The Pseudo-Chronicles of Mark Huntley

The Beginning and an Ending - 9/1/04

Wednesday, September 1, 2004

My name is Mark Huntley, and I've broken up with the most beautiful woman I will ever date.

Okay, so the former is not true. And the latter is really only speculation, but I’m trying to be realistic here. Adonis I am not.

I'm not going to use my real name in this journal. Not because I’m ashamed of it, or myself (though maybe I should be), but so I can continue earning my daily bread (and forgive my debts, as I'll forgive my debtors, and so on amen), and so the aforementioned beautiful woman can continue earning hers (let's call her Lucy Pfeiger-Zalt, by the way). 

I'm getting ahead of myself already. I guess that happens when you rant.

Backing up. There, now, there's a good storyteller. You want to know who this Mark Huntley is: i.e., what he does. My profession alone doesn't speak highly of me, I'm afraid. I'm a fact-checker not-so-extraordinaire at a weekly political magazine in downtown Washington, D.C. You can imagine it's kind of a sensitive climate here in cap city, hence it’s a good idea to cloak oneself. I'm not going to give away the particular ideological bent for this mag, either. Less clues, the better. Ha. 

Where I work is just an incidental detail, anyway... I don't plan on any juicy work exposés in this journal. In fact, it's safe to say that if there's anything titillating going on at work, I'm not part of it. Henceforth I'll just call the mag I work for the U.S. Divide. Seems appropriate for this day and age.

I live in D.C. proper, in the general area of Dupont Circle. I'll even give you a zip code: 20005. For those of you not familiar with Washington, Dupont is a business-meets-boho area in the center of the city that gets away with gouging every last one of its residents. That's right, a jab right in the sensitive spot: the moneypouch. But it’s worth all those gouges and jabs to live here. Access to beer is plentiful and unparalleled.

Currently I'm going poorer and hungrier by the month and living in an apartment without a bedroom. There's a kitchen, though. And a bathroom. I should count myself lucky to have even those amenities, given my humiliating salary and all.

Oh, and more than one window! How could I forget that part? Two whole windows for Mister Mark Huntley to call his own!

I haven't really gotten back to the beginning of this, have I... well, anyway. She knew I wanted to talk. She knew it was coming, I'm sure. 

We were at Sala Thai two nights ago, on P Street just off the circle. Lucy had gone through a grueling rehearsal that day for a certain fifties-era play going up in three weeks at a famous D.C. theatre (this vagueness is going to drive you mad, isn't it? Sorry). Partway through dinner, I couldn't hold it in any longer. I said my piece, and Lucy nodded, and when I was done, she just said: "I understand."

"I don't want you to think that I haven't..." I started to say. To sputter, even.

She cut me off. "Mark. It's fine."

And we just sat there and kept drinking our Singhas and finished our food and that was it. Granted, no relationship ends that abruptly; there's always a time of pulling away. I had mine for a good couple weeks leading up to that anticlimactic exchange over dinner. I loved being with her… but a part of me always dreaded it too. I hated what I’d apparently become. “Loathed,” that might be an even better word.

I guess what I mean to say is that it was causing a split in me. A disconnect. We're each supposed to be the hero of our own story, and my actions were about as unheroic as they come. What did that make me-- the antagonist in someone else's story?

Of course, I might be fooling myself, only retroactively thinking in these high-minded terms. I wonder, sometimes, if it was because she never shut up about her husband.

Back to gloom I sink. Next I'll have to figure out why I have this urge to broadcast it to the world. Maybe talking to you, Reader, feels a bit healthier than talking to the Miller in my hand, here in the apartment. Or maybe it’s just to distract me from looking out one of my two windows, at a night that seems to be looking back at me.

posted by Mark Huntley @ 11:57 PM

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