He went away

Just like that, he was gone. I was standing on a road in Red Hook, covered in sweat and my skin burning under a cloudless afternoon sky. I stared at my phone, my heart having dropped somewhere, laying on the sidewalk between my running shoes, maybe. He was leaving. It was over.

It had been all summer, and I had used any and every excuse to keep in touch with him all along the spectrum of passion, and just today I had hated him. I hadn't slept with anyone else, and the fucker gave me a case of HPV that ended up turning into precancer. I was pissed, convinced he'd given it to me from sleeping around with whoever and not giving two shits about me when he was all I'd been able to think about for months. I yelled at him, pretending there was no way I could have gotten the HPV from the Crocodile before he'd gone off his meds and held a knife to my throat.

I intended to yell more. Then he said he was leaving New York for good. Something about his mother. He hated it here. Then my heart fell out and suddenly I was standing there in the sun, the conversation having ended minutes ago without me knowing how or why. I was parched. I wanted to lie down right where I was, on the dusty sidewalk in front of wherever I was. It was over.

Then Josh moved out. He had moved in just six weeks before, after a several month tour of Europe and Africa, the two of us sitting in bars and crying in our beers about how useless it was to meet the person you're meant to love if that person doesn't want you back. Just six weeks and now he was leaving, right when I needed a friend to cry with. I felt like he was cutting our friendship apart with a knife.

Two weeks later, I forgot my best friend's birthday while she spent it taking care of me after the surgery to remove the precancerous cells from my cervix. I was lying on my couch with my head in her lap when my landlord called me and told me he was selling the building. I didn't remember it was her birthday until the next day, when she had gone back to Long Island.

I think I stared at the cats wondering if one of them was going to die.

Then I looked in the mirror and wished I would die.

I wished the Crocodile had cut my throat. I imagined the blood all over the floor in the foyer, seeping under the door. I imagined the police kicking the door open to find it slamming into my lifeless body, my purse still slung over the arm. I imagined them finding him in the bedroom, overdosed on whatever the fuck he was on, and finding the three bottles of untaken antipsychotics and looking for my ID in my purse. I wondered how they would find my mother's phone number.

I spent much of the next few months feeling sorry for myself that I was still alive, but I got a therapist. I knew I needed a therapist. I felt insane. I felt like everything was crumbling around me, and my home was once again going to be taken away. She didn't even know where to begin, my intake took three sessions and my problems, while not dire, all rooted back to this one thing: loss. Coping with loss. Regret of loss. Fear of loss. Worthlessness from loss. Emptiness from loss. Anger from loss.

Thanks, Dad. Thanks a lot.

I keep running back to that road in Red Hook. I go to the track just to turn around and run over that pavement in the sun and bring myself back to the moment my phone rang. I check it. I see that it's him. I don't answer. Even if I hate him, I don't want him to be gone.

I know this is a little heavy. Thank you for reading.

I miss you today. Not the you that used to get drunk and embarrass me, or the you that expected everything to always be taken care of for you (by me, whether you knew it or not), but the other part...maybe a part that isn't even exclusive to you. What I miss is having a lap to snuggle into, and a chest to spill tears on, and arms to hold me, and a mouth to kiss me and tell me things will be okay. I used to believe it with all my heart when you said that.

I saw a man get hurt on the subway stairs a few days ago. I thought I was okay, but today the image flashed back into my mind. There was so much blood everywhere, and he was moaning and convulsing...the sound was horrible, like nothing I have ever seen before, like a cow, maybe. I imagine it would be the noise made by the cow in Apocalypse now, when the natives try to sever its head, but the machete only cuts halfway. I kept thinking I should do something, and all I could remember from your stupid EMT flash cards was "jazzy hands."

My God, there was so much blood. It was spilling out of his crushed skull like a drain pipe. It pooled up around his face and started dripping down the stairs. The sight of the blood paralyzed me--I'm still not sure how I managed to call the station manager on the intercom. I wanted to scream. All those people were just walking over him and I wanted to scream at them. But the blood...I couldn't. My mouth wouldn't open.

Finally, a police officer descended the stairs. I was watching this all through a metal gate, and it was like watching, I don't know, a scene from Twelve Monkeys or something, where the lighting is all dismal and weird and the depth of field is really small. The police officer shouted at the man: "Police! Sir! Police!" like he was accusing him of vagrancy. How dare he lie face down on the pavement like that, with crumpled one dollar bills littered around his limp hand, with a river of blood gushing from around his brain?

I couldn't help thinking about my dad. When he shot himself, did he do it in the face? Did the bullet go through the side of his head? The back? Or was it front and center, like he was executing himself? Did the blood flow like that? Was there a puddle in the car? When they found him, was the blood still wet? Did it drip off his hands like at the end of Gorillas in the Mist? Did he die right away, or did he have time to think about it while it happened? If he thought about it, did he regret it? Did he ever imagine that I would sit in Bryant Park someday sobbing violently and asking these questions to my ex-boyfriend through a notebook? Didn't he ever wonder what would happen to me because of him and his stupid gun? Why didn't he think about that? Why didn't he love us enough to stay? Why did he have to be so selfish and why am I so selfish all the time with my anger and my fear and my time and my money and my things and my love? Why am I always so afraid? Why is it so hard for me to believe that I'm not going to end up just like him? Why is it so hard for me to understand that the world isn't forcing me to be like him? Why is it so hard for me to understand that it's okay to be happy?

In a flash I was back on the landing by the 2 train, watching the cop and the man, who was no longer convulsing. I think maybe he was dead. The paramedics were on their way, the cop said. Did anybody see what happened?

Truthfully, I hadn't. I had just heard the noise and then turned around to see him lying there. "I think he fell," I said. My voice was not my own. It was so loud, so sure. How was that voice coming out of me?

"Do you want to wait with him?"

I tried to speak again. I tried to say something that would make the poor man, if he was alive, if he could hear, understand why I was about to do what I was about to do. I opened my mouth, but I just shook my head and walked away. What does that say about me? What does it say that feeling so helpless and alone and vulnerable makes me wish that you were here, even though I know I'd hate it?

I feel selfish. I feel like a person who walks away from things and then seeks validation. I walked away from you and I knew you didn't even understand that I was doing it. I walked away from this man, and I couldn't even say I was doing it. I know it's different; with you the process took six months of planning and you could have talked me out of it, and with this the process took a split second and I didn't really have total control of my motor skills.
Even so, somehow there seems to be a connection.

It seems fitting that I no longer have the option of crawling into your lap and getting a kiss on my hair. It seems fair that nobody is going to tell me it will all be alright. In fact, I think that's why I walked away from the man. I know that if he was dead, I didn't want to know.

Now what am I going to do with all the call-girl flyers I had made up? And other, more morbid issues

Hung over as I was yesterday, I left work all geared up for an awesome night cuddling on my couch, ordering pizza, and watching the French Connection. My first New York pizza! It didn't work out that way, and although the night wasn't totally great, I'm actually pretty glad!

Basically, I was invited to meet someone out. A dude. A dude I barely know. A...dare I say it...date....sort of. I was hesitant, but I decided to go for it. After all, Newbie NYC says to never refuse an invitation...and having whined last week about not going out at all, why not!?

So I went. Two major things happened.

1. I saw a man fall down the stairs on a subway platform and crack his head open. Hemophobic as I am, I was scared as hell, but I just couldn't leave him! And other people were just stepping over him and going about their business....I know this is New York, I know people are busy, but GOSH! COME ON, people, have a little human decency and at least go the other way! I had these visions running through my head of me lying on that concrete, moaning unintelligibly, barely breathing, a pool of blood and fluid pouring out of my skull, suits and skirts stepping over my twisted legs... I called the station manager. Another nice girl stopped and called 911. I stayed until the help came. It was all I could do to keep from crying; I have never seen that much blood before. I kept wondering if that's how much blood came out of my dad... I felt so bad for that man, for his family... what if he has two little girls at home? What if he...

I couldn't stay. When they got there, I just couldn't stay to find out if he was... I just never want to know, because this way at least I have some hope.


I almost went home, but I didn't have R's number to cancel, and I also...kind of didn't want to go home. I kind of wanted a drink at that point. So I got on the train and wound up meeting him around 68th and Columbus...

2. R was...really cool! The only fault I can see so far is that he doesn't drink (not even a glass of wine with dinner? I don't know). And that's really just not that big of a deal, because he may have a very good reason for it. After I explained why I was late (still shaking), he read my palm. Very cute, and it totally helped to calm me down. He was still dressed for work, in smooth business casual--and me in my hipster uniform from casual Friday! He looked great in a tie. I only hope I looked great in glasses and pigtails.

I must have, because as the evening moved along he seemed to get closer and closer. We had the most amazing conversation about god and pain and living in the moment. I haven't talked like that with someone in a really long time. After two hours of thinking and talking about thinking and then thinking more, he suggested we grab a slice of pizza. Perfect! Ironic! Funny!

At the pizza joint he spoke Spanish to the guys behind the counter. And he's not just bilingual, oh no. He's multilingual. Amazing.

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PS - Speaking of call girls, go check out my sister's awesome post about Eliot Spitzer.