Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me(34)
I strip off my shorts and underwear and we walk, I naked, Oliver in his suit, through the pounding rain to the pool. We swim in the rain, the surface of the pool like a choppy sea.
“Nothing like it,” I say.
“Yes! Lovely!” says O.
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8-1-13:
How vulnerable O seemed this morning, frail almost. I could feel it and see it from across the room. He said he woke with a thick head and a queasy feeling. He nuzzled his head into my belly. He asked if I’d run a bath.
_____________________
On Frailty
It is not incapacity
Not yet
Nor that one cannot do
As one needs to for oneself
But that thought enters every step taken
Lest the next one be the one
That takes one at last
Vigilance is one’s best defense
Against debility’s imminence
And what was once so simple
Getting out of a tub
Requires a higher mathematics
Advanced knowledge of biomechanics
To solve in advance
But it is also this
The knowingness of senses
So finely tuned to the sensuous
That nothing
Nothing
Is more beautiful
Than being in a bath
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10-16-13:
I, soaking in the bath, O on the toilet, talking, talking about what he’s been thinking and writing—short personal pieces, for a memoir perhaps. He had brought with him two pillows to sit on and a very large red apple. He opens his mouth wide and takes a gigantic bite. I watch him chewing for quite a while. After he finishes, “Bite me off a piece,” I say. He does so, dislodges the apple from his mouth, and puts the piece in my mouth. We keep talking. I add more hot water. Every other bite, he gives to me.
There is a quiet moment and then, seemingly apropos of nothing, O says: “I am glad to be on planet Earth with you. It would be much lonelier otherwise.”
I reach for his hand and hold it.
“I, too,” I say.
_____________________
12-9-13:
On a brief visit to San Francisco: How pretty and clean and uncrowded by comparison with New York—and how small—it seemed.
On Monday night I stopped by my old apartment (now occupied by a friend of a friend named Christian, though I still store things there), a place I had not visited in several years. I felt such a strange flush of sensations—familiarity mixed with forgotten-ness, if that’s a word—something akin to déjà vu.
I tried keeping a conversation going with Christian while at the same time tiptoeing room to room, trying to remember what this place was, what it meant—the life Steve and I had lived here—and recognizing objects and furniture I had left behind in my haste to move to New York: Oh, that was our table, our kitchen table. And that was our lamp—the lamp we bought at Ikea. And there, on the wall, that was my photograph.
I said aloud, surprising myself: “I took that picture.”
Christian nodded, as if he knew this better than I did.
“And this couch—this was mine too.” I didn’t mean to be reclaiming it. I was just recognizing it.
Christian opened the hall closet. All those books! Those were my books (are they mine still?) and those—all the sci-fi—were Steve’s. Part of me just wanted to close the door, but I felt an obligation to keep looking. I went to the other closet next to the door; it was terrible, a jammed, chaotic mess of boxes and files. So much life, so many years, shoved in there, the door closed.
I went to the bedroom. It was tidy and quite empty except for a bed—again: “That was my bed” (is it mine still?). It was a nice bed, the bed I’d bought for myself about a year after he’d died, and for a moment I wanted it, wondered how I could get it to New York, and at the same time, amazed—really very amazed—that I had left it here, just left it. As if I’d committed a crime. As if I’d run for my life. I suppose I had.
I regretted it later (I shouldn’t have said anything), but without thinking I found myself explaining to Christian how Steve had died—had died in that room. Christian was sweet, gentle, kind-faced. He’s Mormon. Very young. Blond and tall, handsome. When I had come in, he was drinking a glass of milk. He’ll probably have nightmares now. He could not be more different from me, yet there he was, somehow inhabiting the life I had led. Was I his age when I moved in? I don’t remember.
I looked at the full-length mirror on the hall closet door, where at night, after Steve died, I used to watch myself dancing, dancing in place for song after song after song, very stoned, the music loud so I didn’t think any bad thoughts. I could feel it in my body still.
We went to the garage; Christian wanted to know what was mine and what wasn’t, in case he wanted to get rid of things, make room for his own. There wasn’t a lot there—a drafting table, an old wicker chair with the wicker broken through, shelving, a broken Xerox machine. It was all mine (was it mine still?).
I didn’t hesitate. “You can get rid of it all.”
I returned two days later when Christian was at work: I had to deal with some of my stuff before leaving. It felt not just sad but terrible, to be there alone, not only because of Steve’s absence but also knowing that Jim and Vicki were not upstairs, nor Conrad downstairs, nor Robin and his wife down the hall, nor Jeffie or Elena on the third floor. Everyone had moved—or died.