26.7.4

The slender rectangular tower of the cryogenic plant rises
up a few blocks - six or seven, William, not three - from our 
(Tere and my) house in Nueva Tijuana.  Sometimes at night billowing
couds of vapor climb toward heaven.  The name CRYOGENICO on the
sign outside is strangely thrilling and terrifying at once.
Perhaps this is why I dreamt again last night that we -
a group of persons I don't remember who exactly we were -
were going to have our heads cut off and frozen
for posterity, or turkeys.

Or maybe it was the fight my love and I had last
night coming back from my parents' house.  I asked her
as we left if she wanted to drive her car or wanted me
to drive.  Comoquieras tu, she said, whatever you want.
So I gave her the nod and went to the passenger side.
Big mistake.  I was supposed to know what she wanted without
even the courtesy of asking her what she wanted.  I was 
supposed to know she doesn't want to drive in the U.S.  
I was a fool even to dare to pretend to 
be courteous and ask her.  ACCORDING TO HER INTERPRETATION
she was thoroughly justified in saying "whatever you
want" back at me if I dared to ask her instead of just doing
what I should have known she wanted.  I should not presume 
to insult her by daring to ask her what she would prefer, for
me or for her to drive.

"You know perfectly well I don't like driving on the other side,
where everything is different.  You should drive there.  How 
could you even ask me?!"

I almost think that all that, too, was only a dream.

In effect, I have already cut off our heads.  Here is the 
bloody knife.  Here is the cryogenic tank.  These words.
This page.  This bus ride in the morning while I scribble,
utterly bewildered that she would take my attempt at being 
courteous and change it into an insult directed against her.

Praise God the merciful and good, but it is so difficult for 
me to learn this woman's ways and wants.  And she wants me to 
know them without asking, without daring to ask, without
daring to question.  Only doing what she wants without even
asking what she wants.

Yes, I dared to say, (FOOL THAT I AM) "The Honeymoon Is Over."

Is that what you think (she asked, at the end of our long talk
at home.

No (I said), that is what I feel.  What I think is that you will
lie to me again and again whenever you assume I should already 
know the answer to any stupid question I may ask about what you
want to do.  That you will tell me to do things the way I want 
to and what you will really mean is to do things your way, without
even asking.

Ah... I think in the bus, blissfully going farther and farther 
away from the woman I still desperately love, and yes, desperately
is definitely the right word, here... ah, I think, now I begin to 
understand why so many Mexican men have mistresses and multiple 
wives.  To play them off, one against the other.  And maybe, even, 
homosexual affairs.  Jesus Mohamed and Moses enlighten me but I
am utterly and madeningly confused.  It was so much easier - but so 
much lonelier - when I was alone.