The Man Who Loved Deeply

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Once upon a time, in Portland, Oregon, there lived a man who loved deeply. His friends knew he loved deeply, his parents knew, and so did his girlfriend, Monica. Even his counselor, whom he saw at regularly spaced intervals in order to stay in touch with his feelings and on an even keel, knew that he was a man who loved deeply. His name was Bruce, and he avoided drugs and alcohol because he felt that they would obscure his emotional perception. "It's important to experience things the way they Really Are," he would say, "and not through an artificial lens."

His friends were pretty impressed by this. They would consult Bruce for emotional and mental health advice, relationship advice, and advice on practical matters like budgeting and dealing with a problematic landlord. His advice was always good, and his friendships were plentiful and thriving. His own relationship was like a shining pillar of light and hope to his peers, because Monica, a beautiful woman two years older than Bruce, was constantly singing in praise of his romanticism and general emotional healthiness. "He brings me EXACTLY the right kind of candy bar without me even asking" she exalted, "he rubs my feet at night at least three times a week, and he washes my dishes sometimes when I'm not home just to spare me the trouble. Once a week we share our feelings and discuss where we're at with each other." Her friends were in awe, and in a perpetual state of envy. "You lucked out, girl!" Amanda, shaking her head at the latest in an endless string of mildly erotic love notes, "I need me one like that."

Bruce tended to identify himself by his ability to love deeply, and did everything he could to nourish it, reading books with heavy emotional content, crying at movies, watching Johnson's Creek and whatnot. He dedicated an hour per day strictly to exercising his abiding passion for Monica, writing love poetry and letters, compiling tapes, planning ways to show her his emotional commitment and the breadth of his affection.

Monica my lover, my love, my confidante, in you lies the deepest river, the highest mesa, the most living green thing and the most enduring boulder. You are my basis, my fundament, the stream of reason from which all my thoughts flow. When birds take wing at your approach, they fly not with fear but in celebration, for the joy of your being overtakes them until they can be still no more and must feel the flirt of sky under their feathers. If I seem silent in your presence sometimes it is because what I wish to be for you cannot be expressed in words, in sound, and my throat is stilled by awe of your love.

Yours always,

Bruce

One incredibly beautiful late summer afternoon, Bruce was hiking his favorite trail (Bruce loved nature) in Forest Park, contemplating the next way to delight his beloved, and noticed for the first time that the sparkling stream running down the ravine through which the trail led ended at a large wooden grate, and that from there it presumably was taken by pipes under the city and to the river. "I wonder what's under there" he pondered, standing at the top of the grate, "I wonder if I can fit through that gap".

He could. He did, and found himself suddenly in a tiny paradise, a verdant location of mosses, wild clematis and gravelly streambed, a tiny island of lucidity beneath a city-margin park full of joggers and dogwalkers. The stream ran around the gravel islet into the gaping dark oval mouth of a pipe large enough to drive a Chevette into. "Fuck" said Bruce. Lured by the addictive sound of water and the natural instinct of men to explore holes, he ventured cautiously across the shallowest part of the stream and placed his foot on the dry, sloping side of the pipe. "It's not too bad down there" he decided, and stepped fully across, both feet on concrete, completely within the tunnel. It sloped gently down as far as it was illuminated by the sun in the western sky, the walls vanishing into the most profound darkness at a point of indeterminable distance. The burbling of the stream at or near the vanishing point seemed musical, almost mythic, like the description of a fairy grove in some science/fantasy novel like the ones he'd read in high school. Something about that sound, about the smell, like the odor of warm dusty sidewalks dampened by a July rain, convinced him that he wanted to explore further, that there was no way he could return to his apartment on NW Irving without fulfilling the day's promise by penetrating the tunnel further. He even had a keychain flashlight, a sudden boon bought by impulse at the checkout counter in a suburban GI Joe's while running errands with a friend. He'd bought a tin of Almond Roca for Monica while he was there, too.

Moving slowly into the pipe, he left the flashlight off. The light from without gave him quite a few feet of vision yet. He let his fingertips drift along the abrasive concrete wall; there were algae stains far up the sides, testament to the swelling power of Oregon's rains. By August, the stream was dwindled to only slightly more than a trickle, leaving plenty of room for the adventurous to stand with no threat of drowning. The algae stains diminished with the light, until he had to switch on his tiny light to see that they were gone altogether. The tunnel was barren, only a brownish slime growing beneath the waterline to show the persistence of life. The tunnel offered a sharply downhill slant just at the point of total darkness, and he momentarily considered calling his exploration off, but reconfirmed his original impulse as soon as he realized with the help of his little light that the precipice was not terribly dramatic and soon leveled off to the previous slight slope. He proceeded. The gurgling of the water and the monotony of the pipe made it difficult for him to track how far he'd travelled... ten yards? Twenty? There had been no branches in the tunnel, nothing to confuse his return. He felt a decided lack of danger, and in fact was beginning to feel a bit too soothed by the reassuring sound of the stream echoing through the conduit.

It was less than a mile from the park to the river. Of this he was certain. A mile meant a twenty-minute walk on the surface, maybe forty minutes in the pipe. Forty minutes down, forty minutes back; it wouldn't even be approaching sunset by his return. He was almost disappointed, considering the limit to this venture. He wondered what was at the outlet point, where the stream flowed to the Willamette. Wouldn't other streams join with it? None had so far. He walked on. His mind drifted. He thought of Monica and her reaction to his story of how he'd penetrated Portland's secret underground tunnel system in search of abandoned Speakeasies and Chinese smuggler's dens, to no avail. He imagined stumbling upon such a room, long abandoned and filled with antiquated furnishings, crates of contraband. Who would he tell? Monica, yes. His best friends John and Elaine and Marcus, definitely. The newspaper? No... he'd keep it to his own inner circle, to be shared only with those he loved. Love. He turned again to love, his mind embracing the idea, the feeling, like old men embrace the cousins they grew up with.

His light died.

Stopped, for a moment stock-still, his liver rose into his throat and he swallowed it down, breathless, heart aching from speed. Ah, but it was no problem. There had been no branches and all he needed to do was turn around and walk out again. Dark was frightening but there was no real danger. The echoes around him seemed newly louder without light, and when he turned to retrace his steps he slipped and splashed into the stream with a cacophanous splatter. Hardly any harm; only a wet foot. A pause. "Deep breaths now. This is fear. You can recognize it without being owned by it." Bruce collected himself. "Just walk. Out the way you came. Easy!"

He walked. Fingers sometimes on the wall, sometimes in his pocket, he stayed focused on the sounds of the water, the echoes of his steps in the tunnel. His breath, also, had a sound, sometimes harsher than it seemed it should be. He walked. He wondered how long he'd been walking, but without the light he couldn't check his watch, as he proudly despised those illuminated high-tech types as being fit only for athletes and trash, and, not being an athlete, stuck with the most basic of battery-operated models. He walked.

It seemed like he'd been walking for hours. An illusion, of course, brought on by the dark. His legs quavered. It seemed cold. For a while he'd periodically checked the direction of the stream's flow with his hand, to assure himself he was going in the right direction, but as his hand grew progressively numb he gave that up. He couldn't be turned around; there was only one way out, and that was upstream. It seemed to take so much less time going in.

He thought about Monica, what he'd do for her birthday. He'd throw her a party, perhaps, of her closest friends, each of whom would bring a favorite food. It would be decorated in her favorite colors, and between now and then he would survey her conversation for hints of her very latest desires. He would buy her clothes, the most fashionable "new basics" which she would have been lusting after but would never splurge on for herself. He would buy her perfume and exquisitely expensive and delicate toiletries. She loved to pamper herself but would rarely buy the bottled designer products she ogled in magazines. Oh, his love! He would spoil her, would write an epic to their love, would paint a mural on the wall of the freeway she drove to work every morning! His love for her would be legendary, their romance the subject of future poetry, an inspiration to songwriters. "Bruce and Monica" he said aloud. The echo reflected softly from the walls and the water.

He had always loved deeply, intensely. Even in junior high, his adoration of a girl named Sara had filled him with the rush and power of mythic heros, of the Song of Solomon, which he read then for the first time in his hunger to consume anything which would teach him about the new sensation in his kidneys. Love. It ate at him, leaving him with a hollowness that had to be used to draw in experience, had to be filled with something. He filled it with romance, with poetry and flowers and cliches, things the high-school girls swooned at until he joined the poetry society in senior year, a group filled with cynical and long-haired intellectual girls who refused to be called anything but women. That was when he really learned how to love. Sara was an idealized memory by then, a growing pain, and he was on to bigger and better. He was learning to be in touch with his feelings, to know himself so he could know and love others. He was learning to understand women, women's needs. He became fully sympathetic to the realization that women are emotionally healthier than men, and therefore superior, worthy of emulation. He grew, and in growing, increased his capacity for love.

He learned to express his love, to use words and gestures and symbolism to show a woman his passion and admiration. He met Monica, and in falling for her he used every method at his disposal to display his devotion. His love for her must be deeper and more perfect than for any previous woman, because his skill at expressing it was so well-honed, his artistry beyond measure.

"Monica, oh Monica! I've been walking forever, my knees are weak. My hands are cold, Monica, my face seems numbed by the dark of it. I only want out. It didn't take this long to get in, I didn't walk this far. I think I'm starting to be hungry."

His memory started to interplay his past with his plans. Her birthday seemed to have already taken place, and to have gone badly. In this new memory, all his plans come to fruition but she is appreciative of nothing. Her friends stand awkwardly around when he recites her birthday poem, and her thanks seem hollow, peculiar, like a stranger thanking him for something she never really wanted. Her friends whisper, and he knows they're not being flattering of his performance. He's let her down somehow. The gifts aren't quite what she wanted, and though she feigns delight at each one, he knows it's a sham. A failure, he burns with humiliation, realizing that his friends will take this to mean that his great love is a fake, that he has no capacity to love deeply, that he himself has no more emotional depth than a callow brute.

"How can they think that? I am capable of the truest, most intense love. I am passionate, I delve the depths of my emotions, let them swell over me in untamable waves. I let them infuse and inspire me, I understand them. How could anyone doubt me? Could Monica? Have I not shown her the greatness of my love? Haven't I displayed it for everyone to see?"

The walls murmured back at him. "Liar."

"Liar."

The stream, running coldly alongside him to empty into the river somewhere behind him, cried out, "Liar!"

He heard them as if it were perfectly normal for walls and water to speak. Angrily he responded, "No! I am no purveyor of falsehoods! I always identify the truth as I see it and tell it as best I can, albeit gently so as to spare the feelings of others. I am no liar, I've discussed the importance of honesty at length with my friends, with Monica, and with my counselor!"

The stream laughed, "Liar!" The walls chuckled softly, "Liar, liar."

Bruce felt weak. He was being mocked by a passage which had lured him in and was now holding him prisoner. His legs ached, his back and belly ached, and he was so, so cold. In August! He knew that the very core of his identity was his emotional intimacy, his self-knowledge. He also knew that thirst was starting to drive him crazy, and started to despair until he remembered the stream he was walking beside, the stream that was still softly taunting him with accusations. He ignored the mockery and only briefly considered the wisdom of drinking, as he squatted down and scooped up a double palmful in the invisible dark. It could have tasted like anything, but it tasted only like water, slightly mossy, a little like concrete. After all, it came down from the hillside; it must be clean. He found it difficult to rise, and sank to rest on the slope of the pipe's side. It was damp, and soon he felt moisture soaking through the fabric of his jeans.

After the debacle of the party, Monica would be distant. She would call him less, and often would end calls quickly. He would make great efforts, send flowers, sculpt chocolate into tiny replicas of her favorite classical statues, but to no avail; her distance never eased. "Why, Monica, what did I do?" he lamented, and in answer the walls accused him, "Liar."

"I am full of love," he thought. "I love deeply. I love greatly. It's who I am."

"Liar."

"No," he protested. "I am in touch with my feelings! I am aware of my motivations! I talk about my emotions!"

"Liar."

He kicked at the stream, at the walls. His frustration and fear erupted into a temper tantrum, flailing at the tunnel in a flurry of blows against his unseen tormentor, the impenetrable darkness punctuated by the sounds of splashing and panting interrupted by what might have been tiny sobs. His legs were soaked to the knee, and his ass was also wet. His knuckles stung where he'd smacked his hand against the wall above his head. He forced himself to his feet and into a walk, striding as briskly as he could, despite a feeling of weight bearing down on his neck. Once, he stopped to urinate, once to vomit, and replaced the fluids lost with more water from the stream. His head was hot. He resented Monica for her lack of appreciation, and as the resentment grew, so did the mirth of the stream. "Liar! Liar! Liar!"

He tried to turn a deaf ear to it, but it wormed under the skin on his forearms and made them itch and crawl. He saw Monica spread out before him, hair spread in a dark halo behind her head, her beautiful form golden on a white bedspread. He couldn't see her face, and realized it didn't matter. "Monica, my beloved," he whispered, "You are everything."

"I am only a vehicle for your displays of love" she sang, rising from the bed and leaving the room. He followed her, watched her clothe herself. "But my love, I feel for you something so deep and wild and strong that sometimes it seems as if I can't surface from it, as if it's swallowing me up, drowning me. How can you be merely a vehicle when I feel so powerfully?"

She stared at him from eyes which had no color, put on her coat. "I'm going to church" she said. "You can go to hell."

He tried to put her face in that void, tried to color her eyes with his memory, but failed. Maybe he was going mad, insanity robbing him of the one thing he cared most profoundly about, his love?

"Love" whispered the curving walls. "Love".

"Liar".

Was it Monica he cared so deeply about, or was she right, were the walls right, the stream, was she merely a vehicle upon which he constructed his identity? Was his love for Monica, or did he only need her to anchor his construct of love? The stream giggled, "Liar." His head was hot. His hands were cold. His feet had no feeling and cinder blocks weighted his neck and belly. He'd been in the pipe forever. He took another step. Another. His knees felt like buckling. He felt like prayer. He felt like Jesus. He took another step.

"I'm going to church too, Monica. I'm coming with you. You're right, they're right." He stopped and raised his hands up as if in supplication to the conduit, to the ground in which he was enclosed. Sinking to his knees, he blessed the walls with his sore fingertips. He thought he heard faint voices answering "Love", echoing distantly up the tunnel.


Over the next several months the local papers printed a few stories on his disappearance, and flyers featuring his face were passed out and stapled to telephone poles up and down the NW 23rd Ave shopping district, downtown, and along Hawthorne and Alberta. A year later some commemorative articles were run... "Whatever Happened to Bruce Kelley", full of speculation and quotes from his mourning friends and family. Six months after that the Oregonian contained the announcement of Monica's wedding to a man who showed his love less perfectly, drank occasionally, and was not quite so in touch with his feelings.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

You know, I always wonder where I went wrong with this story. It's one of my favorites, but no one else ever seems to have any kind of response to it. Would anyone care to read it and comment on what they perceive it as being about?

[Payne]

It's quite long, and it was posted while I was internetsless.

But I liked it, you have a soft touch when you write stuff like this.

You basically covered two of the ideas I had while reading the first half, that he was going to go mad (the tunnel was a descent into madness) and that love is a selfish emotion. The only other things I could think about were, given the suddeness of his "madness", could drugs be involved, or some other kind of "personal apocalypse".

Actually, thinking about it more, this kind of reminds me of "paths". Exploring the badlands, only without a map and compass.

Yes, I like that last part more. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Thanks! I could add a questionable sandwich into his lunch, if that would help with the rapid descent.

[Payne]

Well, maybe walking into a solid wall when he's walking down, right after the light goes out, but one he didn't see when he had the light?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Maybe I should imply somehow that there was a branch he didn't notice on the way down.

Although I kind of like the implications of metaphorically venturing into a tunnel in his psyche and not being able to get back out.

[Jenne]

I loved it.  Beautifully put, and I only didn't read it and comment before because I'm usually on here when I am working.  I'm working now.  As it happens.  9:11 pm and I'm working. 

[P3nT4gR4m]

That was pretty fucking awesome! I must have missed it originally.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oh yay, thank you! I'm relieved that you guys do like it, because I was starting to wonder if it were fatally flawed in some way I was just blind to. I've showed it to a couple of friends IRL and not gotten much feedback from them, either. I gave it to my editor, who normally is pretty full of feedback, and she had, literally, NOTHING to say about it. Not a goddamn thing.

[Honey]

Hi Nigel,

I really liked your story.  It made me think.  & then think again.  I like that.  I also started thinking about other writings that made me feel this way.  Like some of Shakespeare's sonnets, like the one that goes:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak,--yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress when she walks, treads on the ground;
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Like written a little tongue in cheek?  Playful Love vs. Suffocating Love.  When the Love is too much like worship, the Loved One is turned into an abstraction.  The Lover never seeks to understand the Loved One as a person & is not playful at all about it.  This weighs the Love (& the relationship) down.  & then the Loved One is a little disgusted by this Love.  Also, in an odd twist, reminds me of the dissections we had to do in Biology classes.  I was at the same time fascinated & repulsed by the idea.  The idea of opening up the poor dead bodies of animals was disgusting but then, when opened, the intricacy of the systems revealed was somehow beautiful to me.  Living within this paradox (the fascination & repulsion part) was all absorbing to me while I was doing it.  Thinking about it after (& even now) leaves me sad & somewhat confused still. 

I also thought of Aldous Huxley (I think?) who said something like, "There's no such thing as a conscious hypocrite."

Your story reminded me of Love relationships I've had where my Lovers turned me into an abstraction.  It's nice to be playfully worshipped (especially in the bedroom) but worship is not Love.  Worship (when it's obsessive & constant & Not playful & situational) creates distance between the Lover & the Loved One.  It doesn't build bridges of understanding between the two.  After a while it's just not that much fun for either person.

These types of relationships tend not to end very well (at least mine never did) because you can never live up to the Loved One's expecations or notions of what you are "supposed" to represent to them.  Nor did I ever want to.  In the end, I always ended up getting a little (or a lot) pissed off.  Also made me sad too.  & they never understood why (even when I tried & tried to explain) it had to end.  One guy got so mad at me (which I thought maybe was a good sign?) that he went off on a diatribe about how my Love was so ?whatever? that it could destroy!  Which made me feel a little like a Goddess at the time (like Kali maybe?)  That one was a little unsettling to me tho.  Even now the idea of Love relationship puts me off a tad.  It's as if you have to kill a part of yourself, or disappear into another person's idea of who you be rather than them accepting you for who you are (at the moment anyway).  That's another thing about these types of relationships, they tend to lead to stagnation because the Loved One is "supposed" to remain fixed in the other's mind.  & not "allowed" to grow or to change.  Like being in a prison (& not even one you designed yourself).

I'm still new to this site & I really enjoy reading the threads.  I want to read some of the books too but need to gather some peaceful time in order to do so. 

I really enjoyed your story!  It did hit me where it hurts.  It was powerful, disturbing (to me on a couple of different levels) unsettling.  It left me feeling uncertain.  I find that's a good place for me to begin or to continue to ponder on these things.  Thanks & Respect.   

Honey

oh, a quick question if you don't mind?  Did you ever think about ending the story in a different way?  I guess my question is more about the writing process.  The way it ended really worked for me.  I'm just curious.  Not really knowing what happened to him is part of why it worked for me.

[Payne]

Welll, I did see an early draft where he were abducted by dwarves....

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Thanks, Honey!

A large part of that story came from my experience with my second husband, who is a man very much in love with the idea of being in love. As you say, such a relationship rarely works because the vessel who represents Love to such a person cannot, being human, live up to their lofty ideals, nor do they receive true, human, connected love.

I never considered ending the story any other way... I didn't start out knowing how it would end, but as I wrote it the ending became obvious.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Payne, you are thinking about the Stanley story.

[Richter]

Thanks, Honey!

A large part of that story came from my experience with my second husband, who is a man very much in love with the idea of being in love. As you say, such a relationship rarely works because the vessel who represents Love to such a person cannot, being human, live up to their lofty ideals, nor do they receive true, human, connected love.

I never considered ending the story any other way... I didn't start out knowing how it would end, but as I wrote it the ending became obvious.

I've known folks like that.  They always seem like they're just surfing form partner to partner, enjoying the limerance of someone new to adore.  Sad state of affairs.

Also, heavy, but def.   

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Thanks!