Confidential to Dissed in Detroit

02 May 2011 01:36 PM Categories: Friends

Confession: Sometimes I write secret messages in these posts, things that only one or two other people in the world would get, references to old jokes or to nights stretched out on black and white checkerboard sheets. I write them to people who no longer exist, to people who have forgotten that I exist, to those who used to read my words but don't any more. I've spelled out entire secrets here, written them in code, in winks and nudges, have provided enough information for you voyeurs and detectives to maybe figure it out. But you weren't in the room. My words are as close as you will get to the smell and the feel of the real, to the tenterhooked flesh of my heart.

You will have to rely on my accounts, on this unreliable narrator.

For Mr. Stop and Shop
Remember the night the streets pulsated, how the restaurant rug snatched at our feet, the pressure of the sky? "I don't feel anything," you'd told me an hour earlier, so we split another tab and entered the nightmare of a landscape alive, the trees tapping with bared bone branches, the apartment buildings and houses glowing temples to evil. At every pay phone you called your girlfriend collect, looking for calm in the bad trip. Finally we took a cab, a roller coaster ride along the DC streets with a grim reaper cabbie to my place in far-off northeast. And, yes, you slept in my bed, and no, nothing happened, but when my boyfriend, WASP #1, came the next day and I was so strung out and exhausted and freaked, he sniffed my sheets, looking for evidence. Like we ever did anything but kiss, and even then it was lighthearted, even the week before I left for Illinois and I thought I'd never be back and we drank sambuca and fooled around on the couch.

I'm lucky to know you.

For the one who was once my Platonic Other Half
How did those two men end up in our apartment? It was something to do with drugs. Were they connected to the "give me a cell" guy (who in my mind looks like Mike Tyson, but that can't be right)? It was winter and maybe I had already dropped out of school or was on the precipice of doing it and there were those guys and that's all I remember about it, the shiver in the living room, the undercurrent of danger. I'm not sure we could talk about it in person now. That moment belongs to the former us, the former we, to a friendship that crumbled.

We survived each other, the craziness, the tequila-fueled dances along the edge of the roof, the teary reunion at DC Space, the alcohol and strangers. We each have a son now. I'm relieved that there aren't any daughters in the mix. Girls scare me with their complications and symbolism. Or maybe I don't have enough confidence in my parenting abilities to think I could pull it off, could separate myself from my own girlhood enough to raise a girl right.

Oh: one more thing. Sometimes I still laugh when I remember the night you called M drunk and sang the Star Spangled Banner into his answering machine. There are some people I still want to do that to just for the surreality of it.

Miss you.

For Wasp #1
I was sick that weekend with one of those horrible stomach aches that still slam me every other month or so. We were at your ancestral home on the water. I was useless.

"Maybe you're pregnant," you told me jokingly. Mean. "Maybe I am," I replied sarcastically. Scared. A year later, we were on the phone and you mentioned your new girlfriend. I finally told you the truth. We cried. I mailed you a copy of the receipt as proof and we've not really spoken since.

For You Know
Haunted by history and habit, I phoned you a day late to tell you the news. We pulled through, worked together to prepare for his arrival, for the finest thing we've ever done. We had months and motivation and togetherness and then he showed up and he's still here.

I love you both. Will forever. No matter what happens. But you know that.

For Me
I know you still dance along the edge of the abyss, that you have to keep reminding yourself that with ambiguity comes creativity, that the solution isn't always simple and immediate, that no matter what it will be ok.

Remember this: the image of you with fists upraised, the permanent fighting stance, that gave way to a new interpretation, the tree in the meadow with a thick shaggy trunk, its branches feathered over with pale green leaves. You reach for the sun, you reach into the earth. You are strong.

Image: Flowers for the weary and ignored and forgotten.

I write this stuff and I believe in it with all my creative force when I'm writing it. Then I put it out there and doubt, doubt, doubt, until I write the next post and can leave this one to the past. Tell me what you think about it if you wish. Silence is ok, too. And if you see yourself here, know that I valued you enough to write about you, to hold you in words.

Tags: unreliable narrator, boyfriends, friendship

blog comments powered by Disqus

blog »