Telephone, Part 2
'American', Part 2: Dad, you can skip this one | Chapter 12
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February 2023 - Jack
Here, in this space, you are mine. Here, you are a fixture in the same world I occupy. We are safe, and I don’t worry, and whatever distance there may be is reconcilable. But when you leave, you are no longer mine, even as I say and you say that you are; you belong to the world out there, and I am not of the same space, no longer certain that we are safe or that we are even “we,” because it is a world of infinite possibilities, and amongst infinity, I am so few.
I thought, before, that your departure left me in despair because I missed you. But in truth, I realize now that I despair because I am afraid. I know my own strength but I can never truly know yours. I know that whichever world I enter when I leave your presence is not likely to tempt me away from you; and I know that the worlds I am not a part of, the spaces and times that are free from my reality, can be unrelentingly cruel, can take love from a heart they do not know, can take love from eyes that cannot witness. I know that no cruelty may ever be allowed to find you through me, but I only hope that you can say the same.
When you leave this space, I become a memory, even as I live so intently with your promise in my heart. So long as I am not with you, I am the past, hoping also to be the future. It is not because I don’t trust you, but because I have known this world to tempt, to fault, to coerce, and to kill, and I suffer the delusion that, so long as I am there, I can ward off the universe and all its actors; but so long as you are without me, I cannot be sure even of the breath in your lungs.
Forgive me for the weakness in my eyes as I close the door behind you, and for the mourning in my “goodbye.” Forgive me for fear that is stronger than my faith. It is merely love, which makes me withstand all the forces that have ever known or hope to know you without me, and which makes me cower like a child in the darkness of my own mind as I watch you walk away.
September 2023 - Jay
“I’m gonna break up with him. I’m gonna block his number.”
My friend stared at me in silence, sizing up my idiocy before he spoke. “You’re gonna break up with him over this? You don’t even want to see what he says?”
“He’s supposed to be the safe guy. He’s good, normal, and healthy. If he’s gonna hurt me, then there’s no point in seeing this through!”
“What if he just fell asleep?”
“It’s 9:30! All I know is, he went to a work party, at a bar, with other women, women who have good jobs and gym memberships, and now he’s not answering his phone. What the hell am I supposed to think?”
“Well…If I were gonna cheat on a girl, especially after an event where she knows I’m gonna be around other women, I would probably do my best to text her and act like everything is normal. I definitely wouldn’t be ignoring her if I was trying to get away with it.”
I glared at him, my heart still wanting to constrict like a python to silence anyone who merely mentions cheating. A few seconds pass without breath as my brain cross-examines my thoughts.
The devil’s advocate wins - “Well, maybe he’s done with me. Maybe I was never important to begin with. Maybe he’ll just never text me again. Maybe he got drunk and now he’s showing his true colors, and in the morning, when he’s sober, and tries to call me back, I’ll send it to voicemail and block his number.”
Every time you called and he didn’t answer, he was with me.
“All right. If that’s what you think you should do.”
But that doesn’t satisfy me either. Someone needs to stand up for him, and it can’t be me. He’s a good guy. He wouldn’t do that. Maybe he died. Maybe I should call his roommate and see if he made it home or not. Terrible idea.
“You’re letting the past get the best of you. Don’t do anything tonight, see what he says tomorrow.”
I walk back into the bar to sit at my laptop, and start writing furiously. The bar plays a Styx song, and my vision is taken over by a memory of the last guy that I loved dancing to it. There is exactly enough alcohol tunneling through my liver for the mystic side of my brain to whisper that God played that song to remind me - You were supposed to love him. That’s what I felt the first time I met him, and it’s what kept me wholly devoted in six months of him pushing me further and further away, though he was the determined one at the start.
If my intuition could be so wrong, it only made sense to proceed in the opposite direction: utter logic.
On our first date, I said to the new guy, with as much disinterest as I could muster “Well, how do you feel this date went?,”
He responded “I’ve had a nice time, but you don’t seem to be enjoying it.”
I retorted flatly, with a sourpuss “I just don’t see that we’re compatible in any way.” To which he replied smartly “Well, let’s have a second date and find out.”
That was the first step on a slow journey of learning to love, and tonight I intended to end it over one unanswered call.
On the subway home, I determine that I’ll let him call me, and then tell him exactly how horrific an offense he had unknowingly committed. His understanding alone wouldn’t be enough for me to trust him again - the next week would be spent gathering evidence to prove that he had met another girl tonight; evidence that the seed had been planted for him to replace me with her, the imaginary tech girl my brain conceived as the glorious opposite of me.
Every time you called and he didn’t answer, he was with me.
The next morning, he texts, as if nothing at all had changed.
“You scared me.” I thought you were dead, or worse.
“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” A response so casual, my mind couldn’t process that it was sincere. I tell him as much.
“I said it won’t happen again, and it won’t. You’ve told me why it bothered you so much, and I understand.” Cut and dry. He didn’t accuse me of being a burden or of overreacting. He didn’t blame me for being anxious the next few days.
This was my lesson learned. After a whole life of loving troubled men, this man, who I thought was absolutely, underwhelmingly ordinary, was the only one to say “I heard you. I’ll act accordingly.” Only now could I see that having love and loving are very different acts.