The Ghost of a Horse Gone By

Sometimes I just absorb things without much thought. Such is the case with the phrase "to beat a dead horse." I understood what it meant - afterall, beating something that's dead is pointless; it's an exercise in futility. It didn't even occur to me until tonight that the point of beating the horse is to make it GO. I guess I just figured that the person beating the horse just liked to beat it, and maybe they hadn't even noticed that the horse had died. Perhaps someone had even approached the person beating said dead horse and said, "Hey. What's up, man? Why you beating that horse? It's dead, already."

I mean, there are other things that you can do that are rather pointless. Complaining about the rain. Watching "America's Next Top Model." Trying to get someone to understand you, when they don't speak your language, by speaking it louder and louder until you're screaming. ("Scream all you want, buddy,...the loudness isn't going to make me suddenly get what you're saying. Let's draw pictures!") But none of these things really demonstrates a futile desire to have something carry on that isn't able to do so.

And I was thinking about these ideas in regard to some of the relationships I've had in my life. Wishing that we could get back to where we once were just isn't going to happen. The horse, it has died,...and no amount of will is going to make it get up and carry on.

Car Crash Guy turned up at my apartment this past weekend. I sort of figured he was going to show up at some point or other, since he called me at work a couple weeks ago out of the blue. I hadn't spoken to him since June, and wasn't really interested to, either. So he turned up in the middle of the night. I gave him the glass of water he asked for, and he asked how I was doing. I yanked up the leg of my jeans to show him how bruised I am. Still. (I'm wondering if I might be bruised forever, and I've still got no feeling there, over four months later.) He went over to pet the cat, who was lying on my bed, and Kamikaze puffed up like a blowfish and hissed at him. Good kitty.

"What do you want?" I asked.
"Let's talk about it."
"Talk about what?"

His wife kicked him out of the house.
Ah.

See, I didn't know he was married until we met at the hospital a couple days after the wreck. See, at that point he didn't have a choice about telling me. I suppose he could have chosen to not tell me about his two little baby girls that morning, but I guess he figured that since he was finally forced to be honest with me, he might as well tell me the whole story. Before the crash, I had known him as a decent single guy. Afterwards I just knew him as an asshole. But I figured our invisible "horse" was in the backseat of the car, and it definitely did not survive the crash. And he's still as asshole, because decent guys don't turn up at your door at two in the morning months later.

"Let's talk about it," he repeated.
"Let's not," I suggested, and I extended my arm out to the door, not unlike the showcase models on The Price is Right do.
"Where should I go?" he asked.
"I don't know." Again, there's the door.
"Jelly,....."
The door. There it is. Do you see it? I'll point it out. Again. Right over there. And he finally headed toward it and put his shoes on.
"Take care of yourself," I said. And I meant it, too. And the door shut with him on the other side of it.