Monday, May 14, 2007

 

ENTRY 245: BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH


I peered through the window out into the dark, at the haphazard flashlight beams of the men. They were searching for gruesome things out there of which I had little inkling. All I knew was that I was vexed and exhausted and I wanted it to be over.


"How long does it take to find and take care of a corpse?" I said almost silently to no one in particular, to myself. As rhetorical as the question would have seemed to anyone who might have heard it, I honestly wanted to know. I closed my eyes, turning my head back and forth as though I were trying to dislodge it very gradually from my neck.


"Untimely" demises are trickier than others. I think that, in times of bereavement, people often err on the side of verbosity. No sympathy card I've ever sent has included more than a line or so written by me: "Thinking of you. So sorry to hear of your loss." People are so uncomfortable with death, so eager in their misguided attempts to fill with meaningless verbiage the silence that terrifies them, that they insist on coming up with some kind of silver-lining bullshit. "At least he lived a full life." "At least she didn't suffer." Yeah, okay. We are taught to elide grief because it inconveniences other people and, frankly, ourselves. But it is a necessary process, much like shitting. Words don't much help.


The train was stuck there for more than an hour and a half; I didn't get home until nearly 1:00 in the morning, and I didn't learn the details until the next day. "Untimely," and sad. And, for those of us trapped underground late into the night, maddeningly inconvenient. Death is funny like that.


As the minutes stretched into an hour and more, I leaned against the closed subway doors and shut my eyes, as though I were holding a vigil for a dead stranger. I suppose I was.


###

I stood for a moment in the hallway, my eyes on the closed bedroom door where Humbert had been holed up for most of the past two weeks, and my thumb on the TALK button. It was time to dial Bertha's cell phone again. I found myself in a tremendously unwelcome situation. The thought seemed selfish even to me, but if something had happened to Bertha, what would become of me? And how would I confront whoever needed to be confronted? As long as I hadn't dialed, I wouldn't have to answer those questions. My thumb moved, and as I raised the phone to my ear I listened for a corresponding ring that I hoped I wouldn't hear.

Going into the second ring, I knew there was no other phone ringing in the apartment. A third ring. Then a fourth ring. On the fifth ring she picked up and said hello. I waited to make sure it wasn't her voicemail greeting.

"Bertha," I said, feeling a combination of annoyance and relief.

"Frank," she said, launching into one of her notorious soliloquies. "I got your message and I've been about to call at least once a day for the past four or five days, but there's always an interruption. My mother's still being very mysterious about her health problems, and she's a very heavy smoker. My sister and I have been trying to get her to quit for years, but she's almost 80 years old and she just isn't going to listen to us now. Then there was that heavy snow, which she would never have been able to deal with, but fortunately I was here to shovel the driveway clear. I'm prone to lung problems, and I ended up with a bacterial lung infection and I've been taking antibiotics, but the infection came back more than once. And if I push my mother too much about her health problems she'll kick me out of the house. So I've just been doing some cleaning and having some bed rest."

"Well," I said, taking my edgewise wherever I could get it, "I'm just glad things are okay. I thought it was unusual not to have heard from you in almost a month when you weren't supposed to be gone nearly that long, and with your mother not being well."

"Ohhh, yeees," said Bertha. "Well, it's just been complicated. I've been sick, but I'm much better now, really. Humbert told me that you were worried about the rent not getting paid on time. I've taken care of all that."

"That's fine," I said. "I haven't seen any eviction notices yet."

"Oh, it's all taken care of," she said. "Oh, no. I wouldn't have let that slide. Oh, no."

"That's fine," I said.

I'll spare everyone, myself included, a transcription of the rest of the conversation, but she said she hoped to be back in a few days, which stretched into two weeks. She finally returned just days ago, at which time I had to pony up two months' rent. At least it was earning interest. I was just glad not to find myself in the middle of anything more serious than living with a weirdo. But I'm used to that by now.

###


I've grown to like the leader of the gay guys' group, after our slightly rocky start, and he invited me to go to a house party in Chelsea on a Saturday night. Oliver said to meet him and his friends at a street corner in the West 20s, and we'd proceed to the party from there.


Oliver appeared a few minutes after my arrival, and directed me to his group. They were a bit cliquish, so as we waited for the last straggler to join us I spoke mainly with Oliver, who was talking about some college senior with whom he had been flirting heavily. A college senior with a boyfriend.


"Hmm," I said.


"I know, I know," he said. "But I think they're kind of on the rocks."


"Just the way I like to start a relationship," I said. "On the ashes of another one."


"Shut up," said Oliver.


I was ready, as always, with a retort, but Oliver turned his head suddenly, having overheard a remark from one of his friends, and said, "What? The party's where?"


The speaker looked meek. "Hoboken," he said.


"I thought it was in Chelsea!" said Oliver. My brow furrowed.


"No, that was last week," he said. "Didn't I mention it was in Jersey this week?"


"Uh, no," said Oliver, his eyes full of apology as he turned back to me. "Are you okay with this?" he asked.


I shrugged. "What the hell?" I said. "I'll always do something for the kitsch value."


When our straggler finally, finally showed up, everyone trooped down into the PATH station to wait for the train to Jersey. It was a while in coming, and we were subjected to the unseemly noise of an already-drunk-at-10 crowd of unlovelies.


On the train, it was eventually revealed that our final destination was actually Jersey City, rather than Hoboken. Those familiar with New Jersey might, depending on personal outlook, recognize this as a Step Down.


"Don't apologize," I said gently, as Oliver started to.


The trip took longer than I thought, but at last we emerged from the station in Jersey City. My gaze took in some nondescript office buildings and a parking garage.


"Now what?" said Oliver to our ringleader, who was on his cell phone.


"I'm calling the party host's friend," he said. "She's going to pick us up and drive us to the party."


"Planes, trains, and automobiles," I said to Oliver, who made a face.


It took only a couple of minutes for a smallish SUV to pull up. I could tell there wouldn't be room for all eight of us, but six of us managed to cram in there (one riding shotgun, three in the back, and two long-legged guys somehow crammed into the loading space behind the back seat). The other two from our group would await a second shuttle.


It was easily a 10-minute drive, prompting Oliver first to say, "I guess we won't be walking back to the station," and then to mutter that he was starting to get carsick as our driver got lost several times in a maze of one-way streets.


Arriving at the party would have been anticlimactic if I'd expected much of anything at this point. I made straight for the snacks--they were serving those little meat-and-cheese pinwheels, which I love--and then contemplated the crowd, which didn't look entirely engaging. I exchanged dead-end pleasantries with a few people before turning to one of our own group, a guy I hadn't had the opportunity to talk to before.


It turned out he was 23, lived on Long Island, and had just enrolled in makeup school. We didn't exactly have scads in common. But I went above and beyond in trying to take an interest in his vocational plans and to give a little perspective on job hunting to someone who'd never done it, and all that sort of thing. Finally I excused myself from Makeup Man to get a drink.


The drinks were being served by two Russian brothers. More accurately, one of them was taking the orders and one was mixing. The taker was almost totally without charisma. The mixer hadamulletforGod'ssake, but also a surprisingly hot ass. I suppose this is how I entertain myself at lackluster parties these days. I asked the taker whether he was familiar with a certain Russian idiom meaning "She's a bitch," but he seemed to have no idea what I was saying.


Armed with a slightly-colder-than-lukewarm Corona, I wandered into the bedroom, where some of our crew were looking through the two big closets at the host's clothes. There were many whispers and many stripes and more than two dozen pairs of shoes.


The ringleader talked about his life plan, which included moving to Rhode Island two years from now, because he thought it would be a good state to try living in. Next year would be his 35th birthday, and the theme of his party would be "dressing like you did your freshman year of high school."


"What were you wearing then?" I asked.


"Parachute pants!" he said.


Another guy, who was closer to my age, said, "I was wearing lots of flannel."


"Me, too," I said. "Plaid flannel."


"What about you?" said the ringleader to Makeup Man.


Makeup Man, with the same sour face he had worn most of the evening as I was trying to display an interest in his boring life, pointed at me and said, "I dressed pretty much like that."


Wow.


I laughed, displaying my teeth. "I guess I don't have much fashion sense," I said with at least a semblance of good nature. This comment seemed entirely lost on that little fucker, who happened to be dressed like a refugee from a 1987 Depeche Mode concert. Quelle surprise.


Chugging the second half of my beer, I announced it was time for a refill, and swept out of the room.


"You won't believe what that makeup guy just said to me," I told Oliver, who for some reason found the Russian order-taker compelling, perhaps because he was straight. I described what had happened.


"You look fine," he said, patting me on the shoulder. "There's nothing wrong with what you're wearing."


"Thank you," I said, heading to the refrigerator for another beer. I nearly collided with the most attractive person at the party: tall, intensely blue eyes, adorable mussed hair, endearingly awkward.


"Hello," he said, thrusting out his hand to shake mine. "Who are you?"


"I'm Frank," I said, indicating the people I'd come with. He turned out to be a friend of somebody-or-other's friend, and lived in some Jersey town I'd never even heard of, and worked as a graphic designer in another town in Jersey I'd never heard of.


He seemed young, and we didn't have anything particularly deep to talk about, but I was enjoying the flirtation. Until he rushed across the room to start dancing--badly--to "Lose My Breath." Whitey had rhythm issues. It was, like, YouTube-worthy.


Oliver had made a shuttle phone call, and he tapped me on the shoulder to let me know the SUV had arrived. I can't say I was very sorry, but I did almost regret not having spoken longer with the cute guy, though he lived too far away for there to be any real potential for anything. In the end, I am nothing if not practical.


"Goodbye," I said warmly to the cute guy. My nod to Makeup Man was far chillier as Oliver and I vanished through the door.


"Did you have a good time?" asked Oliver as we sat waiting for the train back to Manhattan.


I thought for a minute. "It was an education," said I, indefatigably committed to the truth.


###

It's been a particularly strange few months for me, because, even as I've tried to reboot my life and find new people and experiences, so much has been about letting go of things. Not my sometimes-M.O. of going through the motions of letting go of things while secretly still clinging to tightly held ideas about the way I wish things still were or could be, but actively divesting myself of delusional myths. As painful as the syntax of that last sentence was, it's not nearly as painful as this process is. But, as sometimes you must let a doctor re-break a limb in order to have it re-heal properly, sometimes you must also force yourself to move on purposefully from vestiges of your old life that do nothing but hold you back.

Roger was my oldest friend in the city, but I finally admitted that I was the only one making any kind of effort to sustain that friendship. For the past few months, as lonely as I've felt at numerous points, I've resisted the urge to call him. I can only imagine that it's similar to being an alcoholic who manages not to call the liquor store to place an order. It would be different if I felt the friendship could be salvaged, but I'm not going to cling to people who, intentionally or unintentionally, are conveying the unmistakable message that I'm better off moving on. The last thing I want is a Matt retread. As my therapist recently noted with approval, I'm improving at letting go of what's dead. (On the other hand, Hamilton was an incredibly supportive phone friend in the aftermath of the botched meetup and my other recent struggles.)

The whole thing is still incredibly difficult, for, as often as I've claimed that I don't care about other people's approval, of course I do. Losing any friend is painful, whether it's because they've drifted away or because you need to end an unhealthy situation. But I think I'm experiencing a paradigm shift in how I react to loss: I'm becoming better at not clinging to the past.

Saturday before last I was entering the subway when, midway down the stairs, I ran into Mr. HurryDate. As always, he was perfectly put together, with a sleek black shirt and nice shoes and hair anointed by the gods; I was wearing a wrinkled T-shirt, jeans, Chuck Taylors, and three days' stubble (although people say I can pull off the unshaven look, but I digress).

"Hi!" I said, stopping short on the stairs next to him and nonchalantly curling my fingers into claws so he couldn't see my untrimmed nails.

"Well, hello," said Mr. HurryDate, betraying no more than the merest flicker of discomfort. A class act, to be quite honest.

"I was downloading The Knife the other day and thought of you," I said, which was true enough, though perhaps more obsessive-sounding than I'd intended. (He had, after all, been the one who first told me about The Knife, and I'd heard a song of theirs recently that I liked. "Oh, Mr. HurryDate liked them, didn't he?" I'd thought.)

"Oh, really?" he said.

I salvaged things with a hasty "So what are you up to this weekend?"

He was going shopping with a visiting cousin, he said, and then to a Björk concert that night.

"I had no idea she was in town," I said, genuinely sorry that I hadn't known. "I guess I've been out of the loop."

"So what about you?" he said, his eyes appraising my appearance in a flick or two.

I told him I'd had an errand that morning (seeing my therapist, not that I was going to get that specific with him) and was on my way to a James Bond movie at the Film Forum.

"You know me and movies," I said with a shrug, although, as I realized once I'd said it, at least one of those things was probably untrue.

"That sounds like fun," he said.

"I need to get going," we both said kind of simultaneously. It had flashed through my mind at the beginning of the exchange that neither one of us would be lame enough to say, "We should get together soon," and in fact I was right. And relieved.

We smiled at each other, not without sincerity, and I continued down the stairs. It was the second time in a row that we'd parted without my looking back. I no longer chased receding forms, which had been somewhat true before. But this time mind, body, and heart were all on the same page. The encounter had no deep meaning. It was simply chance, matter momentarily occupying the same space.

###

This guy named Paul had contacted me online, had liked my profile. It turned out he lives in the neighborhood, so we met for drinks last Sunday night at a bar nearby. He was cute, I thought, and seemed nice and smart, though a bit nerdily awkward. Not that I mind that. He's studying art history, and so we talked about that and about roommates (his is from Appalachia and plays a banjo and wears overalls without a shirt).

What kept distracting me from our conversation was a guy at the bar stool beyond Paul's who kept staring at me. I was certain I didn't know him, and I couldn't read his expression very well. The guy finally broke into our conversation to say, "Excuse me. Can I ask you a question?"

Paul just looked at me.

"Sure," I said.

The guy introduced himself--he was a lawyer; I seem to attract little else--and launched into a story about a guy he'd been living with for the past two, excuse me, two and a half years. The guy, who was my age, had been unemployed all of that time, and the lawyer supported him but didn't mind, or so he said. Recently the lawyer's former boyfriend had announced that he was going to spend the summer working in Provincetown and "trying to find himself." In response, the lawyer had broken things off. Had he made the right decision?

"I think, if you weren't comfortable with his being gone for several months in Provincetown to 'find himself,' that you made the right decision," I said. "It boils down to what works for you. Seems reasonable enough to me."

The lawyer kept obsessing, and continued to ask variations of "Did I do the right thing?" until it was clear I had run out of synonyms. Poor thing had clearly been drinking. All in all, it made me glad that I hadn't had an official "boyfriend," at least in those terms, for the past seven years.

"So anyway," I said to Paul, "I really do think 'Dress You Up' is incredibly underrated."


We left the bar and, as I stood there zipping up my hoodie, he mentioned he was going to a concert in a few days and perhaps I'd be interested in it. He named a performer I'd never heard of.


"I don't know him," I said, "but I'll look him up online and see what I think."


"All right," said Paul.


"It was good to meet you," I said, and he leaned down slightly (6'1" to my 5'10") and gave me a quick peck on the lips. I smiled involuntarily.


"You, too," he said, catching me off-guard with another quick peck.


"Good night," I said, feeling slightly jarred. Walking back to my apartment, I pondered the notion of self-actualization in Provincetown.

11:25 PM

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