zaftigg

The Romantic

:::the dangers of falling in love:::
In high school, I fell in love with you. It happened the day we snuck
along one of the back trails at the Nature Center. The trees bled
with sap and I felt this deep pain as I would look up and see the tap
forced into the tree, milking it, in a way. When I looked back at you
the pain didn't go away, but it vibrated throughout my body; it almost
felt soothing. There's something very reminiscent of childhood for
every upstate New Yorker in trying to watch the sap run out of the
trees. It's something that sticks with you forever, not unlike when
you try to wash the sap from you fingers.
I think I could have fallen into the vastness of your wide blue eyes
and practically drowned. I don't think you would have let, me though.
The cool crisp of the late autumnal air prickled the fine hairs on
the back of my neck; or was that the heat of your gaze? Do you
remember the bowl you fashioned out of a cored apple and tinfoil? So
proud of yourself. Only smoking for a month and already you were a
MacGyver when it came to pot utensils. You passed the apple to me and
the electricity almost hurt as my fingers lingered over yours.
There's a sweet burn to that kind of electricity. Not unlike the
sweet pull of smoke I took from your apple-pipe.
The girls and I loved you as a brother, you might say. All of us
finding freedom in intoxication those late nights. The harsh burn of
the smoke curling around your lungs gave way to a sweet kind of mellow
where the mundane could inspire greatness. Watching you those nights,
your lithe body, firm and corded as the trunk of a tree, limbs swaying
and easy, I knew I needed more from you than the relationship we were
building. I imagined clinging to you, combing your dirty blonde curls
straight just to watch them take form again. Your eyes so huge, so
child-like; and yet with such experience and such untold wisdom. I
imagined you were my dusty Apollo; forged from the sun and dusty from
wear. It didn't take long for my love for you to turn incestuous, in
a way; still loving you as a brother, but wanting more.
Do you remember that night that I threw the party at my house one of
the weekends my parents were away? You left your jacket behind. I
never told you, but I wore it the next day for the entire day. I was
hung-over in the most delightful way, proudly displaying the jacket,
nearly swimming in it. When my mother finally asked why I was wearing
the heavy wool jacket indoors (more as a suggestion to change than in
inquiry), I shrugged and told her it was my boyfriend's jacket (even
though this answer came nowhere near to answering her question). If
you knew, I think it may have scared you, the power of my attraction
to you.

:::sister:::
Leigh and I sat on the beach for hours. I ground the sand between my
toes and drew the vastness of the lake in. We didn't look at each
other much. The lake was far too present to ignore. Leigh is the
kind of woman who always seems to float. There is a specialized grace
with which she moves. It is beyond gender specific. In Norse
creation myths there was a time when humans were four-legged and had
four arms. There was an Eden-esque bliss that prevailed until things
went awry, as they so often do. As a form of punishment, bolts of
lightning cleaved the human from one whole being into two incomplete
beings. Thus, we are forever searching for this mate to complete a
congenital puzzle. Perhaps the best way to describe Leigh, then,
would be as one of these whole human beings. Although you can't see
her extra limbs, if you look into her soft brown eyes, I swear, you'll
see an old soul gazing back at you, knowing without probing.
She held me for hours as we both looked at the lake. To be loved and
held by such a complete being is an experience unto itself. For a
minute, you can kid yourself into feeling whole.
When the rain started, light, as it was, we remained still, her arms
around me like a vine clinging to a trellis. As the sky turned a
violent kind of purple, we stood our ground, not saying a word to each
other. Everything had been said. And still, as the rain came down
with a sense of urgency, we remained, unmoving. It's only in this
state, really, that you can cry openly at a beach. No one hears you
sob through the crack of the sky as the lightning splits it and the
thunder drives it's point home. No one sees the tears get washed
away. You can only feel a person cry in a situation like that. Leigh
and I shook so violently in that storm.
We made a retreat to her car and sat in silence, again, her hand on
mine. It would be wrong to say we found shelter because you're so
aware in the "shelter" of a dry car how wet you are as your skin
puckers and you clothes drag. Out in the rain, there is no feeling of
wetness. Only of a cathartic cleansing no shower can provide. But
nevertheless, it was in the car that Leigh gave me Mike's jacket. I
didn't take it off for days.

:::the objectivity of flight:::
It's an odd sensation to feel yourself dividing into two separate
beings. In this sense, it's hard to really describe an out of body
experience. And yet, as hard as it is to describe, when it hits, it's
not unfamiliar at all; almost like a reunion of an experience long
forgotten. My first experience lasted for two weeks before I was
grounded again. There are things I remember as though I were still in
that moment, crystallized, and there are things that ebb and flow not
unlike a dream.
It was early August and the night reeked of impatient customers,
fisting over wads of cash for ice cream they could lick off their
knuckles as it hit the hot night air. Just as I threw in my apron for
the night, Lauren motioned for me to wait for her to share a
cigarette. Passing the line of customers that snaked around the
store, I could feel an odd tingling sensation pass over my body in
anticipation of something I knew very little about. Or maybe that was
the nicotine. The moment the split happened, I remember so vividly
because I could see myself from above as my knees hit the pavement and
the most earth shattering sob wretched from my body. I could see the
customers as they pretended to not gawk at me, even though, in my
physical self, my hands covered my face to try and stop the tears.
There was peace in this division; a sense of objectivity as my
physical self lost utter control.
There wasn't much I could do to control this physical self, but there
wasn't much I wanted to do either. I was a spectator watching a
fascinating show. It wasn't my best friend's body that was fished
from the Irondequoit Bay. It was this heaving mess of a girl whose
co-worker guided her to the car after breaking the news. It was this
shattered girl who demanded answers from a dead boy. It was this lost
girl who spent two weeks going through the motions. And I just
watched. No analysis. No judgments. Just a safe kind of numb.
I can't say as I remember when I came back into myself. That part is
always unclear. But I've found that once that initial division
happens, it's fairly easy to return. It's not unusual for me to see
myself as a character in some scene that is playing out. I often
wonder what it would have felt like to be my body at that moment. But
with the memory of the scene comes a deep kind of pain. It's only
when I meditate that it vibrates into something I can live with;
something that even soothes me.

:::reincarnation:::
I have something to admit to you. After you left high school. When
you started sleeping model storage sheds at the local hardware store.
I asked Genny not to invite us out at the same time. I didn't
recognize the boy I fell in love with. Or maybe I did and that was
why I had to turn away. Your boyish face was still the same. But
that old soul that you and your sister seemed to share, you know, the
one that looks out from your eyes? That old soul looked as though it
were dying. Your body that was so beautifully lanky was so
frighteningly emaciated. Your hair more dust than gold, now. Knotted
and chorded from indifference. When we talked, my mind raced through
excuses to escape.
And yet, something insisted I try again. I can't put my finger on
this element. There was something beyond my perception dragging me to
you. This time, of course, was our golden age. Truly a familial bond
flourished between us. You got back on your medicine. You moved back
home. You found solace in sobriety with me.
There wasn't another person who could understand the immense joy to be
had from driving around, not saying a word, and listening to mix tape
after mix tape. I think our first trip actually had a destination.
But we never ended up getting there. We just drove and drove. You and
I, trading turns for who had a mix tape to play. After all these
years, you and I hadn't really grown apart. We grew parallel before
bending to meet again. No one could understand these nights of
wasting gas and driving without a destination.
I knew I had found a companion when we pulled over that one night. It
was raining so hard; I couldn't see the lines of the road. The rain
thundered in our ears as you took my arm off the steering wheel, your
huge hands able to circle your fingers around my wrist. And when you
ran your thumb along the corded scar tissue of my wrist, something
awoke in that dead tissue. Sometimes when I run my thumb over my
scars, I pretend my hand is alien to me; I pretend it's you. And I
feel alive again with you.

:::mother:::
Walking into the backyard was like walking into another dimension.
Where people would normally speak in code and hide behind the general
rules of polite company, Jan wears her raw emotion for all to see.
Jan is so tiny and frail. Her spine is curled like an old piece of
parchment and her deep brown eyes are worn and tired. Even her lids
are too tired to stay fully open. Jan looks frailer than I have ever
seen her before; a forty-three year old woman too tired to pretend.
Has she lost weight? I watch as she reaches out for me, her watch
freely slides up and down her boney forearm. Her skin feels like
cool, crisp paper as she runs it over my forearm, tracing the words
freshly tattooed there. Her deep brown eyes are rimmed in red and
pool up in hot tears that burn my skin on contact.
"It's in his handwriting."
"I know. God, why did you do this? It won't come off. You're stuck
with his stupid handwriting forever?" I nod slowly are her and she
just sighs, exhausted. "What is 'Twenty-four letters in between'?
What's that?" I tell her about the song that Mike and I bonded over
one night. I give her the full quote: "You're so busy going from A to
Z, you forget there there's twenty-four letters in between." Her
fingers continue to run over my inked flesh as if trying to feel the
hands that would have penned them.
"Let's go." She decidedly strides to the '86 Buick La Sabre and
starts the car, leaving me standing there. I cautiously move around
her, as if afraid to touch this live wire. She starts the car and we
roll out of the driveway.
"I had this dream when Mike was four." I'm silent. "He was playing
by this river. It was so real, Beth. It just all felt so real. And
he fell in and my heart just I ran after him and waded into the
river, you know, like waist deep. I was frozen in this water, but I
kept on treading. I got his hand, Beth I had it. I held onto it and
then, he was gone. I let him go. I let him go. I let him go." She
chants these four words as though in an act of self-flagellation. She
pulls the car over and we get out and walk to the bridge, her hand
desperately clasping mine.
"I knew then. I just knew then. It's like, you know, I knew that he
was slowly dying." Her body trembles and quakes as she begins to sob
against me. I'm afraid taking her here was too soon. It was too
rash. Should we turn around? I'm so scared that if I hold her too
much, she'll crumble in my arms, but if I don't hold on tight enough,
she'll slip away. We walk to the center of the bridge together. I
wonder if this is how the four-legged human walked: slowly and with
intent. Jan let's go to lean against the rail. Looking down at the
rushing waters she sobs so openly it's as though I'm watching an open
wound work through this infection. She is fighting this gangrenous
poison that threatens to swallow her whole. And I am standing back,
watching. I watch as she draws a picture of Mike and Leigh from her
pocket. It's Apollo and his Artemis. The boy of gold with the curly
hair proudly sticking his chest out and openly laughing at the camera,
his two front teeth missing as Leigh grins over at him, her arm
protectively around his shoulders. I watch as she tears it in half.
I watch as she let's Mike's picture fall and clutches on to Leigh, now
an amputee from the tear. It takes forever for it to hit the water.
I squint my eyes trying to hold on to the image, somersaulting in the
wind, trying to imagine a constant of Mike smiling. By the time it
hits the water, I can't even see it. I have to imagine Mike,
toothless, smiling, and submerged in water. But I know he's gone. I
know he's gone. I know he's gone. I know he's gone.


My twenty-second birthday was the hardest. I was officially older
than you. You, crystallized at twenty-one. You'll never grow old in
my mind. I'll never get to watch your body catch up with that old
soul, now.
Do you remember all the things that went through my head? I was so
scared that everything I had learned in Church was true. I called my
mom that night to ask if you were in hell. I had to repeat the
question four times before she could make sense of it between the
sobs. I never believed in the dogma, but I still had to ask if a boy
and wonderful as you could go to Hell for one decision.
Something that kills me is this idea that I couldn't be who I am
today not just because I knew you, Mike, but also because you died.
If I didn't look that darkness in the face after you died, I think I
still might be a child in many respects. Through your death, you've
imparted a lifetime on many of us.
I have all these questions, you know? I still wonder if your
decision was made and followed through in unquestioning commitment or
if, as you flew through the air, like a bird for a split second, you
wanted to go back. I still wonder if the impact of the water crushed
you immediately or if you had to wait until your lungs filled with
water to suffocate. I'm not so foolish as to think that this isn't a
romanticized version of your death. But I am foolish enough to think
there's nothing wrong with being in love with a dead boy.