Jayne doesn't have that feeling

Another installment in the ongoing story of Jayne. 

Frank is married. Frank has a little baby. Frank loves his wife, Fina. Fina and Frank, I know. Their names don't go together very well. Frank and Fina Bordwell live down the block from me, figuratively speaking. In fact, they live over on Fourth Avenue and Ninth Street, which is about a twenty minutes walk from my place. I know them from church. They are good people. He is a writer as well. I was really interested in getting to know Frank when I first heard of him from Josh. Josh and I were driving back from school and he was telling me about this writers' club he was starting with some friends from church. He mentioned Hank, an MFA in Creative Writing at Columbia, and he mentioned Frank, the TV writer, who was writing for Boolean Spoils, the current hit comedy. Computer comedy was all the rage at that time, and well, who didn't get a kick out of satirical drama, a story representing computer programmers as the Teutonic victors of a new world business order. I didn't realize at the time that one day Frank, Fina, and their family would one day be best friends of mine.

Frank loved Fina. Fina loved Frank. It made sense that they were married. Frank was a nice guy, but he was sometimes just a nice guy. Fina gave so very much, but sometimes she just gave. It's a pretty common marriage structure, wimps and nags. Somehow I always knew that I would never be with Jayne because of that. I mean, she never nagged me. I never wimped around her. So, I knew we would never be married, we would never go that far. Anyway, one summer early on, I talked Frank and Fina into going on a camping trip with some friends of ours--Josh his wife, the Dexter sisters and Akin. We went to the place upstate, Copake Falls. We spent our first full day on the lake. I didn't go swimming at all, but most everyone else splashed around in the swatch of very artificial sand beach on the east side of the lake. I spent most of the teaching impromptu canoeing lessons. Apparently very few visiting boaters know about feathering and the J-stroke. I was kicked out of the lake when I went to teach the other canoers how to swamp and unswamp your boat. 

Getting back to the campsite, we spent probably five hours trying to put together and cook foil-dinners in the fire. Some of the packs were carbon-rock-hard, some nearly raw. On either end, that kind of food doesn't sit well in your stomach. I stayed up trying to nurse my grumbly with carbonated sodas. Frank was awake also. The two of us just staring as the flames flickered in the spaces between the glowing orange logs that slowly dissipated into ash. It's the weirdest thing watching the laws of physics take action before your very eyes. Sometimes we talked, sometimes we didn't. He went on for a while about a show of his own that he'd like to develop. It sounded really similar to Boolean Spoils. I called him out on it; so, he spent another thirty minutes back-pedaling. After the next gulp of silence, I asked him about Fina, how he felt about her. "Marriage is hard. It's work. In the end, though it's worth it. She's the coolest person I know. She thinks I'm awesome. It just feels really great, when it doesn't feel really crappy." He grinned and half laughed at his weak humor, his weak late-night humor. He went on to explain in elaborate detail some narrative about always feeling some emptiness, always knowing that he needed something that there was someone out there, how no matter what he did in life, he just knew that there was a girl out there for him. I thought that was pretty politically incorrect, but I guess he had already identified as heterosexual, so, no big foul. He was confused. He wanted to be happy. He didn't know where she was. Even when he felt fulfilled and free, he knew in the back of his mind that there was a family out there that he would build one day. He knew it in his heart. Nothing could change that. He just knew.

I related this story to Jayne a few months before everything ended. I asked her if she felt that way, at the time, or ever in her life. I mentioned something about how society constructed that archetype for us, how normative culture demanded we see the world through such lenses thanks to films, greeting cards and television. Instead of going into some extended oral essay about how various cultural texts since the eighteenth century constructed love politics, all Jayne said was, "No, never." In that moment, I was sad. In that moment, my mouth shut and my eyes opened. I looked at her. I looked with my eyes, with my lips and with my ears, trying to take in everything about her countenance in that moment: the temperature of the heat that emanated from her brow, the weight of her mood that hung on her eyelids, the brightness of the flame that flickered in her eyes, the rate of her doubt that beat in her cheeks. Everything filled my mind as that moment came to almost a standstill. In that moment, my heart beat in my own ears, flooded my own mouth, pushed my throat, creating pressure on my windpipe to the point of pain and difficulty breathing. My eyes were full of the feelings that I read in her face. And while she was calm and peaceful, I began to bawl with the realization that she was serious and confident in her response. It was all true. It was all true, and we, we would never be. 

(I pause here to wait for three minutes. My head is flooded with the emotions I share. Just wait a few minutes before reading on, seriously.)

I don't know what it is like for individuals like Jayne. I can't imagine what life is like when you know that you are alone, when you know that you are not going to have someone, when you don't feel like there are future relationships out there waiting for you that are bigger than yourself. Perhaps it makes it easier to accept an early end. She always seemed so much more peaceful than I ever could understand. She was always peaceful, so very peaceful at the end. I didn't understand it. I was anxious and nervous enough for the both of us I suppose. It's all over now, and perhaps, now, I am the one who has no feeling for another person in my life, no great expectation of some great relationship, some big piece of myself missing. I no longer search for it at least. Perhaps the searching is what creates the missing in the first place. We are taught to search, but do we miss anything if we never search in the first place. I don't know. I want to think that I miss Jayne. Maybe that is enough. Maybe Missing Jayne will be enough for me to miss for the rest of my life. And, since she is no longer here (and since maybe she never was), I feel no need to search now. Searching is so very much work. I love loving and I love being a friend. That can be enough, I believe. Don't ask anymore of me. I've already done more than my fair share. 

Jayne was content to create. Her creations were a combination of all of the greatest virtues: genius, hard work, constancy, openness, hope, sincerity. In creating, she shared herself. She shared herself in humble expressions of love. Those creations are the models that I pattern my own life after now. I will build and create. And love? Love will find a way.

Credits: "I Believe"by Blessid Union of Souls