We’ve all been there––well, maybe most of us––in that relationship in which neither of you want to be but are too cowardly to end. Each of you dish out insults to the other and consume the other’s in return in the hope that one day your lover will be fed up enough to leave and you get off guilt-free. In this life you had set for two, what you think you're hoping for, ultimately, is a life alone––at least until you find yourself that way.
This experience is all too familiar and all too human, and it is one chronicled in Robert Kendall’s long narrative poem,
A Life Set for Two. Situated in a café, the story unfolds through the metaphor of two different menus––one belonging to the male narrator recounting the failed affair to us and other belonging to his lover.
Before we get to the main course, though, we are given several cocktails by way of a prologue to loosen us up a bit and clue us into the storyline: The narrator is looking back, trying “to remember” (Screen 1) the relationship he lost and “wonder[ing how [he] ended up” out of it (Screen 2). The formal poetic structure of these two screens shifts in the third––entitled “Past, Past, Who’s got the Past?”––to a game of sorts that consists of five textboxes, each posing a question: “Under my hat?,” “Under the name of Eternity?,” “Underhanded when underfoot?,” “Understood that it can go its own way?,” and “Under an Obligation to pass away?.” “Under” found in all five suggests the act of getting to the bottom of things, digging deep for the truth, but the flippant language found in some, such as “Under my hat,” taunts the narrator and detracts from his serious exploration of his still raw feelings. For example, clicking on that box, we find the words: “Nothing under here but what’s a head . . ./ though it may seem like history’s/ all in my mind. (It’s really in my blood).” Four of the five boxes provide the same mocking banter and so lead nowhere. It is only when we choose “Understood that it can go its own way?,” which results in “Yes! Let’s follow it/ and see where it leads,” that are we able to move forward in the story. In essence, this portion of the Prologue represents the kind of mind games the narrator has been playing with himself. Until that moment of reverie, the bulk of his thoughts about the relationship seems to have provided him no wise illumination about the situation but rather excuses that helped to assuage his guilt. It is only by allowing himself to be brutally honest that he can move on. And when he does, so does the story. We are taken to the fourth screen where the poem resumes its formal structure. Here he describes the memory of the relationship as “a romantic little place/where the
finished dreams/glisten forever/like overpriced wine in the candlelight.” The poem’s title appears in the next screen: “There once/was/a life set for two/here/somewhere.” The adverbs “here” and “somewhere” emphasize the confusion the “dreams” still hold for the narrator. Staying with the metaphors of “place” and “wine,” the next screen leads to a more vivid memory of a “cake . . . shared with her” at “one table.” This was an early time in their relationship when they were experiencing “happiness,” timidity (“our souls, slow and afraid/inner notes that trembled”), and great passion (“then fell over into hunger”). The final and seventh screen has the narrator remembering the “menu . . . /with its choices still/hurting.” He tells us that “[t]he taste of badly missed chances/still teeters somewhere/in [his] mouth.
At this point we arrive at Café Passé with his and her menus titled “What Fed Me?” and What Fed Her?,” respectively. His menu includes such delightful tidbits as “Fall’s Fruit,” “Seasoned Heart,” “Manna from the Stars,” “Seefood,” “Wild Game (In Season),” and “Handouts;” hers, “Fruit’s Fall,” “The Juicy Part,” “Dainties Under the Glass,” “Naughty Treats,” “Prison Rations,” and “The Recipe.” We realize that the perspective about the relationship we receive comes solely from him, and his obvious pain makes him a not-so-reliable reporter of the truth. But hunger for the truth has visited us, so we make a choice from the menu--“Fall’s Fruit."
The screen shifts to a blurry view of a table setting in black and blue, a reminder of his bruised heart. We hear about “chilled” “fruit” and “lengthening shadows” and, later, in the next screen “her fallen fruit.” This last image is an obvious allusion to Eve tempting Adam with the apple. Our narrator admits he too falls prey to feminine wiles and “pick[s] up [the apple to] share.” We could take this passage as a signal that our narrator takes some responsibility for the relationship’s failure, though Eve, like his lover, is ultimately responsible for the first step of man's (and his) ruin.
Once we complete this course, we are ready to move on to the next. In some readings of the work, we are forced to sample from one menu at a time; but this time, we are handed both––and we opt for hers. Five choices are offered, but we are tempted to try “Fruit’s Fall,” an obvious play on the item from his menu we just tasted. Reading the poem, we learn he is that “fruit” she “bit” into, and the experience made him aware he had “fall[en] for that old trick”––desire. With that realization, we are returned to both menus. His “Fall’s Fruit” is now grayed out, and we are left with the four other choices. “Seasoned Heart” is second in the list, and because we are presumably in a café, we decide to try the courses in the order the menu lists them, though we realize the author doesn’t mind if we sample the food however we wish. “Seasons Heart” gives us: “She was the only one/I could tell myself to/like the [riddle story] her [answer ending]/had been waiting for. “[R]iddle” and “story” change, blinking in and out. They are paired with “answer” and “ending,” reflecting perhaps the confusion the narrator may feel about his lover, a woman he remembers as a “walled city with breasts” and whose “scenery was staggering.” The shifting of “wayside” and “wayward” in the next screen along with suggestion of her “local delicacies” brings to mind the Keatsian “la belle sans merci” whose love, too, was “all wrong.” We end this course and move back to her menu. With “Fruit’s Fall” grayed out, we look down the list to “The Juicy Part.” Here the narrator describes his lover as a seductress, one who leaves him “pulsing” and “quivering.” She is aware of his hunger and works him over “slowly” with “[h]her tongue.” The course ends on this sexual note, and we shift back to his menu and the item, “Manna from the Stars.” The two of them are now seated in a movie theatre feasting on “popcorn” and a “jumbo-size cup/of [his] own/thirst.” Back to her menu we find “Dainties Under Glass” where we learn that “[s]he didn’t need it”––”it” being the sexual act hinted at with the words: “my plot thickening/between her caressing lips,/better times on the verge of coming.” It is clear from the last passage that he alone was “blind[ed] by the passion,” and that his passion for her seems not to be fully appreciated or reciprocated.
We return to his menu to explore the “Seefood” course. He tells us that the “darkness” surrounding them while lovemaking is not enough to keep him “[un]exposed” to her “gaze.” She sees right through him, leaving him “helpless,” literally at sea without his “oars.” The use of the homonyms “see” and “sea” suggests his continued confusion about the truth of their relationship. At the end of this poem, the full complement of her menu returns, but it is hard to resist the next item on the list, “Naughty Treats.” The blue screen gives way to red, and we go back in time to when they first met “in that back-alley doorway behind desire” where they “caught each other there/red-handed” and “uneasiness glistened in her eye.” Back to his menu, we find items also reappear. It is a veritable feast of love’s misery, signifying the way in which we torture ourselves about the loss, rolling the same ideas over and over in our mind with the hope of finding a different, better answer to relieve the pain. Knowing this, do we go back and explore “Fall’s Fruit” again? “Seasoned Heart?” “Manna from the Stars?” “Seefood?” Or shall we go, at this juncture, straight to “Handouts?” We could return to her menu and read “Meat of Our Bodies” or "Love’s Desserts.” With all of the choices beckoning for a taste, one gets the feeling the narrator has not made much headway in his emotional journey to sort out lost love. Because we want to give him another chance, though, we select “Love’s Desserts” found on her menu.
Here we are presented with an array of choices served up on a tray. The title box reads: “Love’s Desert Tray/Help Yourself,” the double entendre of “desert” (dessert?) offering up an image of a parched passion. Five other boxes are scattered around. Three of them are gray, and two are titled “Love” in two different sizes, small and large. Pressing the smaller one takes us to a red screen that reads: “The tougher question/was love./How I/hated/her for it.” With this selection, the game disappears, and we are taken back to the two main menus. We notice too that on the top left side of the screen a dialogue box, entitled “Added Seasonings,” now appears. “None” is selected for us as a default, but curiosity gets the better of us, and we hold down the arrow to find two other choices: “Touch of Another Man” and “Family to Taste.” The former sounds like a promising path to take for getting at the root of the narrator’s anger toward his lover, so we select it. We still also need to select a course from the menu, so we choose “Seefood” again. At first glance the poem we experienced previously relays similar information as the one we read before but is reconfigured with additional content. In the next screen however the narrator recounts to us that he saw another “man’s arms . . . encircle[ing] her.” Thus, we start to understand the source of the narrator’s anger is that he feels betrayed by his lover, but because we never get to hear her point of view regarding the relationship, we have no way of knowing if she felt as deeply about him as he did (or does) for her or if in his irrational state he is imagining this event.
This screen shifts us back to the menus. “Prison Rations,” looks particularly tasty under the circumstances. This course lays some fault at his own feet: He, a “hardened criminal,” “called need,/with its aching, unrepentant balls/for her chains.” "Ah," we say to ourselves, "he demanded too much. He was overly jealous. He was possessive." Even though there seems to be an end in sight with the appearance of “The Check, Please” that appears in the menu, it’s hard at this point not to continue exploring the menu, for he seems––finally––to realize that when love fails, both lovers have as much responsibility in the loss as they do a stake in its success. The drive at this point is to explore “Handouts” in his menu because we have hope that our hapless narrator is finally arriving at this truth. Unfortunately this does not seem to be the case because this menu item is filled with self-pity.
We could continue working our way through the menus, but in this one reading of the many potential permutations of the story of a love gone wrong, we have had our fill and do finally ask for “The Check, Please.” Clicking on that menu item, we get a dialogue box asking if
we are “ready to settle [our] account and leave?” A simple “yes” or “no” is required. Choosing the former, we see the poem end with “her doors clos[ing]/for good” and him going “home/alone” still blaming her and still “afraid” until his “fear” . . . caught the sun/ . . . and a reckless lightness began/to dance/at/the edges/of my senses.” So, we come to the end of this particular reading with some hope that our forlorn narrator has indeed found some peace in a life no longer set for two. Keep in mind though that like real-life where we continue to gnaw upon our doubts and pain for a very long time (decades even, if we so choose to punish ourselves and others enough), we can revisit Café Passé anytime and encounter the poem again, finding ourselves back at the table with menu in hand ready to order another round of misery from lost love.
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