The Eraser Hypothesis

Men. Women. Heartbreak. It happens.

Time passes. Tragedy plus time. And then something changes. You're ready. The never-ending sequence of sleepless nights. The endless loop in your mind, the repetition of the last moments of the breakup. The accusations, the unanswered questions. All of it: erased.

What is the combination of factors, external and internal, that conspire, that come together, that allow you to be free of the oppression, the trail, the tail, and tale of the heartbreak? I wish I knew, because it does happen. Is it timing? The weather? An ocean breeze? The way a strand of hair brushes across your face? The angle of the sun? The way you felt when you woke up, placed a foot on the floor, and stood up to see the morning light streaming through the trees? What is it? If I could fashion a mathematical equation for it, and patent it, I could get rich. Maybe.                        

                              

The someone, The Eraser, doesn't have to be the next big love. Maybe it's someone you know as an acquaintance, someone who lives far away, someone who has a separate life (to put it delicately). But the confluence of events, the right person, the right moment, that particular conjunction. Something aligns so that you erase all memory of the heartbreak: the sense memory, the psychological memory, the physical memory, the body memory. When you recall the image of your heartbreak, you feel nothing. At last.

Up til now, the Eraser process had a big physical component. A big, throbbing, physical component. Sex. The rip-tear-throw-down, dive! dive! - kind of limb-disarticulating, sweat-soaked, hand-trembling kind. The kind when you need dental floss. After. That big.

Of course, before it happens, your liable to leave bruised, if not broken hearts in your wake. Friends tell you to get out there. You date. And you feel like you are watching from outside of your body. You make small talk, you watch, gauge the reactions. You give up some of your precious time. But when an arm wraps around your shoulder, or a kiss is planted on your forehead, or the flat of a hand finds its way onto the inside of your thigh, or more, you cannot get the image of the heartbreak out of your head.

I think of the song, The Other Girl, from the Elvis Costello with Burt Bacharach collection, Painted from Memory (1998). I substitute "Guy" for "Girl," but you get the idea.

Before the the last Eraser, I would belt that song out, listening to it while driving too fast in my car. The tears would stream from my eyes, and I would roll down the window so that the rushing wind would dry my face.

But now I'm befuddled. The most recent Eraser involved no sex. Almost, but not.

The equation needs an extension. A modification.

Maybe it goes to being 40-something-single-in-my-hometown.

Comments

[Anonymous L]

OK-I need an eraser!! You kill me with this blog!!! I can't look at his picture without feeling something. Not sure what, maybe regret? Frustration? I can probably have sex with a person right now, but I am not sure I can make love to anyone. Not yet.