Giving Up the Ghost

“There it is again!” Buck exclaimed in the dark as we lay in bed one night.

“What!?” I asked, confused.

“That sound! Don’t you hear it?”

“It’s just the rain,” I shrugged. “This is Seattle. It happens a lot here. A lot.”

Then, as if to contradict me, the sound stopped — suddenly. More suddenly than any cloudburst could. And certainly more suddenly than any Seattle shower ever would. A quick check out the window confirmed that the sidewalk surrounding the house was dry.

“See!?” Buck retorted. “It is not the rain!”

We had replayed the scene of this debate a few times in recent days, but this time it was obvious something was up. The mysterious watery sound could not be attributed to nature. I had lived in the house for so long I should have known every sound from within and without. It defied explanation. If it was coming from outside, what was the source? It couldn’t be the neighbor’s laundry or shower (not long enough), sink (too regular in its length) or toilet (too infrequent). And anyway, at my age I should know what running water sounded like, especially the sound of a toilet. This was different, baffling. Could it be a haunting? Some sort of water spirit that would not rest?

Maybe. It was not the first relationship of mine to be troubled by ghosts. Ever since leaving Damon, my partner of well over a decade, I was haunted by the past. Regretful of mistakes (both his and mine), I was never entirely able to get beyond the grief and find the closure that all those self-help books talk about. The closer I came to sharing real intimacy with another man, the more I’d have a sense that I was just imitating the real thing that I had once shared with my lost love. It felt like mockery or betrayal. I couldn’t ever be completely in the most intimate of moments without his ghost reaching out and grabbing me by the heart.

I thought about the water sound that seemed to come out of nowhere when Buck and I were in the bedroom. That was when I remembered: Damon was born under the sign of Aquarius, the water bearer. Coincidence?

I had already tried the traditional approach for laying a dead relationship to rest, namely psychotherapy. But dozens of hours (and hundreds of dollars) later, Damon’s ghost was still hanging around. If past relationships can haunt us like ghosts, maybe an old-fashioned ghost cleansing was the answer.

Name calling: My research turned up a number of techniques designed to help with “entity contamination.” For example, some sources say that you can invoke a ghost by calling it by name. To avoid that, I have attempted to eradicate from my speech all pet names once used for my former lover. It’s something like a practice carried on in ancient Polynesia in which the name of a chieftain could never be spoken after he died. This meant not only refraining from giving the name to newborn children but from even using the name as an ordinary word. So for example if a leader named “Chief Water” passed on, an entirely new word for H₂O had to be invented.

Fortunately the task before me isn’t so enormous. And in fact, it seems to have helped. Developing unique verbal intimacies with a boyfriend makes that communication special only to our relationship and doesn’t bring to mind any past pillow talk. I just hope I don’t have many more boyfriends as there are only so many variations of “honey bunch” and “cutie pie” in the English language.

Crystal queer: A couple of mediums quoted online advocate bringing crystals into your home to cleanse it of unwanted spirits. Amethyst seems to be a popular stone in this regard, but the sources also mention rose quartz, blue lace agate, obsidian, black tourmaline, and smoky quartz. But in my case, none of these would do. No, what I needed were coffee crystals. That’s right, the freeze-dried kind. Damon was a connoisseur of coffee and would bristle at the suggestion that we keep instant coffee in the house. What better way to ward off his ghost from the home, or at least the kitchen? I immediately added Taster’s Choice^® to my shopping list.

Blind sage: Another popular method of casting out unwanted spirits is smudging, the practice of igniting a bundle of sage and carrying it from room to room to cleanse the space with the ritual smoke. I have to admit I never gave this one a try. Apart from setting off my smoke alarms, I was pretty sure that burning sage would do little more than invoke the ghosts of Thanksgiving meals past. Admittedly, those family memories might send me running out of the house screaming. But I was hoping for something that would work on the ghost of my ex instead.

Confront and center: One of the most common pieces of advice dispensed by ghost busters is to address the ghost directly. Firmly and unemotionally take charge and explain to the ghost that it no longer needs to hang around and indeed is not welcome to do so. Apparently few ghosts are really alpha souls, and many respond well to this kind of leadership. It was tempting to implement this strategy by dialing up my ex and asking him, for starters, to stop living in the same neighborhood as me.

Unfortunately, this advice is intended for exorcising ghosts, not real people. And therein lies my problem. My ex is not dead. He’s a living, breathing reminder of what never was and never would be. The ghost I need to purge is in my own brain. Hell, it isn’t in me. It is me. And no amount of crystals or smoking sage is going to make me forget what I refuse to release.

Sometimes, say the mediums, ghosts linger because we keep them around. They have, or feel they have, unfinished business. And in some cases that unfinished business is our own unwillingness to let them go. But if the last few years have taught me anything, it’s this: Letting go doesn’t happen in one or two acts of exorcism. It’s a gradual process that is carried on day by day over the long haul. And so I keep going, learning a little every day to live in the now and say goodbye to the past.

I’m seeing some progress. Last night as I lay awake I noticed something: Silence. I realized that it had actually been weeks since Buck and I heard the ghostly water sound. Was the spirit exorcised for good?

Probably not. But I'm more confident now that its days are numbered. In the meantime, I hate long goodbyes.

Needing To Know

A sudden impact occurred at my home today — the collision of two different ethics for telephone etiquette.

I was watching a DVD, waiting for my bf Buck to show up for dinner.  When he did appear, cell phone in hand, he parked himself in the same room as me and continued to chat on the phone while I was trying to watch a show already in progress.  Right away I saw a conflict:   I wanted to hear the television, not his phone call; he wants to hear his phone call, not the TV (presumably).  I was tempted to open the door to the room as a not-too-subtle hint that he take his call elsewhere.  Unfortunately, I was aware that his cell phone has very poor reception in most rooms of the house.  So I let him stay where the cell reception was apparently working for him.  Instead, terminally polite guy that I am, I opted for a technological compromise:   I muted the sound on the television, but turned on the subtitle option for the show so we both could continue our activities — me watching my disc and him continuing his conversation.

When he finally hung up, I asked him about it.  Turns out we had been operating from entirely different assumptions.  I have always believed that when you really need to interrupt others to take a call, the very least you can do is take the call in another room (where possible) so as not to extend the interruption any fur­ther into your company’s time or activ­i­ties.  And fur­ther, that you not expose them to prob­ably unneeded, poten­tially un­wanted, and com­pletely irrele­vant infor­ma­tion by making them listen to your half of a conversation with someone else.  Since they cannot (or are not expected to) participate in the conversation, you shouldn’t force them to be an unwilling audience.

Buck, however, was taught that to take a call away from present company is to slight them — to make them feel excluded or (worse) that they might be the object of your conversation.  In his family, one continues talking on the phone in the presence of others so everyone knows you are not gossiping about them behind their backs.  Personally, I still find this point of view bizarre:   If I choose to gossip about you, just staying in the room for one conversation is hardly going to spare you that ignominy.  All it does is force you to listen to unwanted noise.  But Buck would rather listen to my conversation (even if he only gets half of it), just so he can keep tabs on me.

In my ethical world, I am protecting Buck’s peace of mind whereas he is simply a busybody.  In his world, I am making him feel excluded whereas he is showing interest in my life and conversations.

(I still think I’m right.  Indeed, Info World columnist Dan Brody has listed something similar as number 1 on his Ten Commandments of Cell Phone Etiquette.  See also “Don’t” number 2 on Microsoft’s 10 rules of cell phone etiquette.)

But the suggestion that Buck and I should play audience for all of each other's phone conversations got me thinking:  In a relationship, how much privacy is allowed? And how much information is too much?

Some people assume that relationships mean sharing every little thought, feeling, and experience with one’s partner.  In reality, of course, few life stories go complete unedited.  And those who do insist on reporting each and every detail frequently leave us wishing for the Reader’s Digest version.

So where do you draw the line? The advice-dispensers over at AskMen.com suggest, reasonably, that there is no need to share information that has no bearing on the relationship.  True enough.  The problem comes when my idea of “need to know” conflicts with my partner’s.

And I guess that’s the point.  If there is one topic that should not be kept secret in a relationship, it’s the subject of secrets themselves.  In my view, each partner needs to explain the kind of information he feels is important to share (or have shared with him) as well as the kind of information that he feels falls in the realm of personal privacy.  For me, hypothetical examples are a good way of probing these areas (“If someone gropes me in the locker room, do you want to know about it?”).  And it’s safe to say that it’s easier to deal with hypothetical situations early on when they are truly hypothetical — and not a smokescreen for something that has actually happened.

This kind of meta-talk won’t cover every situation of course.  There may be times when I need to probe more or ask my partner to probe or volunteer less.  This, in fact, happened near the beginning of our relationship, when my new bf was using his cell to send me regular text messages about daily activities.  “I’m pooping,” beeped one message on my phone.  I’m not as skilled at text message as he, but in this case my reply was a simple three letters:

TMI.

Just my thoughts.

Which you didn’t ask for.

Anyway…