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Subject: Greensleeves (Mf inc cons) *
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Greensleeves (Mf inc cons)


In the months that followed after my father's death, I could not bring myself
to remember a single act of his love towards me.  I did not shed a single
tear at his funeral.  All I could remember was how he allowed me six
hours every week to enjoy myself when I was still a child; the rest of the
time I was to study and practice and work.

In a psychology class I heard about parents who wanted their children to
become prodigies, and so they played Bach and Mozart to them before they
were born.  I ran from the classroom seething with hatred.

Books about incest became my obsession.  I started getting nightmares I
couldn't remember and I'd wake up sweating and terrified.  I'd turn on the
light and take out those books and I read and re-read them endlessly with a
box of tissues nearby and my vibrator between my legs.  I felt rage and
shame and a terrible arousal as I read the stories of these women.  I cried
as I read each one, but my body betrayed me and I came again and again
until finally I was exhausted and fell asleep.

I went out to bars and slept with men I'd spoken less than a hundred
words to.  On the nights I slept alone I masturbated while remembering
their taut buttocks and how they groaned when they came in my mouth,
but I could never remember their faces.  The always left me in the
middle of the night.

On the way home from work yesterday afternoon, I heard a song played
on the radio that I hadn't heard since his death last year -- it was
Greensleeves.

I couldn't sleep last night.  I needed a drink, or mindless sex.
I could hear the music, Greensleeves, playing in my mind, over and over.
In the middle of the night I got up and ransacked my shelves of books
looking for the lyrics of the song and the history behind it.  I
threw each book I found to the ground until I found what I was looking for.
I believed with all my soul that this knowledge would somehow save my life.

   Greensleeves is a song about a man who had great wealth and power,
   and yet he was betrayed by the one he loved most and would do anything
   for.  Legend has it that Greensleeves was written by King Henry VIII, a
   man who executed two of his six wives...

Last night, I cried for my father.

                             *    *    *

My father told me once that he started playing for me before I was born,
while I was still in my mother's womb, and that he hoped that even before
I saw the world for the very first time I would hear music and be inspired
by it.  The first song he ever played for me was Greensleeves.

When I was five my father let me sit with him as he played our piano.
Watch my fingers, he said as he began the gentle, familiar melody.

Now you try, he said.  Slowly, haltingly, my fingers moved over the
keys for the first time and I learned how to play while my father
watched patiently by my side.

"One day," he said, "you will do the things I wish I could do."

Years later I imagined that my father and I were in a great concert hall
playing the piano side by side as we always did, and when we finished our
final piece, Greensleeves, the audience would be moved to tears by the music
that came from our love.

My father never fully developed his talent for music.  He told me one night
about the vow he made when he turned thirteen in Indonesia.  That week, his
father had gambled away all their money and they went for four days without
food.

On his thirteenth birthday he was already tired of this world.  He
thought about running away and joining a Buddhist monestary, and he
asked a priest for guidance.  The priest told him that he had a
responsibility to his family that he needed to fulfill, and that he would
die by the age of fifty.

He quit playing his uncle's piano; he worked hard and became a doctor, then
escaped to America.

My father was never a superstitious man and he was always in good health,
and I always wondered why it seemed that he took that prophesy half-seriously.
Perhaps he believed, or perhaps he wished, deep down, that he would work
himself to death.

He left for work early in the morning and he usually returned late at
night.  The inside of our house looked like a library: rooms filled with
rows of cases of shelves of books.

My mother felt trapped in that house filled with books she never read,
isolated from her friends and family who lived so far away.  She often spent
the entire day cleaning, making mistakes so that simple tasks stretched out to
fill the entire day.  More than once I saw her bump into a doorjamb when she
wasn't paying attention.  It was as if the house, and my father's life, sought
to erase her soul little by little until there was nothing left of her.  One
day, when I was twelve, she was gone.  She fell ill and died quietly without
ever complaining.

After my mother's death I was often alone in the house and I started reading
my father's books.  I learned about sex from them; I stole the ones he kept in
dusty corners of the house -- the ones I hoped he would never notice missing
-- and hid them underneath my mattress.  I took them out when he wasn't home
and masturbated as I read stories about sex.  As I read lying face-down in
bed, my fingers making furious circles on my clit, the hard, tense knot in
my stomach melted away.  Sometimes when I climaxed, the man in the story
had my father's face.  Every afternoon I cried out orgasm after orgasm into
the empty hallways of that house.

To please him I studied hard at school, but like my mother I started to make
mistakes while doing even the simplest things.  I forgot about assignments,
or I did them and then lost them.  On tests, I got the hard questions right
and the easy questions wrong.

When I was sixteen I became sick with a progressively deteriorating
illness.  The doctors said there was a fifty-fifty chance that in ten years
time I would live my life connected to a machine.

The day we learned of my illness my father came to my bed and turned
off the lights.

Close your eyes and take off your clothes, he said.

A few minutes later I covered my mouth with my own hand to stifle a scream.
The darkness was silent save for the sound of my own frightened breathing.

My sweet girl, he whispered, his voice ragged.

We slept in the same bed for years.

Sometimes when he slept at night he'd dream about me and call out my name.
I'd slip under the covers, take his penis in my mouth and suckle him
and swallow his come, and when he woke he'd kiss me on the mouth and hold me
in his arms and watch me while I masturbated for him.

My precious, precious girl, he'd whisper as I brought myself to orgasm.

Sometimes at night I'd dream about him making love to me, and I'd wake up
with his gentle fingers already inside me, his eyes liquid and beseeching and
I rolled my hips to meet his caresses.

He wanted me to pretend I was his new wife.  In the morning I got up before
he awoke and make him breakfast.  At night he returned to our bed.  In
between I made love to myself, or did school work whenever I could
concentrate.

I worked as hard as I could, left home as soon as possible, and once I
became financially independent I never spoke to him again.

He died last year at the age of fifty-four.  His iron health had
deteriorated and he had diabetes.  In the months preceding his death, he
worked from the time he got up to the time he went to sleep.  He died in
an accident -- he slipped and struck his head.

                             *    *    *

It's nighttime now, and I am snuggled in a warm bed under a thick patchwork
quilt.  My CD player is running, playing the same song over and over,
but the words I'd heard so often now seem meaningless as I drift, slowly,
into a deep sleep.


     Greensleeves

     Alas my love you do me wrong
     To cast me off discourteously;
     And I have loved you oh so long
     Delighting in your company.

     Greensleeves was my delight,
     Greensleeves my heart of gold
     Greensleeves was my heart of joy
     And who but my Lady Greensleeves.

     I have been ready at your hand
     To grant whatever thou would'st crave;
     I have waged both life and land
     Your love and goodwill for to have.

     Greensleeves was my delight,
     Greensleeves was my heart of gold
     Greensleeves was my heart of joy
     And who but my Lady Greensleeves.

     Thy petticoat of sendle white
     With gold embroidered gorgeously;
     Thy petticoat of silk and white
     And these I bought thee gladly.

     Greensleeves was my delight,
     Greensleeves was my heart of gold
     Greensleeves was my heart of joy
     And who but my Lady Greensleeves.


Copyright (C) 1998 by Thomas M. Carvett

Comments, constructive criticism, and hellos welcomed. :)

tcarvett@earthlink.net             http://home.earthlink.net/~tcarvett

greensleeves.txt@3.4

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