The Saga of a Gal Sort of Named Sue, and … well, … Company

This is a story about consonance, not assonance, but certainly contains more than a trace of dissonance.  It’s a sort of fractured and sad love story.  The characters are, well characters, and no effort has been made, with respect to the nature of their names, to protect the innocent, so we are neither admitting nor denying that they involve real people or real situations, at least deliberately.  But nature being what it is, …who knows?

Well, … maybe the Shadow, … but who else?

Anyway ….

Sue was a lucky girl.  At least for a while.  Good things fell in her pretty lap without her ever having to do anything to earn them, anything at all.  Some said “serendipitous” was her middle name.  It wasn’t.  “Serendipity” was her first name but, for some reason, she preferred to use Sue, which was, in point of fact, her middle name.  Interesting.

Everything about Sue was pretty too.  Not beautiful, not cute, just pretty.  But so much prettiness tended to dazzle, and it wasn’t as threatening as beautiful, although perhaps not as perky as cute.  Being perfectly pretty helped, well, let’s call her “Sue” (since she prefers that name), it helped Sue with everything: with her grades, with her roles in all kinds of organizations, with her teachers (none of whom ever even considered hitting on her), with her family and relatives, with whatever job she decided she wanted, although, to be fair, she never sought anything beyond her capabilities, and she gave every job she ever had her all.  That was Sue.

At least until she inadvertently met “Melancholy Mike” during her senior year in college.  Sometimes destiny sucks.  Or is that fate.  Or perhaps, karma.

Mike wasn’t really melancholy at all, he just had terrible luck at everything he tried despite seemingly having all the physical and mental assets for which any male could hope.  Although he was fast and had great hand and eye coordination, he somehow always had “bad luck” accidents, and, truth be told, he was easily distracted, which is probably why it seemed so hard for him to keep his “eye on the ball”, in every sense.  So, … rather than being a first string varsity sports star, he tended to be a junior varsity backup, but not with awesome promise, without awesome potential .  Same was true with academics, and work, and, as we’ll see, with personal relationships.

Initially, everyone Melancholy Mike met wanted to be his friend and, if it involved a female, and well, some males too, a bit more than just a friend.  To say that Melancholy Mike was not empathic was a massive understatement, so he didn’t pick up on how others felt about him and, all too soon, those who’d initially been drawn to him became, at best, cross with him.  Too many stupid little things just seemed to go wrong around him.  He tended to trip quite a lot, and to spill things, and to blurt things out he’d have been better off keeping to himself.  And all too soon, those who’d initially found him fascinating but had then become being cross saw their feelings devolve towards disdain, and quickly thereafter, to avoidance, and then to generation of nasty, untruthful rumors (which is how he acquired the moniker “melancholy”).  That was especially true among those who’d originally found him irresistible but, with respect to whom, he’d “failed to catch the pass”, if you get the drift.  They’d be embarrassed at first, feeling foolish, then his lack of any reaction towards their obviously miffed feelings, made them feel belittled and ignored, even though he was just being oblivious and, had he caught on, might frequently have reacted in a very positive manner.  Thus, over time, by his senior year in college, Melancholy Mike had become singularly unpopular.

While Melancholy Mike was “usually” oblivious, that was not the case when he met Sue.  They bumped into each other, literally, in a park by a pretty flowing river, where flowers of diverse species bloomed and shade trees abounded.  Sue had gone there to study and Melancholy Mike, well, frankly, he’d not been paying attention where he was going and had gotten lost.  They’d really bumped into each other, as I indicated, literally, but figuratively and physically as well.  Melancholy Mike had tripped over Sue and hit his nose on a large rock and was bleeding profusely.  Sue, who was always nice, sought to stem the bleeding and, of course, succeeded in doing so.  But in the midst of that endeavor, she glanced into his eyes, and became lost there, and when Melancholy Mike, who was in a bit of a daze, looked at her face, he figured perhaps he’d been hurt worse than he’d thought, worse than usual, and …. 

Well, as somewhat polar opposites, the attraction had been as intense as it was immediate, but then, all too soon, perhaps a few weeks later, it seemed as if a thick glob of sticky and sickly sweet molasses had engulfed them, sort of like amber sometimes engulfs insects.  The figurative ambient mess kept making them keep figuratively colliding, first to one side and then to the other, but still clinging.  Yuck, what an awful metaphor, or was that a simile, but anyway, it was unfortunately all too accurate.

Having never learned to cope with failure, Sue refused to admit its possibility,  She stuck by Melancholy Mike, literally, figuratively, physically and every which way, and he rubbed off on her (given that her attention was focused on him).  It had to be, to avoid constant disasters, and people started to avoid her as well but, she was so entranced with Melancholy Mike that she didn’t notice, at least not until it was too late to do anything about it, and thus, she was not only stuck to Melancholy Mike, but also stuck with him.

During a tumultuous courtship, as Sue too became ostracized from her old friends and acquaintances, and even her family, their relationship became stronger instead of weaker.  A phenomenon common when parents disapprove of a child’s choice in romantic partner.  Thus they married on a spontaneous whim, without her family’s approval (his was ecstatic) and started on a life somewhat lacking in the bliss they’d expected.  As might be expected, after turmoil overwhelmed ecstasy, they first separated, to sort of sort things out, give each other a bit of space, and then, at Sue’s insistence and to her family’s profound joy, they got divorced, but then, inexplicably, got back together, got engaged, which they hadn’t done before they were initially married (purportedly the second marriage would involve a long engagement), but then, impulsively, they eloped again (they had no one to invite to their weddings anyway, neither the first, nor the second, nor the ….; but that’s another story).  Well, maybe it’s really part of the same story but the repetitive nature of the telling becomes tedious, soooo ….

After their second wedding, hoping it would help them bond, they quickly had two kids, the first, a cute daughter with an amazing voice whom they named “Melony” (but her nickname, among her friends, friends she never dared bring home, was “Melody”); and then, eighteen months later, a son whom they named Anthony but called Tony.  Tony was, from the very first, even as an infant, pretty much a loner, a kid who preferred comic books, Anime and video games to interaction with other humans.  Tony also refrained from bringing friends home (but that was because he hadn’t any).  In a futile quest to build unity, the family tried acquiring pets, but they tended to run away all too soon, or to die, although Melony suspected that they may have committed suicide. 

Their house was not awful, in fact, if you liked oddities, you might have found it fascinating, in a sort of poor couple’s Adams’ Family, well, not mansion, but a hell of a nice triple wide mobile home, with an aboveground pool outside, and next to it, a third-hand Jacuzzi that worked intermittently, on and off (but off involved squirting tepid water full of rust).  And their home was set on a quarter acre, but next to a junk yard.  Melancholy Mike liked the spot because he loved the junk, and Sue hated the spot because she hated the junk, but she loved Melancholy Mike, at least then, sooo.  Well, perhaps geography explained why they had such a hard time staying together, even for the kids’ sake, although the kids would have been happier, had they stayed apart, especially the times when Melony could live with Sue, and Tony with Melancholy Mike.

As soon as Melony turned eighteen, she left home and joined a travelling troupe of purported actors, and at one of their gigs, in Rye, New York, an inebriated talent scout spotted her singing, and, sobering up quickly, he introduced himself and eventually, talked her into leaving the group.  He fell in love with her and financed music lessons and introduced her to the right people, and got her a contract with a decent recording label, and she climbed the stairway to success, but dropped Joe off on the first rung (Joe, well Joseph H. Riddle II, it should just have been Junior, was the talent scout’s name).

Joe became so despondent when he was so suddenly and completely dumped that he sought out Melony’s parents, and, after interacting with them briefly, for about a week, he realized why Melony was as she was, and decided he was better off without her, and returned to his own family from whom he’d been estranged while he explored his artistic roots.  And his family, a very wealthy and prominent family, took their prodigal son back, but he had to accompany them to religious services at least three times a week.  They were thrice born fundamentalists, who are much more stringent in their puritanical traditions than the merely born-again (whom they disdained even more than they disdained the heathen and the heretic).  But anyway, once again, that’s another story.  Suffice it to say that their family strictures explain why Joe had left in the first place, to pursue a career indirectly involving the arts.  Until, of course, he crashed into the Melony hurricane.

So, to wrap things up.  Melony became hugely successful as a heavy metal singer with Goth overtones set in a hodgepodge of sort of country music styles.  Sue finally divorced Melancholy Mike, permanently, and became a nun in a European religious order where, to the extent possible under the circumstances, she regained a good bit of her serendipitous nature (a lot of good that did in a convent though).  Melancholy Mike kept screwing things up but Tony’s jobs at the local Burger King, where he became a deputy assistant manager and counter boy, but with a night gig as a stock man (boy was too insulting for forty year old man) in a videogame warehouse, his dream job, kept them in stale burgers and hot dogs and pork and beans and cheap beer, which was fine with them. 

And, they all lived, if not happily, well … at least ever after.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution. Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.