When I say that I’m in love with these women, I mean it in
the way of love I’ve felt few times in my life. It’s love, an emotion
that no degree of italics could capture. The way I feel for the two of them is
doubtlessly deeper and more intertwined than the way I’ve felt for almost all of my romantic partners. It’s an attachment that I suspect most folks are lucky to
feel a handful of times in this life, let alone for so long.
What no one ever discusses about this kind of love is that it’s
discouragingly difficult. It’s work, and patience, and understanding. It’s
waiting three years to see each other because that’s the way life carries you.
It’s forgiving one other when you disappear from emails for months at a
time, and it’s apologizing to your roommate for laughing so loudly at whatever they
just sent to your group text. It's knowing that even if they don't respond right away, they still see your words and feel the warmth of your affection across the miles. It’s FaceTiming in traffic because, yes of course that’s
dangerous, but your main bitch is going through a time and you’re going to be
there for her. It’s sending them the podcasts and albums and books that made you question
yourself. It’s being devastatingly honest, out loud and for the first time,
because they know if you’re lying about whatever’s on your mind and they’re not
here for empty niceties. It’s holding your breath when you say your goodbyes, because
you well know by now just how precious your reunions are.
When I last saw these women, I had joked with them about
being emotionally closed off. “I didn’t even cry once this weekend, and I’m angry
about it.” We’d spent hours floating in piss-warm water, drinking improvised
cocktails and airing out our ideas to dry in the sun of each others’ perspectives.
After an intensely trying year away, a year in which I lost several loved ones
and in several senses of the verb “lost,” I was ready for an emotional release
with them.
But my dramatic, misty-eyed monologue never came. We dove
into our own tired souls, dredging up whatever willowy sludge we’d cared to share. I felt
immensely self-conscious about how detached I could be in talking about the grief
I felt, how coldly I could describe the well of my own confused emotion. I imagined
that wasn’t a good sign, and my hyperactive imagination urged me to worry that
they saw me as invulnerable, unwilling to be present and raw with them in the
same way they had both shared with me. As we piled into the car to part ways, I
felt anxious that I had taken our time together for granted.
And then we began driving. It was sweltering outside, a clingy
stickiness that only happens when it’s July and you’re underslept and
dehydrated from long nights and late swills. The windows were cracked, an overeager
breeze stirring the car as if desperate to bring us one last moment of overlap.
We were silent. We'd said hardly a word for the entire drive, until the obnoxious Acura swerved
ahead of us on I-95 as we meandered south.
In that moment, something broke loose. Pushing her middle
finger over the steering wheel, she yelled at the other car, the two of us
passengers peppering in colorful comments about the value of serenity and the supremely entitled fuckery of DMV drivers. We began laughing, an
overreaction to the humor in a fleeting moment. We couldn’t stop. We had moved
beyond words; we were simply together.
As the car’s atmosphere again stilled, the weight of our imminent
goodbye again pressing down on us, the speakers opened up. “A tornado flew
around my room before you came, excuse the mess it made…” Frank Ocean, a hymn
we'd memorized through years of shared history. It was a song that felt like being together again. Each of us knew exactly where the
other two were, without speech or sight. This was what it felt like to be with
the people you loved.
I looked out at the tiny needled skyline, curving past us,
finally welling down the tears I didn’t think I could release. And then a hand.
She had reached over, tear-soaked fingers in mine, to wordlessly tell me that
she was there too. We stretched our palms into the backseat, the three of us
clinging to the present as best we knew how, holding onto each other through
the last minutes of the journey.
When I drive my car these days, often alone, I do my best to keep the
windows down. I like to smell the leafy, dusty landscapes of the county where I
grew up. I abhor the heat, familiar and fervently midwestern, but I enjoy the
way it makes my skin feel, salty and stained with just the slightest
discomfort. I relish the breeze and all it stirs up in my scalp and in my spirit.
I love the way it reminds me of being in that car with the two of them,
barreling toward an ending and yet impossibly confident that the wind would
still, somehow, carry us back together.
- "Thinkin Bout You," from Frank Ocean's Channel Orange (2012)
No comments:
Post a Comment