dammerung

on the plane

Monday 23 June, about 10:30 pm eastern daylight time, somewhere over the Atlantic.

PLAN C (breaking a long silence): I wonder what Polly’s doing right now.

* * *

(Polly is his cat….)

* * *
A little later:

PLAN C (looking out over the clouds): This is my tenth trip across the Atlantic.

MIMI: Tell the pilot you should be flying the plane.

PLAN C (nearly chokes on his wine laughing): That’s what I like about you. You’re funny.

* * *

in the rain

We are on a train to a seaside town where I have friends. A message comes across the loudspeaker that there has been ‘an incident’ on the track near the city, and the train will go no further than the next stop, where we will all be transferred to busses for the rest of the trip.

About 500 passengers are standing in huge, somewhat disorderly crowds around 3 busses.

It’s pouring. We’re standing with our luggage in what is usually called a ‘torrential’ rain, waiting for the doors of the busses to be opened. Will there be enough seats for everyone? will our luggage fit? will we all be able to sit with our travelling companions? how late will we be? will the train people at the station inform our friends who are waiting what has happened and let them know when we might be expected to arrive?

Will they provide us with what we really want, huge fluffy towels so we can dry off from this?

Plan C is standing under his umbrella, squinting dubiously at the locked bus.

I say to him, ‘This is what comes of joining jdate.’

He smiles.

* * *

the president

No, not the asshole president of our own country, but the wonderful, educated, articulate, attractive president of the country we’re visiting.

Because of professional work I’ve done, I get interviewed on the radio and then invited to a major ‘A-list’ exhibit opening and reception at a famous gallery, where the president will speak. The staff-member presses an invitation into my hand the day before and says those magic words, ‘Bring a friend.’

I interpret ‘a friend’ to mean as many people as I like, so I bring along Plan C and a good friend, M, with whom we’re planning to have dinner that night. M, a native of the European country we’re visiting, tells me she has never seen the president, and points out that she has to wait for an American to invite her to meet the president of her own country.

We don’t exactly meet the president (whom in fact I’ve met on two previous occasions — though in fact I’ve never met any president of my own country), but we are present for an exciting Scene. As we arrive, the steps of the gallery are crowded with the press, dignitaries, the mayor of the capital city, cabinet members, the rich, the important, the beautiful (three distinct and not necessarily overlapping categories), and the artsy, who are mostly young.

We wander around admiring paintings and studying the wardrobe of the young and artsy, who are being photographed (depending on the skimpiness of their dress) and interviewed. We drink wine (Plan C, M) and orange juice (me) and gather in the room where the podium is set up. We are well-positioned to hear the president give a gracious and eloquent speech, which is quoted at length in the paper the next day.

Oh to have a president who can give a gracious and eloquent speech!

* * *

Plan C enjoys himself. Few people could fail to enjoy an evening like that. And then the rain (which follows us for the first 3 days of our trip) lets up and we walk to a restaurant, where over dinner Plan C and M talk and bond, and I’m pleased.

* * *
M is one of only two friends of mine who have met Rolly, Performer, and Plan C. I can’t wait to hear what she has to say (I’ll see her again tonight, but in a large crowd, so the girl-talk will have to wait).

guys and machines

We’re in a train station. I’m standing with our luggage, and Plan C is getting cash. He returns with a dreadful expression on his face. I wonder if he is angry with me for something. As he reaches me, he says, ‘The fucking machine wouldn’t give me money. It worked for the person in front of me and the person behind me, but not for me.’

He’s very upset and remains distressed for a couple of hours, until we meet my friends, who greet us warmly. Yes, it’s hard to cope with that kind of frustration, but by the age of 60 or so (or 35…) most people have learned to ‘get over it.’

Not Plan C. He seems to feel he has been humiliated in public. It’s not worth saying more than a few token words of comfort, so I leave him in silence.

* * *

The next day, he is inordinately pleased when he is able to work the computerized ticket-machines for the capital city’s public transportation. A big smile covers his face. I follow his example buying my ticket, and he is delighted to feel he has taught me.

* * *
my adopted country

So as you can tell, this is no ordinary European trip. We’re not ‘touring,’ hitting the museums and cathedrals and grand squares while we consult the Michelin and hunt for moderate-priced restaurants and struggle to ask directions in the native language. No way.

Plan C, some of the time, is a tourist in this country, but I first visited here 40 years ago and have zillions of friends all over the place. We have been entertained non-stop, and I’m really glad to have a day off (today) from compulsory eating of enormous meals. Everywhere we go, my friends are hospitable and incredibly generous: they serve us three or four vegetables, two starches, meat, fish, homemade rhubarb pie, and a ton of wine. We are served four of these enormous meals in three days (Friday night in the seaside town, Saturday in the capital city, Sunday [mid-day] dinner in the beautiful mountainous countryside, and Sunday [evening] dinner in the suburbs of the capital city).

So we are not, as you might have imagined, stuck with one another as tourists. Plan C is meeting all my favorite people, and he is grateful and enjoying himself. We spend some time apart and some time together.

* * *
And oh yes, there is no time for sex.

* * *
We are getting to bed between midnight and 1 a.m. and getting up early to re-pack, catch trains, go places. We haven’t discussed this interesting situation, I mean The Absence Of Time For Sex, at all.

There has barely been time to discuss it.

* * *

dammerung

But there might be tomorrow. Or there might be time to engage in said activity, if we want to, because tomorrow I’m taking friends out to dinner (they took me out last summer, when I was posting about Performer from this very same internet cafe, overlooking a famous and busy shopping street of this capital city), and we will be close to the hotel and not out too late.

It’s one of my favorite words, dammerung.

(I should say right away that although it’s a German word, this isn’t Germany that we’re visiting.)

As you may know, dammerung means twilight. It has an umlaut over the a, but I’m lucky to be able to find the upper case key on this foreign keyboard, let alone fancy accents. So you’ll just have to Imagine The Umlaut. That means the a sound is prounounced eh, and the word is related, I think, to the English word dim. Or if it isn’t, it could be. I understand the word to mean a slow dimming, such as happens at twilight. It means a gradual coming to an end, as in Wagner’s Gotterdammerung, the Twilight of the Gods.

And that’s the state this relationship is in now: a dammerung, a very slow coming to an end.

* * *
Whether Plan C knows this, or what he thinks or feels, or what he thinks I think or feel, I have no idea. Our first day here, I said something, I can’t remember what, that touched ever so lightly on the idea of our relationship, and he said — I can’t remember what exactly, but it was something to the effect of ‘not wanting to have that conversation.’ Maybe the word ‘now’ was at the end of his sentence. But whatever it was, I felt the same way.

* * *
But we’re getting along very well — not a single fight, though we’ve now been together seven consecutive nights, more than any time in the past (our previous record was five consec nights). Each of us is being very thoughtful. I’m going out of my way to see that he feels at home, to see that he is included in conversations with old friends of mine, who are all being very warm and welcoming to him. (And no, I haven’t taken them aside to whisper in the kitchen, This is ending. We’re breaking up. He’s not the one.) I try to understand and anticipate his various needs — for silence, for conversation, for comfort, for a toilet — and he knows that I am and appreciates that.

We’re both being generous about money.

This morning I asked Plan C if he thought I was ‘cheerful,’ and he said yes, I’d been cheerful all the time he had known me.

* * *
So that was nice to hear. Why did I ask?? I guess because I wouldn’t always have thought of myself as cheerful, though I think in recent years, I’ve changed. Certainly in the last two.

* * *
At one point over the past few days, maybe when we were staying with my friends in the seaside town, the thought occurred to me, We’re like an old married couple. We were at ease with one another, physically comfortable with one another, but not living in a charged, erotic, romantic atmosphere.

Not that there wouldn’t be, or won’t be tomorrow perhaps, attraction, but the dials were turned down. I knew his needs, preferences, wishes, and he (I think) sensed mine.

* * *
But the more I heard him talk, got used to the kinds of things he said to people, the ways he thought and talked, the more I felt confidently and unambiguously that this was not the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

* * *
Or even the rest of the summer.

* * *
I think I ‘owe’ him going to that wedding the weekend of the 11th, the one (well, the first of two, but who knows if I’ll make it to the second?) I bought the dresses for, because he bought my plane ticket back in March, and it would be embarrassing for him if I didn’t show up and accompany him. And he has promised to help me move some stuff from one place to another in New York, a move that will require his car. So we have plans together that both of us probably want to keep to through about the end of July.

* * *
And if there’s time for sex in the next few days in the pretty-nice hotel room bed, we’ll probably have it.

* * *

a somewhat odd situation

So it’s a somewhat odd situation, one we haven’t discussed. We’re getting along almost perfectly (I don’t want to jinx things….) and I’m not at all unhappy.

Oddly enough, I’m not even depressed about having to go back on jdate and match whenever that will happen, though perhaps I will be when the time comes.

* * *
And how did this happen?

Well, if you remember (and if you don’t, read the posts from late May to the present moment), he gradually become more difficult and argumentative and less loving, and then, when pressed by me, acknowledged that he didn’t know what he felt about me anymore, or if I was still his beshert.

And for a few days, maybe four or five, I was very upset, mildly (not painfully or intensely) heart-broken.

* * *
But then when I saw him a week ago today, the day we left together on this trip, I realized that my feelings were no longer the same, and that — for lack of a better phrase — I was out of love with him.

* * *

Perhaps because of the wonderful distractions of so many close friends and this wonderful country where I always have a terrific time, or perhaps because the most painful part of the break-up is over and the dammerung is almost interesting, I don’t feel bad.

and moreover

And moreover, is it so terrible to have had this romance? It’s not as if I were a young woman of 25 or 30 who had hoped to marry Plan C, or as if I had married him and we had to get divorced.

Nothing irrevocable has happened. Hey, you know, I’m 61, he’s 66, why can’t we do this? It’s not as if we lied to one another. We fell in love and then — with minimal hysteria — we fell or are now falling out of love.

There are worse ways to do that.

* * *

And we certainly made one another very happen for about three months.

* * *

W

It occurs to me that in the eight days we have been together on this trip so far, Plan C has Not Once mentioned his late wife.

She was a pervasive presence in his conversation in the past, always. And since the beginning of May she has been a dominant presence.

She was a damned irritating ghost.

* * *
But on this side of the Atlantic, she has been completely absent.

* * *

I guess Plan C forgot to buy her a ticket.

* * *

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