crashing out

just at the part when rob’s running through the rain after the funeral near the end of high fidelity, i answer the phone. there’s a strange static silence, during which i feel something wrong. i sit up. and pause. don’t say hello again. she’s gone, his voice cracks. mute the tv. in the silence afterward, i rest my head against the palm of my free hand and rock slowly back and forth within this ephemeral space of time and emotion. glance up—feel guilty for smiling as he runs past the recognizable pace bus sign—decide then to move. i’ve no idea what to say. rather than fill up the empty space with meaningless questions or falsities, i pour a drink and listen to his slow guttural sobs. i try desperately not to cry along. fight off this sick desire to rush in his direction. grab the next flight out just to be there. to yell at. to hold to tightly. to put him to bed. a distraction. i don’t do this distant hurt well. i don’t do hurt well, period. finally decide—whisper, what can i do? knowing the answer full well: nothing. he doesn’t stop crying enough to say anything at all.

i find myself fingering through my cds. internally curse the fact that i’ve found moulin rouge in the led zeppelin iii case. finally locate the actual disc sitting in a pile of other music on top of my hard drive. we’ve still not said anything more. without regard to my neighbors, i put “friends” on to play. he sighs, stop it. i don’t wonder if he means it. i pull my legs up into the chair. rest my head against my knees. feeling helpless and desperately cliché. all i can think to do is play music. bjork’s sultry sad version of “gloomy sunday.” during which he begins to mumble. harmonize. dreaming / i was only dreaming. joni mitchell: “stormy weather.” and i can hear him moving. the sobs, less frequent yet still violent in nature. please don’t hang up, he pleads in tones of desperation i’ve not heard under his voice in years.

god fucking damn it, he shouts into the receiver and into what i guess is probably an empty dark room somewhere within the confines of his familiar spaces. and i thank god there are no cigarettes in this house. i can hear something crash on the other end. feel afraid. do you really love me?, he’s frustrated—angry. to the end, man. to and through all the fucking ends. because sometimes, fuck it, we all just need to know we aren’t hanging on out there alone.

instead of pretending like i’ve anything valid to offer, i read to him from golding’s free fall:

All day long the trains run on rails. Eclipses are predictable.
Penicillin cures pneumonia and the atom splits to order. All day long,
year in, year out, the daylight explanation drives back the mystery
and reveals a reality usable, understandable and detached. The scalpel
and the microscope fail, the oscilloscope moves closer to behaviour.
The gorgeous dance is self-contained, then; does not need the music
which in my mad moments I have heard. Nick’s universe is real.

All day long action is weighed in the balance and found not opportune
nor fortune or ill-advised, but good or evil. For this mode which we must
call the spirit breathes through the universe and does not touch it; touches
only the dark things, held prisoner, incommunicado, touches, judges, sentences and passes on.

Her world was real, both worlds are real. There is no bridge.

for a long time, we soak up the words. don’t say another thing.

hey, i say into this blank moment.
what?
all i know is that i’m lonely, i wail, as low and drawn out and throaty as i can manage.
and I need to be with someone tonight, he responds in his beautifully rehearsed way.
i put on the cd, terence trent d’arby’s neither fish nor flesh
and we pause for the songs we need to hear—i have faith in these desolate times, it feels so good to love someone like you, to know someone deeply is to know someone softly, he joins in for i’ll be alright, this side of love, attracted to you, and i wait for him to bring—i don’t want to bring your gods down—to life, and he does and i can tell he’s losing himself in this particular cd, a soundtrack to all the stupid times of our lives, i click stop when we arrive at . . . and i need to be with someone tonight, because it’s too much. and I know he’ll sing it if and when he can. he does later. after i’ve given up on music. curled up on the couch in my office under a heavy blanket. he takes liberty with the lyrics in ways that feel wholly and satisfyingly appropriate.

he says, you’re gorgeous in ways that i don’t think enough people recognize.
i don’t say anything.
i don’t deserve you, he says predictably.
stop.

i don’t remember, now, how the conversation ended.
and i try at sleep
feeling heavy with the weight of why people like us
try at love anway.