Porn For Panic

Do it again, husband. Yes. Yes, and yes.

One Chapter Heading in my life would be called ' He Tells Her In The Car, Parked in the Dark of The Bookstore Parking Lot '. The children with grandparents, myself in an anxiety ridden frenzy, literally and psychologically trembling with the sickeningly persistent buzzing of a terrified soul, trapped inside a hive, the humming in my ears, in my heart. The fear. I was working my way toward a panic attack. I've ended up in the ER with Mr. Curry twice, from panic attack. He took me this time to the bookstore.

We sat in the car, holding hands, tears all over my face, dripping onto my arms like a humid Southern night. What if we die and we are nothing and never know that we were anything? And the timeless question that most of all kept sucking the life from my life and the blood from my veins: What Is The Point? Around us, the streetlamps flickered. A car pulled up, music booming into the quiet lot, snuffed suddenly out, the loud slam of the door, laughter, footsteps. Silence. 9pm rolled in with dark plasma sky. The books stood in solemn and silent rows in the front display of the bookstore. I thought I might scream. Tear out my hair, in the old fashioned expression of the poet's madness, or cut off an ear, like a great painter, or smack myself in the face, like an American Beauty. Mr. Curry held my hands firmly.

Maggie, he said.

What?

Look at me.

I did.

He said nothing for a minute. The steam of crazy, of fear, of panic, was unbearable. I felt a sudden rush of pity for this sweet man, who loved such a lunatic, such a woman who could never ever forget the nature of existence was a parallel between horror and joy, pain and pleasure, love and fear, life and death, a woman who after the throes of orgasm is aware of what a wolf howl that bodily explosion is against the dying of the body. Why should he have to suffer because I could not escape my mind?

He pulled me close, to his face, so that I could feel his breath on my mouth. Maggie, he said. My husband is a mover. He works for Mayflower. He wears long shorts and tennis shoes and tee shirts and has a shaved head and many tattoos. He comes from a very hard drinking, hard living, very emotionally rough and enormous Irish family. He grew up hard. He experienced two great deaths at a young age. He was never coddled, or fussed over, or given any great opportunities. He barely eeked out a high school degree, befuddled at the time with drugs and drinking. He has been my best friend since I was 19. Maggie, he said,

If all there is. If all there is is THIS- you ( he kissed me ) and our children, and this tiny small life with all of us together in it, the whole way through, all of us together till the end, doing the best we can, then that is enough. That is enough.

And if I never knew what an epiphany was, I found out then. My mind cleared in a graceful curtsey, exiting the cortisol and adrenaline and gut pain of fear, and leaving the calm resolution of truth. In one small moment my consciousness talked to itself in some secret morse code, and I heard these things: I am not alone / I am experiencing life and there was one billion in a quadrillion chance that I, personally ME, who I am, would end up being born, and I made it, I did it, and in place of all those possible people who did not make it here, I will not whine, I will not worry / I am the stupidest wench ever if I cannot look at this man in front of me and spend this night loving him hard, loving him naked and sweaty and fiercely and with all of the trembling passion I was using up in this panic, and

that is exactly what I did.