Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing(17)

Carl said he didn’t need the money; he just liked the company that he found in his renters. The renters shared the third floor. Three rooms. One bathroom. There was Tony, whose name wasn’t Tony, but he was from Jersey (I’d watched a few episodes of The Sopranos), and Alanna, the Capitol Hill intern who’d turn me on to Billy Bragg. And there was the alcove with a door that was meant to be our room, or my room really.

The room, a ten-by-six closet, was for one. Carl was adamant about that. An extra person would be charged ten dollars per night after seven nights. I looked at Jay. He was looking at the twin bed. With the twin bed shoved against the front window, there wasn’t much room left. I assured Carl it would only be me. Jay had a place. He might stay a couple nights. No big deal.

   Carl wanted first, last, and deposit, $1,500. I told him we’d be back with the money. Sorry, I would be back with the money. No, Jay definitely has his own place. We shook on it.

That was Sunday. On Monday, CarMax gave me $1,650 for the Ford Aspire. The check came with a twenty-four-hour hold.

We just had to make it one last night.

It’d been weeks since I checked my email. The upside of all this happening when it did: social media didn’t exist. I didn’t have to post hopeful updates on Facebook about feeling really good about the fifty-seven job applications I’d sent out. Send positive vibes, guys. I didn’t have to decorate the Aspire with stenciled aspirational quotes about stopping to smell the flowers. No one saw a picture of our Alpo nachos on Instagram. But with a room and jobs in our near future—#FingersCrossed—I decided to blow a couple dollars on the coffee shop computer.

I found a message (Hotmail) from a guy I’d known at Shaw. He was stationed at the Pentagon now. He said we should get a beer. I shot a message back asking if he’d mind if I crashed at his place for a night. I didn’t tell him I’d be bringing a friend. I hit refresh a few times. Let Jay check his email. And when I pulled mine up, I had a reply. He said he had to work. But he could leave his keys on the wheel of his truck in the Pentagon parking lot. This sounded like a simple plan.

We had a couple drinks first to celebrate. So by the time we got to the Pentagon, it was nearly two a.m. I don’t know why no one stopped us, driving around in that fucking banana-yellow truck. I’d never been to the Pentagon and didn’t know I had about as much chance of breaking into the Pentagon as I had of finding a gray Chevy in the parking lot. A parking lot that, by the way, is bigger than most Midwestern towns. Every fucking truck was silver or gray. I started blaming the trucks. I started yelling about the fucking military. I started crying.

   All this time sleeping in my car, watching my cash dwindle to nothing. Applying for jobs I’d never get. Showering in bathroom sinks. Worrying about parking tickets. Worrying about being seen. Worrying about the little things I could fix because I couldn’t fix the big thing: that the Family had been right. I was fucking terrified I’d wake up on Tuesday and we’d lose the room or the job or the check would bounce.

Not finding my friend’s truck seemed like a bad sign, a very bad sign. If I were someone who believed in signs, who believed in having a bad feeling about this, I’d say I knew what was coming. I’d be full of shit.

Jay handled my freak-out well. It was only fair. I’d dealt with his snot-crying over a broken cigarette—it’s always the fucking little things—only a few days before this.

He slammed the brakes somewhere between a row of gray trucks and row of silver trucks, and in his ridiculous accent told me, “Honey, fuck this. We’re gonna get some food in you. It’s one dang night.” (Southern gays can swallow cock, but they draw the line at taking the Lord’s name.)

I don’t remember my dreams as a rule. But that night I dreamed of drowning in a vat of Alpo. When I woke up, I realized the pillow Jay’d lent me to sleep in the bed of his truck was resting on the remains of our nachos.

   We were drinking coffee—why not spend our last five dollars?—at a place on Connecticut Avenue when someone ran out onto the patio and said a plane had hit the Twin Towers. When the plane hit the Pentagon, I remember Jay looked at me and his mouth opened. But he never said anything.

I don’t remember much of that day everyone seems to remember. People talk now about how united everyone was. Maybe they were. I remember leaving a bar when the crowd, a crowd of gay men old enough to remember the plague, broke into singing “God Bless America.” I didn’t want anyone to see that I didn’t know the words. When did everyone learn the words? I never even heard that song in the Air Force. I remember a man outside fell into me, sobbing, because he couldn’t reach his boyfriend, who was in one of the Towers. He was missing a flip-flop like he’d been running. I walked him home. He asked if I needed to call anyone. I called my mom and got through. I told her I loved her. But there was nothing else to talk about without lying. And I didn’t want to tie up his phone.



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There was an edge to the mourning, jagged and sharp. In the days and weeks to follow, when people talked about America being attacked, I felt like we were thinking of different times. Pearl Harbor maybe. That morning, I thought people had been attacked, just people. They said it had never happened before. Which is a strangely American way of looking at things. I remember the curfews, the smell of tear gas, and soldiers with machine guns on street corners in Chile when I was a kid. But even in the United States, Tim McVeigh bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City when I was in high school. Hadn’t been all that long ago.