FRESH YARN presents: The Day After Sam Rockwell and I Went Fishing... by Cheyenne Rothman

FRESH YARN presents:

The Day After Sam Rockwell and I Went Fishing
By Cheyenne Rothman

The Day After Sam Rockwell and I went fishing, was the day I fell out of love with Eric.

Or more precisely, the day after I had a dream that the actor Sam Rockwell and I went fishing, and Sam Rockwell declared my affections for Eric misguided, was the day I fell out of love with Eric.

Eric was a boyfriend I had in college who was -- in stark contrast to me -- exceedingly sweet and normal, came from a good family, and had a consistently sunny disposition. And for almost two years he was also just the evidence I needed to prove that I too was sweet and normal; that I did not have precisely the sort of family that guarantees romantic catastrophe; and precisely the sort of disposition that makes it physically impossible to burn a CD that isn't a soundtrack for suicide.

So when sweet and normal Eric suggested we consider forever -- surely the final and definitive victory -- I optimistically agreed.

And one night soon after, I went to sleep and had a dream that Sam Rockwell and I went fishing.

We are on Lake Sagamore, the humid and lonely lake in New York's Hudson River Valley where my grandfather took me fishing every summer throughout my childhood. It's the kind of lake that is so quiet you can always hear that buzzing sound, and the water always looks like black glass and, in the dream, I am sitting in my grandfather's cobwebbed aluminum rowboat, with the splintery oars, and the white fish sandwiches my grandmother always packed for us, wrapped in what always looked like very old waxed paper. I am using the cherished black and gold rod and reel my grandpa gave me for my ninth birthday and my favorite lure -- a yellow flat fish with red and black spots, which once enticed a small mouth bass the length of my torso.

In the memory, my grandfather fishes at the stern of the boat; the hours of silence broken only by his standard midday sermon about how there is no God and there is no such thing as happiness.

In the dream, Sam Rockwell sits at the stern; his voice a constant breach of the silence with a relentless sermon about how there is no man to save me from myself and there is no such thing as marrying up and out of your own skin.

The next morning as I sat across from Eric, watching him spread cream cheese more sparingly than I spread butter, I knew my optimism from the day before was irretrievably gone. And I knew that if I did not heed the truth that Sam Rockwell's words had awakened, that I would marry Eric. And I knew that if I married Eric, he would end up not so sweet and not so normal, and I would end up in the suburbs of Boston assembling tiki bar stools in the basement family-slash-rec room of my split level ranch house only to realize, when startled by a stranger in pegged acid wash jeans, that I am in fact, assembling tiki bar stools in the basement family-slash-rec room of a split level ranch house one block west, or north, or south of mine because I am always walking into the wrong house because they are all the same, and my sense of direction and will to live are being leeched from my brain by lawn pesticides and monotony.

What I did not know as I sat across from Eric that morning was that because of that one dream -- a dream I would never actually have again -- I would continue to fall out of love over breakfast again and again and again, for more than a decade. Because at some point in more relationships than I am comfortable discussing, there comes a night that while lingering in that watery place between consciousness and sleep, I have an impulse to picture Sam Rockwell sermonizing from the stern of that rowboat, which I try desperately to resist, and always fail, because trying not to picture something requires a something not to picture. And the day after I surrender to this image, I fall out of love over breakfast.

So although I would and will always remain grateful for the initial detour Mr. Rockwell inspired, at some point after turning thirty I started to wonder if my subconscious wasn't, perhaps, overdoing things a bit with the dream voodoo, because there are likely a number of good reasons for me to remain single and childless, but I don't think Sam Rockwell is one of them.

And at some point after turning thirty, the montage of romantic catastrophe became exhausting and time consuming and sad, and I so decided to climb back inside this dream to give it a better look so that I could start to imagine a better ending.

I briefly entertained the theory that the dream was actually about the real Sam Rockwell and his destiny as the one man I could love. Not only did he seem like someone who might agree to have "Double Dutch Bus" be the first dance at his wedding, it made sense that only the real Sam could survive the dream Sam, and it just seemed nice that someone should have to wrestle himself in an aluminum rowboat in the middle of a lake in order to win my heart.

But Sam hasn't shown up at my door and so I have accepted the slightly more likely explanation that this dream -- in the way dreams do -- just borrowed his face from the corner of my brain where I keep things like Degrassi Junior High, Kerry 'The Claw' Von Erich, and all of the lyrics on Gordon Lightfoot's Compilation Album "Gord's Gold".

And really, regardless of how Sam Rockwell got into my head, what matters is that I see past the borrowed face to who it really is that commands the demise of love. Because it is not Sam Rockwell -- real or imagined -- sitting at the stern of that aluminum boat; it is my nihilistic grandfather whose heart was broken by life's disappointments; it is my disappeared father whose heart was broken by his own disappearance; and it is my flightless mother, whose heart was broken by her own brain chemistry and regret. And all that heartbreak got folded up inside of me and so it is actually me sitting at the stern of that aluminum boat. It is me commanding the demise of love, because in the wake of this dream, I have continued to choose men I know will not survive Mr. Rockwell's sermons and it is in that act -- not the persistent recalling of the dream -- that I have bowed to the legacy of a heartbroken family.

But what if, instead of accepting this dream as the immutable result of an unfortunate past, or conceding to it as the fateful orchestrator of a solitary future -- what if I draw my new ending not from the dream, but from its source?

Because in the memory -- in my real life -- I bowed to nothing.

In my real life, in what can really only be described as a deliberate act of optimistic defiance, I returned to Lake Sagamore with my broken-hearted grandfather day after day and summer after summer. And in what can really only be described as a great act of patience and faith, I continued to find great peace and great pleasure in all that silence, so many sermons, and with the exception of that one bass the length of my torso, very few fish.

Surely, if I possess only half as much optimistic defiance, patience and faith in my present life as I did when I was nine, I can manage to alter the course I allowed this one ridiculous dream to set me on over a decade ago.

And so I give up worrying about when and why Sam Rockwell and I go fishing. I give up looking for final and definitive victory. I do not need a man as evidence of my triumph over my heartbreak. That I cherish the memory of fishing with my grandfather exactly as it happened, and that I continue to cherish my grandfather for exactly who he was is evidence enough, of triumph enough.

Should I someday fancy a fellow who is meant to survive Sam Rockwell, and should I soon after, for the second time in my life, have a dream about fishing, I suspect I will again be on Lake Sagamore in the Hudson River Valley, in my grandfather's cobwebbed aluminum row boat, with the splintery oars and the white fish sandwiches wrapped in very old waxed paper. And I suspect Sam Rockwell will again be admonishing me from the stern.

But in this dream, I will see him for who he is and I will not sit idly; I will not surrender to the demise of love. In this dream, I will wrestle the lithe Mr. Rockwell myself and he will end up disappearing into the black water of Lake Sagamore and I will be left to fish in peace.

And the day after that, I will stay in love.

At least through breakfast.