5 from Chicago

I went to Chicago and really loved it. I think I would move there in a heartbeat if things worked out. Anyway, here are some things I started writing while there:

I.

In the long arch of the night, he’s sitting across from me patiently sipping a rapidly watered-down drink. 

“So, what does this mean?”

“I don’t know. Or I…just I can’t keep doing this.”

Somewhere off the path, far from us: a train card rattles, a flock of birds takes flight, and two men, drunk and in love lean on each other for support. If you squint hard enough you can see through the haze of light, make out the tiny dot of Mars blinking red towards an endlessly warming earth. Silent tragedies unfold around us, and still, I don’t know how to see them. 

II.

At night we walk to Whole Foods blocks up from our hotel. You’re craving something sweet and I want one more beer. Hours ago we left our dog at my parents’ for the long weekend. A half-decade ago I break down in a car telling a man I want a life with him.

I go back to therapy and tell my therapist I want to make things work. “He is so different,” I say. “I don’t want to fuck things up.”

You challenge me to Tekken 8 and go easy though I know you understand the moves. We walk back together, late, cool wind blowing on our bodies. I am continually amazed by how easy it is to love somebody. How easy it is to let somebody in.

Weeks ago, tipsy, black dog lying on my lap, I looked up what it takes to get married in FFXIV. A silly premise. An easy out. 

You pose over the river.

“I don’t want to fuck things up,” I tell my therapist. “I always fuck things up.”

III.

In the afternoon we board a train, moving backward towards the art museum. It’s the hottest day of the year, but still much cooler than our life back in Texas.

We stroll through the wings of impressionist art. You pose, appreciative in front of a painting of ballerinas, taking in the elegant form of their dresses, constantly in motion.

I tell you how I think people should be loud, not quiet, at the museum. “We sit in quiet appreciation or reverence when we should be screaming. Loudly explaining ‘Wow look how big this one is!’”

I stare at The Golden Age: two men posed in quiet consideration of each other. The first, high up hands down a batch of pears to the one on the ground, who looks up in awe at this silent gift of nourishment. A quiet moment of love reflected, captured with strokes of pigmented oil and preserved here in the air-conditioned hall of the Art Institute of Chicago.

We might never come here again. Or when we do we might be living here. Or when we do it might be separately: you alone somberly gazing at frozen ballerinas, me patiently waiting for one to move. 

IV.

First, the men trimmed the grass and flattened the land. It was important to start with a steady foundation, to see the quality of the bare earth before proceeding.

Next, they set about the building of things: water wells and wooden buildings, grocery stores, bookshops, and the occasional restaurant—just to keep things interesting. For a while, they rested this way, resigned to live a life free of production. But, consumption necessitated production and so they built a field and an orchard and a farm and granary and all the other things one would need. 

In the winter, or maybe just before it, they built a big wall around the city. They wanted to escape the blizzard, the harsh winds of fall that seeped through the cracks, the ice priests in long cloth garbs who came every winter to take someone away. It was a valiant effort, even if it was misdirected. The wall was produced quickly. High enough that if a child fell from the top they would surely die. Thick enough that even the heaviest of winds would fail to pierce. Still, the priests came anyway. the wall posed little threat.

V.

In the short line of summer, we spent the hot afternoons trading spit and body sweat, killing time till night came to cool us off.

“I love you,” he told me, though he never meant it. It was the embarrassing way he had sex: exasperated sighs of pleasure and performance. He didn’t seem to understand you could have sex with someone you didn’t love or love someone you couldn’t stand. 

He was built like a question: head leaning towards the ground, wide back hunched in on itself, careful not to take up space.

He was broad and stocky, covered in hair he couldn’t be bothered to trim. The left side of him sagged, a symptom of a childhood injury that left his knees weak and easily toppled. 

He had dark hazel eyes that caught the afternoon light just right, once or twice a day and shone a brilliant hue that could almost make you gasp. He wore his hair long on the top, a mop of wavy curls that hung in front of his forehead and gave him a boyish charm, despite his aging body.

There were other things about him that seemed conflicting: he had a beard and was often clean-shaven. He kept his eyes focused in the middle distance, as if gazing through you though he paid perfect attention. He had red hair or brown hair or blonde hair once in the summer though we were long gone by then.

I never knew what to make of him despite our time together. On the rare nights we would stay together he would stroke my hair and massage my back. He would repeat the names of those of his past loves rolling them over and over again in his mouth. 

“James, Jason, Eric, Colby” he would talk himself to sleep.

He did not want to be an item. I never learned his mother’s name. His body changed rapidly over that summer we spent together. He bulked up, spending hours at the gym growing his thighs chest, and biceps. 

When he left me for the final time he wrote me a love letter I never read. I was too scared, my hands too shaky to unfold the paper. I imagined us somewhere far off in the wilderness near the end of days. Together we could live a wild life, feral and obsessive, tearing hunks of meat with our teeth and thinking about nothing more complicated than our meals.

I wondered in a way if I had dreamt him up. If our time together had been some psychosis brought upon me by past sin or poor nutrition. We ran into each other once, at the start of a concert in the harsh heat of summer. I remember wishing to see him again, hoping some part of us could be compelled together, the banality of small talk giving way to a deeper more comfortable quiet. He never reciprocated, he kept his distance from me and kept on living. Still, we would circle each other, weaving in and out of the same spots, missing each other by minutes or hours, seconds if we were lucky.

I was sure I never loved him, but sometimes early in the morning, halfway through my coffee, I am certain that I have never loved anyone else. 

On the night that he went missing I received two missed phone calls from him. I thought he might leave behind a voicemail but he never did….