These are just the galleys, not the real books…
I came bounding down the stairs from the poetry room at City Lights. I love City Lights, quel bookstore. omg. No one is ever up in the poetry room. I go up there a lot. Sometimes I spend more than an hour there puzzled by the way the skinny little books are organized. I always forget how absurd it is when I realize the world stops with ‘M’ up there. The world stops with ‘M’ down here too. Somehow I know they understand, and did this on purpose. This is the second time I’ve been here in tears because of how this story ends in the last three years. I feel guilty for not visiting more often. I feel like a bad friend who comes over when he’s sad, or miserable and flirts with you. He doesn’t love you… well he does, but he doesn’t love you, love you. He just feels like he’s lost his grip on everything, somewhere around where the P’s and can’t find his way back. So now he’s sitting across from you at some cheap Indian restaurant flirting with you. I should come more. But I never go anywhere I think I should go more often. About fifteen years ago, when you were still a little girl smoking weed and listening to eighties music, I would spend my afternoons at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It was at the Veteran’s Memorial building then, and it was a very shabby excuse for a museum. I went a few times a week and just looked at the permanent collection and nourished resentments against Paul Klee and thought a lot about how much I really dislike gouache as a media for any sort of painting. When they moved into their new location, a fancy new building about three blocks from my house, I decided that I would buy a membership. I did, and I was delighted as I slipped the paper membership card into my wallet. The trouble is I never went back. Not for more than ten years. My membership had expired, long ago.
I was clutching a copy of ‘Meditations in an Emergency’ under my arm and grinning when I spotted this beautiful yellow book with black helvetica type on the cover. I squinted to read it, I can’t see anything, and laughed at her name. Miranda July, I said to no one. My cousin appeared from around the corner, and I grinned again. I flipped open the book randomly and began to read in my patronizing, I am absolutely a closet homosexual voice, and read:
This is the story I wouldn’t tell you when I was your girlfriend. You kept asking and asking, and your guesses were so lurid and specific. Was I a kept woman? Was Belvedere like Nevada, where prostitution is legal? Was I naked for the entire year? The reality began to seem barren. And in time I realized that if the truth felt empty, then I probably would not be your girlfriend much longer.
I couldn’t stop the tears from running down my face. I slipped the book under my copy of Frank O’Hara poems which seemed thin, and trivial to me suddenly. I bought both books without snuggling up to the cashier. I didn’t care a bit if he liked me, remembered me, or thought I was making good choices. I was thinking about when I was your girlfriend, and how much I loved you. I was wondering why that geriatric dog who slept all over your father’s beautiful house didn’t leave hair everywhere. I wanted to run home and start reading. But I didn’t start. Not for a few weeks. I wanted to be sure before I began, and when I was sure I started. When I started I couldn’t stop. Oh god, I love it when I’m wrong.
It was a quiet sound, but it woke me up because it was a human sound. I held my breath and it happened again, then again; it was footsteps on the stairs. I tried to whisper, There’s someone coming up the stairs, but my breath was cowering, I couldn’t shape it. I squeezed Kevin’s wrist in units, three pulses, then two, then three. I was trying to invent a language that could enter his sleep. But after a while I realized I wasn’t even squeezing his wrist, I was just pulsing the air. That’s how scared I was; I was squeezing air. And still the sound continued, the man coming up the stairs. He was walking in the slowest possible way. He seemed to have all the time in the world for this, my God, did he have time. I have never taken such care with anything. That is my problem with life, I rush through it, like I’m being chased. Even things whose whole point is slowness, like drinking relaxing tea, I suck it down as if I’m in a contest for who can drink relaxing tea the quickest. Or if I’m in a hot tub with some other people and we’re all looking up at the stars, I’ll be the first to say, It’s so beautiful here. The sooner you say It’s so beautiful here, the quicker you can say, Wow, I’m getting overheated.
The man on the stairs was taking so long, I forgot the danger for whole moments at a time and almost fell back asleep, only to be awakened by him shifting his weight. I was going to die, and it was taking forever. I stopped trying to alert Kevin because I was worried he would make a sound upon waking, like he might say, What?, or What honey? The man on the stairs would hear this and know how vulnerable we were. He would know my boyfriend called me honey. He might even hear my boyfriend’s slight annoyance, his exhaustion after last night’s fight. We both fantasize about other people when we’re having sex, but he likes to tell me who the other people are, and I don’t. Why should I? It’s my own private business. It’s not my fault he get’s off on having me know. He likes to report it the second he comes, like a cat presenting the gift of a dead bird. I never asked for it.
I didn’t want the man on the stairs knowing these things about us. But he would know. The second he threw on the lights and pulled out his gun, or his knife, or his heavy rock, the second he held the gun to my head, or the knife at my heart, or the heavy rock over my chest, he would know. He would see it in my boyfriend’s eyes: You can have her, just let me live. And in my eyes, he would see the words I never really knew true love. Would he empathize with us? Does he know what it’s like? Most people do. You always feel like you are the only one in the world, like everyone else is crazy for each other, but it’s not true. Generally, people don’t like each other very much. And that goes for friends, too. Sometimes I lie in bed trying to decide which of my friends I truly care about, and I always come to the same conclusion: none of them. I thought these were just my starter friends and the real ones would come along later. But no. These are my real friends. They are people with jobs in their fields of interest. My oldest friend, Marilyn, loves to sing and is head of enrollment at a prestigious music school. It’s a good job, but not as good as just opening your mouth and singing. La. I always thought I would be friends with a professional singer. A jazz singer. A best friend who is a jazz singer and a reckless but safe driver. That is more what I pictured for myself. I also imagined friends who adored me. These friends think I’m a drag. I fantasize about starting over and eliminating the film of dragginess that hangs over me. I think I have a handle on it now; there are three main things that make me a drag:
I never return phone calls.
I am falsely modest.
I have a disproportionate amount of guilt about these two things, which makes me unpleasant to be around.
It wouldn’t be hard to return calls ad be more genuinely modest, but it’s too late for these friends. They wouldn’t be able to see that I’m not a drag anymore. I need clean new people who associate me with fun. This is my number two problem: I am never satisfied with what I have. It goes hand in hand with my number one problem: rushing. Maybe they aren’t so much hand in hand as two hands of the same beast. Maybe they are my hands; I am the beast.
I had a crush on Kevin for thirteen years before he finally started liking me back. He wasn’t interested at first because I was a child. I was twelve and he was twenty-five. After I turned eighteen, it took him seven more years to think of me as a real adult, not his student anymore. On our first date, I wore a dress that I had bought when I was seventeen, especially for this occasion. It was out of style. On the restaurant we stopped at a gas station. I sat in the car and watched a teenage boy clean the windshield while Kevin paid for the gas. The boy used the squeegee with a kind of precision that made you know this job was not simply within his field of interest, this was exactly it, this was all he had ever wanted. La. As we pulled out of the gas station, I stared through my perfect, clean window at the teenager and thought: I should be with him instead.
The man on the stairs pauses for such incredibly long periods of time, I almost wonder if he is having a problem. Like maybe he’s disabled or very old. Or maybe just really tired. Maybe he’s already killed everyone else on the block and now he’s all worn out. In moments I can almost see him leaning against the banister, his eyes sifting through the darkness. My eyes are open too. Kevin sleeps, he is far away, and he always will be. The silence becomes longer and longer until I start to wonder if the man is there at all. The only sound is Kevin breathing. What if I spend the rest of my life in this bed, listening to Kevin breathe. But lo. A strong and certain creak issues from the stairwell, and what I feel is thrilling relief. He is really there, he is on the stairs, and he is coming closer in his own breathtakingly slow way. If I lived to see daylight, I would never forget this lesson in care.
I opened the covers and stepped out of the bed. I was only wearing a T-shirt, and I didn’t put on pants because who cares. Maybe he would be half naked, too; maybe he would be headless and covered in blood. I stood in the doorway of the stairwell, on the top step. It was darker there than in the bedroom, and I felt blind. I stood and waited to die or for my eyes to adjust, whichever came first. Before I could see anything, I could hear him breathing, he was right in front of me. I leaned forward, I could feel his breath. I could smell his sourness. It wasn’t good, he did not have good intentions. I stood there, and he stood there. He breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in, as I had always done. I expelled my dust, the powder of everything I had destroyed with doubt, and he pulled it into his lungs. My eyes were adjusting, and I saw a man, an ordinary man, a stranger. We were staring into each other’s eyes, and suddenly I felt furious. Go away, I whispered. Get out. Get out of my house.
After we pulled out of the gas station, we drove to a restaurant that Kevin thought I might like. But I was still thinking about the boy with the squeegee, and I systematically did the exact opposite of everything you wanted. I didn’t order dessert or wine, just a little salad, which I complained about. But you did not give up; you made jokes, ridiculous jokes, in the car on the way back to your apartment. I steeled myself against laughter; I would rather die than laugh. I didn’t laugh, I did not laugh. But I died, I did die.
From ‘No one belongs here more than you’ which was published by Scribner (Isn’t that awesome?) some time during 2007.
So while I read this, I was sitting in what used to be our table — and bear in mind that we have a difference of opinion about which table this actually is — and I spit out my breath as I burst into tears, I’ve got a cold which won’t go away and so I sat there reading with snot glistening in the beginnings of a mustache and held my breath while the tears began to run down my face. Then I was laughing that deep, embarrassing laugh of mine. And when I was done I had my head in my hands, slouched forward, giggling, my eyes still leaking. I realized that the lunch crowd had gone quiet. They are not quiet at lunch time at Cafe Du Soliel. Not usually. Typically they talk really loud about work. I don’t like them, and I stay away when the humdrums are there. I was early today and they gathered around me. I was reading, so I didn’t care, and Miranda July was reading your mind, and explaining everything to me in my own language, so I didn’t really notice. But when I looked up I realized that everyone was still there, only they had stopped to watch the crazy man with the beautiful greenish yellow scarf blow his nose into his hands and giggle.
I collected my things and got the fuck out of there. I walked and walked and laughed and blew my nose into the napkin I’d swiped from the counter and stuffed into my pocket in case I needed to blow my nose again before I got home. I called a few friends, just to tell them how much I love them. I made dinner plans, and arranged my evening. It’s been so goddam cold. I can’t stand it. I can’t stop thinking about that last lie you told me. I can’t stop thinking about your crush and how selfish you are. How lame. I’m so glad you felt so much better about something you really should have continued to feel horribly guilty about once you dumped it on me. Awesome. The consolation prize is that now I have Miranda July to interpret these things for me. She helps me sleep. She helps me laugh. She helps me remember that I am not really angry with you. She helps me remember that I love you, and that at least some of this emptiness is a good thing. Something to embrace. Something to save.
One Comment
and i was just wondering what i might want to read after the book i’m reading and the one that’s on deck. a new borders just opened in town and so i want to give the small local book shop on my street time to get whatever they might not have in stock.