I often wonder if suppression is not my bailiwick.

I hate the vague; I hate words when used to hide crystalline understanding and thought provoking description.  Find the damn words! Search for the rest of your life, write thick wordy dribble until the correct combination releases frustration; refuse wordlessness.  Describe the time, the age and hang on to the sound and syllable. From experience I can attest that the search breathes life into the word or words sought after into a living, organism often called sanity.

Warning; don’t drift off into meditation.  Grab a thesaurus. Damnable things really but if used improperly a thesaurus serves a purpose that the sickos who thought of such a cheat never dreamed.  Pay for the subscription to the Oxford English Dictionary and sort it from the 19th century on down and believe you are doing the world a great service because a dictionary will slow a person down, engage the mind and distract it from its own self aggrandizement.

The salt softening Mediterranean wind buffeted her hair into a sexy just-out-of-bed look.  I can summon the self-satisfied smile she gave me.   To her credit she enjoyed being sexy, even beautiful and took pains to maintain her appearance. During sex when I knew that the groans and pushes shuddering through her slender muscular body pulsated from her physical appetite my mind cleared momentarily and by ego induced thoughts, podded from pride, I had some of the most damnable ideas.

Brief thoughts bounced into my consciousness; it was my body, my ingenuity even my bank roll that caused her to do such acrobatic things on my behalf.   Afterward when she walked about naked chatting to her mother in Provo Utah, I plummeted in shame.  She was a high-class hooker, and we both knew it, the only one who didn’t know it was her doe-eyed mother who believed every monosyllabic word she said.

In twentieth-century writings (I won’t say literature, I’ve come down a few steps from self worship and cultural pride) I connected with all the pokes and jabs at the Roman Catholic Church.  I agreed with critics of the Catholic teachings and traditions regarding sexual morality.  Now, well into my sixties, I think of my strict Catholic schooling which left me with a vocabulary, a diligent work ethic and the ability to forge a lucrative way in life.  My parents thought it very important that I succeed and have plenty of money; they worked hard, did without and sacrificed.  Where did that lead me?  I’ll tell you; In my junior year in college at a state-run university known for producing great twentieth-century minds my parent’s diligence left me wondering why they bothered with the archaic Mass.  The real presence, the Holy Rosary, the adoration chapel were too simple an answer to complicated questions.  Besides, I was in a hurry.

Then my parents died.

Then I aged and found passion harder to find in women of my age and then in a moment of weakness I was saying ‘I do’ to an Amazon in the county courthouse.   Her vows wrapped around me like ice cold chains.  I glanced over at her mother, just six years older than me.  She didn’t seem the type to raise a daughter capable of committing herself in marriage for financial stability, the opportunity to travel and the sureness of relaxing nights by the fire while I worked late.  The things my bride said to me on the night we consummated our wedding, her plans for the future to keep me young and virile exposed me, pulled my joints loose metaphorically and from that night forward I collected old dictionaries.

My wife’s lack of vocabulary was paralyzing me.   No bread.  No wine.  No heady aromas.  No clench within my chest when humbled by her practicality or attempts at empathy ever occurred.  Her concise, often repeated and well-pronounced verb drenched sentences left me knowing what she would say before she finished a thought.

Not everyone can grab the right word.  Not everyone can understand the effort.  Not everyone can stand the cold dunk of proverbial water that searching for meaning often takes.

There is an island within the vast freshwater seas of the Great Lakes that I love.  Early in my career I saved diligently and bought a piece of property there.  I built a simple home, not large and I go there as often as I can to read to my wife.  I can see my younger self there smirking over the clever jibs and jabs that old school tradition deserved from a culturally superior world.  Oh, the eye rolling I did and the clucking agreement I spoke to no one there when young.  Oh, the pathetic pride I felt some clever writer summed up the stupidity of faith and waiting; now the place echos with the classics.

On our third anniversary I told her I wanted to surprise her and brought her to the island; it charmed her.  When I stripped down naked in front of her, my actions aroused her.  When I chained her to the bed, she was my slave.  When I left her there screaming inarticulate and shocked I felt as a professor hoping for more from a spoiled and pampered student.

Try to understand I didn’t reject her, it was an escape.