Flat tire before I was even out of the state, can you believe it? I thought I was going to beat that letter to you, but now I have my doubts. Maybe if I just drove straight through: it's only 25 hours from here, and the mechanic said I'll be ready to go first thing in the morning. I could make it, but I'm about as good at fighting sleep as I am a boxer. It probably doesn't matter anyway. Chances are just as good that you shred the letter before reading it.
I called you this morning, before I put the last of the boxes in the car. I tried your parents place, hung up right before the fourth ring. How many times in your life have you been walking away from placing an unanswered phone call, and had the phone ring right back at you? It's like an orgasm, or someone bursting a paper bag right next to your ear. It was bill collectors, the same ones that called two months ago, still trying to sniff out the last tenets of, what has just become, our old place.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Work in progress, untitled, rough, part of larger epistolary work
(Excerpt of larger work in progress. No edits yet.)
Cynthia,
I read that book you were always telling me to read. Out of Boston, bound for NYC, I propped my knees on the back of that threadbare Fung-Wah bus seat and I just tore into it. It was the first book I'd read in months, the only Salinger I'd read at all, except for that one story about banana fish, and I guess I liked it all right. Only problem was, I wasn't even halfway through before I started to notice the things that you had pulled from the pages to line your life with. It became obvious to me all at once, like cracking a code, and the epiphany sent me flipping back through read pages, just to make sure I wasn't imagining things. After that, I wasn't reading a novel, I was trying to work off the dust of a mirror that held your reflection.
When I finished the book, I spent the rest of the ride staring at the ceiling, and seeing your face up there. There was a woman next to me, substantial proportions squeezed into a brown glove of a dress, who kept trying to get me to talk about what was wrong, fancied herself my mother, but I wasn't interested in talking. I was talked out. I was everythinged out. I had gone to Boston three days after you left, shacked up with one of my ex's from high school to try and get you off my mind (if you ever read this, I suppose hearing that will make you jealous, you raging hypocrite, you), and decided to come back because, after just a week, she started picking up my vocal mannerisms and, since I've been talking like you for years now, the whole thing just became too much to bear. When I got off the bus, I spent a full minute blinking in the spring sun.
I'm not staying long. Being one of the few people in New York insane enough to own an automobile, and, at that, a full sized van, has the singular advantage of facilitating hasty get aways. I'll be leaving in the morning. Today, I spent hours immersed in the ruminative monotony of packing boxes, making an exit plan and trying to figure out why you lent me the damn book in the first place. Sure, it's been your favorite thing your whole life. It was on your bedside table in the dormitories, when we were still in school, and when we got our own place after graduation it moved to the plastic crates we used as bedside tables 'cause we couldn't afford real ones. You probably bought a new copy to fill up whatever's serving as your beside table now. What I mean to say is, I guess I should have read it a long time ago, but the thing is that you never asked me to once, not in the whole two years we were together.
In fact, I remember a certain blizzard that locked us in our rattrap apartment for three days last year. I was going nuts for something to do, so I picked it up and set down to read it but you took it out of my hands before I even got past the dedication. I remember, you took it and said, “I know this is going to seem unreasonable, but now is not the time for you to read this.” Your reaction took me aback, at first, but I let it go, easy. Joked around, said, "Well, if that's how you feel about it," and then went and smoked a cigarette on our fire escape. It was something to see, the way the snow swallowed that iron ladder only two steps down from the landing I perched on, even though we lived on the second floor.
I didn't understand it then, but now I am far more confounded as to your intentions. Cynthia, darling, you abandon me and run to Texas, but you leave me the book. Why? In hopes that, once I found so many allusions to the text in your life, I would write you off as a charlatan and let you go? That I would suddenly find you disappointing and unoriginal? Darling, if your life is just some movie adaptation of a book, then it's a loose one. A reimagination, to give the accuracy of your interpretation the most credit it deserves. And that's no slight to you. You did a brilliant job with it. It's just that, however much you feel like you're indebted to your influences, your work is still unmistakably original.
Anyway, the point of this is to say I'm coming to Texas. I know that you told me not to, but I'm not listening. Even if it's only one more time, I need to see you. I'll explain why when I arrive. After all, if I could do otherwise, there would be no point in taking the journey to begin with. I'm mailing this letter to your parents' address, which is also the first place I'll come looking for you. I have some confidence that, with economic matters as they are, you haven't been able to find your own digs yet. But who knows: you have friends, you have ingenuity. Regardless, it's a place to start.
I hope I beat this letter to you for my sake. There is some concern that, upon its receipt, you will run from me.
Love, despite everything,
Michael
Cynthia,
I read that book you were always telling me to read. Out of Boston, bound for NYC, I propped my knees on the back of that threadbare Fung-Wah bus seat and I just tore into it. It was the first book I'd read in months, the only Salinger I'd read at all, except for that one story about banana fish, and I guess I liked it all right. Only problem was, I wasn't even halfway through before I started to notice the things that you had pulled from the pages to line your life with. It became obvious to me all at once, like cracking a code, and the epiphany sent me flipping back through read pages, just to make sure I wasn't imagining things. After that, I wasn't reading a novel, I was trying to work off the dust of a mirror that held your reflection.
When I finished the book, I spent the rest of the ride staring at the ceiling, and seeing your face up there. There was a woman next to me, substantial proportions squeezed into a brown glove of a dress, who kept trying to get me to talk about what was wrong, fancied herself my mother, but I wasn't interested in talking. I was talked out. I was everythinged out. I had gone to Boston three days after you left, shacked up with one of my ex's from high school to try and get you off my mind (if you ever read this, I suppose hearing that will make you jealous, you raging hypocrite, you), and decided to come back because, after just a week, she started picking up my vocal mannerisms and, since I've been talking like you for years now, the whole thing just became too much to bear. When I got off the bus, I spent a full minute blinking in the spring sun.
I'm not staying long. Being one of the few people in New York insane enough to own an automobile, and, at that, a full sized van, has the singular advantage of facilitating hasty get aways. I'll be leaving in the morning. Today, I spent hours immersed in the ruminative monotony of packing boxes, making an exit plan and trying to figure out why you lent me the damn book in the first place. Sure, it's been your favorite thing your whole life. It was on your bedside table in the dormitories, when we were still in school, and when we got our own place after graduation it moved to the plastic crates we used as bedside tables 'cause we couldn't afford real ones. You probably bought a new copy to fill up whatever's serving as your beside table now. What I mean to say is, I guess I should have read it a long time ago, but the thing is that you never asked me to once, not in the whole two years we were together.
In fact, I remember a certain blizzard that locked us in our rattrap apartment for three days last year. I was going nuts for something to do, so I picked it up and set down to read it but you took it out of my hands before I even got past the dedication. I remember, you took it and said, “I know this is going to seem unreasonable, but now is not the time for you to read this.” Your reaction took me aback, at first, but I let it go, easy. Joked around, said, "Well, if that's how you feel about it," and then went and smoked a cigarette on our fire escape. It was something to see, the way the snow swallowed that iron ladder only two steps down from the landing I perched on, even though we lived on the second floor.
I didn't understand it then, but now I am far more confounded as to your intentions. Cynthia, darling, you abandon me and run to Texas, but you leave me the book. Why? In hopes that, once I found so many allusions to the text in your life, I would write you off as a charlatan and let you go? That I would suddenly find you disappointing and unoriginal? Darling, if your life is just some movie adaptation of a book, then it's a loose one. A reimagination, to give the accuracy of your interpretation the most credit it deserves. And that's no slight to you. You did a brilliant job with it. It's just that, however much you feel like you're indebted to your influences, your work is still unmistakably original.
Anyway, the point of this is to say I'm coming to Texas. I know that you told me not to, but I'm not listening. Even if it's only one more time, I need to see you. I'll explain why when I arrive. After all, if I could do otherwise, there would be no point in taking the journey to begin with. I'm mailing this letter to your parents' address, which is also the first place I'll come looking for you. I have some confidence that, with economic matters as they are, you haven't been able to find your own digs yet. But who knows: you have friends, you have ingenuity. Regardless, it's a place to start.
I hope I beat this letter to you for my sake. There is some concern that, upon its receipt, you will run from me.
Love, despite everything,
Michael
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