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.

You’re a Ghost & a Gentleman

Malbech mixed with a handful of Cinnamon Toast Crunch tastes like a mulled cider. Camel lights and a Diet Coke together, taste like dirt in the mouth after a fight.

I had spent the day cleaning and waiting and drinking various concoctions. Mia had called six times before I had risen to put me on the task of getting us into the Whitney Art Party. She believed that I, having just worked with Blake Lively, a host for the evening, could finagle something.

I showered, considered our options and yielded to the easiest. I emailed Blake, almost knowing that she wouldn’t respond to an assistant from a film that she no longer worked on.

For most of the day I was infatuated with the idea of the party. Art, hors d’oeuvres and an open bar were the perfect reason to get dressed up. I wanted to be a young socialite. I found the lifestyle enviable. I also hadn’t really eaten in quite some time and loved the idea of free, especially when others were paying four hundred for admittance.

To take some time away from my obsessive computer searching, I went house ware perusing with my roommate. We found little of interest.

When we returned I opened more wine, knowing that I wouldn’t be entertaining any time soon. I had been saving it for when Jeffrey came to pick up his duvet and return my belt. I hadn’t heard from him in a few days, so I thought it was time to drink for me. I snatched a handful of the nourishing sugary carbohydrate cereal, and something compelled me to put it in my wine.

I put on a size two model cut Diane Von Furstenberg black mini, organized my apartment and called my mother to tell her I was cross dressing in expensive outfits. She laughed, told me to watch the Celtics play tonight and asked that I call her tomorrow. I set up furniture and looked through paperwork, then put my pants back on.

With the Malbech finished I grabbed a Diet Coke and I then went to my front stoop.

A boy had been passing by for a few days now. Normally he would make a comment. Still out there smoking? Don’t you do anything? Do you live in that building or on those stairs? This time, he stopped.

He introduced himself as Kenneth and sat a few steps below me. He was between fifteen and seventeen, clad in baggy shorts, nearly white socks and athletic sandals. His hair was almost fair. He was too young to smoke, but not too young to flirt with every woman that left my building.

I asked him to be nice. He told me he was just letting them all know how beautiful they were. It would make their day. I thought along the same lines so I let it continue.

He took out a dime bag filled with a decaying lemon lime sort of weed. He emptied its contents onto a dollar bill folded width wise. He then asked me to hold onto it.

We were quickly joined by a bartender from a corner dive. He was double both our ages and toting a large nylon bag of laundry. He placed it down and he disappeared with Kenneth. I sat on my steps holding the boy’s pot and watching the man’s laundry, almost eagerly awaiting their return. None of my neighbors came or went.

A few minutes passed before Kenneth returned and reintroduced himself as Killah.

I was an 88 now, or at least, that’s what he told me.

I asked him what an 88 was and he said it was the gang that he started in order to stay out of other people’s gangs. My eyes went to my boat shoes, up my skinny jeans, stopped momentarily on my white cardigan with no undershirt, my kerchief, brass ring with African sea glass and finally I took off and analyzed my hat. It was a Boshi-Basiik, made of felt. It was in the form of a Panda bear, with the eyes resting on my forehead and two felt ears sticking up. As if he understood that I didn’t feel like I fit the gang scene, he told me, “you’re an 88 for life.”

I asked him what our gang did.

“We don’t rape. We don’t kill. We just make money.”

Naturally, I wanted to know what my role would be.

“A lookout, a cover. You’re a ghost and then you’re a gentleman.” Something about those words struck me. I knew I was both, but I enquired as to what he meant.

“Cops, see, they’re our enemy. They are the biggest gang in the world. When they see me they think what’s going on here? How does that little nigger have money? They don’t see you like that. They don’t even see you. And then maybe when you get into some shit, then they’ll see you and say sir, what’s going on here? Is everything all right?”

“Me, I’ll either have a bullet in my head or end up back in jail.”

“You’ve been?” I asked.

“I’m out on bail. Armed robbery. It wasn’t. It was a shady drug deal.” He laughed.

He took his pot back from me and rolled a blunt. He then proceeded to light it up on my front stoop. He offered me a hit, but I told him I only do prescription drugs.

We then sat in silence while he smoked, occasionally making comments at people being walked by their dogs. For a minute I managed to convince him that the elderly Asian woman who was watching us from across the street had a thing for him.

When all was said and smoked he told me he was going to kill me that night.

I told him many people would cry.

He said if I could name five people before he could count to ten he would spare my life.

“My mother.”

“My roommate.”

“Maggie.”

“Mia.”

“Owen”

“Owen’s sister.”

He stopped me. I could have continued for hours.

“Four people would cry if I dropped dead right now. But at least my funeral would get my mother and my father out to see me.”

I asked if they lived in the complex down on the other side the block as well.

“The projects,” he said, “no, just my aunt.”

After some silence and an odd exchange of expressions he said goodbye. I went upstairs, suspending my hope that I would get into the Art Party – this year.

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.