It wasn't supposed to happen this way at all. You were supposed to be happy
to see me
when I came to your door yesterday. We could have talked about old
times, I would have
congratulated you on your trim figure, made a self-deprecating remark
about my growing pot
belly. We would have been friends again, talked, laughed over dinner,
maybe even enjoyed a kiss
at your door. I was ready to bathe in the glory of your presence and
the warmth of your
forgiveness, knowing all my trespasses towards you had been erased
by time. It could have been
the end of five years of wandering and wondering.
You could have at least acted like you were glad to see me, even if
you weren't, you
know, "good old Tom from school, how the hell are ya, well, gotta run,"
but you wouldn't even
give me that. Don't you know that every step I took toward your apartment
was a battle, that
every step I took I felt knives cut through the soles of my feet? That's
how it was. It was like
Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid, you know, not the watered-down
Disney shit but the
real thing, the one where she loses her voice and it feels like she's
walking on broken glass. It
was that hard, dammit, but I fought my way to the door, I rang your
bell, you opened the door
ready to smile and say "Hello!" or "Good Morning!" That's what got
me, that you had that smile
all ready to use and that it could have been a guy delivering pizza,
or reading your water meter, or
even collecting your trash and he still would have gotten the triple-A-plus-Lea-Anthony
smile.
But not me. You couldn't even pretend for me, couldn't even be polite
for me, your whole face
fell and you just stepped back inside and slammed the door shut. I
didn't even get to find out if
my voice had gone the way of my feet, if I was a merman that way, too.
You didn't let me say a
word. Shit, you nearly took my nose off with the door, you shut it
so fast the breeze mussed
what little hair I have left, undoing the conditioning, combing, blow-drying
and hair spray that I
used to get it to look just right for you.
Do you know how stupid I felt standing on your landing, my peace offerings
bundled in
my arms? I dreaded having to walk back down the stairs, knowing everybody
in the lobby would
be looking at me, giving me that "Struck out, eh? Serves you right."
Look behind their
magazines, books, or conversational partners. I suppose the noble thing
to do would have been
to walk down to the window at the end of the hallway and throw myself
out of it. I would have
saved a little face that way--at least to the sharks in the lobby.
I would have been a somebody, a
man with a purpose, business, a significant other. At least until five
or ten minutes later, when
they forgot all about the sweet late-twenties lovebird they saw pass
among them and went out of
the buildings to the accompaniment of sirens to see me bleed on the
pavement.
I thought about it, really. Open the window, jump out, embrace the
concrete. Or,
actually, I thought that if I did jump, I wouldn't hit the ground.
That I would soar rather than fall
out of the window, rejected by the earth and by gravity as I've been
rejected by everyone and
everything else, that I would fly higher and higher, over the trees
and over the buildings and over
the mountains until heaven spit me back with more force than the earth
could match and I flashed
down, leaving a crater like a meteorite. Maybe that's sheer lunacy,
but that's what I thought.
And, somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm still thinking it.
But in the end my cowardice overcame my desire to be a comet, and I
descended the stairs
and rushed through the lobby with my head down, walking fast enough
to elicit a glare from the
clerk behind the front desk. Once I was on the street, I started to
run, out of anger and
disappointment and shame and whatever the hell else. I threw the flowers
down and trampled
them beneath my feet as I cut through the disapproving glances of a
faceless mob of suited
businessmen, whose lunchtime routine I had so rudely disrupted by having
the last hope in my life
taken away from me.
I've been sitting here in my hotel room since then, thinking about
it, trying to make sense
of your reaction. Sitting with the Gideon Bible as a footrest, smelling
the must and bitter
memories of forgotten nights of passion and nights of chain-smoking
seeping out of the walls.
My first thought was that you didn't recognize me, thought I was just
some hopeful loser come to
your door, a coworker, perhaps, or the guy who gives you change at
the gas station. That's it,
you thought I was a rogue gas station attendant, driven mad with lust
the way you used to drive
all of us up the wall, an unstable man with his name stitched on his
shirt who followed you home
and had come to do more to you than wash your windshield. It was an
attractive notion, really.
How could I expect you to know me on sight after all these years? I've
got a lot more me and a
lot less hair than I had then, after all. But no, because there's still
that smile. Surely even Bubba
the mad hose jockey would have gotten at least a little grin, had he
shown up at your door bearing
roses and dressed in his Sunday best. He would have at least gotten
a word or two in before the
inevitable closing of the door. And don't think I didn't notice your
eyes. When you saw me, you
winced like I was swinging a two-by-four at your head with intent to
crush. I'm surprised you
didn't scream.
Maybe I should have called first. This was my next great thought. Maybe
if I had called,
inquired as to your health, talked about how happy I was in my totally
fulfilling job, and then
casually said, almost as an afterthought, "Oh, and I'm going to be
in town on business in a couple
of days. Would you be up to getting together?" Maybe I shouldn't have
just dropped like an
anvil from the clear blue to land at your door. If I had talked to
you before I tried to see you,
maybe everything would have gone as I had planned it. I don't think
so, though. I guess I was a
little stupid about the whole thing. If I haven't gotten over you in
the ten years since our high
school graduation, can I expect you to be over the anger and frustration
of which I am the sole
cause?
Do you even remember the good times anymore? Or is the ugly end the
only thing that
sticks out in your mind? Sometimes, at night, do you walk out on your
balcony and look at the
stars and think about the night we sat on my roof and I pointed out
constellations there wasn't a
chance in hell I correctly identified? Or do you just think about the
other night, the close confines
of my old Chevrolet instead of the vaults of the heavens? Do you think
of the night the moon was
close enough to touch, or the night when I pushed a little farther
than you wanted to go?
I was selfish, I see that now, selfish that night and for most of our
relationship, always
demanding more pleasure, always pushing the limits of propriety. But
you were always willing to
come along for the ride, weren't you? And I did love you. Hell, I probably
still love you, it's just
that I let my libido take control every once in awhile. I'm sorry for
that, and you know it because
I told you a hundred times. I told you that night, as I drove you home
while you sat stiff and cold
in the passenger seat with tears running down your face. I told you
again when I saw you at
school, and again when you finally consented to talk to me on the phone.
But it wasn't good
enough for you, was it? I could never be sorry enough. You act as if
I murdered your family, or
burned down your house, or dismembered your cat. All I did was take
from you what you would
have given me anyway, given time. It's been ten fucking years! Why
can't you forgive me?
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's not fair of me to get angry at you. It's
you who should be
angry at me, Tom the Unquenchable, Tom the Almighty, Tom the Rapist.
I hurt you, and I know
it, and I refused to allow you time to heal, and I know that, and I
was insensitive and kept trying
to force you to be my friend again when I should have just disappeared
for a while. It's just
. . . I needed you so badly then, and I suppose I need you now, I've
needed you ever since
graduation. You were my best friend, the love of my short life. When
you finally shut me
out altogether, I didn't feel any real reason to give a flying fuck
about anything. I limped
through a couple of years of college, and now I'm a full-time "data
processor," a "team employee,"
a cog in a corporate machine. In other words, I type garbage, all day
long. I don't even have
a name, I have a barcode and a social security number that distinguishes
me from every other monkey
typing away at their infinite computer terminals. It makes my head
hurt to think about it,
and it makes my hands hurt, too, so I'm planning on quitting if I'm
not fired for taking
these days off to try to settle my past.
"What about your dreams?" You might ask. "What about writing the American
novel,
breaking into the movie business, writing a song that speaks to the
soul of every man, woman,
and child in America?" Without you, all of it seemed a little stupid.
You lifted me up, told me I
was good at whatever I tried doing. It just didn't seem like I had
anything to offer over the
thousands of other people with a song to sing or a story to tell. And
now I'm talking in cliches.
Fuck.
Do you understand why I had to seek you out? I wish you would open
the door for me,
let me tell you what I've just told this yellow legal pad I found in
the bottom drawer of the hotel
room's nightstand. If you do, if I can get your permission to go on
with my life, I think I might
be able to pull myself out of this holding pattern. Find a better job,
or the courage of my
convictions to quit the minimal-wage circuit altogether and starve
to become a writer, or an actor,
or a musician. Hell, if you won't take me back then you can at least
let me go, I can find a girl
who doesn't care about looks and loves the bashful, romantic, obsessive
type.
I'm going to come to your door again tomorrow. If you open the door,
well, see previous
paragraph. If I'm slammed out again, you'll be reading this, because
I'll stuff it into your mailbox
before I leave.
So, if you are reading this, you know where I've come from, what I've
been doing with
myself since last we met. You don't know where I am, though, or where
I'm going, and since the
facts of the case are on your head I think you have a right to know.
Right now I'm on the roof of
the building across the street taking off my clothes. Take a look out
your window. I'll be waiting
to see your curtain pulled back. When I see it, I'll make my maiden
voyage, like a fat pigeon, an
obese sparrow, or maybe just an extremely small blimp. Watch me. If
I'm wrong about the
flying, I'll at least make it over the trees before gravity claims
me. Yes, that will be enough.
Over the trees.
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