended up as intimate as it gets (he said euphemistically) much to my overwhelming delight (and Betsy's). I have to add that MY GOD SHE LOOKED FUCKING GREAT and without a doubt, I have never seen a more beautiful female body in my 39 years of life. (She's lost about 20 pounds---not that I felt she had to---she looked great before the weight loss). I could go into great detail about what the mere sight of her did to me, but my enthusiasm might become embarrassing.

Things went extremely well, as was par for the course for us... and then, unfortunately, her cell phone rang. I don't want to make the whole thing sordid by saying who it was, but it's enough to say that it shook her badly. Interestingly enough she proceeded to apologize profusely to me as soon as she hung up; I assured her there was nothing to apologize for. But we both then and there acknowledged that the time had obviously come to face certain facts and truths. I did my best to make her feel better, and after a long kiss, we both headed back to our respective homes.

The view outside my new office window: a soon-to-be green courtyard, surrounded by ancient-looking brick walls, like the alley side of a block of old British townhouses. Beyond is the great, humpbacked edifice of Barton Hall, with it's gargantuan angled roof and its broad-shouldered, square Normanesque tower, like someone wrapped a huge airplane factory in the shell of a 9th century castle. This is Cornell. The architecture so different from Syracuse--splaying out in all different shapes and styles and movements, as though someone spilled a box of antique christmas ornaments of myriad design. No, this is not Syracuse. Phony as the Gothic and Classically-influenced styles may be, they're nevertheless old and impressive and awesomely certain in their intended meaning; this, they say, is an institute of Higher Learning, where, (to paraphrase Ezra Cornell) anyone can learn about anything. This is not (the great old buildings hint silently, with smug and aloof charm) a jock teaching school that pretends it's more than it really is. This is an Ivy League school with an entirely different demeanor. (Even if it is "the pits of the Ivy League"--along with Brown--as Paul Fussell said).

My first day has been uneventful, but instructive. This is in some ways a more relaxed and yet more businesslike atmosphere than the one I came from, if that contradictory description isn't too confusing. Maybe it's better to say that these people seem much more to know what they're doing and they're confident enough in that to be relaxed about it.

It so happens that just off Route 89 in Seneca County (which hugs the western side of Cayuga Lake) there's a village called Interlaken. Nearby is the larger village of Trumansburg. About 90 years ago, my grandfather, Benjamin Van Rensselaer Hess, bought up a great deal of land in the vicinity of Interlaken, and settled down to farm. He'd come there from northern Pennsylvania, along with his two brothers, who settled in western New York, around Bath and Addison. I have no idea why the three of them chose to leave the family stronghold to come to New York; maybe land was cheap at the time. Anyway, it was in Interlaken that my father grew up (he attended school at Trumansburg) though I've yet to find out exactly where the family farm was. Directly after World War II the family moved to Auburn. It seems that Benjamin had lost the bulk of his property in the Depression and once the war was over, decided to give up on farming.

Now, some time in the 1960's (I think) Rod Serling, the creator of The Twilight Zone began spending summers in Interlaken. Serling was born in Binghamton, which is off to the southeast some distance, but close enough where he was probably familiar with the area. In any case, Serling eventually began teaching writing at either Cornell or Ithaca College--I think it's more likely it was the latter--and was therefore spending more and more time in Interlaken (Ithaca's only about 10 miles to the south). Serling died in 1975.

In an earlier posting, some months ago, I wrote about the "parallels" between Serling and my father... and how I feel a sort of distant kinship with Serling on account of these parallels. I'd also mentioned that by chance, one day, I came across a book which told where famous people were buried all over the country... the book was indexed by locale, of course, and curious, I looked through the listings for New York. Most of the sites were in New York City of course... a few in Albany, a couple in Buffalo... (Mark Twain, if anyone cares, is buried in Elmira) but I was very much surprised to see tiny Interlaken listed. (Ithaca was also--Carl Sagan is buried there). I had a feeling that it would be Serling, and so it was.

So this past weekend, on the wine trail by myself (it's no fun by yourself, and so I was a bit bored) I decided, what the hell? I'll take a look and see if I can find the cemetary where Serling's buried. I stopped at one of the wineries near Interlaken and asked if they knew of a cemetary near the village. I was told there was one right on the road into the village. So off I went. Sure enough, there was the cemetary--which I immediately recognized because, a few years back when I'd been researching my genealogy, I'd visited that very same cemetary to check out the graves of a couple relatives. I pulled in and checked the cemetary map... yup, Serling was there.

This time it was Bill, Tara, and Tara's boyfriend Bruce that failed me... Bill couldn't get sitting for his son; one has to excuse that, of course. In Tara's case, though, she'd said that she wanted to go, but then Bruce nixed the idea. Apparently because (in his words, as she reported them to me) he "doesn't want to be around alcohol." Why? Well... we're not sure. Bruce has never had a drinking problem; in fact, he doesn't drink and never has. He was raised in a very strict, Christian family, which he since rebelled against. But apparently the alcohol taboo (and some other hang-ups perhaps) has held fast. I find this silly, of course. Wine isn't alcohol. It's grape juice with an attitude. Jesus drank it, for Chrissakes.

Bruce also pulled a petulant, passive/aggressive maneuver on us Friday night. To make up for their abandonment of my celebratory plans for Saturday, Tara and Bruce agreed to meet up with me Friday night for dinner in Ithaca. However, in the meantime Tara and Bruce had argued about the wine trail thing (Bruce had made plans for them to go hiking in the Adirondacks, as it happens). Cut to Friday evening. The three of us are coming from three different directions: I was coming from Syracuse (going directly to Ithaca after work) Tara from Elmira, Bruce from... well, Bruce was already in Ithaca, at work at Cornell. We agree to meet on the Commons at 7pm. Then I phone Bruce (Tara doesn't have a cellphone) to tell him I'll be about 15 minutes late. That's okay, he says... Tara's going to be about that late, too. (Which is expected of Tara.) We agree to meet, then, at 7.15.

So I arrive at 7.15, and find Tara waiting in line at Viva Taqueria, the Mexican restaurant just off the Commons, which is our chosen spot for the night. Seemed it was rather crowded, so she was trying to put our name on the waiting list for tables. As it happens, it works out nicely, because we're on the list and due for a table within a few minutes. All that's left is to locate Bruce. Since it's now just past the time when we were supposed to meet, I head down the Commons to find him. But to my surprise--no Bruce. Tara follows, and we decide to call him. He reports that he'll be leaving work in 5 minutes. Okay. We'll sit and wait for him.

Then time goes by. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Twenty. Now our table is ready... BUT... they can't seat us with one of our party missing, when they're so backed up. So we lose our table. Then we lose another, and another. Meanwhile, it's now a half hour since Bruce said he'd be leaving work in 5 minutes. So we phone again. Now he says he's just leaving and walking to his car, and will be there in about ten minutes or so. (It's now close to 8pm, and neither Tara nor myself have had much to eat that day, and Tara had wanted to get an early night in) Tara takes the phone, and confronts Bruce. This is unfair she says. Passive/aggressive. We've lost ten tables waiting for you. (Well... we lost five tables, I think) She asks him if he wants to come or not. Bruce says he's not coming and hangs up on her. Okay, so fuck it. We go in and have dinner, almost an hour late.

Tara is torn during the evening's discussion... was she wrong to confront him? I say no, that he was being petulant... but maybe she was a bit too forceful, I don't know. Still, though, I think it was shitty of Bruce to do this. What's eating him? I ask. Oh, it's nothing to do with you, Tara says. It's just that he always has to be in control, he has to make the decisions. And even though he got his way about the weekend's activities, he isn't happy that it was an argument. So he's sabotaging dinner. Classic passive/aggressive behavior, she says.

Dinner was nice, anyway. Drank a lot of sangria.

On New Year's Day, 1988, my mother died suddenly of a heart attack, at home. I was there. It was a bit fateful that I was home that morning; ordinarily I'd be sleeping off the previous night's partying at a friend's house... but for once it had been a kind of sedate evening and I'd ended up making it home. My mother woke me around 9 that morning, having chest pains and trouble breathing. Sometime after that, she died, while the paramedics were working on her there in the house. I was there alone with her. I was 22 years old.

I'd planned on returning to college that January, after the winter break. I should have done so. My family wanted me to. But being suddenly on my own, with no financial back-up--no safety net--made me nervous. I decided to put off going back to college. I decided to get a job for a time.

This was not the first mistake I'd made which affected my life in later years. But it was possibly the most far-reaching one in a way. At the time, my friends Scott and Hans were both working at Syracuse University--both doing engineer work for two different science departments. Hans knew a bigshot in HR. (In fact, she was the then football coach's daughter) They took me in, got me an interview at the University Bookstore, and I got the job. It was there that I met Judi, and we started dating in June. I left that job at SU, finally, to go back to college in the Fall... but by then the momentum had gone. Judi and I were seeing each other... I felt torn between not wanting to let that go and wanting to let it go. Something felt wrong about me and Judi, deep inside... but I was lonely as hell and afraid that this was my one chance at happiness... I felt I should take it. After all... maybe my mother's sudden death had just thrown me out of whack. Take it, I thought. Take it.

I spent too much time worrying about that (and traveling up to Syracuse to see Judi) and ended up not proving myself well enough to Binghamton (where I was in school) for them to allow me in as a full-time student (I'd been going part time to get my grades up, to show them they should allow me to matriculate.) They offered me another chance... but the financial aid wasn't there. I didn't know what to do... teaching English was an idea that was becoming less and less attractive to me. I only wanted to WRITE. But I knew I needed to make a living, too. But I couldn't see making a living at being an English teacher. I didn't feel it was for me. So I now decided to take time off and go back to work, and think it over.

Of course Judi and I ended up getting married eventually. It started falling apart almost immediately. I went from one job to another, miserable and lost... adrift. Judi and I were swinging back and forth---wanting to stay together at one point, then sure we were wrong for each other at the next. We split up for a time when I was working as a manager at a bookstore... which is where I met Paula. Then when that ended, Judi and I got back together. There was a kind of euphoric recovery for us then---we both seemed blindly happy to be back together---and so we had a baby, naturally. But the good feelings started falling apart fast. Still, we stuck it out. I took two years off to take care of the baby (Judi was still working at SU and making more money than me) and then I went to work at SU in my present job. It was 1996. I'd been stuck to Syracuse like a wandering star to a black hole, since 1988.

Judi and I both wanted to get away from Syracuse--I hated it, and she professed to prefer the area where I'd grown up. My idea was to find a place in Skaneatles--close to Syracuse, yet still in the Finger Lakes. But we found the place in Aurora, on Cayuga Lake instead. We had our second baby, as things began falling apart more and more. (The first baby, our oldest daughter, was more or less "planned"---as I'd said, we were in that euphoric stage at the time, thinking we could save our marriage and that it in fact was getting better. The second baby, our youngest, was accidental. The difference is meaningless of course. The one thing Judi and I shared--besides a great sex life, curiously enough--was our love for these two little girls that we produced. Our pride in them is limitless) Even then, though, the end was right in our faces. Judi and I split up finally... I moved a few miles away and continued working at SU, dealing with the nasty commute. Judi left her job at the University and finally took one as a bookkeeper at a plastics company closer to home. This was when Amie and I were involved. I was still tied to Syracuse. I wanted out, badly. But time dragged on. It was 1998. Almost six years have gone by... Paula came back into my life twice in the ensuing years, and then came Betsy... which brings us to today... and I'm finally getting out of here.

Of course, if I'd never come to Syracuse back in 1988, I never would have met Judi and wouldn't today have my daughters. So I can't say it was really a "mistake". And Judi and I had our happy moments... and every time we went into the bedroom it was an ecstatic moment. But all I mean is that I fell into a torpor back then... if I take the kids out of the equation, the fact is that had I returned to college immediately after my mother's death, I might have finished on schedule. That might have led me into better work, or maybe I would found it in myself to continue with grad school. Then again, maybe not. All in all, the real mistake was in staying in Syracuse so long. Eight years in this dead-end, low-paying job has been far, far too long. Sixteen years attached to Syracuse like being chained to the bottom of a chasm has been far, far too long. I built up one bad memory after another here. I've been under non-stop stress. True, I started actually writing the novel while I was living in Syracuse (after having the initial idea for it in 1986 or 87, while still in college) but I was continually pulled away from it by this or that problem, mess, miserable experience or rotten relationship. I say all this with tongue ever so slightly in cheek---I blame all this on Syracuse when I of course acknowledge that I'm truly the one to blame---but still, in a superstitious sense, it seems like a curse has hung over me ever since I made that decision to take a job here instead of going back to school. Having the kids puts the lie to that, but still... the feeling of it won't go away. I remember what I was like and what my life was like prior to 1988; I look back on that period and can't imagine I'm the same person... and it has nothing to do with age... I've felt like this ever since I started consciously looking back on the difference, in the early 1990's. I always knew that it was the action of not returning to college that did a lot of this to me. Oh, surely, my mother's death had even more to do with it---it was a scarring thing, especially considering that there were unresolved consquences from my childhood, which had been lonely, neglectful, and devoid of guidance or direction. But in any case... the starting point for much of my current plight goes back to that January in 1988 when I ignored the advice of everyone else around me. No, I can't say I'd go back and change it now, because of my daughters. But of course such a thing can't be done anyway, and I'm therefore simply recognizing the steps I took which led me to where I am. Had I recovered my senses and gotten the hell away from Syracuse sooner, I could have done more with my life in any case. Having the blessing of my children doesn't mitigate the fact that after they were born, I stayed in place doing very little for years longer. FINALLY, after sixteen years... I'm free.

Many of us (I won't say most because no doubt there's a lot of low-grade intellects hovering around out there) who do this blog/journal thing are what one would call educated people. In our private, "real" lives, we tend to move amongst and associate with other educated, intellectual people such as ourselves. We're sometimes made aware of the fact that we constitute in some form or another the tier of a certain middle-to-upper middle class; what often escapes our notice, however, is that we are disliked for it.

This came to my mind as I was thinking about the tendency of some to equate opposition to a war with being non-supportive of the troops fighting that war. The president, in his usual despicable manner, has occasionally played up this absurd idea--thinking, no doubt, to garner the support of the dim-witted segment of American society that is ready to believe such things. And we often hear such sentiments from the mouths of dim-witted people--that it is, to wit, traitorous and dirty to oppose a war when our armed forces are engaged in fighting it. But we never seriously consider, who are these people who believe such ridiculous things?

Some, surely, are simply idiots who don't think. Some are people who seem incapable of considering the consequences of terrible things (such as war) when those consequences fall on others and not themselves. This is a kind of revolting blindness and ignorance that is to be despised but is, sadly, all too common in the ugly tarn of human nature.

However, we often fail to consider that people will sometimes react in ways that reflect underlying prejudices, dislikes, and fears that aren't openly acknowledged or discussed.

I come from a background that places me, in the usual vague sense (vague because the areas where classes meet--sometimes it's better to say collide--in American society are always sketchy and difficult to define) in what might be called a middling tier of the upper-middle class. My family goes back generations; on both sides they were here prior to the revolution (except for a sole strain on my mother's side) and in fact well before. Except for the one great-grandparent that arrived here from Italy around the end of the 19th century, the latest any ancestor of mine came here was 1764. The bulk of my ancestors can be traced back to an arrival date of 1625-1640. They were all either English or German. All eventually worked their way into the merchant classes or higher; for a time, prior to the Revolution, a large part of my family owned much of western New Jersey. Many of them were farmers, but of the high-volume sort. They weren't struggling on small scraps of land. My paternal grandfather and two of his brothers came to upstate New York just prior to World War One (our branch of the family had moved into north-central Pennsylvania in the mid-1800s to buy up land) to purchase a great deal of what was then probably cheap land in the Southern Finger Lakes. This turned out to be something of a mistake, as they lost a lot of their investment when the Depression hit. Possibly the move away from the locus of the family (which remained in Pennsylvania) had left them in a weakened position financially. At any rate, the end result is that today we're a branch of the family that once had a lot but lost it decades ago. We're by no means Upper Class. Even if the family as a whole was ever "upper" in any sense (which I doubt) our branch of it can't be because we're too far removed from the old "ancestral strongholds" as it were; we're lost and isolated cousins in alien territory. A family that goes back generations is one thing, but the social effect of a "long pedigree" is weakened if the family doesn't remain in one place. No doubt such nonsense didn't matter to my grandfather when he left Pennsylvania to come here, nor, no doubt, was it on the mind of my great-great-great grandfather when he left New Jersey to come to Pennsylvania. And there's no reason why it should have been. There really isn't that much to be gained from being the "big noise" in a small town. I've seen that. I live in such a town, and while the old families are known, it doesn't really do much for them; they exercise some measure of control over what happens in town, but not that much. Money still speaks louder than "pedigree" in many cases, and an outsider with lots of bucks to spend can come in, essentially take over, and change the whole nature of the community.

I bring all this up to elucidate the point that my family exists on a sort of cusp; sometimes well-educated (I have cousins who went to Yale, my brother attended Cornell, etc.) but sometimes just ordinary working class types; we're a mix, and we move within multiple circles. Consequently, it makes it possible to observe certain truisms that others don't always see, in the interactions between classes.

What educated people fail to recognize, sometimes, is the hostility felt towards them by others due simply to that education. This hostility doesn't result merely because "uneducated" people dislike "educated" people per se. It results, rather, from the fact that an education (at least of certain sorts) places one on a higher tier in terms of social class. The gulf between tiers is often tiny, often negligible; but the perception of the gulf can make it seem chasm-like. Resentment on the basis of class is another common factor in human nature; the fact that America is a more egalitarian society than, say, Britain, only means that the lines are fuzzier here and we often don't know who fits in where, exactly. But we know what we know, and class distinctions do exist and are felt in America.

It's therefore not always understood by the educated that, when they rally openly against a war (to use a timely example) they may face resentment from the very groups that they'd assume would be in concert with them---the ranks of the working classes who produce most of the young men and women who end up serving in the armed forces. We've all heard the one about how easy it is for the rich and mighty to send the sons of the poor and working class/middle class off to war, when their own sons are kept out of it; this is an old saw, and certainly to a great extent a true one. The lower classes have long recognized the truth of it, but they still buy into the idea of patriotism and the service to one's country, in part because America has never been the sort of stratified society that Britain once was (and even in Britain the sense of "upper class duty to country" meant that a large fraction of the well-educated, well-to-do class sent its sons to certain death in the trenches during WWI) and there is as a result the sense (however hollow it may be in reality) amongst the working classes and middle classes, that America belongs to them as much as it does to the fatcats. What we fail to see, however, is how negatively the lower and lower-middle classes can react when educated upper-middle types speak out against a war. It seems to be counter-intuitive; if we posit that the working classes contribute the bulk of the people who are sent off to fight wars by upper-middle and upper class politicians---we would think it logical that the working classes should therefore stand in concert with those upper-middles who take a stand to oppose wars. But we fail to consider that the educated are viewed with a certain degree of suspicion by the working classes whatever the political philosophy the educated types happen to represent; it's a curiosity of our society that it places so much value and totemic respect on "education" as a means to betterment, while at the same time it retains the resentment inherent in such intersecting planes where different classes meet. Working class people who see educated middle- and upper-middle types marching to oppose war are not going to automatically hop in step with them, even if philosophically it would serve their needs, because the perception of class separation is often more powerful. Hence a reaction such as, "look at those pansy-asses, protesting..." It isn't the philosophical opposition to war per se that bothers these working class/middle class people... it's the vague sense of the gulf between classes that colors their reaction, as well as, probably, a reasonable questioning of the sincerity and straightforwardness of those educated types who oppose war. Reasonable because we've often seen how one political group's unjust war is another political group's just war, and this can flip-flop from one time to another. The educated can sometimes seem to change allegiance with the wind, and this doesn't go without notice amongst the working classes. It often must seem safer and easier to simply cleave to the "America, right or wrong" idea rather than to trouble oneself with the fickle imaginings of one's educated "betters". The educated, like everyone in the higher classes, aren't to be trusted. That's the underlying class tension that explains some of the seeming inconsistencies and conundrums of American politics.

Hey Ame.

Good weather over there? For chrissakes, we're just now in the middle of our FIRST *full* week with sunshine and without rain. (Although the temperature still hasn't gone up above the mid 70s). And it's September. It literally rained every single week in July and August, and when it wasn't raining, most of the days were overcast. The lake, in fact---sheesh, you should see it---the lake is lapping up against the breaker walls, and the "beach" that we had behind the house (all rocks, really... no sand) is washed away and/or is underwater. This time of year the lake is usually receding. It's higher now than it was during the Spring melt.

I *did* have a nice night last night... I strolled out to do some painting. I then ran into this older woman who lives down the street a ways, named Anna... she also paints, and so we had the chance to show each other our stuff, since I had some of mine with me, and she took me inside her studio to show me some of *her* work. Wonderful stuff---huge, huge paintings of flowers---"bouquet portraits" she calls them---in oil, in these enormous, antique-looking frames... gorgeous work. She's from California (why she's here I don't know) and only sells her paintings through a gallery there, in Santa Barbara... I guess she ships them out there periodically. Doesn't like any of the galleries in Ithaca ("they're not for me or my work" she said. Not sure what she meant by that exactly, although the stuff that comes out of Ithaca does tend to be more radical and edgy... though I do think her stuff was quite beautiful.) Well, we walked alongside the lake a bit, talking about painting (she had to walk her cat) and then Laura H. and her "friend" Jay (I don't know what their relationship is at all---presumably they're a couple, but it's hard to say) popped out of their temporary apartment (Laura's family is building a new and gigantic house right next door to me, so they can have a larger summer place for the whole family to visit---Laura is the only one who lives in Aurora year round... her family's from Toronto and they're apparently filthy rich... anyway, these are the people who sold their *old* house to the billionaire who's sort of "taken over" the village, named Pleasant R.---talk about digressing... this is a terrible digression---well anyway, they sold it to her because the village asked Pleasant to save the old H. house, for its historic and aesthetic value... though, while a pretty house, it wasn't that historic... and then all Pleasant did was move it over into the next yard, where this huge house still sits, on blocks, while the *new* and even larger H. house was being built... and now Pleasant wants Wells College to tear down the old Lake Apartments building--an old refurbished carriage house--next door to the new H. House--so she can put the *old* H. house in place of the Lake Apartments building---are you following all this? ;-) and then she claims that Wells can have the old H. House and use it as it sees fit---but the whole village is up in arms about this because it means that Lake Apartments would be torn down... and Pleasant's been lording it over Aurora too much, changing everything, "updating" things and so on... but she's a billionaire and can do as she pleases, apparently) ANYWAY... sorry about all that... anyway, Laura H. and friend Jay are living in Lake Apartments until the new house is finished. And so Laura pops out and asks us if we'd like to join them on their dock for gin and tonics. I, naturally, responded with a fervent YES. (Gin and tonic being my favorite). So we sat and got nicely drunk, talking about all sorts of things---animals seen over the course of the summer---otters, mergansers, herons, snakes of all sizes, ducks, loons, geese, bats---and about the new house, and meteor showers and so on... it was a beautiful night, clear... gorgeous sunset... and we even saw a pair of great blue herons come gliding in down the lake, then looping back to land near the old mill... they look prehistoric, these birds... like pterodactyls.

Still on the edge with my job. It's really up to me, now, when I leave. Everything is set in terms of what they'll give me as a severance package. Four weeks pay plus my unused vacation; retain my benefits for a year with only my ordinary contribution ($25 a week) out of my pocket. Free to go on unemployment after the final paycheck. Scared to be jobless, on the one hand... sick to death of this job, this place, these people, Syracuse itself, on the other.

the job search has been unfruitful thus far. Cornell has rejected me repeatedly, for various positions (but I keep trying. Sooner or later I have to get a break.) I was supposed to interview for a job at a bookstore in downtown Ithaca... then at the last minute they called to tell me they'd hired someone else. It's likely I lost out because of the objection they'd raised about me, which I was informed about when I called to request an interview in the first place: they were concerned about the commute. (!) Having commuted from Aurora to Syracuse for the last eight years, I was amused that someone would actually think that Aurora to Ithaca can be considered a "commute." I countered their concern as best I could, but apparently not well enough to quell it.

I've wanted out of the university, and out of Syracuse itself, for quite some time now... and so the hard part is maintaining my cool and not succumbing to the tremendous desire to just up and quit, now that the situation here has become so tense and unpleasant. It basically comes down to personality conflicts; my boss and I are no longer getting along as well as we once did, and I'm certainly not wanted by the other old crone in the office, who, I found out just recently, has trumped up and even fabricated any little negative thing she could think of in regards to my job performance, in order to squeeze me out. Eight years on the job, no bad evaluations... dicked around on salary time and time again... and now this.

Yes, this morning I arrived at work to a surprise from Betsy, (though hardly an unexpected one) when I phoned her up to see about lunch. (Bear in mind, she and I had long-drawn out phone sex only two nights ago, amidst planning for our next real-life session) "I was just about to call you," she said... and I knew right away.

So she launched into her speech, about how our latest fling had to end, because she decided she was beginning to have strong feelings for that other guy she's been seeing (who also works here at the university) and she wants to take things with him to the next level (the physical) and can't do this while carrying on with me. So things between us have to stop, she said. It wouldn't be fair to me, to him, to anyone, she said. This is, of course, a gentler (yet firm) way of saying, "you and I have no future because I don't love you. I think I love this other person so out you go, now." I pointed out to her the foolishness of chasing after feelings, "tingly" feelings or, as Betsy put it, "that goosebumpy feeling" she gets with him. She doesn't get that feeling with me and believes she never will. "Is that all?" I said. "You and I have an amazing sex life, we enjoy each other's company, we're friends, we make each other laugh, we're happy when we're together... etc. etc. etc. What the hell is a little goosebumpy feeling compared to all that? You fool... you child... you adolescent... you idiotic woman who is very nearly forty years old and yet is still talking about life and relationships as though you were twenty-two. What the fuck is wrong with you?" I found a kinder way of saying all that of course... but it was all I could do to keep from shouting those very words at her. But after all, you can't argue someone into loving you. Pointless. Completely pointless.

A couple things she said hurt me... she said she didn't feel as comfortable talking to me as she did to him. I asked why and she said she didn't know, but I strongly suspected that she did know but didn't want to tell me. I can't fathom it, however. I've always been the guy women prefer to talk to; to my detriment on occasion, because too much of that stuff turns you into the "male friend" and ruins your chances for being "the boyfriend." Women, I found, may think that they want to talk that way to men they're attracted to, but in fact, it always seems to ruin the attraction. At any rate, I've never before heard from a woman I was involved with (or from anybody for that matter) that they felt less comfortable talking to me than to someone else. I was floored by that one. I suppose it wounded my pride in some way. But it also fed into the sense of rejection; more affirmation from her that the other guy is oh so much better than me... that sort of thing.

The other thing that hurt, oddly enough, was when we got talking about why she preferred him over me---she had a hard time coming up with any reasons (or perhaps she was desperately trying to spare my feelings) but it finally came down to that "goosebumpy feeling" and, she said, she still wanted "the storybook thing." She still believed she needed that, she said. Or anyway, she wanted to pursue it. She feels that with him, and not with me. "The storybook thing." She also called it "the fairytale." She labeled it appropriately with her own words... and doesn't see or taste the irony. "I still want that romantic feeling," she said. "I need that."

Depends on what it is and how badly you need it, I said. It's not that I don't believe in falling in love or feeling that "goosebumpy" feeling... but to place it higher in importance than anything else... that's foolish. "It'd be one thing," I pointed out to her, "if you and I had no interest in each other, no attraction for each other. Or if I was pursuing you and you weren't attracted to me or interested in me, and you were just pushing me away all the time... an unrequited love kind of thing. But this isn't exactly the case with us. We do find each other very attractive. True?"
"Yes," she said.
"We both have wanted this sexual relationship between us, and we've both wanted to come back to it again and again, and keep it going, true?"
"Yes," she said. "I definitely did. Could't you tell how much I wanted that with you?"
"Yes," I said. "I never thought otherwise. But we've also enjoyed each other's company, right?" She affirmed that. "And we're happy when we're together, right?" Affirmation again. "I make you laugh, you make me laugh, right?" Again, she affirmed this. She loves talking to me, loves being my friend. I make her happy. "You make me happy too," I said. "So madam... what the hell else do you WANT?" What more is there? What else do we need? Goosebumps. She wants the goosebumps. And my point was, it's not like we didn't have all this between us and she just fairly wanted to find someone she could have all this with. Then I could understand. I've been in that position too, before. On both ends of it. It makes sense. But this is hardly that kind of situation. This is a lack of "storybook," a lack of fairytale, a lack of goosebumps. That's it.

My goosebump feeling, my "in love" feeling, for her, is contained in all the things we have together, I said to her. "It's in the affection and attraction I feel for you. It's in the fun we have together, the moments of tenderness we've had together. It's in the sex too, yes. It's in the way we laugh together and like each other, it's in the way I love spending time with you and talking to you. That's where my feelings for you come from, and that's the stuff that makes me feel love for you." But she cringes when I use the word "love" in regards to us. She agrees with everything I say, but in the end the whole doesn't add up to the same thing. I admit that love isn't a fuckin' equation... but I know at my age that "goosebumps" aren't the essential ingredient that only comes from out of the sky in a dream or a fairy story. I felt what I felt for Betsy for all the reasons I outlined, reasons which she herself agrees with totally. Yet in the end... we come up with different feelings and different ideas. Maybe she's right and I'm wrong, or maybe vice versa, I don't know.

Anyway, she wants her storybook and there she goes after it. Or maybe she's chasing more than that and just won't tell me, I don't know. But here's my chance to put my theory about "letting go" to the test... is my will strong enough to let this go and be done with it for good? I'll find out. In the meantime, the rotten part is that it still hurts no matter what. It does hurt that she finds that "goosebumpy", silly, storybook/fairytale feeling with him, and not me. That's the rejection. Hurts, I told her, to be right there in front of her all this time, having what we've had between us, and she'd still rather go looking elsewhere. It hurts to not be the object of those feelings, for as much as I dismiss them. It heightens for me the awareness of just how many times I've been in this position, of being the guy who doesn't make the woman feel the goosebumps. Friendship, yes--I've no problem with making them feel that. Sexual attraction, sure--not the easiest thing in the world but I've had my share of women attracted to me sexually, physically. But that stupid, dizzy, bullshit about goosebumps, storybooks, fairytales, grand romance... I've failed to get women feeling that for me my entire life. Amie may have been the only one who ever felt that for me. Not even Judi; maybe early, early on Judi did, but it's questionable. Certainly not Paula, or at least Paula never admitted it to me, and I think if she had felt that, we'd be together now. 39 years old, 20 years of interactions with many, many women... and I can say (with qualified hesitation) that maybe... maybe... I sparked that feeling in one woman in all those years. Physical flings I've had, friendships I've had, relationships-without-a-future I've had... one failed marriage I've had... but in all these years, only one situation where I can say that maybe I got a woman to feel that goosebump feeling. And I scoff about it... but still, this makes my scoffing seem rather hollow.

My cousin Jim, Marion's oldest son, (56 years old, I think) came into town from Boston. Apparently he retired from his teaching job at Northeastern U., and is now doing social work stuff... he spent some of the time telling us about his two winter houses... one in Florida, one in Arizona.

At one point the conversation somehow got onto my father. Some of us were sitting around the kitchen table... Jim, his brother Billy, me, my nephew Ben, his girlfriend, my brother-in-law Mark. When the topic of my dad came up, I listened more intently. Yeah, I remember Loren, Jim said. Tall, good looking guy... thick head of wavy, dark hair... (Jim and most of the other men in the family, including my two brothers--but not me--is bald) He had a tattoo on his upper arm... (I was totally unaware of this, and said so. Jim said he'd probably gotten it during the war)

He talked about my dad's interest in sports, and how he'd built that baseball field on our property... mentioned his flying of course... but then, what stopped the rest of us cold was:

"I remember those sports cars Loren had, too..."
Sports cars? Mark and I piped in. What sports cars?
"Didn't you know your dad had a collection of cars?" He asked me nonchalantly.
No, I did not.
"Yeah," he said, elaborating. "I can't remember all of them... European stuff I think. He only had a couple of those, but I remember those Henry J's that he had..."
Puzzlement. What's a Henry J?
"I don't know much about them... they were these little, rounded cars... looked very European, like something out of a James Bond movie... but I think they were American... he had three or four of those. I remember this blue one he had... really great car."
So at this point Mark went upstairs to fetch some car book he had. And sure enough, we found the Henry J. Built by the Kaiser-Frazer company from 1949 to 1954. Only about 130,000 were made in those 5 years. When I saw the photographs, I remembered seeing a picture of my dad next to one of these cars... but I'd never known what the hell it was. I'd never known it was his. So apparently these Henry J's are sought nowadays by racing enthusiasts along with antique car collectors... And of course they would have been worth a great deal of money... but my mom, in her grief, got rid of everything when my dad died. I remembered, I said, watching all his airplane parts being taken out of the garage one day...

But it was strange to hear these revelations about my father so unexpectedly when no one else in all these years has ever mentioned any of it in all these years. I'd felt a little pang of pride hearing Jim describe my dad as a "dashing, good looking guy... thick head of dark, wavy hair..." and talking about the cars, and his flying... and even saying, of my dad's long, terrible period in the hospital after his plane crash: "he was in awful shape... they had to go in and scrape off his skin every so often, he was so badly burned all over... but he had a great attitude about it. He'd hang there in that big body sling, face down, just reading a magazine..."

What's funny is, this is only one of several times over the years that I've heard my mom's family reminisce so affectionately about my father... they always leave the impression that he was extremely popular, very well-liked, and a hell of a guy. It always amplifies a feeling of pride in me... and at the same time sadness, because I never knew him.

How my life might have been different, I've often thought, if I'd known this heroic, smart, athletic and popular man... World War II veteran---a bomber pilot; eloquent writer (when I first read his letters to my family that he wrote when he was hospitalized, I was amazed); a man who built his own airplanes; who taught flying, cropdusted, did aerial surveying---apparently whatever he could do so that he could fly; who played the guitar and was so enamored of baseball that he built his own ballfield on our land so the kids all around could have a place to play; whose favorite musical group was The Supremes; a man who, by all accounts I've ever heard, was the kind of guy that women love, men feel deep friendship for...