On Richard: Now

The man sleeping next to me is not Richard. That’s the way it’s going to be from now on, for some version of forever. I find myself, in someone else’s bed, surrounding myself with memories of Richard as if somehow they could bring him back, the Richard I thought I loved, as if somehow they could undo everything that’s happened. Nothing will bring it back, but the memories crowd me regardless.

When we’d first get into the bed, he would hold me, put one arm around me, and I would take that hand and hold it to my chest. His fingers were freakishly large and it was sometimes a little painful when he’d squeeze my hand, but I’d stay there, on my side, intertwined with him, until he’d say, “Sleepy time,” and roll away from me.

I don’t remember him saying that he loved me, except for that first time, but I’m sure that he did, at least at first, I’m sure that he said it often. I try to hold all the memories that I can, but they slip through my thin fingers. The memories that stay are not the most invited ones. I don’t want to think about them.

I don’t want to think about Richard at all, but this first time, waking up with someone, this first time in years, it’s as if he’s the one here with me, and I feel guilty, because the man sleeping next to me, gently snoring next to me, is a beautiful man who has never hurt me, and I should close my eyes and let my dreams intertwine with his, but instead I lay on my back, staring towards a ceiling that I can’t see, and let my mind fill a bit with Richard.

I wonder if he felt anything like this that first night he spent with someone else. I shouldn’t wonder. Richard was not me, did not feel things the way I feel things, and Richard is gone.

I get up, put on pants and shoes, no socks or shirt, and a heavy coat, and go into the morning rain. I cross the street and stand in front of the building that used to be my home. The first night I spent with Richard was here, but I don’t remember that, or the last one, or any of the other nights I spent with him here before I left. I do remember him in my bedroom, telling me sad stories, crying because he had to leave me, and I remember him standing at my window on the morning of his birthday wearing just a towel. I may only remember that because I took a picture of it. I wish I could remember better things.

I wish I didn’t remember at all.

After my cigarette I go inside again, climb back into the bed and let another man’s body warm me. He wakes, a little, and smiles. I smile too, resting my head on his chest, and wait for Richard to leave me again. I moved to a different city, to a different life, but he’s the one who left, maybe the one who was never really there. He’s not here now and I close my eyes.

The man next to me is not Richard.

This is how it is, now.

--

In May of 1998, I wrote a short fiction piece called "On Richard." It's always been one of my favorite works, but it's definitely fiction. Now, thirteen years later, given some things that have happened recently, I thought it might be interesting to take the first line of that story and use it as the first line of a new piece, this time purely autobiographical. I hope this is the last thing that I ever write about Richard, but I make no promises.

Still Here

Still Here

You may snuff the heavens, silence the hum of the stars,

But I am still here, and

You may turn the rivers to stone, cities to flood,

And I will still be here, still

Standing here, still,

Watching you inventing havoc and gathering madness,

Watching you try to break me, to wake me

From this dream of creation,

Knowing you cannot sway me, and you cannot

Steal me from my home,

My cities and rivers and stars and heavens.

I am still here, always here, and ever still.

8.1.11

Black Hole

Black Hole

The black hole is not evil, you see, and not even black,
Only in that no light can live inside it,
Nothing can live inside it, no warmth or love,
But it does not mean harm,
Does not mean to disintegrate and dissipate
All light and love

I found that singularity, and I thought
The black hole isn't evil, it means no harm,
And I thought
I could bring some brightness to that darkest place,
And I smiled,
And I saw the light within me,
Disintegrated and uninvented,
Everything bright about me, and everything dark,
Destroyed

It isn't evil, or even black, only to my eyes,
Which expect light, light returned.
The warmth must be somewhere inside it.
That's what I still think.
Flying as fast as I can from that place,
The place we shared,
Flying as fast as I can,
Though possibly not fast enough.

7.31.11

Day 26

It's been twenty-six days since we've had any communication. The last time we went into radio silence, you broke it after that many days, so as we move through today into tomorrow, we will set a new record -- for no one but me to observe -- for days without contact.

I'll confess that, although I've managed to avoid saying anything about what's happened publicly, until I sat to write this, that I've run a dialogue with you in my head this whole time. No, not a dialogue. A monologue. Your input is notably absent. I think you had to know it would be like this for me, given the way you did this, that I'd be left waiting, wondering, addressing the air. I think you had to know. I hate you for doing this to me, again.

If you did contact me, I think I know what I'd have to say:

You only get to kick a puppy so many times before it either bites you or runs away.

I think you're a good person, overall, but there's another person that lives inside your body who is not so good, not so nice. He's selfish and cruel. I've met him a few times and I always made excuses for his appearances, tried to mitigate the awful things he said to me and the thoughtless way he treated me by contrasting him, and the sparsity of his visits, to the other, more visible, more present, nicer parts of you. But this time, by letting the nasty version of you have the last word, or the absence of a word in this particular case, you've left me, for the past month, with no access to the calmer, softer, sweeter you, and so it's been harder to forgive you your jealousy and your temper. Harder. No, it's been impossible.

So now I have two impulses: to try to hurt you back or to get the hell away from you.

I have done petty things designed to sting you, but I've always immediately regretted them, and they don't compare at all to the level of hurt I'd want to inflict now. I don't know if you even have an idea how much you've hurt me, always under the aegis of protecting yourself, always flying that banner. It's not a good enough excuse for what you've done and what you're continuing to do. There's so many horrible things I could say in return, if given the opportunity, but.... I don't want to. Writing this publicly where probably no one will actually see it, well, that's about as nasty as I can bring myself to get. I will always care about you, and the thought of inflicting pain on you brings me no lasting joy. I've been told that I shouldn't continue to care, that you deserve whatever I might want to unleash on you, that you never deserved me at all, but I know the other you. I loved the other you. I always will. That said, you only get to kick a puppy so many times.

That just leaves me the other option.

I will forgive you eventually, of course. As the cliche goes, time heals all wounds. This is just a phase, for both of us. But if we will be "friends forever" as you said just a day before cutting me out without warning, well, I'm skeptical. You didn't trust me, when you could have, and I trusted you, when I shouldn't have. So it goes. This is how it goes.

You wanted a life without me, so that's what you'll get.

Now

Now

don’t believe in
love, now, i see through
that sugary skin, i
rip at it with teeth and
sharpened nails, recoil from
the rotting flesh of
desperation, of need.

now i will not cover lies with
lies, will not stitch up
that delusion with
this dull needle, i will not

believe in love, not
now, not as anything
as an orchestration,
a well-choreographed deception,
by animals,
wild and mostly
untamed things,
who are smart enough,
now, to
fool themselves:

dancing in pairs, figurines
on a chipped music
box machine, circling there,
waiting for the tin notes to stop.

6.10.11

The Camera

I woke up Tuesday morning much too early, much too nervous about things I couldn't control.

I didn't know what else to do with myself so I took my camera out, like I used to, in a different city, in a different life.

A few blocks from my house, I stopped to photograph some flowers outside a church. A man outside the church told me that the flowers had died inside but come back once they were brought outside. I smiled. He offered to let me photograph inside the church but I wanted to keep moving so I declined.

A block later, I was kneeling outside a shuttered cafe trying to capture the street scene reflected in the stainless steel exterior, and a man came out of the building next door and stopped to talk to me. "You're shooting reflections?" he asked. "I do that all the time," he said. "You should come around the corner and see my display of shoes." I waited until he left, took a few more shots and then ventured over to see what he was talking about. Outside another cafe, just a few doors away, he had hung sneakers from the wall, filled them with dirt and planted flowers. I wasn't sure if I could capture this in photos but I tried. He came out again and offered to buy me a coffee in the cafe next door, and I hesitated, but then said yes. He took me inside and by the way he spoke to the barista, with no exchange of money, I gathered that he owned the cafe. I ordered my coffee and he wished me well and left.

Then I was back on my way.

I love Brooklyn, I thought.

Another block or so later, I stopped to photograph yet another flower, and set my coffee on a ledge that was too small, and the coffee fell to the sidewalk. Half of it spilled. Oh well, I thought, it was free anyway, and I shot pictures of the coffee running along the sidewalk.

I used to do this all the time, just me and my camera.

Sidewalk

A light rain falls on me as I walk down Atlantic Avenue, early on this holiday morning, the streets deserted and wet, the sidewalk covered in seeds from the trees, fallen from the brief but intense downpour of just a few minutes ago. I think the sidewalk will forgive me for what I have to do.

A year ago today, you made me an affectionately-named playlist of songs that you wanted me to hear. I was touched, wanting your attention, but it was so loaded with mixed messages that I found myself unable to connect to you, the next day during our day at the beach with your ex-boyfriend and his new boyfriend, or the barbecue at his house. I didn't understand how you could love me and not want to be with me, but want to be with me, and want to keep me near, but not want to let us be together.

"If one day we had to say goodbye / And our love should fade away and die / In my heart you will remain here."

I listened to that song over and over for weeks and tried to understand. I thought I did, for a while, but I didn't. I really didn't.

But now, as I walk and remember you, two years ago, that day that you came up to visit me, how you looked lit by the fading sun in the parking lot down the street from my parents' house, where we stopped for me to smoke, and I don't even think it's the same person. I remember you sitting across from me at breakfast, on your birthday in San Francisco, in a restaurant that's recently been shuttered and reinvented, and the hurt I feel is different now. I don't want it back. I think that I don't love you anymore, and I wish I never had.

I come to stop in the parking lot behind the laundromat where I sometimes go to smoke. I stand with a coffee and stare at a puddle reflecting the pipes that peer out from the top of the buildings. Looking into the puddle, with the rain coming down around me, throws off my sense of perspective and I suddenly, for an instant, feel farther from the ground than I really am. It reminds me of waiting at the bus stop as a child, with an umbrella, imagining that I could levitate, that I could fly away.

I wait to hear from you, for you to tell me when you're coming home from your weekend-long date, so we can see each other. So I can talk to you. I haven't let on what I intend to do, and you may suspect, but I don't think you do. I don't think you think I have it in me. There's a lot about me that you never saw, and I've just realized that there was a lot about you that I didn't want to see. Seeing it now has tainted my memories of you, knowing what you would go on to do to me, and it's sad, because memories are all that we have left now.

"If the sky should fall into the sea / And the stars fade all around me / All the times that we have known here / I will sing a hymn to love."

It feels like something has fallen out of me, and if it's fallen to the sidewalk, it's since been washed away. I forgive the sidewalk, and we understand each other, but the difference is this: I will not be walked on.