Why I Came

It's my last night in Long Beach. Marcio's painting his living room and there's not much I can do to help, so I wait and watch, wishing I had more time, wishing I was already home. Gray walls. The green wall is already done, coated and coated again, blue tape removed, furniture returned to its place, but the gray walls are only half done and it's already late. I don't have much to say but there's not much else for me to do, while he paints, but reflect. Too much reflection is dangerous so I try not to think about the dozens of times I've been here before, all the odd, funny, wonderful and painful experiences I might have had, and just focus on the past two weeks.

The night I arrived, we waited for Marcio's friend to drive us to the grocery store, to buy food for our Christmas dinner and a dish that Marcio had to make for a work party. Wed already half-loaded up our cart when his friend found us to tell us he was leaving, leaving us with no ride home. Our options were to abandon the groceries, or most of them, or, as I suggested, bring the whole cart home with us. Yes, I can now number myself among the esteemed collection of folk who have wheeled shopping carts out of the supermarket parking lots. You think those things are hard to handle in the store itself? It turns out they are even trickier in the outside world, and maybe as a deterrent to potential thieves, they are incredibly loud. We laughed at ourselves as we brought the cart home and then we hid it in the alley behind the house. It's still there.

On New Year's Eve, we fought, about nothing, as always, but then we made up and occupied ourselves watching television on my computer until eleven thirty, when I suggested we go for a walk, just so we'd make the arrival of midnight a bit more memorable. Marcio was tired and it was cold out but we went anyway, after engaging in some Brazilian superstition involving lentils and bay leaves, wrapped up in our wallets. I still have it in my wallet and keep meaning up look up what this means. There was a dense fog, one of the densest I have ever seen, that made it feel like we were the only two people in the world, and if the situation had been different, if we had held hands, it might have been one of the most magical and romantic moments of my life. We had just arrived at the ocean, or where the ocean should have been, when my phone announced the arrival of the new year, and we kissed and hugged, in our heavy coats, and Marcio apologized for the fight, earlier, and so did I, and we stood overlooking the vast nothingness that should have been the ocean, listening to fireworks that we could not see.

There's other memories too: the sad wounded kitty, and the other kitty in the planter. Our multiple walks to Belmont shore and repeated stops at the Starbuck's there. The frightening gay mannequin. The unfortunate story of Ramon's mother and our even more embarrassing response to it. The party where everyone wanted me to define my relationship to Marcio and I was left with no prepared response. The new year's eve succulent adoptions, and the other planned ones that got thwarted. Hours spent in front of his computer or mine, watching our television shows, sometimes in the bed, and in the bed, cuddling, warm, but not quite as tight as we once did, even weeks before. The quiet in those moments when I had a fistful of things I wanted to say, but said nothing, a quiet unlike any other.

I'm glad I came. I've stayed too long but I'm glad I came. Despite the tagline of my website a decade ago, "change is good," I hate for things to change, and I hate to say goodbye, but I have to, and I have, and that, I suppose, is why I came.