I wanted to play it by ear, but this was not what I had planned on hearing.
To what looked like her surprise and confusion, I told her the truth, I explained to her how I was feeling, about how I still, of course, love her. I told her that I’d thought a lot about the possibility of getting back together if we found that that was what we both wanted. We talked and talked, and not just about us, but about everything; sitting together, next to each other, on those concrete steps under the light of the warm singular streetlamp. She seemed taken aback by the things I had said, and so we got to the point where we said we’d talk about this more after she had time to process all of this new information. She said she’d worked so hard to get to a place where she was okay not being with me, and she was ready to be friends. I told her that I did too, but then I started to miss her more and more each day. She just wanted the time to think about things, and with that time and this new perspective, she’d see where she stood. If we wanted to be together then, that was the answer.
I know in my heart that I was missing Lila, and not just missing having someone; she didn’t know which I was feeling, and so she didn’t just want to be the girl to fill a void. She wanted time, and I was fine with giving her time. I’d give her anything to just get the possibility she’d come back. I wanted so desperately to go back. I just want to hold her hand, I want to go on a drive to the coast, and sit and know we’re in love.
We walked back inside and sat on the steps outside her door and chatted a while more, this time just about the day, and her friends, and her internship, and my trip.
And then there was a short silence, we stared at each other closely, she let out a laugh.
“What?” I asked.
“Nevermind,” she said like she always said.
“What is it?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing.”
“What?” I asked again.
“Oh, well, I’m just feeling a bit horny right now.”
“Really? Well, what do you want to do about that?”
She asked the same question back at me.
“Well Lila, what I want and what’s probably best are two different things.”
I could tell she felt exactly the same way. She smiled with only the corners of her mouth and looked at my lips.
“I’d like nothing more than to kiss you right now though,” I said.
“Well, talking about it is a good way to not do anything, and I—” I put my lips to hers, and that stopped her talking. She opened up to me once more, and it was absolutely exhilarating, like the first time we’d kissed. It felt like I had just found something that had been missing.
Scientifically, a breakup does the same things to a person as drug withdrawal. It affects every part of the brain and the body. There is real pain and real heartache. And there is real relapse. That’s where that desire for one more hit comes from, one last hook-up. I was deep in the throes of girlfriend withdrawal, and sex is the methadone of a love addict.
We sat and laid on those stairs, grasping each other, grasping at what we had, and we kissed deeply and passionately. I felt like I was floating almost, time stood still, I felt the most right I’d ever felt, like this was what was missing, what I’d been waiting for. It felt pure and righteous, and right. And then it was over. She drew back and apologized, and I did the same out of impulse, we’d quickly call it a mistake, and a lapse in judgment, and say that it changed nothing of how we felt or of what we talked about. She insisted.
We talked a short while more, she asked if that was an act of wanting something or wanting each other, and we said we didn’t really know. But we did agree that what we’d talked about before was right, and we’d just have to see. She needed time.
And then we went back inside sometime after 4AM, and went to our separate beds, and slept.
Thinking about it, it’s never the first kiss that’s the best, but it’s always that first kiss back. After a breakup, after a break, after time or distance or circumstance, the unexpected, anticipated, taboo kiss. And it was.
. . . . .
Day 19. We woke up, well, I woke up, Ken slept a little while more as I stared at the ceiling. We got up slowly, and then the three of us set off. We walked to the Metro and took it to Upper West Manhattan and walked up through China Town, west through Little Italy, and down through SoHo and into the artsy districts. Of all the places we’ve been, I could see my life there the most. Everything here is great. The people, the electric yet still relaxed atmosphere, the buildings, even the graffiti, and Lila.
We had brunch at Russ & Daughters, I had a bagel, and I had Lila’s leftovers like I always did, a few bites of chocolate babka. The whole morning might as well have been one of those beautiful New York montages from an episode of Louie. I was happy, I was experiencing Lila’s city with her, and I was in love with the world again, through the eyes of a girl I’d try to love again.
From the deli, we walked Lower Manhattan to the Freedom Tower and Memorial. We didn’t go into the museum, those two holes in the earth and the names and the memories were more than enough. I have to say though, that was one of, if not the most, appropriate and well-done memorials I’d ever seen.
We walked to the financial district, then to the tip of Manhattan and stared across the gray, storm-swept waters to look out at Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. We walked to the dilapidated Chelsea, and I thought of all the great loves that had happened there, and of the time I loved Lila as Leonard Cohen crooned softly on her record player. And she’d tell me again that she preferred Lana’s rendition. We walked on the High Line and settled in Bryant Park. Ken wanted to do that thing where you pay one of those old guys and play chess with them, and so he contented himself doing that as well as staring at the park’s carousel like the Kenneth Caulfield he is. Lila and I laid on the grass next to each other.
She asked if I was feeling any differently.
“No, I’m not. Today was really nice with you, Lila.”
“It was,” she said. She asked what it meant to be friends. We’d been close all day, and it was so nice. She said she wasn’t ready for more, and I thought of what an idiot I’d been, and what an idiot I’d be if we couldn’t get back together.
“I want to be with you, but if I can’t be with you, I want to be friends. I never want to lose that. Ever,” I tried.
“Alex, it hurt so much when you broke up with me,” she said. When we broke up, I thought but didn’t say, “and now, Alex, I just don’t know, it took so long, and it was so hard to move on, I just don’t know if I can go back now. I don’t know if it’s just one of those things I’ve shut off and can’t turn back on again.”
We laid in the grass next to each other until she pulled out her phone to respond to a text, the screen turned away from me.
“In that first month after the breakup, I cried almost every night, and there was this song I’d listen to and think of you and what all had happened,” she said as she hit play, holding her phone to her chest.
The song was “All I Want” by Kodaline, and as it played, tears fell down the sides of my face as I laid there next to her listening to it. “Peace” by O.A.R. was that song for me, which I listened to in that last tumultuous month of our post-talk, pre-actual-breakup relationship. We laid there on the grass next to each other watching the sky as the song played from her phone. I’ve heard that every human needs seven significant touches per day, I reached for her, and she wasn’t there.
The sky was growing dark, and the park and city were once again illuminated by lesser lights. We made our way through Times Square and into Grand Central Station and took the Metro again to her place. I liked New York public transit, it really felt very democratic, everyone rode it. Lila said her sister wou
ld be more than happy to have us another night, and we could leave in the morning after a good night’s sleep, but I said we wanted to keep moving. I really did just want to put my mind back on the road, it would’ve been too hard to stay.
When we arrived at the apartment, Ken said goodbye to Lila and walked to the car. I walked with Lila. I hugged her, and held her, and looked at her, my eyes welling.
“Drive safe,” she said and pecked me on the lips for an instant that I wanted to last forever. When she drew away, I chased after her lips again, but she drew back again and whispered, “just one,” as the elevator doors opened behind her.
“Bye,” I said as she stepped inside the elevator. We just stared at each other, and I watched her as the doors closed. As soon as she left my sight, I wept. I pressed my hand against the cold metal and wished that that wasn’t it. I collapsed to the ground, and sitting there I heaved deep sobs trying and failing to catch my breath. They were the kinds of tears that were hot as they left your eyes, the sobs that hurt the corners of your jaw. But I caught my breath, dried my face, and I just fucking drove.
And you’ll find her somehow you swear, somewhere tonight you run sad and free until all you can see is the night.
. . . . .
Day 20. We woke up parked in front of a Connecticut rest stop and drove on to Boston after McCafe coffee and some breakfast burgers. Boston was a cool city, a really nice mix of historical and modern, and they like beans. We drove past BU, and through Harvard, stopping to check out the boathouse, and that was about it. So begins our journey West.
Heading into Pennsylvania, we stopped at a kids park and sat on the swings and played on the jungle gym for what seemed like at least an hour. I walked barefoot through the grass. It seems to me that grass has gotten courser over the years, more irritating than relaxing to walk barefoot through or lay on. Or maybe I’ve just started to notice it more.
You know, sometimes I try to think I’m an adult, and sometimes I feel like I’m the only adult in the room. But it’s times like this when I really forget that I am. I forget how much I’m terrified of growing old. I guess I’m just stuck somewhere in between the two. You know, if I had to say, Lorde’s “Ribs” is what I could call the song of my generation. Lorde, Halsey, TØP, there’s a new generation of young artists giving a voice to this generation, and I hope they can help change things and people all for the better.
And thinking of any of this just made me miss Lila all the more.
And we kept driving; stopping, exhausted, thirty miles out of Scranton.
. . . . .
Day 21. Three weeks on the road. We drove into Scranton, The Electric City (because of all the electri-city), which was a sadly underwhelming city considering how much I cried during the finale of The Office. Jesus, I’m probably making it sound like I’m just some emotional wreck of a guy that cries all the time. I’m really not, but then again what would be wrong if I was? I hate the phrase ‘be a man,’ I really fucking hate it. Ken thinks being a man is shutting out feelings, bottling them up, not letting anyone else in, and I used to be like that because that’s what I was told was right growing up. It’s what I was forced to do at home, when my dad would shut me out and tell me to get over it and my mom would always qualify my problems with her problems, or tell me how upset what I had to say made her. ‘Be a man and take it’ I’d tell myself, ‘suck it up and deal with it.’ It’s honestly the most damaging thing for young boys to hear, and for everyone else too, Jesus, just look where it almost left Ken.
We drove on to Ohio, through forest and farmland, the landscape of the country once again changing. We ended up at the Rock and Roll hall of fame in Cleveland by twilight, closed, but we looked around anyway. The story of Ohio is the story of music coming from nothing, so many bands, so many people who just had one dream and kept at that dream. It was absolutely inspiring to be there. Power to the local dreamer. I just wish I could have that conviction. I just wish I had something to be convicted about. I don’t know now what I have without her.
We parked in a Walmart parking lot, Ken chased some geese there, and then we slept.
. . . . .
Day 22. Cleveland to Burton, a sleepy, one-street town in the middle of Amish Country. They did have a Walmart though, so we knew we’d spend the night. We walked around the main drag, a perfect American small town, except this one had buggy lanes, the Walmart even had specific buggy parking; can they even shop at Walmart? In town you could immediately tell an Amish person apart, if not for the clothes then by the bowl cuts and the beards, even if they were wearing ‘Yankee’ clothing, as one of them told us it was called. Our dirty jeans and t-shirts were Yankee clothing. To the Amish, we were the outsiders, and as everyone has the tendency to do, they had a name for those outsiders. To the Amish, we were Yankees, to the residents of East Jesus we were from Babylon, and to New York we were from ‘Cali.’
Smoke from trash fires billowed into the sky above the tree line at the edge of town. We had some local cuisine at Mary Yoder’s Amish Kitchen and called it a night, I was just getting tired of driving, I was just getting tired. I felt like I was running, but I didn’t want to run anymore.
I’ve been thinking about Lila so much since we left New York. I know I can’t do this anymore. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m not the one who’s in control this time. And I want her, but now she’s the one that’s decided to not be together. I hope that this isn’t it, I hope I haven’t lost her. I’m jealous, and I shouldn’t be. I wanted her to have fun in New York, and I still want her to, but the thought of her in someone else’s arms, the thought that she could want someone else, it just makes me feel physically sick to my stomach. And that’s not fair to her for me to think that. I don’t want to feel this way, all tangled up in blue.
And despite how I feel, there’s still that gnawing doubt somewhere in the back of my mind that goes back to the reason we broke up; it was so I could have college, and so she could have New York (and then college). It’s just that, right now, I could care less about that, I could spend the rest of my life with her. I want her to be happy, but I want her too, I just hope that those two things can be the same.
. . . . .
Day 23. We slept in as much as we could, something that’s always a bit of a challenge when you’re sleeping in a car in the parking lot of a busy store. Only today the clop of hooves woke us up instead of the screech of tires or the honk of horns.
We drove past farmland and factory and through Detroit. Through the abandoned factories, the decrepit decay, and the wretched refuse, laid the city, that proud, powerful city; still standing, still moving, in spite of a whole country that said it couldn’t. We drove down 8 Mile road, had 313 burgers at McDonald’s, and drove through a neighborhood that no one gets out of. Seeing the burned-out buildings, the boarded-up shacks, I kept thinking ‘people actually live here.’
We kept going up the glove, or the mitt, or whatever, to the tip of what I’d guess is the middle finger, Traverse City, where one of Ken’s uncles lived. It was a beautiful little city on the shore of Lake Michigan. Ken’s uncle, aunt, and toddler cousin were all very welcoming, they even offered up their washing machine for our use. I showered, washed my clothes, and sat down on a couch indoors, in a house. Wow that felt good. We had a quiet night in, this will be a nice change of pace, I thought. No alarms and no surprises tonight.
Ken and I each got our own beds, his in a guest room and mine in a cot in the basement, I don’t know if I’d ever been in a basement before, we don’t really have those in California. I showered before bed and washed my clothes in their machine, and went to bed in an actual bed, and I was so incredibly comfortable.
. . . . .
Day 24. The family’s old, smelly, sad-eyed, big, gray mutt woke me up as he feebly climbed into the low bed
with me, I welcomed him though; he’s a good dog. The adults were long up and had already left for work, the kid already at summer school. I made a pot of coffee as suggested and fed the dog as instructed, and I sat on the couch and read from one of the books I brought. I knew it’d be a long time before Kenneth got up. At the risk of sounding old, I have no idea how teenagers sleep so goddamned much all the time. Lazy piece of shit.
When he finally did wake up, we drove up to the Sleeping Bear Dunes. We parked, left our stuff in the car and went to play in the sand in shorts. The big dune looming above us, towering and sandy, we made our way up, looking forward to rolling down. Ken said there was water on the other side.
“Okay,” I said.
Well, after an abysmal uphill trek, we made it, only to find more sand. So we pressed on. There was water soon, wasn’t there? Ken assured me of it. And we kept hiking, and the sand kept coming after each summit, and eventually, the sand just turned into rocks that were burning hot in the sun. And so, with nothing on my feet, no water, and no sunscreen, Ken started us on a hike that I anticipated being a stroll. It was an actual hike, we passed people using those double hiking stick things and CamelBaks, prepared assholes. Each next peak we thought, and he said, was the summit, it had to be. But it wasn’t, there was just another level after it that could only be seen from on top of the next peak. And it continued to be like this, a mountain you scale without thinking of size. Again, actual hiking people were doing the thing we were doing. I’m not one for melodrama, or maybe I am, but I was prepared to eat Ken in a heartbeat, I was dying. Five fucking sun-beaten miles of uphill sand and rock later we arrived at the shore, and I just kept walking until I was swimming. As Ken searched the shores for Petoskeys, I laid on the pebbly shore and simply existed, closing my eyes and listening to the waves wash up against the rocks, one after the next.
No More Dead Kids Page 17