Unlike Heaven

This has been quite a weekend for a quite a few of my homegirls (yes, the ones with whom I live). Not unlike them, I too have been living on the precipice of nausea for almost a week. So, you can understand that I was not shocked when I heard their constant moans, “We should go to smoke.” “I’m going to smoke; are you?” I was confused.

It turns out that the “smoke” to which they were referring is a little jazz bar on 106^th and Broadway. After midnight on Sunday night (technically Monday morn.), six of us went to Smoke, where the drinks were exorbitant and the men, oh so metro. Still, the music rocked. The drums provided a Latin beat while the trombone and saxophone serenaded our crowd with some strong horn action. It’s safe to say that we were largely satisfied.

To tell the truth, I could have used a smoke. We all could have. Isaac brought over a delicious chocolate cake that he bake to ease our pain. (By the way, kudos to the cook. Who knew?) Usually, cake is a poor substitute for Camel Lights. In the case, it didn’t matter. Despite Isaac's Prada-clad intentions, his kindness couldn’t dent the drama that we was enduring.

Since Shabbat, the girls and I had gone down with Dante from Limbo to Purgatory, the latter being exponentially worse. In Catholicism, Purgatory, like Hell, is a place of unimaginable torment. Purgatory’s very thin silver lining is that it is only temporary, unlike Hell, where the torment is eternal. We’re all confident that we ended up here on a technicality. In our cases, bureaucracy had become infernal.

The torture is, indeed, temporary, though it feels like an eternity. Daniel refuses to discuss the relationship until I apologize to him. Who would demand such an insincere apology? It never occurred to him that I too could solicit an apology. I am, however, not so presumptuous. His apologies are his to give, not mine to take. Genuine sentiments have never been so easily summoned or dismissed.

I feel that he’s still bullying me into feeling and acting as he wishes. In order to get what he wants, he is threatening me with the relationship. Essentially, it feels like I’m being tortured for not reassuring him. He doesn’t understand that I will always refuse to be controlled. My feelings, not so amazingly, are my own to feel. No man will ever control them. Is that so foreign an idea that he should not understand and respect it?

“A questo invito vengon molto radi:

o gente umana, per volar sù nata,

perché a poco vento così cadi?”

“This invitation’s answered by so few:

O humankind, born for the upward flight,

why were you driven back by wind so slight?"

Purgatorio, Canto XII, 94—96