The Winner's Circle
With Eric Feezell.
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Eric Feezell is recognized by a handful of people within his family as an authority on board games. His specialties include Yahtzee, Mouse Trap, Twister, and Travel Yahtzee. From time to time, he will share his expertise with us.
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Twister.
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It has been said, dear, that people who need people are the luckiest people in the world. By that account, you and I are blessed with a bounty of good fortune. And here, spread before us upon the floor, is an exercise that should serve to remind us of this providence. May I compliment you on your socks, by the way? You have always had exacting taste when it comes to socks.
For now, place your left hand on blue so we can begin this lovely charade. I'm reminded tonight of our very first encounter. You, searching half-blindly for a contact lens along the embarcadero, awkwardly balanced there, hunched over as though you'd just taken a punch to the gut, combing slowly about the quadrant of cement on which you were sure the article had fallen. I offered you my assistance, which you accepted gladly. Now, as I gently straddle over you with my left leg to reach yellow, it's as though we'd been returned to that very moment, and I am alive with love.
Right foot green, dear. Would you ever have believed that it would come to all this, to us? Often I am overcome with this irrational fear—that I will awaken in my twin-size bed back in Cucamonga, laced with sticky sweat, cheeks warm to the touch. I tremble as I ruminate on this possibility, and then realize how much more difficult my next move will be if I don't manage to transcend my semi-weakened physical state. Reaching back around your rear end toward a red circle with as much grace as I can muster, I take comfort as I brush delicately against you. I know that this is no feverish hallucination, but a breathing, pulsing moment stuck in time.
With you so close, my silly, unwarranted neuroses simply cannot last. You are like their kryptonite, I think. You're stepping on my left big toe, I think. Don't worry, though. It hardly hurts at all.
I like this, and I think it helps my claustrophobia some. It's like being trapped with you in an inverted broom closet without walls. Or in an invisible crate. Or a tipped-over telephone booth—but no ... the clear walls of the telephone booth are confusing the metaphor. Anyway, I get nauseated at the thought of being trapped in a telephone booth with most people, and even by myself, but I think I could handle it with you, so long as it were of the clear-walled variety. Right hand yellow, please.
The song that's on right now—remember it?! It was on the CD I burned for you back when you lived on College Avenue. I know you're not the biggest Poco fan, but you agreed this one was different. "Less country-ish," you said. Richie Furay really didn't get the credit he deserved as a songwriter after Buffalo Springfield, did he? Sorry. Blue, you said? Can you imagine having to compete with Stephen Stills and Neil Young? The ego-tripping must have been titanic. Can you imagine the fights? No, you don't have a mean bone in your body.
You seem pensive, sad, suddenly. What is it about Twister that does this to you every time we play? Is it a fleeting melancholy—a dully aching disappointment that the game, like all games, must end—or is it a deeper sort of contemplation, one rooted in the knowledge that we cannot be fully and separately our very own private universe, that we cannot last forever like this, tortuously wrapped throughout one another, each touching the other in ways that most will never be fortunate enough to know exist? No? Is it Poco? Whatever the source, I beg you: remove yourself from this sadness, much as you will now remove your left hand from blue and attempt to place it on green. Do not cry, please. I don't know if I could bear to watch the tears stream up across your forehead.
Love me tonight, kind woman, and tomorrow, and as long as you can love me, and I promise to do the same for you. Don't be afraid of what we are now—nor of the future, for all the future offers is a secret slowly pending, and nothing more. There may be sadness, gladness ... certainly there will be change. If we fall, we fall. And eventually we must fall. But together, as long as we remain together, we will never, ever fail.
Let's celebrate love over fear, my dear, and the togetherness we have found. For now it seems we are inextricably linked.
Right hand yellow.
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