Along Came a Spider

I find myself thinking of the sketch boy… the man with agenda like a hack saw hidden in a birthday cake... the player who picked the lock of my post-marital shock. There he is leaning nonchalantly in the back of my mind nearly ten years later… with that smile stolen from the Grinch and a mocking twinkle in his eye.

We met in the summer that a divorce decree officially reissued me to the world as potential mate meat. I was living a life of emotional hiccups, not quite sure what my identity was… one week a power mama… the next week a power geek who worked overtime and then spent many nights in a crowd feeling completely alone.

The days and nights go fast when in the company of a goddess… plenty to occupy our time. Bikes along the Mississippi… swimming at the Y… ambling down the avenue in search of a restaurant for dinner. Gap clothes, trading cards and pogs to buy… playing a silly game of stop/start, fastening our clothes (while still in them) to the floor with the heavy-duty stapler --- quite fun!!! The goddess brought vitality to the warehouse district as we purchased numerous rubber chickens at Sister Fun, roller skated, shared our toys with the afternoon drinkers at Urban, jumped on pogo sticks or skipped merrily past the diehards drinking wine at the New French.

Later… in our cozy space, with music playing softly there would be homework, a bubble bath, a story and numerous good night kisses. Each night the goddess slumbered inside her goddess tent, a parachute from the Army Surplus store that hung from the ceiling in a voluminous designation of her personal space --- further marked with a 5 foot blinking "G" strung from Christmas lights on the wall beside it. As she gently snored, I'd sit and try to write with the candles lit, sighing and at a loss for words in front of my computer beside the large arched window in our warehouse space.

The infrequent shrieks of late night revelry and the constant flow of traffic below our window would sometimes startle me, but it never disturbed her in the least. The predictable sounds of the warehouse district would slowly build to its usual closing time crescendo as those socializing hit the streets. Quickly it would fade to the quiet hum of early morning and then start to build slowly again at 7 am. I was a frequent witness to the cyclical movement of the sound of the avenue. Being the peaceful and hopeful insomniac that I am, I usually managed a full 24-hour cycle of wakefulness a few times each month. With my world completely changed after 12 years and my identity obscured and challenged, my life more than resembled those uneven yet predictable sounds of the avenue… like clockwork… busy daily noise… rowdy infrequent outbursts in varying pitch with each new parade of people and then followed by that quiet and serene hum when everything possible has been rung out of a day… only to start all over again 5 hours later.

If the week of being a mama was the structure in those days, the week of being alone was the anti-structure. My weak alone… I was known to quip. On many nights in the week without the goddess I joined the revelers in the street and became the self-appointed human punctuation mark of the warehouse district. Whether it was an exclamation mark in a tight black dress and stinging comments sitting at the end of the bar at Tachio's, the big question mark dancing by herself at First Avenue, Bunkers or the Gay 90's , or an ellipsis giving the eye to a potential suitor across the table at the New French or Sawatdee. It was in the middle of a week of anti-structure that I first felt the heat of the sketch boy as he surreptitiously weighed and measured me from across a smoky room with a smirk on those Boris Karloff lips.

I once had a spider that lived in my garage. Each morning as I walked to the car I would peer into the window and inspect the results of her nightly weaving --- she was a spider artist, her medium being intricate and deadly gossamer lace. At the end of the day, I would hold the goddess up to peer into the window and count the number of flies and bees she had netted --- always at least three left mummified with a few holes where breakfast and lunch had landed. She never showed herself in the morning or afternoon --- but we knew she was there and were somehow comforted that she'd be back again in the night. I'd see her on the nights I’d arrive home late, I’d shine the headlights on the garage window and marvel at her graceful yet purposeful movement from each corner of the window pane… spinning her web and re-working her plan of attack for the new day to come. The sketch boy and I were spiders… actually he compared me to a Venus Fly Trap to finally break the ice. "What kind of line is that, and what does that make you?" I asked him. "My dinner?" He was a spider all right --- it takes one to know one, much like a vampire can most assuredly identify other living dead creatures. Spiders are solitary creatures with a plan… they move forward and build, with the intention of doing it all over again the next night.

We spent a number of weeks circling one another and weaving intricate webs only to tear them down and re-weave new ones. In our local establishment someone noticed the energy between us and warned him, "You are wasting your time, she doesn't want a relationship with anyone --- I hear she has a shower massage." I would hear, "Stay away from him, he's a flighty player on the rebound --- you're just begging to get your heart stomped." We laughed about it, because out in public we loved to antagonize one another and felt we were very entertaining, hopefully to onlookers as much as to ourselves. We perplexed many, because we hung out and then verbally sparred for hours --- many thought we hated each other, to the contrary.

Then on a particularly hot night, we decided to leave the safety of Tachios and venture down 3rd Avenue in his convertible to Lee's. As a country band played and regulars two-stepped I took a sip of my beer and he whispered in my ear, "Hey spider, didn't your mother ever tell you that it was rude to play with your food?" "Once I think, right before I ate her!" I replied.

Later on my roof, the subject of actually having sex came up. We shared a smirk and then ended up in my living room while I tried on every slutty outfit I owned. This eventually moved to some crazy sex but the rules were “no fucking, no hugging, no kissing, no trite compliments.” The rules spurred our imaginations and the safe emotional distance fueled a strange desire, which we both had plenty of. As the winter approached he made good on promise to dodge the freezing temperatures of Minnesota and move to California. I remember the night he left as we said goodbye… I almost hugged him but stopped short and punched him as hard as I could in the arm --- "Call me when you get back or I’ll hunt you down, tie you up and eat you."

A few years later finds me in the same life with a new warehouse space. Another closing time at Urban except I rub my eyes because I was sure I saw the sketch boy home for the holidays lurking in the corner and checking out my ass. We salute each other with a smirk and a nod, I invite him over for naked American Movie Classics. At 4 am, I’m drunk and excuse myself, crawl to my bedroom and slide under the down comforter. Minutes later he slides in beside me. I look at him wide-eyed and ask incredulously, "Are we going to fuck?" To which he nods, "Yes… but no kissing or compliments." We had sex until we were both sober and never did sleep that morning. As he opened the front door to leave I gave his hand a squeeze, smiled and said “Bye bye spider man --- I missed you.” and then wished I hadn't. He smirked at me and said “Oh, what’s next? A kiss goodbye?” Suddenly I felt demoted to fly in his web versus my previous identity as comrade sexual spider. I felt defeated, I had lost and he had won. My snide comeback, “Nah, I know where those lips have been.” didn’t come close to putting me back in the game.

From time to time he turns up out of nowhere and I feel the heat of his eyes upon me. I'd turn and there he would be, smirking and somehow always apprised of what was going on in my life. I'd say something quick, witty and cutting or just give him the finger and a wink as I walked away. That’s spider language for “I love you.”