Anger

Jan isn’t speaking to me at the moment. In fact, I just got back home from leaving some money for her in order to fix the damage.

She called me last week asking if I’d like to come over that weekend. I was happy to because Jan and I haven’t spent any real time together in a while. I was expecting a night like the old days in which we ate good food, drank some good wine and talked into the ealy morning. Jan has always been my intellectual equal and I enjoy her company.

I had planned to see Grace that night, but decided to cancel in favor of seeing Jan. After all our would-be burgeoning relationship has been sinking faster than the Titanic. I’m strangely unmoved by it. Once you’ve been through a divorce your feelings about relationships change. You realize that most of them are, for better or worse, transient.

I’ve got a bad temper. I get it from my father who was one hothead son of a bitch. He never hit me, but he was always on edge, uptight, angry at the drop of the proverbial hat. My mother said it was his work. Whatever it was, he passed it to me. This temper of mine comes on at the worst times. It’s cost me friends and lovers. Sometimes it has been justified. Sometimes it hasn’t. You can’t think about it too much, just keep moving forward. A person can strangle on regret.

I arrived at Jan’s in the best mood. By the time I hit the front door though I knew I was not in for a quiet evening. I could hear the chatterheads milling about behind that door. I was set to turn around and leave when two members of the skinny jeans brigade arrived, forcing me to knock on the door to avoid suspicion.

My consternation was further heightened by Jan who acted genuinely surprised to see me even though she’d invited me. I gave her the bottle of wine I had brought for her, yet she seemed more intrigued by the two brats who came in behind me. Nothing much to them, really. Boys denying manhood, whose only goal it seemed was to look like the 70s punk group, The Ramones, a band of ugly idiots if there ever was one.

I wandered around the place, listening to the conversation, feeling the weight of knowing I had no place in this apartment surrounded by these flea-ridden assholes. I should have scrammed out of that place right then, but I’m a dumb fuck so I took a seat and started drinking.

It was about an hour into this torture of wallet chains and stuttered vocabulary that Andy prick showed up. Son of a bitch walked right in and started owning the place, telling people this and that. It was too much, but I could handle the prick. I’d dealt with assholes like him before. They’re nothing. Just a human megaphone spouting their list of imagined accomplishments.

After another drink however I began to take exception to his condescending attitude towards Jan. The son of a bitch should have been on his hands and knees morning, noon and night praising whatever is up there for allowing Jan into his life. Instead he treats her like a mangy dog……and even those are worth a little love and respect. After all, how can you not love a dog, no matter how mangy it is?

I couldn’t stand this prick any longer. I stood up and made my way over to him, let him know what I thought of him. I’ll give him credit, he let me finish my spiel. He must have known before I did I was digging my own hole.

Then he rips into me. You know, my age, what was I doing there, some things only Jan knew that he now knew about me. I have to admit, some of it was right on target. Maybe that’s why I lost my temper and decked the son of a bitch right there.

He wasn’t made of anything. He fell backwards into a lamp, spilling it to the floor. I went in for another punch. I wanted this son of a bitch to swallow his teeth. I tried to clip him as he was falling backward but I missed, driving my fist into the wall. Right up to the wrist. Took me a few seconds to dislodge it. I was seething like some kind of wild animal.  All I could think about was beating this frazzled-headed little bastard into a pulp. I was really losing it.

You’ve got be careful with angry people like me. We let it sit there and sit there, and when it finally explodes, we’re so happy to be rid of it we take no consideration who we’re dumping it on. That’s why it’s a good idea to leave those brooding bastards you see out and about alone. You never know, you may end up paying big time for the person who broke their heart nine years before or the corporate exec who canceled their favorite show or the alpha males who humiliated them in gym class. It could be anything. Anger doesn’t have a set of universal rules. It comes from the heart, the mind and the pit of the stomach where all of our worst fears and venom never digest.

After I punched that snapperhead, the place was quiet. It was as if time stopped. I had gone from an anonymous figure minutes before to the center of attention. Andy had fallen on his back and was squirming like a turtle. He looked ridiculous, prompting me to laugh. I knew I shouldn’t, but seeing that punk blithering like an idiot on his back was a real joy. Sue me. Jan didn’t think much of it, I can tell you that. She told me to get out.

I tried to reach her over the next few days to apologize and smooth things over. All I got was her voice mail with that sickeningly sweet voice she has, young and pretty, chiming in my ear. I left a message saying I was going to leave the money to pay for the damage in her mailbox. I didn’t ask her to call me back. She hasn’t called me back. Probably won’t. Like I said, a person can strangle on regret.