NOTE: As I mentally deconstruct the demise of my marriage, I am publishing a series of short essays about things that happened, the way I felt, and so on. It's intended to illustrate my mental state at the time, and provide a kind of chronicle of my emotional state, hopefully helping me not make the same mistakes in future relationships.

10/16/03 12:36 AM: So I'm driving home from the comic book store, eastbound on Rodeo (not "roh-day-oh" -- that's the one in Beverly Hills) when I get this overwhelming craving for shrimp dip. I often grab some food on my way home to work on my comic book reviews, or get ready for poetry, or whatever I'm gonna do that night. However, the only food that really stuck in my mind tonight was shrimp dip. It's this partially solid, partially creamy concoction of onions, shrimp, some kind of cream I never asked about and other stuff. It flew in the face of at least two of my personal food convictions, and it would invariably clog me up with mucus, but wow it was tasty.

The idea of me wanting shrimp dip is a distinctive problem, despite its tastiness. The only person in the whole world I know who can make shrimp dip is my ex-wife, Yuri. It was a time-consuming thing she did, I know now, as a gesture of affection, since she knew I liked it a lot (and since she too liked it, it was doubly good for her). I am a real "don't really care how it works" kind of guy on many levels, so I never asked the real details about it. She made it sporadically (again, time consuming) and I guarded it jealously (often keeping it from friends and relatives -- it was that good). Lots of things about Yuri made me change my own rules, and at the time I thought that was all right.

So this got me thinking, and that's almost never a good thing. As I made the turn off Rodeo on to a side street (dodging traffic is not just my goal, it's my calling), I had a dangerous fifteen seconds or so where I debated offering her financial compensation to make me a huge batch of shrimp dip. I know she's strapped for cash. I know it's not weeks of work. I know it's tasty ...

However, this then made me think that I spent the last two years of our marriage asking her stuff -- where the scissors were, why wouldn't she love me, why she was always complaining but never doing anything about her problems, and so on. The idea of asking her for something now, on the other side of that space of hurt and disappointment, is galling to me. I live a life of virtually no needs -- the only things I want are affection and creative opportunities, as I am wholly self sufficient economically.

That led my train of thought to its next station, a kind of reluctance to indulge in extreme joys, tastes that thrill and emotions that swoop and climb to the heavens. If I hadn't been so stupid in love, I wouldn't have been the last guy off the sinking ship, clinging to a passion for her that had gone unrequited so long I barely remember what it was like when she was crazy about me. That struck me as funny -- the extremist preaching moderation, looking for subsistence foods and still emotional waters. A contradiction I could barely accept for myself, but there it is. I'm afraid to be too happy, because I now know the other side of that coin.

So I dashed the idea of bribery on the stones of my brain. Yuri has since said it's okay for us to talk via email, but neither of us are comfortable seeing or being around one another physically yet, our wounds still too raw, our presence still too great a reminder of a loss that in some ways rendered five years of our lives moot. The idea of bringing her groceries and her making food for me, a gesture she kept trying even after it was clear I couldn't receive it ... that's just too freakin' creepy.

"Well, you could ask for the recipe," my stomach offered vainly, still hanging on to the delusion of hope. It's not like Yuri didn't leap at a chance to make the stuff for every gathering, every birthday, every special event. Surely other people in the world were enjoying the taste of her shrimp dip, as other people had enjoyed the tastes of my affection since we broke up.

Then I remembered Sunshine Punch Kool-Aid. As a kid, I drank so much Kool-Aid I often believed the insides of my body were coated with white sugar and food coloring. When the Sunshine Punch flavor was introduced, I demanded to be taken along on the next shopping trip, refusing to allow Tropical Punch or Berry Blue or Strawberry or Great Bluedini or anything else in the cart. Only Sunshine Punch would do. For as long as we could find it in stores in Memphis, I drank at least six gallons of this stuff a week. Then, one day, it was gone. We went to different supermarkets, finding single packs once in a while, but after a month there simply was no more Sunshine Punch anywhere in the greater metropolitan Memphis area. I was forlorn, I drank water and milk, because any other flavor of Kool-Aid simply reminded me of what I lost. Years later, when I saw a quote saying, "If you find something you like, buy a lifetime supply, because they'll stop making it," I smiled ruefully, knowing that logic all too well.

So I decided -- even though it theoretically still exists in the world -- that shrimp dip was like Sunshine Punch Kool Aid, a taste I adored and that was gone from my life. My therapist said it was all right to remember the good things and let them go, and I decided that's probably the best thing to do here. I went to Subway, bought a sandwich and called it a night, certain my craving -- like my still-disappearing pain -- would fade. I would not take anything more from Yuri, let alone ever ask her for anything again.

Opening the door of my cluttered, dark but wholly "mine" apartment, I remembered that everything I wanted from her has dissolved in water and dilluted, found its way through our bodies, and the pitcher washed clean. From her shrimp dip to her semi-spherical salmon croquets, from her enjoyment of CrossGen's Meridian to the delights between her thighs, it is all a construct of memory, an artifact of the past tense.