I spent an hour trying to write this. I know what I want to say, and it’s not all that different from what I always say, but I’m stuttering tonight. Here was my introduction:
“I like those moments where everything converges, and suddenly you’re OK. Maybe you were not OK that morning: your neighbor chainsawed the shit out of something at 6 AM, and then you tripped down the porch stairs and broke your face. And, fuck, you’ve been crabby this week. No one’s been immune. And you know that habit you have of losing your wallet and spilling your drink? Somehow you did that to your entire life these past few months, though the chaos didn’t come from an unhappy place.
But while you’re saner and healthier than you’ve been in your entire life, everything still isn’t OK. Growing pains. Disorganization. Something. So you spend a lot evenings feeling like you have a concussion, or like you stepped on the wrong train and didn’t realize until you were halfway to Delaware. It’s not the deep terror and despair of evenings past; it’s a subtle confusion. Like waking up from surgery. You’re safe. You’re fine. But what the fuck just happened?”
But then I got stuck. I mean, I didn’t get stuck. I knew exactly what I was going to say, but I got embarrassed. I sensed misinterpretation. It’s just this: I was going to tell you about a moment where I felt that OK-convergence, and how it was a little like being in love, but not the type of love you’re thinking of. Not a romantic love, though close. Not platonic. What to call it?
It’s the type of love I feel when I get dizzy with OKness and I’m not afraid to die. When my blood runs faster, and my eyes focus, and I want to kiss you, but I don’t want things to get weird. Won’t things get weird? You don’t have to do anything with my love. It’s not a chain. It’s me saying: I’ve seen you to the bones, into the marrow, past all the gross pathology we don’t understand, excavated that place the skeleton protects. It’s my way of telling you that I’ll hold that place; that you don’t need to be embarrassed. You don’t have to call me. You don’t have to hold me back. I’m not asking for your fidelity, here.
It’s when I asked for the last bite of his cupcake, and he gave it to me, shoved it in my mouth after we ran down the steep hill at the Witch Hat Tower. When she and I had to walk around the building in the rain because we were laughing too loudly to be in the office. When I drank too much good bourbon and she got me a glass of water. When he turned bright red when we teased him about how funny his voice would sound if he said “I love you” to a girl. When he stood awkwardly over me by the jukebox at the show, trying to say to hello but failing. All these things! More things. Endless things.
I see you across the room, shifting inside yourself, preparing layer upon layer of body and face, and I want to take you to a quiet room. I have always loved too much; it’s made me awkward and cold because I have to play it cool. But sometimes they can tell. I want you to be able to tell. I’m old enough where I’m not as afraid of exposure. Just let me do this one thing, this reaching into your soft and spoiled parts so I can feel less afraid about my own.
You’re not going to believe this, but I’m going to link to a song to go with this post. You’ve probably heard it. And it’s not going to be cool. But it describes what I’m saying, you know? Here.
I wanted to give you the truest thing I could say about you. I wanted to grind your essence into a single substance, like sediment into countries. You are off walking somewhere tonight, smoking. You – smoking! One time, when we were babies (21), I smoked outside with your roommate on the porch. You caught me, chased me inside, tackled me on the carpet to rub detergent into my mouth. (Later, we made awful food – pizza rolls dipped in peanut sauce? – and then nearly broke your bed frame.)
There are many true things about you: you are kind. You are thin. You are strong with ropey muscles. You have a beautiful singing voice. A stunning ear for melody. For a bony guy, you give great hugs. You don’t speak badly of anyone. You laugh loudly with your head thrown back, and you never laugh if you don’t mean it. You are particular about your clothes: if they stay in the dryer past three minutes, you re-dry them and wait in the room for the buzzer.
You always wear socks. Your feet are baby-soft, but your fingertips are so calloused you could stick syringes straight though. (But I won’t, because this would make you squeamish. A lot of things make you squeamish.) You love chocolate, romantic comedies, your cat Phoebe and baby animals. (I tease you about being a teenage girl.)
These are not the truest things. I keep searching for an anecdote, a memory to illustrate what I know about you. Maybe when you get to a certain point, there aren’t words for what you know about a person. You like black coffee. Your favorite number is 25. You like stars. You like the way the back of my neck smells. When you wash your hair and then sleep on it, you call yourself a Lego Man. When you drink too much coffee, you say you’re getting loony. When you have one beer, you lean into me and tell me you love me. You love red wine and good cheese and watching movies at 2 AM. You stay up too late. Nothing about morning appeals to you. And that smile! The smile.
You are the most fragile person I know, and yet you’re Antarctica. Far-away and locked. I can never get to you. I’ve never been there.
I’ve written about you so much and here we are, at the end, on your 27th birthday, and I can’t think of anything else to say. I feel it, of course. I feel whatever that thing is you feel, that angioplastic sensation below my sternum. Those weepy tectonic plates coming to confrontation under the fault lines of my ribs.
It’s funny: everyone I meet, who hasn’t met you, loves you. They root for you. I must talk about you a certain way; I must say your name in a revealing tone that describes what I’m trying to say here. You’re lovable, to even the people who only know you, through me.
This morning I heard you talking on the phone. I was half-asleep, sick with a cold, in the other room. Your voice was deep and lilting and I didn’t recognize it.
You are the type of person who makes all risks worth it. And I don’t mean just my risks. Everyone who meets you wants to risk something for you. Is that the truest thing I can say about you? I doubt it. But the truest thing I can say to you is: it was all worth it, every bit, every fucking second, every baby step and fall-behind.
You are the most interesting person I’ve ever met. There it is, the truth. My favorite truth to give. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s the best one I have. And I want to give you my best. We all do.
I wish I could reach you. Instead I’ll just continue to fly by your continent, dropping this letter (my heart) in the storm, hoping one day you’ll look up and see it fluttering towards you.
Happy birthday. You make me write corny shit like this.
There’s two of me. Never been a secret. Along with my dippy nostalgia and my overattention to detail, this is what I write about. What I can say differently, by now? I’m told it’s OK to be divided, that everyone’s divided, but listen: rarely are the divisions so equal. Rarely do they refuse reconciliation.
I’m a hedonist. Selectively. (See? We start already.) I want scotch, and I want it now, in a cold lowball. I want to drink until it’s OK to be me. Then I want to disappear into the crowd. Stalk a warm body. But not anyone. I don’t want strangers. Unappealing. I want someone I’ve studied, but don’t understand, and I want carnal research. I want it so badly that I will drop my entire life for the moment.
The Moment. You know what I mean. Before the scotch and the low-cut dresses and perfumey hair, there’s sitting in an office, sorting mail. In a classroom, taking notes. In an apartment, across a room. I time it well. It’s an art, the affair. I will wait it out as long it takes. I will wait until he believes it’s his idea. I’ll make him come to me. Then -
This doesn’t describe it. I can’t describe it. I’m trying to explain a wildness that isn’t genuine. I don’t want drugs. I don’t want much drunk. I don’t want blind sex. I don’t want to go to Argentina. I don’t want to smash things or people. I want it quiet. I want it suppressed. I want it to converge explosively, then go away.
Let me describe the other part. This is simple: I want someone to come home to. The same person. I want an orderly home, the same home. I want to be an island, with one other inhabitant. I want to see no one except my husband and lock ourselves away with the animals, watch sixteen episodes of a trashy TV show. I want to plant my vegetable garden.
Wake up slowly each morning, open a window, brew coffee, walk the dog around the trainyard, putter, go to work, come home, light a candle, make dinner, slouch into each other on the couch, make lazy weekend plans and then break them, go for Sunday walks, spend weekends at the cabin, love only each other. Love only him. I want this. I want this! Not boring. Interesting in its own right. Fulfilling with a grown-up depth.
Doesn’t describe it, either! Help me out here. I assume everyone has these parts – the spinster noir, the comfortable rock. When you’re young, you try both. Or one. Then you settle into another. The point is, you choose. You make camp or you keep moving. But I can’t do either. Oh, I’ve tried. Tried, tried, tried. Other people and the whiskey burn and the way I feel in a short dress with my hair over my eyes is too interesting to give up. Too vital for my heart. Keeps the horrible existential desperation on its leash.
Without it, I’d go mad. I know this, because I have. Gone mad. The only way to never go there again is to keep moving, and find zen within the movement. But what about the camp? What about the end of the day when all I want is to rest my head? People want too much, sometimes. Sometimes the interestingness turns cheap. What then?
There is a moment before I leave the house when I’m at the bottom of the stairs. My shoes are half-on. I smell like a woman in a dress like this smells. There are things in my hand: cellphone, purse, keys, money, directions. Upstairs there’s a light on in the bedroom, and a bed with a white blanket. Each time – each time! – I have to decide. Sometimes I kick off the heels and go upstairs. Sometimes I lock the door and start the car. But I always, always want both. There has never been a moment where I haven’t. I want life to love me, and I want it to leave me alone.
The older I get, the more I realize I have to choose. It’s easy to choose when you don’t already have camp, but I do. I stay stagnant between the tent and the fields, waiting to be kicked out or called in. I don’t resist the call. But I stay close enough so I can see home.
We live in nomadic times. No more metaphors. I’ve said enough. I want, I want, I want. But only on my terms. Sometimes I meet people like me. Uneasy adventurers. We know each other immediately. We acknowledge the signs. We’re usually terrible for each other. No comfort at all except recognition: we are screwed, this lot. We will never be happy. We will never fit into our skin. But we will have stories. Ask Bukowksi. Ask Fitzgerald. Dead writers. Unhappy and alone. But engaged, and conscious, and interested, I think. Was it worth it? Is it worth it? What a risk, all this. All this, and you.
I last drove on a highway in June 2002.
I was in Hopkins that summer. I’d run away from Duluth for a few months to get my head together after a bruisy spring in which I managed to destroy my relationship and my theatre career in one punch. I was falling in love with Chris, but my old relationship (Erik) was still around, and I vacillated between the two for a while. I lived in the muggy basement of a house owned by a sweet new-agey woman I’d met through Erik. She was loyal to him. She didn’t like Chris coming over, so he crawled through the storm window. (I’ve talked about this before.) I was taking sedatives, but my freckles were out for the summer and I went places. Everything was OK, until it wasn’t.
Anyway, I was driving back from seeing Erik in Duluth. I was racing a dude in sunglasses from Florida when I reached over to grab my directions. My car went across three lanes of traffic – during rush hour! – and ended tilted in a ditch. I lived, somehow. Thirty minutes later, still shaky, a girl slammed into me under the 11th Street bridge. Then another girl slammed into her. When I opened my door, my knees were water and I fell. The highway did not cause these accidents, but combined with the heat and disorientation of the summer, a phobia developed: I drove on the highway once more, to move back, but I never drove on it again.
I learned backroads, or I didn’t go at all. Embarrassed, I made up excuses about my car, or my health, and I canceled plans because I didn’t want to ask my friends for one more ride, especially since I lived out in the suburbs (Richfield, then Saint Louis Park). I missed concerts, parties, weddings, work meetings, school events, dates and fantastic adventures. I trapped myself, for a while, though I never knew if the driving got me, or if I used it as a crutch. Either way, I did not drive on a highway. Not once, for six years.
So this Saturday it was raining and dark and late. I was tired and maybe a little weepy. I felt defeated and brave because of life’s latest fluctuations (self-caused, really), and so I took a turn and I was on the highway. I did not die. My car did not explode. My brain did not immediately morph into one of those plasma balls you see at the science museum. I just drove. I did it because I had to, and I did it out of a kind of love, or what I thought was the end of love. And then the next day, I did it again. And then again.
We know how I make decisions: they seem impulsive, but I’ve been quietly planning for months. Sometimes I don’t even know I’m planning. My bravery follows the same line. I am afraid, for years. I am afraid, for minutes. And then I’m not afraid at all, and I step into the road. Easy enough.