The New Math IV?

Rainer Franz Mendel’s name was composed of three first names. I am always suspicious of people who change their first names, as if they were too flippant about identity, or too fearful to commit to being themselves. With a name change, one could become an entirely new persona in the life of someone already established and steer it in a new direction. Rainer, by accident of his parents’ choices, could alter his identity simply by changing the part of the name with which people addressed him. This fact alone should have clued me in immediately that I would not be dealing with one person, but three, or perhaps even more. It should have clued me in to steer clear, since I am not equipped for storms anymore. But, I often overlook what I need to in pursuit of my ends. Besides, Rainer’s evasions were subtle, and they returned me to a time in my life when I blamed myself for everything, especially the crimes of others.

Rainer was in the hospital when we met. He fell on his bicycle after breaking up with his girlfriend. Or maybe they just argued. Maybe she wasn’t even a girlfriend. The story changed as I heard it from different times. I forget little. I knew the story changed and yet each time Rainer told it, there was no reason to deceive. I think he believed the story exactly as he told it, each time he told it. In every version, his story was true. In every version, his story was never solid.

The second time we met, Rainer showed me his X-ray of his broken hip and the plates and screws that fixed bone to bone. We lay side by side on his bed, his arm over me while the other worked the mouse. I’d never felt more intimate in my entire life as I did when I looked at an X-ray into someone else’s body. I could see the white, ghostly bones of his legs, his pelvis, his sacrum, his lower spine. Just past in slightly greyer tones the X ray showed the flesh of his thighs and abdominal area. In unmistakable stark white I could see the alien metal within the bones of his leg. One large screw went through the ball of hip bone and was attached at the other end to a plate that ran down his femur. The remaining four screws held the plate to his femur. We studied his X-ray together lying on the bed side by side, his once broken hip pressed up against mine. Hours earlier, that hip had helped him plough into me with piston engine force. Now, we were languid on the same bed, and he was showing me something that no one else had ever seen (except himself and a doctor), and that no one would see unless they saw his X-Ray. “Totally cool,” he said. I repeated after him, “Totally.” Totally was his favourite American word and the quality of the “o” betrayed his Austrian beginnings.

Just as Rainer had three names, multiple personae, he could easily be replaced by any other of the men I knew during this time period. They had French names, Irish names, Spanish names, Biblical names, Latin names, British names, even Danish names. They were musicans, poets, chemists, bank clerks, firemen, constables, security guards, filmmakers, lawyers, barbacks, actors. No doctors, though, well, not medical doctors. The details around each man changed – where he grew up, where he went to school, if he believed in God, if he played lotto and what he would do if he won. The specifics of his emotional absenteeism were explained in different scenarios – his girlfriend is a missing person, his father murdered his mother, he was starting AA for the fifth time. But, oddly enough, the story always seemed the same. He came on reeking of love and desire, longing for romance. I loved him in an instant, as I always do, but tabled it since my love means nothing. I withheld, jaded, uninterested, but at last capitulated because I longed for romance too. He wooed me effortlessly with dinner, a book, a story, a philosophy, a piece played just for me, a song written for me. I told my friends. The spell broke the minute I carried the story to an open ear. The whole thing collapsed and he didn’t want a relationship, or, more bluntly, didn’t want one with me. I wrote pleading letters that I did or did not send. Then the silence and the disappearance followed. By the time I met Rainer, I was so familiar with this pattern that the whole sequence could be executed in less than a month.

By the time I met Rainer, I wanted to put an end to the repetitive cycle.