Gonzalo Torne - Divorce Is in the Air

“An oxygen mask would help you keep going, too.”

“She saved my life. I was thinking seriously about…you know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

“About bailing out.”

“You mean suicide?”

“That’s a forbidden word.”

“Like ‘poo’? Like ‘pee’? That woman is infantilizing you, and while she’s at it she’s going to clean out your bank account. You’re not going to change the way things are with torrents of good energy. Once you go out into the street again, even if it’s just to buy a toaster, you’re going to find the same aggression, the same human hostility. The only trick is to accept it, learn to dance to that tune. A man alone in his apartment, lying in bed, is a man in his apartment in bed, no veneer of spirituality. You don’t owe her anything. You could have felt better talking to a crisis hotline, or your mother.”

“I didn’t have the number.”

At that moment I’d forgotten that his mother (who was always so worried about the crumbs we dropped as we chewed) had, after five years of fighting, been asphyxiated by a cancerous ball. So I presume it was my eyes that said: “What number?”

“Neither of them.”

“What problems do you have?”

He pointed to the bottle, to one of the bottles. After the initial confession it got harder and harder to make out the kernel of truth amid all the fantasy, but Saw let me know that the rate of our drinking was not actually due to the effervescent effect of our renewed friendship, as I’d been inclined to believe; he’d already been drinking daily. By the time the moon came out to inspect the night sky, he was already pretty crocked. The office had been the only dam against his liquid vice, and now he’d lost even that; he was defenseless, at its mercy.

“I lied to you. It was absenteeism. I don’t even really like photography that much. I’m sick of fighting for everything, and gin is so tolerant and kind.”

It was hardest on the weekends, when he started to drink five minutes after he was out of the shower.

“On Saturday, my strategy consists of keeping the bottles hidden away. I prepare myself mentally, but it doesn’t help that I know my own best hiding places like the back of my hand.”

He’d given up going out. He traipsed around the apartment in his underwear (and a modest T-shirt in case a neighbor dropped by), alternating between phases of self-indulgence and fits of eloquent rage. Around mid-afternoon his brain managed to find some sort of clarity among the clouds brought on by the gin he sent streaming continuously toward his liver. The poor organ did what it could to dilate his spongy pores and drain the toxins.

“It’s not such a bad life.”

He told me about the horror of finding himself without tobacco on a Sunday, the crippling sensation. He’d throw on some sweatpants and start to wander the neighborhood: he looked for places where it wouldn’t be so humiliating to ask them to turn on the vending machine. In July and August the pavements seemed painted a sunny yellow, and he felt even more miserable.

“We’re friends. Friends play tennis, they go on trips. They don’t make themselves ill. Not so soon! Are we going to hug like a couple of diabetic old ladies?”

There you have an example of my grand attempts to bring him around: I was giving him a sermon! Just what my father would have done, though Dad wouldn’t have gotten up from the sofa and spoiled the immaculate line of his cream suit to pace through rooms like an outraged lawyer before a jury. Nor was I so surprised to find myself imitating Dad. He was my role model in life, the one that had fallen to me; if you and I had had children (if you’d wanted them), I would have spent my days overacting. I learned to recognize in the incipient expression on Pedro-María’s face the soft happiness of the child who discerns worry behind the scolding: the concern that those tall and strange characters, adults, had projected toward us when we were boys. And to hell with that stuff about friendship — since the moment he saw my photograph on Facebook he’d chosen me to give him a hard time, just so he could feel a little warmth again. The silly boy was looking for a daddy, Petra didn’t hug him enough, and so it made sense he’d turned to me. I’d been the only one at school taller than him.

He liked my tone, sure, but he wasn’t willing to listen to me. It was like when you hear a favorite song over and over, but it never occurs to you to shape your life to the lyrics. He’d fill another glass, turn on the transistor (sorry, but that’s the only word that fits the thing) or glue himself to the Mac screen to watch BBC news, fishing shows, or the festival of anorexics on MTV.

“George Michael is still alive!”

Well, I guess I didn’t really give it my all, either. I chastised him for drinking, for neglecting his projects (yeah, right), for flushing the best years of his life down the toilet, but it was just lip service. You cultivate friendships that allow you to shine, and what can I say — I’m vanity’s sweetheart. In my wretched emotional state, Pedro was like manna from heaven.

And don’t give me any crap about how I was overprotecting him, with maybe a little joke thrown in about how we were acting like a couple. That old chestnut of yours about how I repress my bisexual leanings — which according to you are latent in every Tom, Dick, and Harry — to the point of homophobia…I’m not in the mood. I understand that your literary aspirations mean you can’t resist holding original points of view, but I’m not going to buy that crap like it’s some age-old truism. How could I take anyone seriously who can’t even be sure what kind of genitals they like to go to bed with? Pedro and I weren’t even living together. We were just two guys recuperating from three bad marriages, taking a fresh gulp of male company, happy, stupefied, ignoring the clock, avoiding any exhausting domestic routines. It wasn’t even a temporary fix, it was about regaining our strength before setting off in search of new women. Things aren’t so bad out there for healthy-looking forty-year-olds: you have your contemporaries, intimidated by dark myths of never-ending singledom; then there are young women with their fantastic and favorable ideas about maturity; and then you have those astonishing fifty-somethings heading off to the gym. Not to mention the married cheaters, the dreamers, the unsatisfied, the adventurous, and the bored, all burning with libido. What an idea, that once you’re past forty the passion stops!

I was so inspired by the possibilities my fantasies spread before me that my heart skipped a beat the night I heard him say:

“I’m done with fucking. It’s just not worth it anymore.”

He managed to get up from the sofa he was sprawled on, but the momentum wasn’t enough for him to recover his human shape — he looked like an octopus with a tentacle trapped between two rocks. When he managed to reach something like a standing position, the idiot pointed to a box and told me to remove the contents: a bundle of photos, in splendid full color. They shone like fresh banknotes.

“My daughter.”

He told me again about the injustice of the divorce laws: defenseless men, female greed, the criminal belief that women are all delicate and weak and men are tough and selfish. He told me he never would have uprooted himself from Isabel’s life. He talked to me about the Fathers for Justice group. And I said: “Yeah, of course.” I took his words in and gave him back a ration of empathy: cold, urbane, weary. Going through the motions.

“They’re strong. Very strong. They put on feelings and take them off again like dresses. They’re like those marsupials that can interrupt their gestation at will. They decide when they’re going to stop loving. They complain about language, about how there’s no feminine equivalent for ‘womanizer’ that isn’t degrading…”