My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

Day three in New York isn’t entirely conducive to compelling writing. It just isn’t. Kim is off to visit some friends in Brooklyn. My assistant, Katherine, and I go to the top of the Empire State Building, eighty-six floors. The view is gorgeous, but I have a head full of reverie. This isn’t new to me, I often feel lonely around people. I get lonely and contemplative. I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember. So, I’m there at the top of the Empire State Building thinking about being lonely, thinking about why I am the way I am.

There’s this woman back home, and I’ll be honest, I’m totally mad for her. It took me far too long to tell her so, and I wonder where we’ll go next. I’m looking down at the city, thinking about seeing her again, thinking about being closer to her. Given the last three years, given what happened in those three years with my last relationship (it went quite wrong), it’s difficult to want someone so badly and admit it. It’s also a little difficult to wrap my mind around the idea that she could feel the same way about me.

I start singing an Elliott Smith song, silently to myself. Part of it goes, the part I’m thinking about, “you’re still here, but just check to make sure. all you aspired to do was endure. you can’t ask for more, ask for for more, knowing you’ll never get that which ask for…” It’s a line that I don’t want to be true for myself, but sometimes it fits too well.

I’m mostly really nervous about the next evening, about seeing Ira Glass and Anaheed, his spectacular wife. I haven’t seen them in almost a year, I’m worried we’ll go to dinner and they’ll suddenly realize that I’m not at all interesting. I worry that I’ll suddenly forget how to carry on any manner of conversation. I’m neurotic. it’s, unfortunately, my way.

Aside from the reverie, we have a nice lunch in Bryant Park with some friends from This American Life. I wonder if they notice I’m a little out of it.

That evening, Katherine and I walk down Times Square. The lights are bright and pretty, the opposite of how I feel inside. I wonder if I’ll be able to fall asleep, or if I’ll sleep and have bad dreams.

We’re all a story. We wake up in the morning. We have jobs, and hobbies. We have friends, families, lovers, and people we don’t love. We do good things, we do shameful things. We make choices, our choices affect one another. We’re happy, and we’re not. Our stories are connected, they’re collaborative, we don’t have total control over the plot that makes up life. When we die, it all adds up to a story. We get summed up in an obituary, by the people left who remember us.

Lately, I think a lot about Kurt Cobain, Elliott Smith, two people who I completely admire as artists and writers. Two people whose stories did not end well. I like them because I feel like I understand them, because I see myself in them. It’s not that I said to myself years ago, “those guys are so amazing, and one day I want to be a talented, depressed, suicide to be.” They haven’t shaped me into this disaster that I am. I don’t want to kill myself because I listened to Old Age, or Between the Bars. Kurt and Elliott haven’t influenced me, but I think they mirror so much of me. I’m ending up like them, and it scares me. I can’t find a way to be happy, or content. People tell me I’m a great writer, but I don’t necessarily feel good about it. I love writing, I know I have skill in my craft. It’s just that I’m not writing the way I want. I spend so much time writing nothing because I can’t turn off the noise in my head. When I do write it’s often so dark, but I can only write what I feel. I write so I don’t drown in that darkness, because I need somewhere else to put it. I don’t like feeling these things that I put into words so well, it’s exhausting. I almost never feel comfortable, or at peace. At best, I’m a fuck up who’s good at writing about being a fuck up. Elliott has a line, “they took your life apart, and called your failures art. they were wrong though…”  I write because it’s what I adore, I think it’s something I’m meant to do, but I’m rarely proud of anything I put out. People tell me I’m an amazing person, but I’m not. I know I’m not. I’m a screw up who’s just so tired of everything. All the liquor and drugs in the world couldn’t fix me. Kurt and Elliott saw the same thing. I see the way my story is going, and I don’t know if I can write my way out of it. I’m starting to feel tired of trying. I’m tired of lonely and empty, but maybe I’m too far-gone to be anything else. I don’t know.

Maybe I’ll die having nothing I ever really wanted, and that will be the story of me. The only reason I keep trying is because it might not.

So, for day two in New York, we walk three miles from our hotel to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s a long walk, but it’s spectacular. In a cab, you don’t really get to feel the city. New York city sidewalks are so alive with people. People walk by reading books, listening to iPods. There are guys selling silk pashminas for five bucks on practically every street corner. The buildings are so tall, and often very ornate. New York makes me feel small, but never lonely. We pass by Bryant Park, people are sitting outside at a quaint little cafe. Kim adds some Bryant Park gravel to my dirt collection, for some texture. We pass by St. Patrick’s Cathedral, it’s the epitome of holy-looking. We walk, and walk, and walk some more.

The Met is a gorgeous museum, home to thousands of years of art. I’d been before, but it’s nice to see again. If you’re in New York, you pretty much have to visit the Met. It’s scripture. I stroll through the Arms and Armor collection, all the swords, axes, heavy suits of plate-mail. I see suits of armor for horses, which strikes me as kind of sad. People have spent so much time and effort developing effective ways of killing each other. People fought and died under all that steel, today people kill each other with the push of a button. It all seems stupid. I also laugh at myself, at my proclivity toward turning absolutely melancholy on a dime. I mean, I’m surrounded by beautiful art, and my first thought is, “everyone who created this beauty is dead.” I do that a lot, I always feel the weight of passing time, of how everything ends.

After the Met, we walk to Central Park. I once rode through the park in a horse-drawn carriage with the legendary actor, Van Johnson, which is a long and odd story that I’ll leave a mystery, but I’d never been through the park on foot. Central Park is a little surreal, it’s magic. Manhattan is so chaotic, it’s steel, and concrete, and noise. Central Park makes all of that chaos vanish, the contrast is astonishing. Massive skyscrapers and frenetic energy, then green trees and peace. It reminds me of someone back home, how I feel around her. Walking through Central Park, the sky shifting from blue, to orange, to starry black, it hits me how much I love her, how much I miss her. I want her there with me, walking through the cool night air. I ask Kim to add more dirt to my tiny liquor bottle.

As it gets dark, we start seeing dozens of little green flashes in the bushes, lightning bugs. So much of why I like my friend, Kim, is that we both get a kick out of the silliest little things. Kim sees the lightning bugs and she’s nine years old again, she’s catching lightning bugs, giggling as they glow in her hands. Watching her, I kind of miss talking. I want to say how glad I am to have met her, how happy I am that she’s my friend and that we’re in this crazy city, on this crazy trip just like we talked about in that dive bar. I could alphabet it, but that’s not the same. So, I think it to myself and know I’ll write it later.

Being that we’re in Central Park and it’s dinner time, I decide that we have to dine at Tavern on the Green. I’ve seen it in so many movies, I want to experience it first hand. It’s as posh and decadent as I imagined it. it’s perfect. We sit out outside, the trees are covered in twinkly white lights, waiters bustle about serving food. It’s nice to sit and relax awhile, we’ve walked so many miles. As we’re leaving, Kim is good enough to top off my dirt collection, I wonder if anyone else has ever spirited dirt away from Tavern on the Green in a miniature vodka bottle. I doubt it.

I needed a break from writing about New York, so…

Dress is one of my favorite PJ Harvey songs, it so beautifully describes loneliness and playing a role to fill that loneliness. We go out. We put on a pretty face, a pretty dress, but desperation can so often be behind it. Dress is all about the desperation bred from loneliness. That dress is pretty, but it’s uncomfortable, it’s something shiny to cover something dark. It’s exhausting to wear, but we want to be noticed, to be wanted, to be loved. So, we wear that dress because emptiness is so much worse than the weight of putting on a facade. Death is better than emptiness, loneliness, so we put on that dress and go out dancing. I find it frightening that the dress does get to feeling so damn tight, it does get filthy, nights do end empty, and after enough time, wearing that dress starts to feel pointless.

So, we’re trying to catch a cab to Union Square for our first outing into the city. We’re staying in Times Square, it’s probably too far to go on foot. We’re walking up and down the sidewalk, no takers. A woman comes up to us, she has that “I want to say something, but I’m not sure what to say,” look on her face. She walks up and says, “Hi… weren’t you on tv?” I say, “yes,” with my eyebrows. Last year, I was on an episode of This American Life. She says she loved the episode, that she’s so glad to meet me. I never know how to feel about these sightings. Part of me is always flattered, it’s definitely fun to feel like a minor celebrity. Still, deep down I know I’m just a nobody. I still haven’t accomplished anything that I consider important. At any rate, my fan says her goodbyes, and we actually find a cab.

Union Square is sort of a trendy hippie area. There’s a lovely park, and on this particular day there’s a huge outdoor market. People are selling fresh fruit, vegetables, freshly laid eggs. There are bad artists selling bad art, and some good artists selling good art. We’re walking by these vendors, a woman screams, “Johnny Depp! Hey, Johnny Depp!” Being that I don’t talk, he was my tv voice. I’ve been celebrity sighted twice in one day. We walk around the park a bit, it’s gorgeous. The sun’s hot on my face, the whole day’s ahead of me. Before leaving Union Square, I have to take care of a little project. In Kim’s purse is an empty child-sized Absolute vodka bottle. I have this person who couldn’t come with me, so I figure I’ll bring my favorite parts of New York back to her. Dirt, in a tiny empty bottle of my favorite liquor. Kim scoops up some Union Square dirt, we’re on our way.

Now, on this our first day in the city, we don’t really have a plan. We’re sort of just wandering around, taking in the city. This suits me fine. I don’t want plans, or schedules. I don’t want a list of action items. I’m in a beautiful place, I want to be lost. We walk from Union Square to Washington Square, somewhere a little more historic, less offbeat. There’s a big fountain in the middle of the square, little kids are splashing around in the water. I have this coin in my wallet from the 1800s, a fellow gave it to me a few years ago as I was leaving a movie. He said it was good luck. I have Kim toss this coin in the fountain, hoping she doesn’t put out some little kid’s eye. I make a wish and wonder if the coin could be that lucky. As we’re leaving, Kim adds a little more dirt to my collection.

We wander more. We stroll Broadway. We pass by Grace Church. It’s a gorgeous gothic building, it looks so sacred, so holy. I wonder if God’s there, and if He minds the people eating pizza on the church’s front steps. I also wonder if He minds me having Kim stuff consecrated ground into a dead liquor bottle. We walk to this trendy area of seventh and eighth street known as St. Marks Place. St. Marks is all thrift stores, coffee shops, bars. We walk to the East Village, to one bar, the Beauty Bar. It’s a vintage beauty salon, the bottles of hair-dye replaced with bottles of that liquid that makes life feel spectacular, if only for a little while. There’s a lovely woman sitting down the bar from me, we make eye contact a few times. She always smiles. I buy her a drink, give her my card. I tell her, “one day, I might be a famous writer.” It turns out that she’s also a writer, we talk a bit. It’s always interesting talking to strangers with the alphabet, and not my computer. You learn right away how smart and patient a person is, she’s both. I know I’ll never see her again, that doesn’t matter. I bought her the drink, I’m talking to her for the experience. This trip is all about creating experiences.

A few months ago I’m sitting in this smoke-filled dive bar with my friend, Kim. We’ve just met for the first time outside of the internets. So, we’re talking surrounded by a host of drunk people, she tells me that she’s been wanting to go to New York on a train, but nobody wants to go with her. Now, at the time, I’m fairly functionally depressed, but that night, I’m having fun. I like the idea of a trip to New York. I have this Things to Do list, and a post-trache trip without my family is one of my Things to Do. I figure, if I still dig Kim’s company in a few weeks, maybe I could figure out a way to go. I’d need a new assistant. My current best assistant, Sarah, would be gone soon enough, definitely before I could throw a trip together.

Skip ahead to early July. I’m still friends with Kim, I have a great new assistant, Katherine, who does everything I need perfectly, and I’m having nothing but trache troubles. Between late-June and mid-July, I’ve had four different traches in three weeks. One particular morning, I’m coughing like crazy, I’m not breathing well at all. I have to hike it to the e.r. in an ambulance. I’m in the e.r. thinking about a certain woman, how much I love her, and if it matters. I also decide that when I get out, I’m going to text Kim and tell her we’re hopping a train. I get out, I text Kim, we book tickets.

On July fifteenth, Kim, Katherine and I are set to be on a train bound from Tampa to New York. That morning, my family flips out a little bit, they stage something like an intervention, the consensus being that I don’t know what I’m doing, that I have no business trusting this assistant that I’ve had for just two months, that I don’t really know how to take care of myself, and that if I go to New York alone I’m going to die. None of this surprises me. I also find it a little ironic, because in my head I’ve been calling it “the suicide trip.” I mean, I’ve had nothing but trache trouble, I kind of feel like shit, I don’t really know what to expect, but I don’t care. I just keep thinking, fuck it, I’m going. It’s not that I want to die on this trip, at all, but I’m not going to let the simple fact that I could die stop me. I feel like I know what I’m doing just enough. Eventually, thanks to some counter-intervention from another friend, Celeste, people calm down. Celeste has a hatchet tucked under the front seat of her car, which pretty much says that she’s ready to handle any situation, especially zombies. I get on that train.

The ride takes twenty-seven hours because of delays. The biggest delay being that before the train picked us up in Tampa, it hit and killed a fellow. We start calling it “the murder train.” At around midnight that first night, I ask Kim and Katherine, “have either of you ever seen the movie, The Midnight Meat Train?” Kim says, “oh God, don’t talk about that.” I laugh, quietly. I type an old-school offline letter to someone I’m thinking about who’s getting further away as we go North. I write…

So, right now, I’m on the train, not online, but writing to you anyway. It’s night time, the car’s dimly lit, people are asleep. I’m lying on a cozy cushion, on the floor, it’s a nice big area by a window. I’m all lazed out under my fluffy red blanket.  The motion of the train under my back is the sort of thing that relaxes me.

I’m falling asleep now, thinking about you.

I’m definitely glad to be away from Tampa, but not entirely. I figured I’d get on the train and think, “later, Tampa, it’s been real!” I do think that, but not as strongly as I expected. I haven’t missed anyone in this particular way in a long time. It’s a good feeling, a good feeling mixed with melancholy. I think of Elliott Smith songs, and Aimee Mann songs. Songs about things that don’t work out the way we want. Part of me tends to think that Elliott and Aimee are entirely right, while another part of me just won’t accept that life has to suck. This is why I’m a ridiculous romantic, and why I’m in love again, and why I’m on a train that’s crawling toward New York and my possible demise. I do things on the off chance that I’ll experience something good. I’m a dark optimist. I fall asleep. it’s a really good sleep.

We get to New York late on the sixteenth, the folks at Penn Station are quite nice. A fellow hauls our forty-seven bags to street level, we start trying to hail a cab to our hotel. Now, the thing about New York City cabs is that they don’t seem to like picking up wheelchair people, or perhaps it’s just my crazy looking chair. Either way, getting a cab takes some doing, especially because my sort of cab has to be a mini-SUV, or specifically “accessible.” Oh, and I forgot to mention the luggage. So, we need two cabs, at least one big enough to fit me, my assistant, my vent, and my chair. Two cabs finally stop, both big enough to suit us. This is when we get our official “welcome to New York.” There’s this woman behind us, a resident of that particular street corner. she’s swearing at random passersby. We’re getting into our cabs, I get the hose temporarily disconnected from my neck while my vent gets loaded into the car. The woman screams, “oh my God, you pulled the tube out of that child’s throat!” She’s screams, “get that child out of here!” She screams, “I’m calling the police!” Kim tells crazy lady to relax. Crazy tells Kim, “I’m gonna burn your car.” We’re definitely in New York…

New York is the sort of city where people seem to say whatever’s in their heads, it’s something I love. For example, I don’t walk, or sit up. I have a hose running from a machine connected to a hole in my throat. I mean, I dress nicely, I don’t drool or stare blankly into nothingness, but it’s definitely not common to see a fellow like me wandering about the streets of Manhattan. However, in Manhattan people’s reactions are abundant and rather extreme. I get, “holy shit, what the Hell is that?” I get, “oh my God, what happened?” A woman screams at us, “oh my God, he’s dying! why do you have him out like this?” A fellow says to me, “Jesus, I hope you live.” A fellow says to his friend, “no, man, that’s not real, it’s a doll.” I actually get the doll comment a lot, but it’s usually from drunk or high people. I guess in New York, I even look fake to sober folks. I think a lot of people think these things, but New York is the sort of city where people say whatever they want, to whoever they want, out loud. New York has no filters, no censors. Everything’s so “out there.” New York’s harsh, and friendly, and ugly, and gorgeous. There’s nothing fake about New York, it’s so totally alive.

New York’s the sort of city that says, “I could kick your city’s ass.”

So, right now, I’m in New York taking care of one of my Things to Do. I’m at the Fairfield Inn in Times Square, after a twenty-seven hour train ride. I’m going to write about everything, but not yet. For now, I’ll note that I’m with my assistant, Katherine, and my friend, Kim, and we’re staying in room 1407. 1407 is a lot like 1408, it’s astonishingly cold, the faucets run with blood, concierge calls to encourage suicide, but the door doesn’t lock from the outside. So, it’s still an evil fucking room, but we can leave whenever.

I wonder if I should try to post nightly, or just at the end of everything…

Ever since I choked on some pineapple juice, died, and woke up not being able to talk, it’s been very apparent that nothing lasts forever. Girlfriends leave, and come back, and leave again. You meet new people, they feel close, and they don’t, and they do again, then they don’t. You get high, and it fades. Liquor feels amazing, and then it doesn’t. Alanis Morissette once wrote, “you will learn to lose everything, we are temporary arrangements.” There’s a line from Heath Ledger’s Joker, he says, “everything burns.” Heath’s dead now. Everything does burn, nothing lasts, aside from possibly the written word. Still, the people behind the words don’t last. We’ll all be as dead as Heath eventually, and there’s not a Goddamn fucking thing we can do about it. Aside from suicide, our ends aren’t welcomed, or genuinely expected.

Everything burns… it’s such an honest thing to say. The idea that everything burns is frustrating, at least to me. Aside from the times I’ve wanted to quietly slit my wrists, and those times have been genuine, I don’t want to die. Really, I want to be happy. I want to write well. I want a woman to love me, and I want to fall asleep holding her. I want the life I have in my head. The idea that everything burns makes me a little insane, it crushes me, and it drives me. It’s why I write the way I write, it’s why I try things that scare me, it’s part of why I have it in me to drink too much, it’s part of my depression, it’s why I revel in new experiences. Last night, I looked into a woman’s eyes and said, “I really want to kiss you.” Saying something like that is kind of terrifying, but I can’t not say those things, because everything burns. I know everything burns, and I tend to make a lot of decisions because of that knowing. Right or wrong, it’s what I do. I let people carry me up flights of stairs at goth clubs, I drink like mad sometimes, I flirt like crazy, I write like there might not be a tomorrow. I do these things because everything burns, and I can’t not know it, not anymore.

I might be astonishingly physically fucked up, and I’m going to burn, but you know what? You’re going to burn just the same. Life ends for everyone. That’s why right now is important.

So, the folks at Bedlam Publishing were kind enough to pick up three of my flash fiction pieces, and what a shock, they’re about suicide, sex, and religion. Those are a few of my favorite things…

Hit their site, read my flash along with some other great fiction.