The 15th Pt. II

Introduction

For the first few weeks I knew Maggie, I repeatedly asked our mutual friend Brandon if she hated me. I was a very youthful and bubbly, previously sheltered, annoying sort of kid. She was a student leader, a year older, and although a social figure at Fordham, she was very selective about who her actual friends were. She did not hate me. She just took her time to truly warm to me, and that lead to a connection that I think runs unmatched, as best friends are concerned.

I’m going to be very selective in the anecdotes I chose to share, and hopefully dedicate as much time to the being that is Maggie, as I do to how I was effected by her.

My first real experience with Maggie as a friend, and I may be wrong as we have had so many, was seeing Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Maggie and our friend Colleen had tickets to a midnight screening. Both had already pegged me for the fiction/fantasy dork that I not-so-secretly knew myself to be. I had settled in for a nap but all the lights in my dorm room were on. The next thing I recall is being awoken, from across the room, by Maggie and Colleen. Their third guest had dropped. There was a ticket for me if I left immediately. I dressed and we were out the door. E-walk? E-walk, we all wondered. We had no idea where the theater was. We hopped in a taxi and went to twenty third, or even Union Square. Everything happened so quickly. We were not in the right area. We ran. And ran, passing a homeless man with his pants at his ankles. The streets were dark. The air was cold. And at some point, we all made our way to Times Square and found the theater. Midnight movies in Times Square theaters are always an eye opening experience. Things are shouted and often times thrown. You are uncomfortably close to your neighbor. You don’t know if you are actually watching the film or the audience. Regardless, for four hours we were transfixed. It was more than an emotional experience for all of us. A movie-going experience that was tough to match, and might not ever be overshadowed.

Student Activities

It was Fordham’s student activity programming that really brought Maggie and I together. Two specific events require mentioning. Fordham flew Maggie, myself and two others to Cincinnati, Ohio for the NACA Conference. It was springtime of my freshman year and we were selected due to our active roles in the community. It was there that I got to connect with Maggie, in a city belonging to neither of us and in the face of unending stimulation. We hunted out winged pigs and had private audiences with artists like Teitur. It was the first time I felt like we were in it together, whatever it was. Mutual discovery and mutual appreciation form a firm, concrete foundation. Our history is rich with such.

The summer between my sophomore and junior year, Maggie and I were both representatives at JASPA. It was a large Jesuit conference held at the Rose Hill campus. It meant a great deal of work for both of us, in addition to our summer jobs in the Office of Student Activities. For a short while we found ourselves living in the Bronx, playing host to leaders from the nation’s Jesuit schools. Being Lincoln Center students we approached the situation thinking we were better than everyone else. We quickly learned that just because we bitched and got what we wanted, that didn’t make us better than others. We found filthy spoons and squatters in the Bronx campus, as well as scattered pills and bricks with notes. Seriously. We made fast friendships with many others. But it was the time away from JASPA during JASPA that reflects the true nature of our friendship. On a Thursday night, we quickly packed up everything we needed and headed back to Manhattan. Together, blocks away from the Lincoln Center campus and our apartments, we watched the midnight screening of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was a much anticipated and joyous occasion and there was no one else in the world I would have wanted to see it with. Then back to the Bronx we went to rest up, and then work, and then return to Manhattan for the release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. It was another midnight release. Another dork-related event. Another sincere and genuinely happy moment of my life. With book in hand, after comedic drama and anticipatory tears, together, once more, we traveled to the Bronx. Maggie finished reading the book before I did.

Maggie has a love of faith and tradition, of honesty and reality. She is someone who values childhood, and managed, in the most incredible way possible, to mature to adulthood without sacrificing any of what made her a beautiful youth. She both grew up and retained all the splendor.

My Girlfriend

My grandmother believes that Maggie is my girlfriend. This is OK because my grandmother loves Maggie to death. My mother used to believe Maggie was my girlfriend, until I was forced out of the closet. My mother calls Maggie the little pixie. Our time as a “couple” was equal parts glamorous and sincere. She was my date to TRL as  I competed for the title of World’s Largest Harry Potter Fan. A year later she was my date to the next Harry Potter premiere. She was my date to the Russian Tea Room after Valentine’s Day. She was the person who bore the weight of my unending bouts of unrequited and oft times weird love. She has a remarkable ear, and incredible patience as I often struggled to enact her correct advice. She saw me through adjustments off medicine, new medicine, and mixed medicine. Like any true girlfriend, she told me to get a fucking job and said, wouldn’t it be nice if your check said IFC on it? She sent me packing to the IFC Center and it turned out to be one of the most valuable work experiences I ever had, at the best theater in Manhattan.

I remember the day I realized I was obsessed with Maggie and I think about it frequently. I had left class and knew I had no plans for the night. I called her. She didn’t answer. I got confused and walked outside, calling her on the way. She didn’t answer. I walked around outside and called her twice more. I then felt light and lost. She called. I think I only mentioned calling her four times, but I am pretty sure it was six. I don’t do this to everyone, and I no longer do that to people I obsess over, but for some reason on that day I needed her, just to spend time with.

Perhaps our greatest date was our trip to Buffalo. We drove there and back again. It was my introduction to Maggie’s family.  I don’t know what you know about the city of Buffalo, but it is perhaps the last warm and welcoming urban environment. It was Autumn and chilly and perhaps my most beautiful weekend away. The drive was long and had a never ending Sony BMG soundtrack. (Unless that Louis XIV album is not Sony? Though the Franz one certainly was.) Maggie’s family explains her. They are loving, positive and real. They are incredible storytellers and it’s impossible to share their company without smiling and believing the world to be a safe place. We got drunk at the Buffalo Irish Center. Maggie’s father’s band performed. We danced. I met every bloody Irishman in the city. We traveled to Niagra-on-the-Lake, my first ever trip to Canada. We had beer and bangers and mash at the Angel Inn. It all, her city and her family, stands a relic of early America: the beauty of European tradition melted together with American ideals. Their sense of history and family and value knot tightly together. They welcomed me.

The Scar: A Comedy

I was naked in a hot tub pretending to be a porpoise. Maggie, Brandon, Texas Stephanie and I had all had a great deal to drink. We watched fog roll off the tree tops into the field of Brandon’s backyard. Everything was heightened and hilarious. Maggie left the hot tub to pee. We all lost track of time. And then she returned, her hand over her forehead.

“Hey guys, buzz kill,” were her first words. In retrospect, this is absolutely hysterical.

Maggie proceeded to show us the gash on her forehead inflicted by an ornate ivory toilet paper holder. We contemplated slapping a bandaid on it and tossing her back in the hot tub. (This is a joke.) Instead, after a thorough inspection, we went back to my house and woke my mother. Pam alerted us that the emergency room had to be our next stop.

So, drunk, I got back into my car and drove Maggie and Stephanie to the Waterbury Hospital Emergency Room. From the fake fingernail tapping receptionist to the inattentive interns we floated around the ER. We finally found ourselves placed in a room and had an initial consultation. They could stitch her up right there or we could wait for the plastic surgeon to come in and do a thorough job. He couldn’t come til six in the morning. It wasn’t that much after 1AM when we heard this news. Stephanie and I, drunk and antsy, prayed that Maggie would consent to a patch up job and we could be on our way. We also knew that whatever she wanted we wanted, and if we were in her position we would need support. You don’t fuck with someone’s face. Maggie chose to wait for the plastic surgeon, who I personally recommended (as he was the father of a classmate of mine from high school.) One of my favorite phrases fits here nicely: thus began the wait.

We watched television. The three of us. Under hospital lights. Very aware that we were losing our drunken state and entering a hangover, while awake. We chart the night based on my mood swings, which were all associated with Burger King commercials. The first time the cheesy tot commercial aired, I was attempting optimism. The second time, I was a raging maniac. The third time, I went for a walk to fight claustrophobia. The fourth time, I was a Negative Nancy. The fifth time I was loopy, beyond loopy. I was insane. The sixth time I was in hysterics. The seventh time I was exhausted. All the while Maggie sat up in the bed, holding her forehead. Stephanie, she very well could have been a figment of my imagination. Then the surgeon arrived.

I am terrible with doctors, so I stood as far away as I could. Stephanie opted to hold Maggie’s hand. She informed me that every time the needle tugged Maggie’s flesh together, she could feel the pull through Maggie’s hand and into her whole body. Had I been evaluated at this point in time, I would have been found clinically insane.

The surgery rapped. We waited out the rest period. Then the three of us got back into my car and began the ride home. It was 10AM.

As we got off my exit, haunted by the cheesy tot commercials from the all-nighter, we actually stopped at Burger King. Seriously. We were all starving and all ornery. It was one of the best meals I’ve ever had. By 11AM we were all asleep.

My mother woke us all up the next morning, also known as, a few short hours later. We had planned a day trip to the Yankee Candle Factory Store in Massachusetts. It is a wonderland and one of the happiest places in the world. Maggie and I had so looked forward to this trip. So, in pain and drugged out, she dressed and we all went on a car trip over an hour away to shop for candles and Christmas goodies (at Easter time).

Spousal Abuse

When I graduated from Fordham and before I left for Puerto Rico, I lived with Maggie in Astoria. It was for only a few months and I spent more time out of the apartment than in. There were graduation parties, party parties, work, the birth of my friendship with Owen and the entire city of Manhattan pulling at me. It was a terribly difficult transitional period where I acted more like a child than a college graduate. We struggled. I was a cheating husband. I was a disloyal friend. I indulged in base activities and ignored my confidante, or only reached out to her when I needed help. She was a forgiver and a giver. And teary eyed, one night, she confronted me. I had two weeks or so left in New York City. She informed me that she was going to be missing me for the next few months that I’d be away, but she’d already been missing me for the past few.

If I can say I had my lost years, it would have been the months in such close proximity to Maggie, where we were – as people – never more distant.

The Departure

On April 15th, Maggie left New York City. She returned to Buffalo. At Cosmo, a classy little drink corner frequented by Fordham undergrads, she told me she would be leaving. It was a move for personal happiness. She needed to see her sister grow up. She longed for a community less brutal than our city. It was not necessarily final, but opportunities needed to be explored elsewhere. She shared with me that I had a home now, and a job and she felt comfortable leaving me in the hands I was in. She was a guardian angel, at times a mother, always a best friend. We had a few months together before she left and I did not use them to the best of my ability.

We still speak with regularity (that being almost every single day), many days at great length, and she has come to visit. Once, we went on a much anticipated adventure to City Island, walking through cemeteries and hanging out with seagulls and in grocery stores. Once, for a reunion of our annual Thanksgiving party; a celebration that means so much to me, a tradition early in the making with our dear friends the Teich-Rennstich family. It is a successful attempt at growing up and realizing the holidays must be shared with family… and family is defined by heart not blood.

My heart belongs to Maggie. Her influence and patience stun me. My inability to see her torments me. But, and I laugh when I say this, being friends with Maggie is like riding a bicycle. You don’t forget how. It’s impossible.

The 15th Pt. I

Jeffrey and I in Bushwick

Introduction

I had been awaiting the premiere of “Brothers of the Head” for months. Punk music and filthy looking British twins appealed to me at the time. One of the two still does now. The day turned out to be incredibly important, but for an unexpected reason.

I had been promised a seat as an employee of the IFC Center, but fearing a full house (of people with greater independent cinema worth) my coworker and I arrived early, spiffy and glowing. Both of us beamed through the red carpet and press sign in. In the lobby, where we waited to spy on the others in attendance, I saw a new employee.

I remember two things perfectly clear: I checked him out from toes to crown, while he was facing away from me. This is something I never do and even frown upon. Second, I dismissed him immediately as being too skinny. This sounds absurd, I know, as I am attracted to pencils (being a writer), but that was how it happened.

One week later, across from the fountain at Columbus Circle, I was already discussing with Maggie by obsession over Jeffrey. Much to her dismay, that would be the case for two years.

Jeffrey once told me that based on those first few weeks at the IFC Center, he would have never thought we would develop the friendship we ended up having. I was a hyper little ball-of-light boy trapped in a box. He was dark and cool and sarcastic. It seemed we had little in common. Perhaps we didn’t.

Development

I don’t really know where to go next. It’s all a blur and all about the development of stories. In my opinion, stories are what hold friends together: adventures together, which turn into a story; stories which turn into nostalgia and history.

As soon as he got text messaging I didn’t leave him alone. He would be my last text message of the night, as I’d ask him to tell me a story: about his family, about life, about. We spent a great deal of time together, at work or out of; days and nights. In November of that year, he came to my house in Connecticut for a party. In December, he was the first person I called when my mother confronted me about my sexuality in our driveway in Florida. Outed by a blog, damn googling parents. By Easter, he was with my family and we traveled to Miami. I was in love and it was unrequited.

Upon returning from Florida, he left the IFC Center. It was a terrible day for me, but I adapted. I knew my time there was short lived, as I’d be leaving in the summer after graduation. But we had spent every Friday and Saturday night together, selling tickets and serving popcorn. When he left, however, we started clubbing. Every Thursday, with his best friend, we would go to Hiro Ballroom and every Thursday night I slept beside him in Bushwick. I was a puppy.

Departure

Then I graduated and contemplated departure. Rather than hunt for a job in New York, Jeffrey and I planned a move to Berlin. When we decided we shouldn’t live together in Berlin, I decided my first stop should be Vieques, Puerto Rico. There I wrote a book, and by the end of my island isolation, I was near broke. I decided to delay my trip to Germany and went, first, to Florida. He made his way to Berlin alone. I would call him and he would call me. Berlin: poor, but sexy. Sort of like us. I wanted to be away from family, away from the United States. I wanted to be on the European adventure, with him, that I helped incite.

Friends rescued me from Florida in order to attend a wedding. There, I found myself in New York City once more, surrounded by genuine friends and a beautiful occasion. While back in the city and awaiting my flight to Berlin, I stayed with Owen. Owen had filled in the gap that Jeffrey had left in my life with being in Germany. I met him not so long before I departed for Puerto Rico and from the moment we met, we were on the phone together 20 out of the 24 hours in a day. In a rapid fire decision making process, day of, I decided to miss my flight to Jeffrey and stay with Owen (also, while trying to get my new manuscript seen). I was justified in this action for many reasons. First and foremost, Owen; second, people wanted to read my book. Still, at least once a week I would call Jeffrey. Especially when times got hard. Jeffrey traveled to Paris and Milan, working on the film that I too was supposed to be employed on. Our relationship adapted. He was a long distance friend, a vision, ungraspable and always exciting for me. I was safe from the way I behaved around him. There was no drama. The puppy was gone. It was just communication.

Change

While at dinner with Owen and his family, Jeffrey called. He was coming back to New York City. I was excited, yes, but terrified as to what his effect would be on my new life. I was happy and all of my time was allotted to worthy outlets. When I hung up the phone, I said aloud “he wasn’t supposed to come back.”

We met again, for the first time, at a bar on the upper east side. I swaggered in. I wanted to be mature rather than excited. We were both different people and it was reflected in our friendship. During the next few months, and this is what I’ve come to miss, whenever I’d see him alone, we would brutalize one another. In perfectly choreographed battles of words, we would jab and slice out bits of one another. I’m not sure I’ve felt more alive than with cigarette and wine in hand, his words cut my throat.

Jeffrey once said that he couldn’t imagine two people in the world were having conversation as interesting as ours. We were Auden and Isherwood. We took on the world, yes. But to be so mentally intimate with someone, to have them carve up your deepest darkest insecurities and to know that it was all OK because you loved one another – it’s a place few can reach.

The Beginning of the End

When I was fired from Conde Nast,  Jeffrey got me a job working on the film he was employed by. So there the two of us were, living in a hotel and eating for free in my home state. We spent days and nights together. Every minute. When we weren’t in each others company we had to be on the phone. We had a lifetime of ups and downs in a few short months.

In the middle of it all, we had a fight. Jeffrey punished me in the way he knew hurt me most. He stopped talking to me. He knew I felt power in combat, so he cut me off. This was impossible due to our proximity and the demands of the job. We worked through it, but he said something that came back to haunt me: I was crazy and he never knew which Dodger he was talking to. My fear, the minute someone genuinely believes you are crazy, and he did, they stop taking you seriously. The ground, the foundation of everything, was removed. We took a weekend together in Montauk. His restlessness destroyed me. Our cigarettes and conversation was no longer enough for him.

Jeffrey went to LA and I came back to New York City after my job had wrapped. I attempted to ignore him while he was there and did so successfully until he called me once from the desert. He was who I wanted to share things with and I desperately wanted to know how he was. While he was away, however, I reached out to another employer of Jeff’s and struck up a deal that allowed me to remain unemployed over the summer.

When I confessed this to him, he was not surprised. However, he was angered that my ingenuity struck before his.

Only July 15th he texted me that he was leaving for the Maccias Islands to spend time with the puffins and that there would be no way to communicate with me. Offended, or hurt, I asked him why or with who or when I’d hear from him next.

His response, his favorite Royal Tennenbaums quote, “I can’t even begin to think about knowing how to answer that question” was the last of our mutual communication. He committed to removing me from his life and on January 1st, over five months later, I accepted that we aren’t supposed to be friends.

A Year in Review: The Umbrella Theory

My days are, at times, excruciatingly long. I never find myself at day’s end wondering where it went. I am acutely aware of every passing moment. Some are more enjoyable than others, of course. But still, time passes slowly.

Yet, years fly by for me. In fact, I have no idea where the last few went.

My theory on this occurrence, which I believe is a contradiction, is called The Umbrella Theory. It separates simply and neatly into two parts.

A. Looking backward at the year, what one sees are the peaks of umbrellas established along the way. Each umbrella marks a period (as little as a second or as long as a fortnight) of great light or great rain where I have had to set up a milestone umbrella; either to protect myself from wet, icy pelting or joyful blindness. When looking back to review my year, I don’t tiptoe day to day through each month. My mind jumps to the last umbrella. The last incident or event that I feel defined the year. I jump and hop like stones across a creek, perhaps spending time to capture the fleeting motion that existed there at that spot.

B. Forward motion through time I think of as either searching for the next great point of light or rain, or time spent hoisting up the umbrella. Both require patience and effort. Not every moment is branded into the brand.

Therein lies the difference in my backward years and forward minutes.

With the Umbrella Theory introduced I’d like to take some time, first, to look back at umbrellas flagged for friendship upheaval. This was a year of great traumas and greater accomplishments. But nothing so dramatic occurred as my changing friendscape. I underwent a major change with the four closest friends I had starting at the beginning of 2008. (All umbrellas hoisted at those times were to prevent the rain.)

There is redemption to come, however, as old faces and new faces stepped in position to catch me from my fall.

But bad news first.

I’ve broken the first four into two parts:

The 15th will address New York City’s loss of Maggie, my best friend (April 15th) and my loss of Jeffrey, a first love (July 15th).

Families will address my loss of Owen, a little brother and Mia’s (my oldest friend and kindred being) divergence from a life path I thought was stone laden.

As all four elements are emotionally draining, I’ll take my time in getting them posted, but each will shed insight on not only me, but interactions between close friends.

And from then on, I promise birth, light, social anecdotes and humorously disastorous Dodger antics from the past year.

A Taste: The Pear, the Quarry and Paul

I wanted, very much, for a year-in-review to be my first blog post. Well, I haven’t finished it. Too much has happened, too much needs to be said… but first, digested.

This is my favorite bit of writing to date, “The Pear, the Quarry and Paul.” Enjoy:

There are certain moments, cast in such specific light, that trigger a phenomenon that I’ll struggle, now, to describe for you.

It’s a process of reinforcement, of bolstering the mind and soul. Without proper understanding it could be confused as duplication or rehashing, even nostalgia. My argument is that of something more.

Where to begin? A description of the inciting events? A clear explanation of the passage that precedes this one? As time is a theme of this piece, we will begin here and now.

The only fruit I ever crave is the pear. I more regularly indulge in berries; blackberries or raspberries. But it is the pear that, when I am reminded of and pursue my want for, I am most greatly rewarded. There is a familiarity there, some unrememberable association from early childhood that allows me to simultaneously walk through many times and places. To relive sweet, life-rich memories. A multitude of Davids finding happiness at once, over the fields of memory. I, now, sit with the slices – silvery, green, a wet cream opal – of this pear, but with it I travel.

With this idea of the pear, let us now travel.

In the tumult that was college I took my best friend home for a weekend. She had been and continues to be, my rock; Diamond hard, as rare as an emerald, more valuable to me than either. My treasure.

Somewhere between Danbury and Westport we ended up at a mansion party with throngs of my then, still childlike, younger friends: physically beautiful, mentally free, high school attending princes and princesses. I was drawn to them, and back to them, by their ability to both capitalize and squander their exquisite powers of body and privilege.

Drunk on a bottle of Cristal, belonging to someone’s absent mother, cheers erupted around us.

“To the quarry! To the quarry!”

Swept up on wings of debaucherous adventure and Connecticut-style rule breaking we piled into cars and pursued. I remember nothing about the ride save for sitting backward in the trunk of Volvo station wagon and starred sky.

Twenty or so of us parked along the road beside a forest. In the almost hushed tones of paranoid drunks, we spread the warning: entering private property.

We commenced with a winding hike through the moonlit silvers – turning evergreens into still lifes, trapped in the mangled arms of deciduous neighbors.

Every so often we would lose a couple to a shrub, and after a questionably long, late night trail tour, we found the quarry.

With a fringe of onlooking trees and a cliff face rising opposite our position, we stood on the gravel shore of a mirror of the sky.

As a true representation of youth, we sought to destroy it. Quickly we stripped. The true adventurers, shoeless, ran through the trees making their way for the cliff. Maggie and I ran straight for the water and with all the force we could muster shattered the plain of the mirror, over and over – rippling the land and sky into waves, plunging through cool waters, crystals, time both our own and time belonging to the forest – to the family that carved out the quarry, to the rain the filled it and the ground water that fed it, to those that did this before us, to the animals that drank from it – traveling so fast through space and time we touched the event, or the creator that provided it, this mass, with life. All in a moment. There were thousands of smiling Davids, all held within me. This one vessel touched every great summit. More importantly, and the point of this exercise, a new me was created: one who will always walk happily through the quarry with Maggie.

I pull you now to time just before the pear.

The tumult is far greater, far more real than anything experienced in college. My struggles have deepened, and with them, the stress carried in my jaw and the recession in the light and set of my eyes. My ability to make justified assumptions or envision days beyond the moment I live in.

But the pear and the quarry visited.

This isn’t turning into a love story. It remains a life story, mind you.

I introduced Paul to a world I walk in, sometimes, like a prince. There, Le Royale, none the less, I was surrounded by people – and I say this without ego and a genuine lack of truly knowing why – who have made efforts to covet me. People who’ve made clear a desire to both fuck and date me. People, who I suspect, like me because I am still mysterious, because I withhold from them. Because I reject them, holding out for something different.

Again, without ego or exaggeration, this night was difficult for them and none hesitated to let me know.

My crime was showing vulnerability. With Paul, others cease to exist. The backdrop and supporting cast smear like a priceless painting left in the rain, with only its subject – him – so beautiful that the elements themselves are scared to touch.

Carelessly drunk and mildly addled by the treatment I quietly underwent at the hands of others, I danced with Paul. With ego, I do say that three ladies all commented that we were some version of the best or most adorable dance couple that they’d seen. I was equal parts disturbed by plans I overheard about “dividing and conquering” us, and at peace being there, at peace, with him.

With that as my set-up, we fast forward to the crux. The climax. The pear.

The bathroom window was open. The lights were off. The tiles glowed silver, the same light that bathed the quarry, only years younger. (If light, as I suspect, can age.) The same light that glistens in the nectar pockets of my pear now.

Thick, warm clouds of steam rolled out the window – sailing four stories down, dispersing in the air, delivering his scent to as many lungs, human or not, in every corner of the world. He mixed with the air and settled with the sea.

His skin was the tone and texture of marble. He was the moon.

I was naked, not yet in the shower. Self conscious. Terrified. Not wanting to destroy the picture. I don’t recall ever seeing anything quite so beautiful in my entire life. His posture. His proportion.

And when it all became to much, when life brimmed over with an exquisite awe, and I stepped in, I traveled time.

To his quickened breathing minutes before and the release of cages of Monarchs in my ribs, fluttering about singing with the voices of songbirds.

And I was six, naked, collecting shells on a sandbar with my father steps from our hotel in Molokai.

I was looking at myself, in Paul’s eyes, when we first met.

As life continued to pour forth I revisited first love and first kiss. I drove alone through the hills that nourished me as a young artist.

I was dancing around the fire pit in Thailand, wearing my robes, kicking up sand, covered in sweat and soot and dust, stomping my feet to the musical instruments our villagers had crafted. Flailing my arms, undulating rhythmic and tribal and as the surreal reality of that memory pushed my very limits of happiness, I was in my imagination.

Paul and I were naked, running through mossy forests of mythology. Younger. Boys. Spirits. Of the trees and of the water. Powerful, especially in our pull over people. Devilish, oft times unaware of why or how. The world was new, but we were timeless. And he smiled.

So we kissed. Then and there, in the present of the shower. I was not surprised to discover that his lips were as cool and soft as ever.

My pear is gone, but inside me right now, you will find a David eating it, a David at the quarry with Maggie, and David with Paul. In each of them, you will find a silver imprint of unknowable better versions of me.