Replay

Nelson Shake

I met Mara at a honky-tonk bar. We connected right away, fell in love fast. Two years later we ended it, and I’m still trying to understand why and how.

I don’t know that I can explain what happened in any sort of way that makes sense. Or maybe the opposite is the problem: I can explain it lots of different ways, and any of them can be equally compelling. I’ve been telling myself that it’s the middle that matters, that it’s the part that can change over and over. But truthfully, the beginning and end are also entirely malleable. I’m not sure which is more important. Different perspectives in my head have their own rationales.

• 1. “Obviously, beginnings are the most crucial. You’re charting your course. It is at this moment that limitless options cease. This is the proving ground. What you put here begins a chain of events that begets another chain begets another chain begets another chain…”
• 2. “Anything can start and anything can end. But it’s what you do in between that makes us who we are, separates us from others, etc. How you take the trappings of the beginning and move from there is the crux of existence. I mean, good God, how many people’s beginnings mirror others? ‘We met at the library.’ ‘We met at a mutual friend’s birthday party.’ ‘We went to the same café during our lunch breaks and then noticed each other.’ Anybody can begin. But once you dive into it, that’s how you make it your own.”
• 3. “What’s more important than the ending? That’s what you leave people with right before they exit and go back to their own lives. It’s what they’ll have in their heads as they go to sleep that night. Most of the other stuff they won’t remember. But the ending? That’s crucial.”

Mara found me at a honky-tonk bar. I played hard to get, but she won me over. And then two years later, she ended it.

Maybe it all matters, I don’t know. Or maybe, like my friend Ed keeps telling me, I should stop thinking about it and just move on.

“I don’t get the impulse, man,” he said the other night, over at my place.

“To what?”

“To keep rehashing details. What, are you doing this for posterity’s sake? No offense, but you two didn’t strike me as Romeo and Juliet.”

“You don’t ever replay events?” I asked.

“No, I do. But I settle on it, move along.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“So how do you know you have it right?”

“What do you mean ‘how do I know?’ I’m me. I was there. I know.”

“Sounds confident.”

He shrugged, mulled something over, and came back with, “Or maybe here’s what you’re doing: You know it’s not Romeo-and-Juliet level, so you’re trying your damn best to get it there. Huh? Yeah?”

It was an interesting theory, but I dismissed it. I think, more than anything, I just wanted to clear up confusion of my own.

Boy meets girl. Boy really likes girl. Boy leaves girl.

At its basic level, that’s it. The simplest way I could draw it up. But even then, it doesn’t feel right. So of course more detail is needed. Or perhaps it’s not even an issue of detail. Because what if, in its most reduced form, it’s still not right? Similar to the compass metaphor: Be one degree off from a destination 500 yards away, big deal. But be one degree off 1,000 miles away from your destination and you’re doomed.

Granted, that implies that I’m heading somewhere, and I’m not even really sure that’s true, either.

I noticed Mara at the bar. She was drinking the same beer I was, which I found interesting because it’s not often I see that bottle in another person’s hands. So we started talking, and that turned into dancing, and from there we were sailing on our mutual momentum. And it was the closest I’ve been to experiencing bliss. But in two years it’s over, and what do you do with that?

I know I’m not the only one who wants to pinpoint origins of crisis. Blame is a seductive game. Ed and I talk about this with the whole reparations thing. The philosophical notion that you could peel back time enough in all its bloody layers to determine the people within the core of the machine who were truly responsible for ruining the lives of others is a joke. A noble joke, but a joke all the same.

So we often laugh about the following scenario: Enough government-funded actuaries successfully crunch the numbers and pinpoint the principal players at fault for the world’s greatest atrocities, like slavery. Of course, those individuals are all dead now, so the actuaries keep running the data farther and farther up the timeline until they eventually trace who has benefited the most through the ages from the havoc created by those first in line. And odds are it’s going to be some average joe who doesn’t know anything about anything—let’s say his name is Gary—and he’s about to get a knock on his door from the House Committee on Financial Comeuppance for Slavery telling him that he’s been saddled with a portion of the $500 billion reparations bill. Like a twisted Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes. No check, but probably still balloons.

It’s a funny image to me, ol’ Gary standing there like the schmuck that he is, baffled by the marriage of historical enormity and minute precision and how it was determined a part of the target was on his back. It’s absurd, right?

Except it’s not, because we want justice. Or clarity, at least, which is probably the same thing as justice. And this is what I’m doing with Mara. Or the Mara in my head, anyway.

I had something good, and I lost it.

Still too broad, but somehow better.

Mara saw me, likely standing off by myself, and she asked me to dance. For some reason, I say yes, and we’re off and she’s magic and when the night is winding down we both learn that we’re avid bike riders and that becomes this big deal like when something trivial and unimportant is suddenly invested with all this meaning because of a coincidence and you’re probably reading way too much into it but there it is and you’re biking together through the park and making out in the cool grass under the stars like some kind of cliché except it’s not a cliché at all because it’s actually happening to you and it’s good and you’re goddam grateful it is happening to you and your heart surges with the certainty that nothing better than this could come about which is really the same as saying that starting on such a high note could only mean disappointment from here on out.

That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose.

Or more than likely it’s this: It’s nobody’s fault because all things fluctuate and sometimes you learn how to adjust with the fluctuations in a kind of dance, and some people are either better dancers than others or they have only so much stamina for the dance floor for so long.

But that’s not a very satisfying way of putting it.

Or how about this: My life is not an interesting story and it never has been, and here for once it had the makings of a beautiful tale, the kind you tell people once you’re engaged and the girls are tearing up while the dudes are rolling their eyes because they hate you for upping the ante on their own future proposals.

Except we never got to that point, and you’re back to square one.

If I do not love Mara anymore, it is likely that I love the idea of her, which means I love the story of her. But then, if even the story isn’t very good, it’s a double loss. Or triple, if you factor in time wasted.

We met at a bar and hit it off right away. It was like discovering an old friend you never knew you needed. And in that comfort, over time, you both stopped trying and took each other for granted, like a succulent on your window sill that hardly ever needs water and then one day it’s bone dry, and you’re left going, “Now, how did that happen?” even though you know damn well how it happened.

When at a loss for imagery, reference plants.

What I’m saying is, I don’t trust my own memory. Because here are the possibilities:

• 1. I tell a factual story. It moves nobody.
• 2. I tell a self-deprecating story. I come out looking like a monster. I lose sympathy.
• 3. I tell a self-aggrandizing story. Mara comes out looking like a monster. I become a martyr.
• 4. I tell a horror story. It moves nobody (other than to repulsion) because we were both monsters.
• 5. I tell a heartfelt story. It moves people because life is just plain disappointing.
• 6. I tell a didactic story. It sends people running for the hills because they see my soapbox before I even start talking.
• 7. I tell a thoughtful story. It moves people because they detect the care and wisdom.
• Or:
• 8. I shut my mouth because maybe you can’t tell a good story until you’ve had a really long time to forget enough of the facts so that you’re forced to fill in gaps in such an imaginative way that neither you nor your listener will know if what they’re hearing is fact, fiction, exaggeration, cloying, contemplative, or honest.

Mara and I met. We gave it our damn best until we didn’t. And that was it.

Please.