Drunken Love by Que Son (red scrolls of magic .TXT) 📕

Cut the bullshit, Shakespeare tells himself. But if I cut the shit, what do I end up with? You end up with what you have to do, that’s what, you fucking scumbag, you colossal failure of mankind. And do you still remember what you have to do? I hope you do, because if you don’t I am going to beat the shit out of you. But before Shakespeare can regroup and remember what he needs to do, the train pulls into the Times Square Station. The train doors open and a bunch of people walk noisily in. They wear tall coned paper hats that say “2005” and “Happy New Year” and shit of that kind, and some of them are blowing horns that make hissing noises. All appear to be drunk. Shakespeare feels very annoyed near this kind of people, so he gets off at the next stop, and walks up to the surface. He finds himself in Rockefeller Center. He strolls in the direction of the Xmas tree. It is now almost 3 am. The snow continues to fall, and accumulation is now noticeable.

Shakespeare knows he does not have much time left: the daylight will be here soon, and he must finish the story. He feels something is pushing him in the back and burning him under his ass. The images of Adam and Eve comes back vividly to his mind. He feels bad for Adam, being one or two miles from Eve while in San Jose but unable to meet her. Adam thought about her everyday of his life since he knew her, the only difference was how intense one day as compared with another day.

Shakespeare walks toward the giant Xmas tree and he sees a couple in a tight embrace. He stops and looks. The woman is small and she is burying her head inside the man’s chest. The man covers her head with one hand while wrapping around her back with his other arm. He kisses her hairs, and whenever she looks up at him, he kisses her on the mouth. Then as if aware of Shakespeare’s observation, they walk away, the woman clings to the man as if he is a magnet. Shakespeare stands in a doorway, out of the falling snow, and his imagination kicks into gear again. Now he is painting another part of the picture of Eve:

When Adam called that day in 1992, Eve was living a miserable life. She had two small children with David, but got little help from him taking care of them. David was a useless man, he could not even hammer a nail straight on the head. He disappeared for days at a time, and never helped her with anything, not even with the rent. He was brought up as a spoiled kid in a rich family back in the old country, used to being pampered since childhood. They got married after living together for two years, but he did not have a dime to pay for the wedding. Eve had to pay for all the expenses with her own money, she was working 12 hours a day and six days a week on an assembly line. And she was deeply humiliated by doing so. She felt so debased when she had to spend her own money to marry a man, an act that is against tradition and the way she had been brought up. Traditionally, it is the groom or his family who must pay for the wedding expenses. It is like buying a wife for the son: the bride will leave her own family and become a member of her husband’s. But Eve felt she could not do otherwise because David was the only person she knew in the US, someone she relied on for companionship in a strange land; and furthermore, they had been living together for two years and she had become used to him. When Eve expressed to David her shame of having to pay for the wedding herself, David laughed and said that she was only practicing the customs of the new land: the bride’s family pays for the wedding. The American way. When she heard David said that, she felt like throwing up, and wanted to spit in his face. She had thought many times of leaving him, but did not know where to run to. She had grown used to having him around, and he was good at begging her for mercy and forgiveness and not abandoning him every time he screwed up, which was quite often. Every time he pleaded, Eve’s mother instinct was touched and she allowed him back in, she felt conflicted: he was the father of her two children. Being a dutiful wife, Eve allowed him to fuck her almost every time he wanted, but she felt like a piece of meat. She let him do what he wanted with her body but did not do anything for him. And David fucked like a chicken: one-two-three-done. She just spread her legs and closed her eyes. However, the two times she had orgasms was the two times she conceived. David was using her, whether he was aware of it or not.

In the couple of months before the brief conversation with Adam in the summer of 1992, David had gambled away all their money, and accumulated a large debt. When Eve found out, she went mad, and filed for divorce. She kicked David out of the apartment. He then called his parents and asked them to help him plead with Eve to again forgive him. David’s parents, half a world away in Australia, called up Eve repeatedly and pleaded their son’s case, saying that for the sake of their two small children, she should let David back in and allowed him another chance. In the end Eve relented, but she had become a hardened woman, and would rule David, who now submitted to her will.

Eve warned David that if he screwed up one more time, she would divorce him, and the next time she would not be around to hear his pleading. David knew his wife meant what she said this time, and promised her that from now on he would stop gambling. And he did. The couple then worked hard to pay off the debt. From then on, David lost all authority in the household, he let Eve make all decisions, big or small, inside or outside of the house. Sometimes he would argued with her, but it was just for the sake of arguing, because in the end, it was Eve who always prevailed.

Years went by, David got over his gambling habit, but his psychological dependency on Eve had become another habit. Eve ruled her family. She was glad that her husband had mended his ways and now worked hard to provide for the family, assisting her to bring the money home to take care of the two children and Eve’s parents who had just come over from Viet Nam and were living with them. Eve and her husband rarely saw each other because he worked the night shift and she worked day, the only time they saw one another was on weekends. On weekends, David sometimes asked for sex, and most of the times she accommodated him. For her, it was the duty of a wife to satisfy the husband on the matter of sex. But she was reluctant and passive. And when she slept everyone must tiptoe around her. David sometimes in relaxing moments would venture to ask her if she loved him, and every time, he received the same answer from her, "I don’t know."

When they first met in the refugee camp, Eve had told David about her love affair with Adam, that she had loved him and but he had abandoned her. David always had the nagging feeling that even though he had her body, her heart and mind and soul belonged to someone else, and he suspected that she was still thinking about Adam, still loving him, that he had no place in her heart even after two children and all these years living together.

The day Adam called in the summer of 1992, it was David who answered the phone, and when the caller asked for Eve with a Hue accent and mentioned her by her nickname only her family knew, David knew it was her old lover. He handed the phone over to her. And he did not talk to her for a week after that. She left David alone with his jealousy, and did not try to offer any explanation, and he did not ask: perhaps he was too intimidated by her to ask. Adam called twice, but Eve talked to him only once. The second time he called her father answered the phone, and soon as the old man found out the caller was Adam, the boy he had hated back in the old country, he told Adam not to attempt to destroy his daughter’s family. Adam, having his own trouble with Jane, stopped calling.

Eve worked hard. She often worked 12 to 16 hours a day. In addition to her own children, Eve had to take care of a nephew and a niece who were entrusted to her after one of her sister in law died of cancer. So she had four children to bring up; and there were also the aging parents to take care of, and all live in the same household. Eve thought her effort and determination to rehabilitate David had succeeded. He had stopped gambling and was now working regularly. She felt content to live a quiet life, even if boring and tasteless.

Sometimes thoughts about Adam crossed her mind and bothered her, and at those moments she would retreat into herself to indulge in the memories. She still thought of Adam as the only one she loved, but she also felt that he had wronged her. He left her languish the years after he had left the country, forgot about her while she was suffering, and eventually rejected her--when she needed him most. She never forgot the last letter he wrote her. Even now, whenever she remembered the years in Ca Mau, the years waiting for any pieces of news about him, any letters from him, the mental and physical suffering she had to endure at the hand of the father all because of her love for him, she felt bitter and wanted to cry. When she fell in love with him, she felt that she would belong to no one but him, and all she knew was she must wait for him to come and marry her. She was determined that she would be no one else’s wife but his. And wait she did, in desperation, for a marriage proposal from Adam that never came; and years went by, until the rejection letter arrived and destroyed all her hope. From that day on, she considered herself free, and Adam was no longer relevant to her. He rejected her, did he not? However, the love was still there, she had no doubt about her affection for him. Her only regret was she did not become his wife, but it was not her fault. Then the escape, the rapes at sea, life in the camp, David, and the years and the loss of contact…all added to the oblivion. She now believed that fate had