Quenched

You say you know the color of my soul (but do you know what it hides, what it contains?); when I tell you that I write about you, sometimes, you laugh and say I must be joking. And perhaps it just wasn't a true enough statement -- maybe everything I write is in some way about you, or to you -- maybe everything for half my life has been shaped in small or larger or invisible ways, by you. And there is always the thought of one last time, one more goodbye, that makes certain things almost impossible. In some ways (I do not tell you this) you save my life over and over again.

First, we meet at the train station -- and I tell you, later, sitting at the table in that cheerful grimy bar, that we always seem to meet at train stations, points of in-between and not-quite-anywhere. We realize, just then, that it has been solidly 15 years, now, that we have known each other, and you half-shout Champagne! (and you even laughingly ask at the bar if they have any, and of course they do not, so we sit and drink tea and swim in the pools of each other's eyes). It is quickly done; you have to go, and I walk through the icy snow-covered streets with my arm in yours, wait with you until your bus pulls up, and touch your cold cheek with my warm fingers as you turn to walk away.

Later, my last day in the city, you call me in the afternoon and ask me to come meet you nearer your eventual evening rehearsal destination. (You never found your lost suitcase full of wooden recorders, $15,000 lost, more or less -- well, less the money, more the flutes themselves, and you have some persistent small-but-irritating injury affecting your left ring finger, that makes playing the violin painful and very difficult. When I ask you, later, what you will do if it gets worse -- or does not get better -- and you can no longer really play, you whisper that you have no idea at all.) So I take the bus to a depressing little almost-suburb of the city and meet you at the depressing little Commercial Center -- grey and harshly-lit, fluorescent -- and the only thing in the whole area, really. We sit in a small pizzeria where I drink coffee and watch you eat an early dinner.

And you think of me as a shaman, a healer, a mystic -- always, still. And either you simply do not know me at all, not even a little, never have...or you see something, here, that I cannot. That, perhaps, I am a different thing -- something better -- than I can imagine. (Or maybe, I am like that when I am near you, and it is just that simple. You are magnetic, drawing the metal shavings of something better, something good, from somewhere deep inside me, pulling them, briefly, to the surface.)

When you finish eating, I take your hand in both of mine, and kiss each knuckle, the joints of every finger. I press my thumb gently against the contours of your hand, your wrist, massage the palm. The places where things come together, pause, and split off apart again. And you smile, eyes closed, and sigh. It is difficult to find the words for things -- or there are things that, to say them, makes them smaller or less true or simply less. I tell you that it is like slowly dying of thirst, a week or more without a drink, and someone comes and offers you three drops of water. Which does nothing, of course -- three drops of water are less than nothing, and you are still dying; you are going to wither away, become dust. It is almost worse than nothing at all. (And these stolen, so-quick hours -- one, two, and then a year goes by -- that is what they are like. Drip. Drip. Drip.) I raise my eyes to your face, and halfway smile (you pointed out to me that usually, when I smile, it is with the right side of my mouth only, except when it is a smile disguising something else, when it changes to the left -- but almost never both sides at once). As far as you are concerned -- or you-and-me -- I have been slowly dying of thirst for years.

You watch my face for a long moment, trail a fingertip against my cheek, and screw up your eyebrows into a question, But, surely not -- with all of your other relationships, your friends and lovers and everythings, surely there are many filling up your glass? And I look at you, and laugh. But nobody else is you, and one person cannot replace another. There are all kinds of water, in the end. And then we are quiet for a long time (or for no time at all).

You have to go, after what seems like an instant, and you say you'll call me when your rehearsal is finished, and we stand in the hallway of this depressing plastic strip mall of a place, and embrace, and I take your face in my hands and your press your forehead against mine, and then you are gone, and the dull and empty ache is something too far inside me to reach or even name; outside, it is coldly raining, and I tilt my face up to the sky and let it mingle with my tears. And the bus ride back into the city feels like years.

Later, though -- nearly 11:00 that night -- you do call; you are nearby, close to the train station. Am I around? So you come to my hotel, up to my room, and we sit next to each other on the bed for several minutes, talking, until I take off my glasses and lie close beside you, my head on your chest, over your heart (but your sweater scratches my skin, and so you take it off so I can rest against the softer shirt you have on underneath). We stay still like that, your hand on my shoulder and mine tracing paths up and down your arm; I feel you slow your breathing down, closer to my own, I listen to the message of your heart. We talk, low-voiced; we fall in and out of sleep or almost-sleep. I trace the details of your face with the tips of my fingers, memorizing and re-sculpting. I tell you, finally, how you are the first person I ever loved -- not something romantic or sexual or anything, but truly loved, something infinite and real. You unlocked something for me, inside of me, you formed a base. After that, I was no longer the same person. You say, quietly, When you were 15? And I make an affirmative sound into your chest. I listen to you breathe. You know, when I first saw your picture, before you came to stay with my parents -- it struck me, deeply. I can't explain it. It was, for me, a sort of archetype -- you were. It's funny. And all of that before I'd even met you. Before I knew... and you trail off, ...before I knew how good you are for the soul. We stay there, in the room, with time kindly stopped around us, wrapped around each other gently. You say several times that you should go, But the more I sort of fall asleep, the more I want to stay and sleep for real. You sit up, and I rub the back of your neck, and you stretch out flat on your stomach and look at me questioningly over your shoulder, so I laugh and sit on top of you, and massage your back and shoulders for a long time. I can feel you dissolving, bit by bit, and you make small sounds in the back of your throat with every breath. Finally, I stop, and lay beside you once more, and you roll over and wrap your arms around me tightly. You have always been a magician of massages (and then, almost to yourself, And of caresses too, of course).

I asked you, when we were in the restaurant, to tell me the name of the artist -- the old man from Lithuania -- who lived near your parents, and your eyes lit up as you said his name (a name that rolls so smoothly off the tongue, how could I have forgotten it?). He died, you know. And I ask when, and you say it was five years ago, or six. I smile gently -- for he was old 15 years ago, already; he smoked and drank like life depended on it. I adored him, so completely -- and you say, the memory dawning suddenly, Oh, we went to his house one afternoon, I had forgotten! And indeed, your parents were away, and the two of us alone for several days, and you took me to his house for coffee one afternoon, abruptly rushing off to a rehearsal, telling me I should stay for dinner so I wouldn't be alone. When I pointed out that I hadn't been invited, you smiled and told me not to worry, that I surely would be. (And so I was, and I ate at that big kitchen table with a dear, dear old man, his paintings looking down on us from all the walls.)

You have always loved how I used to work in a sex shop -- a topic you bring up at least once every time we speak. This time, though, you then ask me if I am still working for a travel agency. And I stare at you blankly for a moment. A travel agency? I've never worked for a travel agency. You make a face, open your mouth to say something, stop, and start again. Are you sure? And I laugh, loudly. Pretty sure. But then, who knows what I am really doing, when I'm not paying close attention. (When you whisper to me that you don't know what you'll do, if you can no longer really play anymore, we are both quiet for a minute, and then I tell you, Well, you can always come work at my travel agency. The pay isn't great, since it doesn't actually exist, but the hours are fantastic. And your laughter wells up from somewhere deep inside.)

In a month you will be 45; you haven't really changed at all. Your age shows a bit in the moments around your eyes, but nothing more. (You say, That isn't so bad, then, is it? And I tell you that it isn't anything, good or bad, but just something that I noticed.) Your eyes, which are the warmest warm thing, through which I would give anything to pass, like mist, like walking through a mirror.

It is nearly 4:00am when you finally pull on your boots and leave, for real. We kiss, gently, and I touch your cheeks, your temples, your lips, your chest. You hold me tightly against you, your hand on the back of my head, and I watch you walk down the hallway before I close the door to my room again. (So much unsaid, here, where words have no place and time flows in strange, uncertain ways.) I hold the touch of your skin inside my fingertips, the rhythm of your heartbeat deep within the center of my chest. I can hold these moments in my cupped palms like something solid (like something more real than any solid thing).

And for the first time in more time than I can possibly remember, I am -- however briefly -- no longer thirsty.