Big band music makes her think of gin, makes her drink the gin, makes her wonder if this state is a cliché like bitterness or a human condition like sadness. But she realizes the label doesn’t matter because it is within her and others like her, and there is no sense in denying that, because what is the point of humanity if we do not share the simple common expression of sadness sometimes only discovered through alcohol? In this case it is her bottle of Aviation gin, cool and sleek with its art deco design, housed so well between the bag of frozen peas and a pint of vanilla ice cream.
It’s the music of Airmen of Distinction and Count Basie and Michael Bublé because she can’t choose every song from memory, and she feels certain that accepting, really accepting, the randomness of automated algorithmic choices from a remote computer server will help her achieve existential enlightenment. If she can figure out the meaning of zazen without Googling it, then maybe she can overcome the loneliness that descends upon her so heavily while at the same time staying out of reach of the self-help books and humorous observations that deflect so many other forms of pain. But not this one. Not loneliness.
It’s the voices of Dean Martin and Sinatra, of course, and some others she can’t identify, though she imagines maybe someday knowing so much about music that a blog springs up under her fingertips, a chronicle of the nuances of each member of the Rat Pack—and the Brat Pack (why not?)—and how their scripted lines can be used to guide you through a break-up or divorce or explaining to your kids why they can’t see you every weekend, just every other. But there will be no blog about mid-century music or the gin ads it inspired because in her heart—wherever that old bastard ended up, because she hasn’t felt it in years, not since the cuts to her brain and the chemicals and the obvious threats to her life made her stop caring and feeling and loving—she is spending all the energy, the trendy blog energy, trying to reign in her feigned hatred for mothers and their adorable children kicking up puddles in yellow rain boots, the feigned disdain that covers a vestigial longing. She fears everyone can see it on her face and hear it in her voice and feel it in the absence even of dogs and cats and creepy antique dolls. She has none of those things and she wonders, she wonders if and what if and maybe…
It’s Rosemary Clooney and Edith Piaf and Julie London and “What Lola Wants, Lola Gets” and the trumpets and the drums pushing forward into her ears and brain and life that makes them more alive than she is at this moment, so alive that she envies their vital bones and the tragedies and plane crashes of yesteryear. Their loneliness—derived from the loss of something obtained honestly and not part of a pathetic imagined what if and maybe—was solid and tangible and tear-stained and stands as a monument to all the things she is unsure of. She is made uncertain and belittled by every reproductively productive woman who looks down and smiles and says understand and someday and you will, and she bites her tongue, pierces it, gnaws it, to stop the response that sounds like a curse about the dead babies resting inside her that she will never know and about the ones they brought forth as part of the business-as-usual circle of life. They have their special yoga and special schedules and special happy hours and special jogging clubs. The ninety-five percent of women throughout history who have birthed and raised and given flight to entire lifetimes outside their own and now expect her to bow down and silently await instruction on how to be without. It isn’t acceptable, it isn’t allowed that maybe her heart needs attention and support because it has been destroyed three times over while theirs are built up with family and hope and immortality.
It’s a fresh cool martini and “In the Mood” and “Don’t Mean a Thing” and “A-Train” and the realization, the final blasting epiphany that there is too much chemical imbalance in play for it to be anything other than fated. Her hopes, the hopes that have followed her since eighth grade, that she could disintegrate, evaporate, dissolve, vanish, painlessly un-exist have all prepared her, have led her to this moment, this point when she knows she is not needed by the world for any reason other than carbon and oxygen and that a feast for the worms will be her contribution to life ever-after. Finally she can close her eyes and hold her breath and this time, finally this time, the dreams will stop, the hopes will stop, the hurt will stop—and she can go into the void and there will be, no there will not be, there is no be…there is nothing to reach for, nothing to resist, or to get, nothing at all and it’s her and it’s you (are you with me?) and it’s me it’s me it’s me, really me, I whisper, smiling into the chorus.
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Photo credit: ahh.photo / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND