It hit me like the Staten Island Express Bus.
My gift might be motivated by something more than friendship. Crossing Seventh Avenue with the framed Buckingham Nicks album perfectly gift-wrapped under my arm, I knew full well that it would be the most thoughtful and appropriate present Mikey would receive this year. His 30th birthday would be indelibly marked with thoughts of me. My subconscious was a sneaky fucker.
          I liked his new boy, Ryan. He was nice, but more importantly he wasn’t as good looking or as welloff as I. This was petty, sure, but it felt good to win my own self-comparisons. And there was no way in hell that he would have as specific and rare a gift as mine.
Reality check: this was Mikey’s birthday, this was his night, not my opportunity to sashay in and create bar theater. I paused to collect myself on the corner, took a few breaths, and launched into the monologue I had written in the first months after our breakup.
There are reasons-- good reasons-- why we are not together anymore. And his success is more important to him than my success, than our relationship. And he is not a bad person, just an unsuitable candidate for the long haul. And being with Mikey means playing a supporting role in “The Mikey Show.”
The inevitable coda:
And he screwed more guys when we were together than I have in my entire life.
Okay, that brought me back a little.
But my heart still ached. Badly.
I got lost in the window of the Urban Outfitters, fixated on the bottle-opener necklace on the mannequin. God, that period of my life-- Mikey and I were separated, and I clung desperately to the last vestiges of twinkdom: knee-high tube socks, wife beaters, and that goddamned bottle-opener necklace, declaring my obvious devotion to the bar scene. Sometimes... sometimes it amazed me that he took as long as he did to leave me. He had barely scratched the surface of his ambitions and I had already resigned to complacency. He would be the toast of the art world, and I would be stuck here, forever haunting Chelsea with memories of what I should have been.
This was precisely the loop that my therapist, the unfortunately named Mr. Block, had warned me against. I was too sensitive, placing grave importance on the opinions of others to the point of obsession. And with profound rejection, the what-ifs could be crippling. When my relationship with Mikey dissolved, so did I. My mother came to New York and dragged me home herself, nursing my heart to relative health before sending me back north.
Mikey and I had several missteps and misunderstandings along the path to civility. On more than one occasion, when meeting for a few friendly cocktails, one of us would make a move on the other and invariably be shot down. Then there was my birthday party, where he assumed I was over the whole thing and brought a boy with him. I was not amused, and it did not end well. After each awkward lurch forward, we would take a two-week (or so) breather, and try again, eventually getting to a place where we could be happy for each other.
But my heart still ached. Badly.
It was time to regroup. No one would notice if I was late, but I could not show up to the bar looking so disheveled. A few tears swiped away, and I was almost good to go. It really wasn’t so bad. We were good friends now, with little jealousy or bitterness. When either managed to creep into play, we were good at acknowledging it and moving on.
Still if I pulled at just the right threads, I could unravel myself enough to see what was still happening inside.
Shit. I had dropped the album. The glass on the frame was broken and the wrapping paper torn. Perfectly appropriate. And the tears were unstoppable. I bent down to salvage what I could. Cursing and muttering under my breath, it didn’t surprise me to see the young boy staring at me. I was the crazy man arguing with himself on the sidewalk. The boy held his mother’s hand and cocked his head, staring intently. I gave him a half-smile and a little wave. His mother pulled him over and joined a crowd forming around the front of the express bus stopped partway into the intersection. Such a hush seemed quite out of place, as if something devastating or criminally beautiful happened. I followed the spooky boy’s gaze as he turned from me to the horrible tableau and back again. I shuddered when I first noticed the brown Cole Haans, certainly a common enough shoe. Curiosity turned to quiet bewilderment as I realized that I knew what I was seeing here-- I would undoubtedly see it for the rest of my days. And quiet bewilderment gave way to gratitude as the kind man in the paramedic’s uniform bent over, and with a tender, deliberate motion, closed my eyes.
I love your writing, Marshall. But I also love bar theater. I think that would make an excellent comic book.
ReplyDeletethanks Alia! Funny you should mention--for bar theater in comic form, please check out the web comic that I edit: fromthecellarnyc.com . The character "Sheriff" is based on yours truly.
ReplyDelete