You buzz Sandra on the intercom.
“Is she still asleep?” Sandra asks.
“Mind your beeswax,” you say, brushing the saltine dust on the floor. “Get me a Dustbuster. And an ashtray.”
You stare at the crumbs so you won’t lose them. You will know where they are when she arrives with the Dustbuster. You wait there like that.
Dear Popeye,
You said you would love me until you were ashes.
You bolted from work that morning and took a cab sixty blocks for a fuck-our-lights-out festival, you busted in and took me from dreams by throwing your backpack on my floor and then throwing down the pussy gauntlet; I roused and rallied and smiled and you tossed me across the bed—you could have had me fine in the direction I was facing, but it was a morning that needed a body happily pitched across a duvet with a guttural mm hmm, a morning that begged for bodice ripping and hair-pulling and whispering and taking off and taking me away, and just then—when I was waking the homeless on the streets with my OH GODS, you slammed into neutral at the end of the in part of the next in and out, you pulled fully out of me and backed off the bed like I was a parking space you were deciding against after several attempts to nail; you stood up so obscenely perfectly stiff and lumbering slightly, no false grace or attempt to indicate to me that: Hey! Woman with your legs as open as the E-ZPass track, I am coming back! No, “hang on one second,” no halftime announcements, nothing, and so I was not sure if I should applaud, feel indignant, or just say screw that and start scrapbooking or what; so I stayed splayed and thrown and eventually started to think about maybe going to the gym, or the bodega, maybe today was the day I would learn how to use a Waterpik; at which point I heard, what, you opening my fridge? Looking for something in a drawer? Imodium? Brian’s Song? On VHS? But then I heard a pop and a fizz and you appeared again, Renaissance Fair stud, with your cock in one hand, not because it needed reminders but because you wanted it in that hand while the other hand gripped a bottle of Coke Classic, the old-school kind, which—doesn’t it? Taste so much better like that? Held in glass so you can see it as clearly as yesterday; you were singing “Harmony,” I think, by Elton John, or no, “Melissa” by the Allman Brothers, and as you approached the bed you smiled and waved at me like I was across the street and you knew me from church or something, but I was right there and you were right there too and then even more there, inside me, and you had a grip on the headboard pulling yourself in, another hand holding your Coke so it wouldn’t spill because you hadn’t taken a sip yet, but you did, then, you stopped mid in or out or who remembers, took a long pull on the bottle while your free fingers started at my hair and moved down my front to my softest, where you were held so completely and you came at me both hard and soft and just when that stopped being strange, your having a bottle at your mouth, you pulled it away from your mouth, my eyes opening then as your hand found my cheek, not gently but not rough, either, and your mouth it was still full but you didn’t swallow, you leaned in with lips near to spilling over and I parted my lips because I knew to and I like to obey when I can decode the command and you put your two lips on my two and opened your mouth, the Coke still cold and pepper sweet as you so slowly, like a faucet just left on by accident, you on purpose let it in my mouth and said
I thought you might be thirsty, baby
and I said ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhh, oh yeah.
and it was loud, the next part, very loud, and we took it very seriously, and then it was quiet and there was some near-sleep and when I curled into the great wall of you, which was still not ordinary, still fragrant with your new exotic familiarity, I said a bold thing, which a girl who doesn’t speak much can sometimes pull off, but I wasn’t pulling this time, I wanted to say it, I said, “I feel full. I feel, if we were forever poor, and had to live with so little, you know, really poor, and this was the best thing we got, I would be all right with that,” and you said
but we’re all poor people. this is the best we get
• • •
Today I heard your voice. Years after losing each other, you’ve managed to hold to loving me still, in the way you can when you know you both tried.
I remember when you went off to trek the Pyrenees, you brought me flowers you picked from the top of a mountain there, carried them back in a tiny woven basket that I saved to this day, even though the flowers are dust. I wrote about us while you were away in a notebook that eventually saw the end of us, but the last I wrote about that time was in ink; it was a hurried, angry scrawl reading: Time, that cold bastard, with its nearlys and untils. I think, what a shame. Time should weep for having spent me without you.
Dear Man Out of Time,
That was quick, what we had.
I saw you on the couch at the party I didn’t want to attend. Your legs were crossed in elegant trousers that exposed a length of what had to be a cashmere sock. “That’s a gentleman,” I thought, and I watched the way you held a glass and a conversation until I realized I wasn’t looking at anything or anyone else.
I came out of the corner to sit beside you. Fairly quickly something sparked that was past flirting; and the scent of you was enough to keep me there. It was a mix of rituals from a perfectly groomed man who had one foot in another era: pressed shirts, oiled loafers and aftershave, but an old-fashioned, distinctly masculine smell. I wondered if you went to the races and wore suspenders on Sunday. I wanted to put my head on your shoulder and make a wrinkle there.
“Don’t stop talking to me, ever,” I thought. “You are the most interesting man on Earth.” I kept asking you more and more questions and you turned your whole body to face me. We were both animated and nearly ignoring everyone else, but someone walked by smoking, you clearly knew him and pointed accusingly, laughed and said
When are you going to put those out?
I said something flip. I can’t remember what. It was some reference to vices being our true comrades. The people sitting on either side of you were quiet. One smiled uncomfortably. You pointed to your head, which was bald, and I realized then, my mouth dissolving into a silent “Oh,” that you hadn’t shaved your head as a style choice for a dapper man losing his hair.
Well, it’s . . . I have cancer, you see. It’s unfortunate.
You tossed it off. A gracious dance move by a partner who didn’t want anyone to see that their partner had tripped. You went back to talking about your girlfriend who I’d been asking about, as you had my boyfriend. We were both articulating, by extolling the virtues of our partners, that we were committed to our mates. Once that was laid out we were free to keep talking without worrying the other was receiving any incorrect signals. We were both so amped up by our interaction that it had to be established so we could get on with it. There was such freedom talking to you and no obligatory small talk. Your smile felt so alive with affection but there was a fixed quality to your face, as though you were memorizing me. You seemed poised to catch my phrases and pocket them with their accompanying silences. I felt like I was the Super Bowl, you were that engaged, but with the permission to say, “Wait, what did you mean?” when I didn’t get something. There was no squirming when the quiet went on too long.
Scientists can’t agree where speech evolved from so no one can arrive at what makes a particular communication successful. This is something I would never ever want to know the secret to any more than I would want to know on which day I will die; but it’s a subject I could pull apart for hours without getting bored. I love attempting to describe a thing, but I might love even better the fact that the more words you have available to encode with when you attempt denotation, the farther away you can sail into ambiguity. I could go on about you forever and that might only make you less clear to someone discovering you through my words. We might have had another twenty years to reveal ourselves to each other and not come away as sure of each other as we did.
Part of why we can’t explain the origin of language is our reaction to perceived truth. If words were entirely rel
iable they would have evolved as the most efficient means of communication, but they haven’t, because humans lie. An ape makes a sound or gesture to another ape signaling that it wants a banana. It gets the banana or not, but the communication is clear. An ape would never say, in ape-speak, “Your socks say a lot about you and I am intrigued. Would you mind handing me that banana?” Despite the fact that animals do “deceive” one another, they are resistant to deceit when they sense it. An ape would simply ignore a communication that was too convoluted, which I think would be a big fat relief. Humans are saddled with so many terrific ways of overcomplicating what we want. “I will give you five dollars for that banana,” or “How come Jolene gets a banana and I don’t?” Or even “I think we can both agree that after what happened last night, you owe me a fucking banana.” All of this takes us further away from what is ultimately: Banana. Give it. We have all these fancy ways to say things, so why do we end up walking away from a simple interaction wondering, “What did they mean by that?” I don’t know what made me want to sit there next to you or why talking to you felt so energizing. Is it how you were stringing words together or what was behind those words or both? I didn’t need to interpret you, I wanted to take your hand and kept touching your arm. I nearly grasped it at one point, but the way you would with a brother or long-lost friend. It was everything minus the one thing that usually ruins it all in the end. I don’t know what you call the sum total of that.
I left that night with your number and an appreciable craving to see you again. Weeks went by before we could make a date that we could both finally keep and I headed uptown that afternoon to see you for our unique nondate, fantasizing about what it would be like to see you once a week.
Your girlfriend answered the door, lovely and welcoming. She said you were in the bedroom not feeling well and I tried to convey that I was sorry. I wasn’t expecting you to be unwell and worried that I should just slip away, but then you came out to greet me. You looked pale and a bit thinner but still dashing. I suggested that I should go and let you rest, directing my question to your girlfriend out of respect, but you wanted to have lunch. “I’ve been looking so forward to this. I’m not missing it,” you said, and your girlfriend nodded her agreement and patted me on the shoulder as we left.
We walked to a place very near you and picked a table outside. I saw that you were moving much more slowly than you had a couple of weeks before. We ordered sparkling water and Italian food and it didn’t take much time to connect. Our conversation was slower but the comfort was still there and your indescribable smile that made me have to restrain my impulse to take your face in my hands and kiss you, but without tongues and apologies and pulses flaring. I wanted to curl up next to you but not end up on top of you. It was clear and it came with boundaries that I would never have to draw. I just liked you so much.
As we left the restaurant you offered me your arm and I looked at you standing half in and half out of that bistro. The city instantly seemed to exist only to blend with the portrait of you there, poised to go for a walk with me. It was maybe like seeing Fellini in Rome. All of Manhattan was either moving past or revolving around you, creating the effect of the city explaining itself by way of a man representing it. The cafes and boutiques, all the well-dressed women going by became saturated with color when they moved into your frame and you completed their picture. The Guggenheim Museum, a group of little boys in school uniforms—all of it seemed constructed to exist as the atavistic backdrop that told your story.
I took your arm and it was clear you needed support. I found the place between us where I could balance and bring myself to you securely. The gesture found me for the first time trying to think of the right thing to say.
You spoke first. We were such a nice surprise, you said, and a reminder that things could still keep popping up. We had something unique you wanted to keep for your own, and you leaned over when you said, “This is for me, I need this.” You looked down at me and said, oh, this is sweet and so good for me, but
this may be the world’s shortest friendship
We spoke again once or twice, I think. I came home from a trip a month or so later and a card was waiting from your girlfriend. She told me I’d mattered to you and given you a kind of boost. I held the card to my face, covering my eyes, and saw us walking down the street. I remembered how everything fell into place on all sides of you like someone was off somewhere pushing buttons and calling cues.
Thank you for giving me your arm and those four hours that I now understand you did not have an endless supply of.
It was short but I loved our little trip. We fell in love, but the way you love a view that comes along once or twice in life. You don’t want to leave it because it feels like, yes of course, this is the perfect spot. Those moments always come with a little shock and I love that sensation, when you think, this is too good, I’ll catch up with everyone else later. You just have to take in the truth of that expanse a few more seconds before it changes and becomes something else entirely, or before you do.
Dear Father Bob,
I believed in you, who knew God and still liked him.
One Sunday when I was maybe eight, I leaned out of my pew as you were passing after the service. I reached up and pulled at your robe.
“Father Bob?” I whispered. You bent down to hear me over the organ. “Is there anyone in Hell?” I asked, knowing you would know. You knew enough to give my brothers and my sister and me Cheetos when we came to your house to play Ouija board. You could answer this.
Putting your hand on my shoulder, you paused. Your eyes moved back and forth like you were reading invisible text while I stayed fixed on you, awaiting the truth. You started to speak and then stopped.
“Now? You mean is anyone there now?” you asked. I nodded a solemn yes and you scanned my face again, considering, and said, “No.”
“Okay,” I said.
You patted me on the back as if to say, good for you for questioning what you think you’re supposed to believe, as though the idea of eternal damnation was absolutely something to be revisited, years after having been ordained. As though the afterlife was worth examining upon being challenged by a third-grader. I realized that it was your opinion, in that moment. Faith to you was more clay than mortar, and if you could interpret the gospel, so could I. So should anyone. If God wasn’t mad at you for drinking wine and chain-smoking and being a homosexual, he might forgive me for stealing a kitten and trying to hide it under a blanket in the back of our station wagon. Certainly that God was preferable to others who wouldn’t let you in Heaven if you said bad words or drank Mountain Dew. If all your answers weren’t in the Bible then mine didn’t have to be, and potentially the point was to try to be honest and sweet like you, and not panic if you yelled or had too much spaghetti. You didn’t worry that the Parker kids were going to burn in a smelly inferno just because they were trying to conjure dead spirits courtesy of Hasbro.
All us kids have stories about you. My oldest brother remembers you driving him in your own car all the way to Bisbee so he could deliver his declaration against the Vietnam War to the draft board. They took one look at him, skinny and asthmatic and already spouting his political diatribe to anyone who would listen, and went to another section to find his name. They promptly informed him that he was F-4 status, a medical reject. He nearly burst into tears, having been robbed of the chance to articulate his opposition to the war by way of a narrative speech with footnotes. He paced the hall outside the draft board with you following him and listening to him go all over the map. What on earth should he do now, when he had not gotten what he did not want?
Finally he arrived at an idea, announcing that he had the answer: he would combine law and the teachings of God. “I will go to school and get my degree in canon law!” he said, excitedly, looking to you for validation. When he asked if you’d help steer him to this chosen path, you took a long drag on your cigarette and said
Of course I will. You realize, though, th
at canon law is about as useful as tits on a butterfly
“I know someone who can answer that better than me,” I said to my children. It was thirty years after my question to you in church that day and my own kids had one now. They bounced on the bed while I dialed you at home.
“Guys, settle,” I said, “this man is a big deal to Mommy and I’m putting him on speaker.”
“Is he nice?” asked my son.
“Father Bob?” I heard coughing after a faint “hello.” It was your voice. I hadn’t heard you in years but the sound of you was a time machine. I asked how your partner was, and you said great and he was right there in fact. I said to give him my best and incidentally, would you mind answering my kid’s question about what went down when Jesus died and you said sure thing. I nudged my son, who was trying to pry a rubber chicken out of my daughter’s hands. He put his face up next to the phone and said hello.
“Hello to you,” you said.
“Well,” said my son, “why did he come out of that cave? That had the big rock in front.”
“There was a rock?” asked my daughter. My son punched her, whispered be quiet and she punched him back, said she didn’t have to. I’m killing you both, I whispered, just stop it now and then I said full voice to you,
“They were confused about how he came out.”
“No, why,” said my son, “I don’t know why he came out and left the door open.”
“I thought you said it was a rock,” asked my daughter, who was now lying down and close to sleeping. I nudged her over and scratched her back lightly. My son was staring at the phone and I could hear you breathing on the other end.
“He came out,” you said, “because he needed to get into the light.”
Dear Mr. You Page 5
