Adam Fieled (editor, Philadelphia, USA): "Equations #12"

Indeed, some equations are about nothing but pain: consummate, unceasing, unyielding pain. With Heather, the extreme fluidity of our intercourse lubricated into being a mixed set of thoughts and emotions. Ecstasy and agony remained in exact, if delicate, balance. From the moment I met Roberta, while still a young boy, her presence engendered in me a sense of extreme attraction and craving, soured by a sense of her as obstinate, obdurate, and generally a hard case. Roberta as a girl had olive skin, not unlike N; lank tawny hair which fell over her eyes and which she used to preen; a sleek, straightforwardly pretty face, which emphasized prominent cheekbones and (slightly) buck teeth. The story of the emergence of her clique in my class, as of fifth grade at Elkins Park Middle School, and my brief immersion in it, is not worth telling. The story of a dynamic tinged towards Pip-Estella, her used by forces above her to torment me, is worth telling. I was in the clique briefly, then out. What caused both of us the most pain, is a simple reality which animated everything which happened between Roberta and I: she wanted me as much as I wanted her, and we both knew it. We were condemned to be in love at the most star-crossed possible angle, and for many years, until the end of high school. Me in the clique, then half-in, then not in at all didn’t matter: a force behind her, built into Cheltenham, the school district and the community, compelled her to play Estella for as long as she knew me. Roberta coped by halving things: she was only sort-of Estella, sort of a would-be lover, sort of with Cheltenham, sort of against. Her own equation was to take whatever emotional response she had to me and tramp it into the ground, just to survive, just to eat. We were playing tennis once, and she broke from her protocol (and disrupted the game) just to tell me a parable of sorts. There was this guy she was mad about, but she knew it just couldn’t work out. And she’d done everything she could to try and jockey for a different position in her community, and failed. I was still a child, with a child’s level of awareness, but even then I knew she sounded suspiciously like she was talking about me. Cheltenham had thrown her a bone: she had one chance to communicate to me, however obliquely, how she felt in my direction. The parable half-worked. I was never really able to achieve certainty, for myself, however, that it was about me. And for seven years, the half-assed romance stumbled forward. Communities destroyed individuals, as usual. Senior year, the sadness of her half-assed inscription in my yearbook leaned on N, who was more fulsome, for redemption; and both leaned me forward, into my days, to reach the apogee I achieved with Trish. 

 © Adam Fieled 2021-2023