“Come over here, take a look,” he said. Because he does that, he just invites you over, it’s totally normal to him to have someone come over and take a look at his work. I can’t understand this, this desire to have someone share in, or observe, the work I do, but this is because everything I do is about translating thought or emotion to page; there’s no process to watch that is of any interest, unless you like to watch people type, or hold a pen, pause, write, and then pause for a long time.
I am here, at his apartment, again, because of an email. Because I forced the moment to its crisis. I did not understand why he never contacted me. And why he wouldn’t even say something like “hey, good luck with your show.” But that’s me. I cannot empathize with someone who works 16 hours a day, according to him. He’s right.
On the bus, on the way over, he texts me, “want to grab a bite? I’m starving.” Should I accept this, it pushes my train departure back by another hour, at least; and though I sense I shouldn’t, I accept.
The lightening is so bright, its flash so vivid, that for one second, it is daylight; then, the black. We sit, in the dark together, on his couch, staring at the storms intrusion. We rest our chins on our hands, which rest on the back of the leather couch.
You are able to say you want to leave it when you have it; but when you don’t have it, you say you don’t want it. In both ways, you don’t want it. But it’s good for you.
When he received your card in the mail, and when he read your email, both on the same day, he called you.
This voice kept saying in your head, “maybe he really likes you.” And I didn’t listen.
You now write with a semi-purpose. You have a job. You will likely get an apartment soon. You are getting acting jobs. But you have no one, whom you love, that loves you in return. And the ones who do love you, whom you could snatch up in literally one phone call, you do not want; you’d rather never have another lover for the rest of your life than give in, out of principle, to one of these.
He said, “maybe it’s best if you don’t see me for awhile.” Did you bring the situation to this point, with your very thoughts, that you indulged, that you didn’t have to indulge in? Did you bring the moment to its crisis?
You have to show the good face around him, because if he sees that you are hurting, he won’t want to be near you.
I do not get him.
You saw the façade of the University Club, and it made you want to leave town again. But the part of you that has majority veto is comfortable, staying in Chicago, at the job you held before you left, playing it safe in your mother’s house, taking pills rather than selling everything you own in order to get an apartment, like a normal human being would do.
It seems that, every opportunity you give him, bad or good, he takes; if you introduce even one element of doubt, allowing him an out, he takes that out.
But all you can see is the bad; you are being offered things, things that you want, and you are literally taking them into your hands to throw them away. You do this with him, all the time. Or really, you used to, when you had the chance to do this.
You are so used to the patterns of pain, and destruction, that when something opposes those patterns, you reject it immediately, like a food you cannot digest. You spit on it and destroy it, because you don’t know what to do with it, because you don’t know what it is, what it means, and you are deeply, deeply afraid of it. You are fearing the wrong things.
You don’t even have a lot of feeling with your prayers, so it seems that they are not quite coming along like you’d like.
“Jess, you can stay longer, you know; you don’t have to leave just because the rain has stopped.”
“Oh, okay…but I have to…I have to wake up at five, I don’t know…I don’t know. Hold on.”
You had a thought today that this would be the last time you’d ever see his apartment. It was said in the same voice as when it said that you would see him that day, the day he was at the same sushi restaurant as you.
You pray that it is not true, and, in fact, you reject it.
You cannot quite believe that the storm is so bad that you actually ask him if you can stay at his place for a bit. You wonder if the gods have set this up so that you would see that he actually does like you, that he is good, that you need to, literally, take a pause, rethink, and remember: "if the sky can crack, there must be some way back, to love, and only love."
And you say, ok.
Now, you want to be the one selling his designs. You wish you had taken him up on this, when you were at your worst, several months ago. You wonder if your whole life is a test, and therefore, at what point are you going to get a right fucking answer? When are you going to crack down, and understand the theorem, and fucking answer the question?
“What are your hours at work?”
“So, you think you’ll be moving into the city soon?”
“So, three months?”
“Three months what?”
“Till you move to the city.”
“Yeah, three, maybe four. I think I want an apartment in Byron’s building.”
“In Byron’s?”
“Yeah, they’ve got good spaces for cheap.”
“That’ll be explosive.”
I think what is most telling about this last transaction is, I wanted the very thing that, if he had done, it would have been him, at his worst.
This could be good. You could get back to it. If you want it, you could get back to it. It could be everything you want. I know you refute this and you argue against it, but the truth is, you could have it.
He operates like no one you know. You are trying to assess his English using a Chinese dictionary.
It could be so easy. You could love him, and you could just enjoy life, and ride your bike, and write books, and act, and make your money, and just be happy. It actually is that easy. You could just accept joy. Just work hard, be normal about it, and do the things that you want, deep down, to do, but are afraid to do. Maybe set up a challenge for yourself once a day; something you are afraid to do, that is a positive thing, something especially that you are afraid of, and don’t go to bed until you do it.
You wish you could have the balls to say something like “I just don’t do the suburbs,” stick to it, because you have the strength of character to stick to things, like he does; where if he says he’ll do something, he does it; if he says he feels something, he means it.
The lightening drives in at one spot, as if sticking in a knife, and twisting, and holding it there; you remember what it was like to be naked in this place; but now, he won’t even undress in front of you, and you are perplexed as to why. And you realize, it’s because he doesn’t want to fuck with you. This is to your benefit, because you are too wound up in him, or really, he in you.
You think of what he accomplishes, and you are terrified at the idea of not attempting the same, of not striving for something, of not busting your ass to make a life for yourself.
He has the coolest taste in music.
Really, you just love every single thing about him.
When the two of you started, it was impossible to be anything less than giddy, hovering around ecstasy whenever you were with him; he seems to conduct, as in, like a wire, electric happiness.
But you are somewhere else, lately. You are not walking with people. You have chosen a different path. One that permits you deep, deep, isolating grief. You are walking in a valley with slate walls on either side and you know there is a stream of people beyond those walls but you disbelieve everything they say. You know what you have done. And no one is strong enough to convince you otherwise.
The rain has slowed. It is no longer blowing sideways, like it was when you both ran across the street to stand under the awning of the ice cream shop, before you caught the cab that would drive you only one block up to his apartment.
You know it is time to go, and it is the thing you want most, because this staying here, to be here with him, when he's offering, is almost more painful than you leaving.
Your clothes are now dry; you had hung them over the edge of his bathtub. You gather the things in the Whole Foods bag that you had come here for, the whole reason behind this meeting: a pyrex dish that you had left when you had brought him a cake you'd baked; a pack of sewing needles and thread that you intended to use to mend a shirt of his you'd torn; and boxing pads, that you brought one day when you sensed he could use a sparring partner.
There is a loss when you walk out his door. You can feel a vacuum created when it shuts, with no great ceremony, with no dramatic closure. Only, the vacuum is not for him; it is in you. There is a cavern inside you, there has been, since you began to end things, through your insecurity, your fear. In the attempt to protect, they destroyed you further. They saw an empty spot and they sensed he could fill it, and they sealed it off, only by protecting that hole, they made it bigger. You don't even feel your body touch the ground as you move down the hall. You don't feel anything, except loss.
You have been utterly ruined by the inability of everyone around you to, in fact, ground you, like a wire.
You walk down the hallway to the elevator, and you remember the movie, and something from it that you once said to him.
"As Ray Porter watches Mirabelle walk away, he feels a loss. How is it possible, he thinks, to miss a woman whom he kept at a distance so that when she was gone, he would not miss her? Only then does he realize how wanting part of her, and not all of her, had hurt them both, and how he cannot justify his actions except that, well, it was life."
