Flip Flops

A restraining order, which came in the mail, said, “If you come within ten inches of my woman, I will break your head with my son’s Jurassic Park T-Rex Rampage Lego set.” It was from a “he/they,” who was transgender and bipolar, and would not tolerate my indiscretions toward his girl, that is, my ex.

I went onto their/his Instagram and/or Facebook accounts and played with buttons. People know when you are playing with their buttons. It’s the modern-day equivalent of playing with a person’s garden hose. They see that you have breathed, pressed, and prevaricated on their lawn of computer privacy—their turf—though you should not traipse upon images they’ve eaten or photographed.

The ex knew I tracked him/they/her on Instagram, and that by keeping their account public, he/they would unintentionally allow me and other exes to leave carbon footprints with flip flops. She even encouraged it by texting me on Instagram once a year or telling me she thought of me at the ocean while she was with her fiancé, who sent me the injunction.

My ex was betrothed to this “restraining order sender,” who proclaimed: “We shouldn’t let those people we’ve dated (in moments of non-clarity) know our business.” Her fiancé, who said this, was a tough marine who had become a pacifist but then reverted to marine status again.

“How does that affect me?” my former courtesan asked.

“Privatize your Instagram account,” he ordered. He, her man/them, was incredibly alpha, whereas my ex was alpha only with other people besides him. With me, she was always intentionally bitchy, which was a major turn on, so I never stopped crushing on her, and she never ceased reaching new and stupendous levels of sadism.

One time, when she was in my apartment, and I didn’t want to “roll over,” she decided to get up and walk to her car. This was South Philly at 2 am, mind you, when crack and meth heads are looking for disenfranchised girlfriends. She would stay in her car, with her muffler waking up the entire neighborhood—those inside and outside. She had no fear, however—just anger that I refused to make love to her that night because I was exhausted. She saw this as an insult to her soul, not to get kissed or touched when she wanted it. Her brooding had the firing intensity of a gun in my glove compartment.

They/she and her current trans-amino acid bond were now an “our,” which happens when couples in the LGBTQI community merge. They are no longer one person with gender confusion, but multiple people at once infesting the atmosphere with instability—a learner’s manual for why loneliness is preferable.

I had blocked them, but if they don’t block you, you should not flip flop on their account as they will discover your ungraceful and deliberate likes. If, however, you adhere to the principles of never viewing their page(s), it will preclude them from issuing a restraining order.

It did not.

As I opened the mailbox—broken and neglected because my brother spent his paycheck on medical reefer—I saw a large, camouflage-colored envelope.

It was addressed to “Sheila Dimowitz,” though my name is “Sheila Manowitz.” I apprehensively opened the package.

“Dear Sheila Dimowitz,

My name is Fred Smith. If you come within two inches of my lover, who will someday be my wife, I will stir you into deer stew. You have a despicable sense of morals and how she ever dated you, well, that’s something I can’t comprehend. Yours sincerely, Fred Smith.”

To my knowledge, restraining orders did not come in the color of deer rifles, though this one did. It was green and shadowy and the brown mixing with its vibrant greenness made me think of the deer hunters past and present who expressed zero desire for me to accompany them on hunts because my deafening voice would frighten them and the deer.

I had expected this note—like when you predict your short story will appear in a journal later that month, which no one, except you and your 86-year-old Aunt Lucy, a convert to Judaism who is not really your aunt, but was good friends with your mom, even though your mom found Lucy’s gossiping completely repulsive, well, you and Lucy being the only ones who might read a few paragraphs from your obscurely published story that received 100 rejections before it was published in a journal no one reads, you knew, after you couldn’t access her/their photos publicly on Instagram because a micromanaged restraining order, written by your grammatically challenged ex’s future wife/husband, would appear in the mailbox. This was more certain than The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints knocking on your door. More assured than your dead mother’s name appearing in a New York City lesbian club mailing list in the nineties—you put her on several—and her New Jersey mail lady, a bit androgynous and short and liked your mom, but not that way, was open-minded when she delivered your mother’s mail in the suburban enclave, which was populated by Orthodox Jews and their children in hand-me-down strollers where there had once been Irish and Scottish kids playing kickball.

My friend B, on a trip to Massachusetts, advised me to stay away from the ex.

“You never stick your dick in crazy,” he proclaimed. He had heard stories about “her” and it was displeasing to his palate that such an incendiary force had wiped her soul against mine. “You can be tainted for life with her mercury salts, which cause mental and psychiatric impairment,” he said.

Indeed, my former lover was meshugenah. Why? Because her living room was filled with broken dog toys; her kitchen was a pot-smoking den comparable to Chinese opium dens pre-Chairman Mao; she spent a night in jail after stealing Tupperware containers from a VA Hospital; and she put a gun, purchased in a Pennsylvania Walmart in my New Jersey glove compartment. This was when I let her drive my car along the Garden State Parkway. “It was ill advised to let her bring that gun from another state into your car,” B said.

“I have the gun,” she told me, “because I’m concerned, I might get killed at the Philadelphia train station.”

B was fearful that hanging out with her, I’d be imprisoned in a Rikers Island-like institution in Jersey if the cops found her unregistered gun. “This chick has no worries about anyone but herself.”

“Don’t you understand why she’s, my religion?” I asked.

“No,” he cried, for she was not Michael Stipes, but the woman who’d leave my apartment in the middle of the night and sleep in her car; who’d make up a mental illness to explain why she walked around South Philly at 2 am with a Grinch mask; why she would not go to sleep until we spent seven hours in the diner discussing her 8-year-old daughter’s elementary school GPA. Who would leave me bewildered and obsessed and pining over her as if she were a newly discovered parchment of the bible.

Thus, I, Sheila Manowitz, couldn’t visit Instagram and see photos of their date nights; their Harrisburg bowling lanes converted into a lesbian disco; or observe scintillating moments of them washing drunks on the Bowery. I had to avoid her like when a former Republican senator lobbied for legislation that would allow you to block all porn sites from your rotary telephone. These “locks” are like modern-day chastity belts that prevent you from becoming obsessive and psychotic and a mega-stalker. This would ruin your life—this unrequited love bullshit, which, to you, was the air you breathed and the water you drank. And to her, it was like an impossible annoyance such as mosquitoes in your backyard that cause an unrelenting disease that if you were bitten, it might leave you in a state of paralysis.

The truth was: I was incapable of smoking a cigarette to relieve stress, which is why I hunted on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (now “X”). This relieves my anxiety, I told my therapist and AA sponsor, who both declared, “there are no stalker’s rights,” and that yes, if I didn’t become organized, smoke a joint or instead harass Julia Roberts, I’d end up with a soiled reputation. Indeed, the “cigarette” always transformed into a nuclear storm.

We did not end up in food court or regular court, though they spent their “date night” between Taco Bell and Wendy’s—not because the milkshake was better at Wendy’s, but the Diet Coke was a notch above at Taco Bell. I had to accept that she left me for him/they and that though I’d never meet this female Zeus in my bedroom again or watch her leave in the middle of the night, she was never going to be my lover. Or wife. Or significant other. Other adjectives that “normal” people easily insert in their profiles.

I let them, eventually, be in peace, as man/man and wife/wife/husband, so they could rest, in intransigent sleep and beauty and matrimony with half-bred golden retrievers and schnauzers they had rescued from the malls of Louisiana, in a GoFundMe® campaign that raised thousands of dollars. It was not their fault that their pets were incontinent, or their miniscule brains were like raisins on a movie theater floor. They were as God or existential philosophers had decreed them: two multilayered souls in one another’s arms—staring into the corpuscles of time.