I keep turning and twisting like a worm on a hook, trying to figure a way out of this. And no solution is coming to me. I’ve even thought of killing Jeremy. No one else knows we have ever even met, right? Except the other film student and she might not even remember. Maybe I wouldn’t get caught.
Except life isn’t like the movies. It’s a lot messier. I wouldn’t have the first idea of how to really kill someone. I don’t own a gun. Or even a crowbar. An axe? In a Manhattan apartment? Do hardware stores here even sell them? Even if I thought I could get away with it, I am vaguely aware from things I’ve read and seen on TV that it’s a lot harder to kill a human being that you’d think it is. People, as a rule, don’t conveniently break their necks when you push them down a flight of stairs like Alfred Hitchcock would seem to suggest. Thank you A&E true crime shows.
Maybe I wouldn’t even have the guts to kill someone. I’ve always felt like I was against the death penalty. I don’t think violence is the answer to violence. Life is a precious gift, right? No one has the right to take another person’s life.
But maybe I could. Would. To protect myself. I think I’m gaining a new perspective on the subject.
I’ve got to think of something. Usually when I have a problem I can’t solve, I talk to my friends about it. Or to Colin. I’m at a severe disadvantage with no advisers. I don’t always follow their advice, but talking to them often helps to clarify my thinking. So, I just keep writing this blog. All safe and anonymous. Hoping that a solution will occur to me.
I’m trapped like a rat on a sinking ship.
And it’s like Jeremy knows it, too.
He called me again today, just after lunchtime, and said he was down at the diner across the street and would I come down and meet him. It sort of surprised me when he called because I was working on a travel brochure illustration and not thinking about him, for once, so I just hung up quickly and didn’t say anything. But after about 20 minutes, I went down to my building’s front door and sort of sneaked a look over to the diner. I could see he was still there. Waiting for me.
I went back upstairs and sat down again. I knew he would keep waiting there. Probably all day. I thought maybe I should try to have it out with him again. Once and for all. Be really firm and try to act really bitchy, too, so he’d get the idea that I’m not the prize he somehow thinks I am. Yeah. I thought that might work. So I put on a plaid work shirt and my toughest-looking leather jacket and went over there. Being overcast, the diner’s windows were closed today so I went inside and sat down at Jeremy’s table.
He right away wanted to talk about his film, but I stopped him. I was trying to be very firm and totally straight with him and make him understand that he has to leave me alone. That I’m not going to put up with this. I tried to even be threatening. He was just looking at me indulgently like I was a child or something while I was speaking. Very frustrating.
It’s like he’s so confident in his own perceptions of reality that his unshakable faith in what is real is starting to warp mine when I’m around him. His acting as if I was the crazy one was starting to shake my own confidence. And that’s totally crazy.
It was really getting to be a bit overwhelming and I got up to go to the bathroom because I thought I might cry and when I came back he watched me walk from the back of the diner and he said, “Nice legs.” I said “Not gams?” before I even thought about what I was saying. Which is of course the line the victim says to the psycho killer girl in the film “May” right before she chops said gams off and sews them onto a big multi-sexual Frankenstein doll to be her friend. And I tend to be reminded of the movie “May” a lot when I think of Jeremy. As you may recall, for this blog I pseudo-named him after Jeremy Sisto, the actor who played the film student in “May.” Who made the weird cannibal love film, in that film. Just like this Jeremy.
Anyway, he got that fairly obscure film reference (of course he did!) and asked me what I thought the weird cannibal love film had represented in the movie “May”. And though it struck me as very weird that we were talking about it I said, somewhat viciously, that it was obviously a heavy-handed comment on the all-consuming nature of obsession as opposed to love, because love doesn’t imprison or place limits on its object. (hint, hint, clever me)
Yeah. Clever me. That was the general direction of where he was leading the conversation anyway so I fell right into it. He told me in an oh-so-reasonable tone of voice that he would always love me, but all he wanted from me was to be a part of my life in any way. Even a small part. Even if we could just talk on the phone once in a while, he would accept that. Just to be friends.
At this point I was fighting that “losing my grip on my own reality feeling” and I looked at him really hard and asked him if he really thinks that would be likely to happen given his actions of three weeks (only three weeks!) ago. And I’ll be damned if he doesn’t try to take my hands gently in his. I yanked it away from him as you can imagine. He asked me to forgive him for what happened and try to put it behind us. He says that he made such a bad first impression (psycho!!!) and he’s not really like that at all. And…that I would find that out if I would just give him a chance. I told him it’s not the kind of thing I can just forget and it’s not the kind of behavior I look for in a friend. I had almost started feeling really sympathy for him again for a minute there, but at the end I did remember to be more bitchy.
I got up and left before I lost my grip on Claire-reality entirely and got completely lost in Jeremy-reality. He is so completely certain of his world view. Talking to Jeremy is very bad. It’s like his psychosis is almost contagious. A psychosis virus. God, I’m such a wuss.
Problem clearly still not solved, however. Grr.
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