Listening to: Blonde on Blonde.
Reading: This is Our Youth.
Quote: "You were never very kind / And you let me way down every time / But oh, what can I say? I adore you."
Some of my old photographs are scattered about Shane's apartment. They're print-outs of scans made from the original prints that Merideth is carrying around with her in BC. I didn't expect to see these photographs. (I hate being reminded that I've taken some good pictures, because I haven't taken any since.)
There is a collage of pictures taped to Shane's bedroom door. Among them is a shot I took of Lewis. It's black and white. He's sitting on the edge of Penny's bed. It's a medium close up. His body is turned slightly away, looking over his shoulder. He's wearing that dark brown leather jacket-- you know, the one that looks really good on him. Yeah, you know the one. His hair's longer, in that perfect mess it always used to be. There's the sharp line of his eyebrows, his strong nose, his chin, his jaw, those lips of his that are somewhere between stupid-boy and pretty-boy. With that curve at the ends. He's looking just above the camera, where my face would be. He's smiling a little bit. His eyebrows are scrunched in the middle, really cool, like he's in pain, like he's making some kind of sympathetic/apologetic/tough love gesture. It's the saddest he's ever looked. But it's the coolest and hardest, too. His look says, "I'm sorry baby. What else could I do?"
He apologizes, says he loves me, forgives himself, and denies me all at once. And I thought I had the upper hand. I came into the room, having caught a fucking bus back from the hospital because he'd abandoned me. I figure, he'll see my bandaged nose and that will be enough. But it isn't. He sits on the bed and looks at me. There's movement in his face for a moment when I walk in and then it's gone, as if a flock of birds had suddenly shook free and taken flight from a wire leaving it bare and motionless. So I stand. He sits.
"What should I say?" he says.
"Don't say a thing." I say. The camera's on the tripod in the corner and I get it and start focusing on him. "I'm just going to take your picture. So just sit there and don't smile."
Merideth has been standing in the hallway with KC. KC says, "Don't, Curtis." He anticipates a fight, but Merideth knows better tonight and she takes him away.
I circle Lewis a bit, not really snapping any shots but looking at him through the camera. He's just sitting there like he's exhausted and can't bring himself to sit up, to look at me, to say anything. So I take my face out of the camera and stand there.
"You can't do this to me," I say.
He looks up. He gives me that look. He smiles. I take the shot. I was sure, in retrospect, that it would never turn out. I wasn't even sure where the camera was pointing, if he was even in the frame. But when I developed the pictures, there he was. Sitting there. I thought I was taking the photograph to punish him, to remind him what he ought to be sorry for, to make him apologize. But what is it really? It remains. It lingers. It surfaces among clusters of pictures when I least expect it. It's scattered around my life in the most subtle places. It's the perfect, most emblematic moment of who Lewis was and continues to be:
"I'm sorry baby. What else could I do?"
Listening to: A mix tape circa 2000.
Reading: Our Lady of the Flowers.
Quote: "I am 32 flavours and then some."
I was throwing out some boxes when I found an old portable stereo with a cassette inside. Rather than reading the label I simply pressed play. I haven't seen you in almost a year but I recognized your voice instantly. Suddenly you were there. Playing piano and singing. Suddenly you were there. The same thing happens when I smell this particular hair wax that Janna has... summer, ozone, coconut.
I try to tell myself that you were never very important if we could have simply fallen away from each other like we did. But my body knows better. You've been coded in an important way into the emotional significance of things in my world, my senses, my memories. Something happens, something in my limbic system is triggered, and there you are. Are you haunting me? I don't think so. I think I just miss a friend.
It happens sometimes when I'm drinking tea, holding the cup in my hands. Or if I'm standing in someone's kitchen, if it's bright, if something's on the stove, if there's a radio in the corner. When I'm standing in my driveway, there's a particular pattern to the wind (a kind of crescendo, a sudden warmth, a blast of gravel from the sidewalk, and then cool again) that reminds me of you.
I've found that most of the pictures I have of us don't really register much feeling. At first that scared me. I thought I didn't care anymore. I know the feeling of looking at someone and suddenly realizing I no longer care about the person. It's an insidious feeling. It feels like pennies in my stomach, like water inside my bones. But it's just that the pictures were always so contrived. We always set out to achieve something specific in taking pictures. The photographs don't mean anything, but sometimes something else entirely will summon me back to the feeling of holding the camera in the blue Honda, your feet on the dash board. That parking lot by the soccer field, barely hidden from the highway by the trees, it's beautiful. I've been there with Karen, with Shane, with Shannon a few times. There's something about its stillness, the hazy quality of the light there, the way the wind rolls like little dogs playing over the grass. And the smell of dirt. Something in the smell of the sun and wind and gravelly dirt that makes me think of you sometimes.