I plan a trip to Portland in the summer, hoping to escape the harsh heat of Texas in favor of somewhere lush, green and barely known. Long ago, in the rainy winter, I walked through the streets shuffling my way into a bookstore and grabbing food from a halfway decent food truck.
In Portland I read about The Big One: the collapse of the Cascadia fault line that would lead to tidal waves so big they could wipe away the west coast. I wonder what it would feel like to return here after the fall? Would each memory still cling to geography, or would they too be taken by the tide?
I am revising a story about two men traveling to the coast in search of a magical cure to the disease killing one of them. In this story the forest is alive: a tangled character that is supposed to represent the dark and gnarly parts of their present situation but also the lush and blooming parts of their past.
It’s been a while since I’ve hiked, but I always enjoyed it when I did. Now, pounds heavier and with a different partner, hiking seems like a more perilous task. Back then, I could simply follow someone else’s path, trailing behind them and peppering them with questions or inane chatter. Now, older and more secure, I would make that decision myself: choosing which trail to visit, keeping track of the path, making conversation as I go.
In the first version of my story the men spend way too long in a car. Which seemed great when I was first writing it but lacks action or agency now that I revisit it. In this revision I am chopping away the car bits and throwing them straight into the forest, extending their hike and using it as a way of tracking their progression to the ultimate end of their relationship.
The story is originally titled Please Hurry, Leave Me, after Mitski’s song by the same name. Primarily because most of it is based on the feelings I felt listening to these lyrics:
Please, hurry, leave me, I can't breathe
Please don't say you love me
胸がはち切れそうで (My chest feels like it's going to burst)
One word from you and I would
Jump off of this ledge I'm on, baby
Tell me, "Don't", so I can crawl back in
I liked the concept of loving someone so much you’d want them to leave. Understanding that they had this intense power or control over you (whether intentional or not). I framed the story also around my experience watching my mother care for multiple dying people and reading books (mainly Roz Chast’s Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir). When caring for someone on the edge of death, caregivers often express dueling thoughts. The first is the human desire for the person you love to stay alive and the second is the equally human desire to have them pass away peacefully. Caring for someone, whether they are alive or slowly dying, is a tough task. It drains the body and the mind. It often drains the wallet. I liked the idea of a main character who would do anything to keep his partner alive but at the same time wants, desperately gone.
Revising it I’m listening to Remember Sport’s new album, replaying the song Ghost so I can hear the lyric “and I loved you early, don’t have to worry, I’ll always be your ghost.” I’m drawn to the song for a lot of reasons, but primarily the concept of being someone’s ghost is something I write about a lot.
In Please Hurry, Leave Me, the secondary character is already a ghost: dying and clinging to life the disease renders its infected incapable of going out in the harsh light of the day. In such, the story is a race against time in two ways: they are searching for a cure before the sun comes out and damages the dying partner more they are also searching for a cure before he dies.
But the main character is also a ghost: ruminating over his life and his relationship, incapable of accepting the new moments he his building with his partner who, despite dying, is still very much alive. Combined, their relationship is ghost-like too. In fact, the story starts with a haunting “Tiny cones of white plastic mark the fallen trees, gleaming white against the headlights of our car like gravestones guiding us to our final home."
In the revision I am thinking of adding in the fall of the west coast. I am thinking about great floods that wipe things clean. I am thinking about the force of water and rain, how dangerous a river is after a great storm.
The title doesn’t work anymore to me either. I suppose that is the first thing I could change—one of the many things claimed by the tide of change.