I mean I couldn’t leave him lying there.
He was more broken than you could ever be.
More messed up than you will ever be.
But there was a time he was all right.
I was a kid, and he took me on a trip.
He took me to the beach.
It was the only trip we ever took.
Days, I swam in the water.
My father sat on the sand.
And on our last day, we watched a sunset.
And my father looked out at the water.
And he said, What if all the earth’s water were drained.
And at first I laughed.
But then I thought.
And then I thought.
Listen.
The girl’s initials were not G.O.D.
They were just G.D.
I never knew her middle name.
But whatever.
G.D.
G. fucking D.
I am not a mystic.
There are no mystics.
There are people who watch.
And there are people like me.
But that night at the bar, the misfit was on.
He went into his so-called trance.
And he was right about who walked in.
And he was right about every song.
And when he said the girl’s name,
And when he reached for her arm,
And when he said, Don’t go,
And when I looked at her face,
I should have said something.
I should have done something.
But I was not very nice.
I was not a nice girl.
I just left the bar with the guy I liked.
I told him, Drive fast, and he did.
I’m sorry, but I was my father’s daughter.
I did not know how to save you.
SIGNIFIED
Because words are about desire and desire is about the guy who filled my two front tires when one was low. And desire is about the guy who cleaned my windshield as the other, below me, filled.
And there’s the guy who pours foam onto my coffee in the shape of a heart and I, each time he pours, so slow, think, Jesus.
Because the guy who pours the foam in the shape of a heart — and I don’t know how he does it — is twenty-four, and I am not twenty-four, meaning I am not thirty-four and don’t think much of twenty-four except to think I must have been working through something back then, living in that railroad apartment in Baltimore, daydreaming of fame and all that came with fame.
My friends that year said, Why move, but I packed some boxes, crammed the boxes into the car, pushed the couch over the porch. My friends waved from the couch in the rearview mirror and I forgot them once I reached the highway.
Why Boston, they wanted to know.
Because why not.
Or because I imagined Boston as brick-walked and lamp-lit, and I could see myself tromping in boots through the snow.
Or because I imagined a field from a poem I’d read in school as a child.
Or because I had no good answer to, Why Baltimore.
Because I’d gotten held up, a knife point pointing at my face.
All this to say that I remember those friends from then, sitting here now on my new couch, years past, their tattoos I remember of gothic letters and Celtic knot work, their tangled hair. All this to say that I’ve made a connection, forced as it seems, of twenty-four to twenty-four. I’ve made a connection of couch to couch. Connections are easy when one is sitting, staring at a wall. There is no deeper meaning. There is no signified.
There is couch and there is couch.
There is the table my feet are on and the table from then. A table we sat at until the pale hum of morning.
There was no such word then as afterparty.
There was no such use of the word random then, how the kids these days use random.
What I mean is the guy who filled my tires looked up and said, of the lowness in one tire and not in the other, Random, and I, remembering running into a curb the night before, driving home from a bar where I sat and sat until giving up, thought, Not really.
And the guy who cleaned the windshield whistled and walked back to the garage.
And the guy who pours the foam into the shape of a heart told my friend of me, She’s hot, when my friend went to the café once alone. Your friend, he said, She’s hot, and my friend called later to tell me the news.
What was I doing that night. Same thing as this night. Drinking wine. Sitting on the couch, my feet up on the table. These are the clichéd years, these years. The details have been predetermined. It’s a recipe I follow. Very little this, very little that.
I think I said, That’s cute. Because that’s what one says in this situation. One laughs and says, Cute, and one’s friend says, in this situation, You should go for it. Which always seems to mean to me that I should go against something else.
I said, How old is he.
Then I said, That’s cute.
Then I said, That’s way too young, and my friend, exhaling smoke for emphasis, said, Exactly.
In Baltimore everyone was going for everyone else. Small town. Junkies. We were all the same age, the twenty-somethings, the fifty-s omethings. When the bars closed we went to the place that stayed open until morning. Club Midnight. And we drank orange drinks until things felt unreasonable. What was the point of reason. I had no desire for reason. I had only a weak desire — in the words of my shrink from then — to fill a space, and I filled the space. There’s a list, somewhere, of the drugs I did. There’s a list, somewhere, of who I fucked. I wrote these lists on the backs of napkins, a night at Club Midnight, and everyone thought the lists were too short. Well that was years ago, and things have changed. And there’s a list of the drugs I almost did and a list of the guys I almost fucked. And those lists. Believe me. Another story.
So I sat the other night in a bar on a snowy, lamp-lit street, until I realized he — the one I am supposed to desire — my age, a neat haircut, small hands, a tucked-in shirt, a workhorse, a perfect match — wasn’t going to show. Or I realized that he would show and that I would feel disgust. So I stumbled to the car, ended up half the car on the sidewalk, no one around to see it.
I once knew better than to drive.
I mean I once considered other options.
There were no windows in Club Midnight. We knew it was morning because of sudden blue shadows under our eyes. And that shock of light, no matter how pale, when someone opened the door. And the shock of the cold. Jesus. There’s no good story to tell except once I decided to wait for the bus. My friends had gone, and I was too sick from drink after drink to drive. Birds were chirping, and I wondered where from. There were no trees. There was nowhere to hide. The man with the knife had a scar on his face and I didn’t want a scar on my face. I reached into my pocket, pulled out some ones, and he ran one way, I the other.
And here I am watching the blue turn darker blue behind the trees. And the color of this couch, according to the catalog, is mushroom, which means it’s greenish, grayish, brownish. Which means I paid a lot for it. One must pay up when one is following a recipe, and one ingredient is a costly couch. And one is a car. And one is a man. And one is a child.
And one is not thirty-four, though feeling for that warm space in the dimming room.
The men who carried up the couch were older, no-nonsense, beer bellied and smelling of sweat, though had the room been darker, smokier, the bartender filling and filling, the music up high, well, perhaps there’d be something more to say.
The guy filling my tires, when I tried to hand him a few ones, said, No. He said, Jesus, lady, air is free.
And the guy in the café—dark curly hair, that way of dressing — his pants hanging just under his hip bones — blue eyes and so on, the thing with the foam. Well, each time I drop fifty cents into the tip jar, lift my cup, say thank you into the disintegrating heart, never looking up, though I can feel him looking down, and my friend — who always smells like smoke— did I say this — and it’s comforting somehow — will say, Aw, a heart, Look, a heart.