perfect/imperfect/love in retrospect
Someone once said to me, What's wrong with you? How come you're not married?
I said, It's a long story.
He said, What's the short one?
I said, He died.
The irony is, had he not died, I doubt I would have learned this about myself. They say marry your best friend, and I never would have married him. He said, I want to have a baby. I said I will never have your baby. He was too old, I was too young, but it felt like we'd known each other for a thousand years. I remember the conversation, sitting in his living room on a low to the ground beach chair he used like an arm-chair, and him saying let's get married and me saying, but I don't like you like that, I don't like you like that at all. Yes we are friends and yes we can talk together, but I want everything. I want the man, the myth, the romance. I want tall and broad and perfect and like you, but not you; you but more like screen idol you and less like who-you-look-like you, but still you who I can talk to you, who is my best friend.
I remember him saying, MBC (that's what he called me), what we have is rare, you don't know this, but I do. I angrily stormed out, and probably said something like, how dare you tell me who I am? You don't know me! But he did, and he didn't mind. He never got mad-- sure he had a temper-- but he never got mad at me, even when I was yelling. He would just laugh and eventually I would laugh and that would be that. It was as easy to miss-communicate as it was to communicate. I was too young to know this, but he was not too old.
This is not a sad, bad, terrible, tragic love story. When I first met him it felt like the love match of the century, true. But that was because I was in a highly altered state of mind. As I got clean and stayed clean (he already was clean, that's how we met), all that quickly faded and without thinking about it we went everywhere together. It was as they say, easy. Maybe it didn't feel so easy at the time, but having lived 14 years in the interim of his death, I look back and see how easy it was. He would tell a story of his brother Mark, who had died in the 60s. When they were little boys his mother once asked Mark, who was quite a dreamer apparently, "Mark what are you doing?" and he said with affronted 7-year-old wisdom, "I'm not doing anything. I'm just being." So we would often say to each other in regards to each other, "we're just being."
I had no appreciation for most of this at the time, and the time was relatively short. Four years and four months, but it felt much longer.
The story would translate into an impractical love swept Cinderella in diamonds tale of love worn female afraid to love lest it not be perfect, spending her lonely days in the tower, tossing rose petals out the window on the back story of imperfect love and tragic endings; except that is not the case_which is not to say I did not write exactly this for a publication several years ago about the clamors and questions of seeking unattainable love. The editors tacked on a stupid title which I hated and published it (and I would not do that again; a writer's misspent writing youth); and although I do think romantic love relationships manifest unresolved business in the human spirit, the purpose of this story has nothing to do with pining or moping or sad or destroyed or never again or why me, or never me, or when will he, or why didn't I, but simply to remember (or possibly to realize) this person.
It's not his birthday and it's not the anniversary of his death, but he walked across the screen of a dream the other day, literally just walked across in front of me, like someone who knows you are watching but is pretending he doesn't know you're watching. He was young and vibrant and vital, a Damien I finally realized I had always known in my heart, but never seen with my eyes. He was a young stallion heading for the hills, he was on his way.