Boy continues to breathe.
A little after midnight, sneaking into the early hours of October 4th, I was on someone's front stoop in Brooklyn, the Bedford Ave. stop on the L at the end of the sidewalk. We were at an apartment. 201 N. 7th St., if I remember correctly. Corner of N. 7th and Driggs Ave.
We'd seen Gravity earlier in the evening, I, someone who'd become immensely precious to me in the course of three expansive and terrifying weeks, and a few very good friends and their dates.
Across the street from the front stoop, as I and the Girl dug through our chili cheese fries and ate our bacon-wrapped hotdogs, was a spa-type set up offering facials and nail maintenance. There was a sign in neon overhead, but I've forgotten what it said. A fire escape, reminiscent of the one on which Jack woos Davy's sister in Newsies looked at us out the corner of its eye, right above 218 N. 7th St.
By the end of that night, heartache and fury would be the only things beside me in bed and fitful sleep bridged the gap between that night and the hangman's noose waiting for me the following afternoon. Those hours in the park witnessed an horrific and systematic dismantling of self that revealed all the rusted gears and bunched-up belts and broken switches, the pistons corroded by acid. Monsters, the ones that had poked their heads out from behind their curtains the night before, stood naked in the sunlight, not having been lessened by the fight I'd waged for the past 2 and a half years, but having become much better at being monsters.
Boy has girl. Boy loses girl. Act III awaited me.
In the evening of the 4th, I saw a close friend who'd agreed to meet me halfway, in Stamford, CT. We added some color and character to a local pizza and pasta place. Mario's Something. And deferred our movie ritual for another day, as we needed to find cheesecake before she could send me on my way back to the City.
We parted, she having carried me on her back out of the pit I'd fallen into, she having nursed me back to health and given me a new pair of glasses with which I was able to gaze upon my new situation with perspective, she having nudged me into a curative plan of action to help me return to the spiritual heavy-lifting I'd neglected over the past year.
And upon my return to NY, I sped towards the familiar hookah spot in S. Williamsburg, that sanctuary at the corner of Broadway and Keap where a good, good friend accompanied me. As we talked and laughed and reminisced and he listened to me be angry and callous and heartbroken, the girls who worked the place came, one-by-one, into the outdoor area behind the place, where we were sitting, and embraced me and wished me Happy Birthday. All of them.
This friend and I talked some more, the type of talk that's more than words, that's the sealing of wounds and the calcifying of bonds. The type of talk that heals. And we planned roadtrips to places like Colorado and Nevada and Utah, and the more we talked, the less our plans looked like dreamstuffs and the more they looked like foregone conclusions.
I'm yet a boy.
I forget sometimes because of how I wear this beard and because of the burdens that have stooped by back and because of the weathering by my eyes and the gray invading my hair. But I'm yet a boy.
I'm closer to 30 than I am to 20, and I'm yet a boy.
We'd seen Gravity earlier in the evening, I, someone who'd become immensely precious to me in the course of three expansive and terrifying weeks, and a few very good friends and their dates.
Across the street from the front stoop, as I and the Girl dug through our chili cheese fries and ate our bacon-wrapped hotdogs, was a spa-type set up offering facials and nail maintenance. There was a sign in neon overhead, but I've forgotten what it said. A fire escape, reminiscent of the one on which Jack woos Davy's sister in Newsies looked at us out the corner of its eye, right above 218 N. 7th St.
By the end of that night, heartache and fury would be the only things beside me in bed and fitful sleep bridged the gap between that night and the hangman's noose waiting for me the following afternoon. Those hours in the park witnessed an horrific and systematic dismantling of self that revealed all the rusted gears and bunched-up belts and broken switches, the pistons corroded by acid. Monsters, the ones that had poked their heads out from behind their curtains the night before, stood naked in the sunlight, not having been lessened by the fight I'd waged for the past 2 and a half years, but having become much better at being monsters.
Boy has girl. Boy loses girl. Act III awaited me.
In the evening of the 4th, I saw a close friend who'd agreed to meet me halfway, in Stamford, CT. We added some color and character to a local pizza and pasta place. Mario's Something. And deferred our movie ritual for another day, as we needed to find cheesecake before she could send me on my way back to the City.
We parted, she having carried me on her back out of the pit I'd fallen into, she having nursed me back to health and given me a new pair of glasses with which I was able to gaze upon my new situation with perspective, she having nudged me into a curative plan of action to help me return to the spiritual heavy-lifting I'd neglected over the past year.
And upon my return to NY, I sped towards the familiar hookah spot in S. Williamsburg, that sanctuary at the corner of Broadway and Keap where a good, good friend accompanied me. As we talked and laughed and reminisced and he listened to me be angry and callous and heartbroken, the girls who worked the place came, one-by-one, into the outdoor area behind the place, where we were sitting, and embraced me and wished me Happy Birthday. All of them.
This friend and I talked some more, the type of talk that's more than words, that's the sealing of wounds and the calcifying of bonds. The type of talk that heals. And we planned roadtrips to places like Colorado and Nevada and Utah, and the more we talked, the less our plans looked like dreamstuffs and the more they looked like foregone conclusions.
I'm yet a boy.
I forget sometimes because of how I wear this beard and because of the burdens that have stooped by back and because of the weathering by my eyes and the gray invading my hair. But I'm yet a boy.
I'm closer to 30 than I am to 20, and I'm yet a boy.