Itās the week after I got back from my summer pilgrimage in Italy, solivagant I wasāstill am. Weāre cruising down Mulholland Drive with the windows rolled down, an invitation for the breeze. We will spend the rest of our lives in the front seats of that rattletrap Volkswagen vanagon of mine; The Lemon Twigs and Tyler, The Creator winging through a fried speaker that Iāll never bother to repair. Weāre going to wherever-the-hell-we-want Boulevard. As always. On the wheel, I croak a gurgle of a laugh at some stupid thing I saidāpitchfork creases branching out from the corner of my eyes. Your lithe frame bounces with the giggles, and I make myself break down into hysterics, thinking I might hear you start to rattle like a skeleton. Your rolling belly flashes out from a crop top, and itās a sobering sight. Not too long ago, you admitted to me how in middle school, youād used your own reflection as a means of torment. Xylophone rib cage and keloid scar stitched into your hip, tracing your fingers across the length of your collarbone. Watching you then, carrying a confidence previously unseen, I realized you were more āyouā than youād ever allowed yourself to be. I began to overlap past and present to conceptualize the differenceāand what a difference at that.Ā
Thoughā¦ I do miss my old friend sometimesāthat long-gone āyouā from way back when. But thereās no plane ticket to where he lives, Iām afraid. The small boy whose fragrance was (is) bare feet rubbed green with thyme, cheeks christened by silt, and hands which on the daily kissed daffodils. Who looked up to the Earth due to his stature, due to how much he feared it, how much he hated it, how much he admired it. On occasions, I get to hold him, when you spring awake in the dead of midnight. When the sky is ultramarine, supernal, and silent, and you think Iām fast asleep. You fear rousing me from slumber, so you stifle yourself. Your back, hunched over with wracking sobsāa guttingāthe desolation wants to eat you alive. Youāre replaying a night 25 years prior. The flash of gunshots blotches your moon. When you finally notice me sitting up, your breath hitches in your throat. These bygone days will come again. They always do. I bring you into me and I thread my fingers through the long threads of your hair. You taught me how to do this and Iāve practiced diligently. Other times, the boy you were, appears as a mist of sadness thatās perched beneath your long lashes. Cow-eyed disappointment, expected, and for that, all the more regrettable to see.Ā
The girl I was, well. I take care of that girl. If Iām quiet enough, I hear her, feel her on the side of a translucent membrane within one of the chambers in my heart. Her grievances and anxieties, her happiness, her gap-toothed smile. The others are there too. A 20-year-old nursing heartbreak with Lady Gaga. A 9-year-old learning to wean off an accent. A 15-year-old, her head exploding with quadratic equations, and her small attempts at fathoming the cosmic horror of having a body. Every time I blow out the candles and everyoneās done caterwauling the merry song, I archive another iteration of lilā olā me. Our child selves, they donāt go off to die. They are preserved, wounded or otherwise, within these compartments.Ā
In my salad days, I fell into the repeated mistake of thinking I had to betray my nature to escape The Spiral. The veritable cyclone of self-recrimination and war waged against me, myself, and I. In the name of hate, of disgust. Of shame. You know it too. Forgiving my innumerable selvesāsettling the blood feudāIāll keep trying. Iām still trying. And trying and trying and trying and trying.Ā
Youāve been ringside for all of it, you tough, beautiful bastard.Ā Ā
The only way weāve lasted this long is through a āPerpetual Learningā. The active and fervid education one ordinarily undertakes when itās a new person veering into your gravitational sphere. I make the deliberate choice to clear shelf space in my closet for each novel rendition of you. Not always quite there for every second of your many renaissances, Iām proactive in cracking open the required reading to keep on the bleeding edgeāonly if you continue to let me that is.Ā
The unspoken secret of us: You know how these things of life go. A circumstance. An opportunity. A reason, one or the other. This is our way, though every time you hate to hear me say it. The natural orbit of us, the perennially wanderlust-stricken pair, is we part. Despite it, weāve never exchanged a proper Midwest goodbye. I suspect, and I intuit itās the same for you, itās because itād play as kinda frivolous. Weāll eclipse one another eventually and when we do, share the circus thatās been the past year apart, āsome lack-love loser tried to mug me on Valentineās Day with a water gun in Chelseaā.
These discussions of ours, huh. Whether under the protection of dark, where I can only parse the white of your eyes or greasy-fingered over a Wendyās 4-for-4 deal. A two-person conclave, where we exchange the happenings of our internal worlds. Sometimes foolishādebating bizarre theories on loveāsometimes a parallel play of rumination, not a word uttered aloud. There have been a thousand like these and there will be a thousand more.Ā
Today, in bed, not a pint of drowsiness to pass between the two of us, I divulge a tender morsell, a profession thatās a whisper, a hypnotic hum in my chest, āMy dad used to call me an alien as a kid.ā
And I was thinking, maybe part of my being an extraterrestrial is that Iām host to otherworldly abilities. Case in point: Prophetic dreams, such as the one I had when I dozed off on the recliner this afternoon.Ā
Picture: Weāve been pruned by age, wrinkles annotating the living weāve done, and twinning, as always, rocking platinum locks. Iāve been on the losing end of the disease for 9 years now. The hospice unit is a torture room kind of white and I loathe the food so you smuggle me packed lunches. Home-cooked Tom Yum soup is the best palliative care. Your trained hatred of hospitals doesnāt deter you from sitting in that chair near the window and spending half the day playing cards with me or grousing about the last film you saw in theaters. Itās a dream, so I just know these things. A Thursday when the devil is beating his wife is my last. The nurses and the doctors know. And youāyou recognize this period before departure almost instinctively. Iām not your first. However, this time it is not a threat and youāre certain I will be taken gently.Ā
I like to think that the I with you there, withered yet vigorous in spirit, somehow exists right here, as the me now, snuggled with you under the comforter, in this episode of our lives, which is really a memory. Time travel mumbo-jumbo, witchcraft or what have you, Iām here againāa visitor; telling you this vista of the future while drenched in the aureate glow of a table lamp you bought on sale for college fifteen years ago. Back then, I could scarcely think of how Iād celebrate a 30th birthdayāhow Iād make it to a 30th birthday. If I could. And then each year came, dominoes collapsing, one after the other. Iām teasing with the idea that being here with you now, is my second, or maybe third time around. Either reliving it all or truthfully just remembering. But reliving and rememberingā¦ They truthfully are the same thing.Ā
As I begin to surge from the face of this mortal coil, the dying note of a bell dissipating into unity, youāll hold my hand and hold my gaze. In this solitary experience, Iām alone with you. Being old sorcerers at this point, weāve mastered communication via telepathyāthe secret is itās all in the eyes. And I say, āMy good friend, my darling, my rival, my favorite one. Iāll be seeing you. Iāll see you! It will be so soon, youāll think time has favored our story and folded in on itself so we might meet once more. As always. Just across a serene stream like the ones we gamboled in as children, across an intersectionālike in the cities of light we spent our adolescence, past all the heartrending prime-time television soap opera fiascos that the humdrum day-to-day never failed to churn. In heaven, in purgatory, in Valhalla, or wherever you believe, it will be through a gateway that once you cross, youāll see me parked illegally somewhere on Main, with the shotgun door open, legs propped and crossed on the dash wearing my cowboy boots, and Beach Boys assuaging the air.Ā
Someone sure took their sweet time.
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