Gunnar In The Carrels

Need to catch up? Links to earlier parts of story follow post.

Part 7

Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit. (8 - 12)

-The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot

Just this morning, Connie referred to that dark time in Gunnar’s life as ‘mono.’

She was looking in at him from his bedroom doorway once again, this time wearing a light wool pantsuit and wafting the moneyed scent of natural beauty products into the funk of his room.

In the long tradition of adult children living at home past the time it’s a good idea, Gunnar moved his bedroom away from the main family dwelling when he returned home from school, taking up residence in the loft above the pool house. He was surprised when David supported him over Connie’s argument that it was ‘too Bohemian’ until his father turned to him after she retreated from the debate and said, “Just cause you’re done school doesn’t mean you’re done getting it on, am I right?” And winked.

“Gunnar, you absolutely must get up right now,” his mother said, sunlight filling the door frame around her. “It is incredibly irresponsible of you to do this today, of all days. Your father has the television spot at noon and Valkyrie’s general meeting is an hour later. We don’t have time for this today, Gunnar. I don’t have time to worry that you’ve got mono again. Not to mention poor Jenny.”

Gunnar couldn’t remember when his parents started referring to his girlfriend as ‘poor Jenny’. Nor could he remember when his days in bed became mono, but he did remember some in between stages such as ‘that time you were so tired you slept for days.’ In the twelve years since ‘the incident’, he’d witnessed the slow whitewashing of ‘the event’ to a story his parents’ could accept and even, as he overheard Connie do once in awhile, trot out as evidence of his superior sensitive nature.

Gunnar got out of bed, took a shower with the JASON for Men products Connie regularly supplied for him, dressed in the pressed jeans, lightly checked dress shirt, and navy blazer she laid out on the newly made bed, and opened the door on the lemony spring morning. The air smelled like new promises and Gunnar paused on the top stair to breathe in deeply, reflecting that if he didn’t find something today to move him above five on his therapist’s recommended ‘How are you today on a scale of 1 to 10?’ exercise, he never would.

It was the excitement that the first warm breezes of spring stir up in the human breast that drove Gunnar to the library in the first place. By the time he had brought round the car and transported David and Connie, Et Al to the places they needed to be, it was 1:30 pm and he itched for some kind of fix. He needed to do something secretive and satisfying for himself.

Some men turn to drink and some men turn to women - or men, Gunnar added. The few times he let himself get truly intoxicated, however, he had cried nonstop, embarrassing himself and everyone in earshot. And women - well, there was Jenny and Gunnar knew she didn’t want to hear about this feeling. Instead, like a Catholic boy caught masturbating by his mother and told God could see him, Gunnar’s experience with his first poem had imprinted on him in an erotic delight overshadowed by extreme guilt that seemed only to heighten the excitement.

Poetry was Gunnar's closet poison.

Practising a sort of knowing without knowing, Gunnar had driven the finally empty sedan to the library parking lot, his innards alive in ways both delicious and startling.

And then there was Mimi and then there was Her, the red haired beauty, and then there was the f-bomb kid, and now we are here, Gunnar, staring at a shelf of books, droned Sigmund. We are all getting most bored. Can we get on with it?

Right, thought Gunnar.

With determined effort, Gunnar turned from the shelves, abandoning Her to the kid - teen - person - bombarding her with profanity.

"It was so fuckin’ radical, dude, like really fuckin’ radical," he told Her, as Gunnar moved out of earshot.

Back across the aisle, he threaded his way covertly through the stacks to a section of books at the far end of the library. More than once, he had blessed the individual responsible for the fact that the poetry section was in a darkened corner against a wall.

Not even pausing to look at the titles, Gunnar withdrew a book randomly, turned and took the blissfully short route to a seldom used staircase leading up to a row of wooden carrels overlooking the library space below. No one else was up there so Gunnar chose the carrel at the far end of the row, sinking down onto the floor rather than the chair and fully relaxing for the first time that day.

“What if I just stayed here?” Gunnar wondered. “Like a squirrel or…”

Sure, replied Sigmund. People love to have rodents living in the attic.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6