Miggy
I loved all three of you so much
But it wasn’t enough to keep me alive
Today 7:52 PM
It’s good to see you.
“It’s good to see you, too.”
“I can’t believe you wore Timbs to Two Bunch,” he said.
“Oh god!” I reached down and yanked at the knots in the laces, I pulled them off as fast as I could, and stripped my sweaty socks off, and flung the whole mess into the corner near the door. I curled up on the couch so I was looking at him and he curled up to look at me. Between my toes: my own sweat, my own skin; the sweat in my armpits had dried up in the air conditioning into a salty film; I had such a living body next to his ghostly wisps.
“When I had a body again, I noticed I had a phone right away. At the time, I think I was just hands and a phone, actually. Which, like, some witch in their fifties should write some moral panic trend piece about how millennial ghosts are manifesting with phones. Anyway, I was drifting somewhere over Palm Springs, I could see the pool at the Ace Hotel, everybody partying there. If I could see that, does it mean I had eyes as well? Anyway, I texted you right away,” Miggy said.
“Why didn’t you tell me you had a body?”
“At first I was disoriented, like I was on some really strong edibles, and I was trying to figure everything out,” Miggy said. “I tried to text everybody important, Ezra, you, my mom, and only you were answering. You and Nozlee. And I thought, of course. You two always said you could see ghosts.”
“It’s how we met,” I reminded him. “We were witches together in New York.”
“You were witches together in LA, too,” Miggy said.
Sort of, yes, she’d moved and for a few days it seemed liked we’d shift into a version of our same closeness from New York, but then she’d met Ezra and started things up with him, and Miggy got pulled in, so instead of a twosome we’d become four. I didn’t argue this history with Miggy, not now, when I was getting used to his body again. He wasn’t bloody and hungry, he was as hot as he ever was, his muscular arms, his perfect face, the grace with which he held his limbs; he kept all his beauty in death.
“I found my footing,” Miggy said. “I figured out how to touch down, how to walk around on the ground, and I was getting ready to tell you to come to Palm Springs and find me, I really was. It was strange, though, because I didn’t regret killing myself, even though I felt this great sense of loss that I had given away my life. These contradictory feelings didn’t feel at odds with each other, they both just were. Okay. I wanted to be dead, I wanted to keep on being a ghost and hanging out with you. How could that all be true at the same time? I felt lost.
“Around then, I texted Nozlee to ask how you were doing and she was very, very honest with me.”
What could Nozlee have even said that would alarm him to such an extreme? “I had one bad weekend,” I said, “which is pretty understandable when your best friend suddenly offs himself.”
“You absolutely flipped your shit, you terrified everybody, and you definitely would’ve been 5150’d if Noz and Bea hadn’t come pick you up.”
“It absolutely was not bad.”
“The manager of the motel had called the cops. It was going to have happened.”
“That’s a badly formed sentence.”
“The sentence is not on trial here,” Miggy said.
“Why didn’t anybody tell me?” I asked.
“They thought it would make you flip again. Everyone gave you a lot of leeway to act out this year, Eve, and whenever there was a little bit of stress on you, you definitely acted out.”
“I’m like one of those 1950s women whose husbands send them to ‘institutions’ to treat their ‘hysteria,’ and then the doctors will only tell the husbands what’s wrong, keeping the probably totally sane-to-begin-with woman completely in the dark.”
Miggy looked at me, droll. “You overreact.”
“So what, conditions are dire.”
“When you react more obsessively and dramatically than the people around you, it can come off—it has come off—like your suffering is worse than everyone else’s,” Miggy said.
This was alarmingly similar to something Georgie had said to me earlier that day; it felt like a million years ago, and it felt like the exact same moment, echoing.
“I don’t think my suffering is worse than anyone else’s,” I said. “Anybody is welcome to be dramatic around me, I don’t have to be the only one.”
“It’s not like it’s 100 percent your fault,” Miggy said, still my best friend despite his death. “There’s no good way to react to a devastation, and you were all limping around, emotionally speaking.”
He reached out to grab my wrist, like he used to when we’d had serious or difficult conversations. This time, though, his hand went through me, unworldly. I was used to the non-touch of ghosts, but I ached for Migs to be able to touch me again. I tried to put all my longing for his dead body into my face, and I looked at him. He shivered; I didn’t know a ghost could shiver.
“You can’t leave Palm Springs?” I asked, but I knew the answer. Ghosts get stuck in places.
“Well it’s not as if I’ve tried,” Miggy said, vibes of it’s not that I can’t it’s that I won’t, protesting too much, avoidant.
What was Miggy thirsty for, here, in the sand outside Los Angeles? Did he hover over the gay white parties in Palm Springs and drip his ghost saliva, unnoticed, over the glistening bodies of the hottest twinks and daddys alike? Did he sit unhappily at Tonga Hut and Melvyn’s and the other historic Palm Springs bars, drinking in the depressive vibe of Old Hollywood and the desperate alcoholics it attracted? No, it had to be something that only existed in Desert Hot Springs. Was it rude to ask a ghost what kept them hanging around? I’d never before cared about being rude to them, or else they’d made their thirsts immediately clear.
What had Miggy wanted very badly when he was alive? He’d wanted his mental health issues to go away, the depression and the interlinked anxiety. When Miggy was alive he’d had panic attacks while he was driving, panic attacks at the Glendale Galleria mall, panic attacks at the gay nightclub Akbar; his anxiety never seemed to abate, only expand, and he’d wanted very badly to feel calm and serene. We agreed that the desert skyline, palms and prickly Joshua trees and cacti blossoming against the beige sandy grounds and the rich blue skies—that was serenity. He was dead, he was in the desert, his panic was gone.
“Why did you tell Nozlee and not me?” I asked.
“I trusted her to know I was here and continue the work of getting over my death,” Miggy said. “I worried you’d drop everything and move out to the desert and just, like, make that your life.”
When ghosts encounter the thing they are thirsty for, they transform, like Babs had done in Verdugo bar when I gave her the gift of really good lesbian drama; I didn’t want to see Miggy like that: ghoulish, animalistic. And perhaps, he didn’t want me to see him like that. That would make sense if it were true, but if there was anything I’d learned over the past forty-eight hours, it was that I didn’t have the first clue what anybody was ever thinking, especially when it came to what they were thinking about me.
“That’s something I would do,” I said.
“That’s remarkable self-awareness, coming from you,” Miggy said.
I guess it had been true that my lack of introspection had always been a joke among my closest friends. Eve would rather look at a painting than think about a painting, that kind of joking. I thought they’d just meant I had a keen eye. I guess everything means more than one thing at the same time.
“I’ve really grown up this weekend,” I joked. Miggy laughed, I was grateful.
If he’d had a body he would’ve hugged me, or knocked his shoulder into mine like a playful older brother, “You still mad at me?”
I wanted to say no. “Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
“I get what you did. And in my grief I’ve been selfish and too much to handle. You should be mad at me for snorting all that Cascarilla and being rude.”
Miggy waved his hand as if warding off smoke, “We already had it out about that, it’s fine.”
“Yes, okay, I’m just saying, this might be me being selfish again, but I’m a little mad, and I’m mad because I’m hurt, but that doesn’t mean I can help being angry.”
Miggy nodded, “Okay, I get that.”
I stuck my palm out again and he rested his ghost hand just above it. This would be our new way of hugging. We held our hands like that for as long a moment of a silence as either of us could stand, and I felt finally, for the first time since he’d died, like I was back in sync with Miggy, the way we’d been on all our good nights and days together when he was still alive. Together, simultaneously, our hands drifted away from each other and our faces turned towards the back glass door. Ezra and Noz were sitting in porch chairs next to each other. Ezra was leaning close to Nozlee, but not nicely, like he wanted to say something angrily directly into her space.
“So, they’re definitely not getting back together.”
“Definitely not,” Miggy agreed.
“I’ve spent this whole weekend being pissed at Nozlee for breaking up with him.”
“It’s only Saturday,” Miggy said.
“It’s only Saturday! Holy shit.”
Miggy left, dissolved into mist. Apparently he liked to float around a few feet above people and buildings.
Nozlee had been facilitating a conversation between him and Ezra all day long, and they’d all gotten a chance to talk things out with each other. I was jealous of the three of them, talking without me, even though Miggy assured me it had mostly been purging a lot of bad feelings. I wanted to be included, even when it was a negative experience. Too late, too bad. Miggy told me to tell Ezra he said goodbye, and I told Miggy that if Ezra ever forgave me, we could come to visit together next month. Making these plans made me feel really normal, like Miggy had moved to New York or something.
Noz and Ezra hadn’t yet noticed that Miggy had left. Ezra wouldn’t even see the change; they were still on the porch leaning forward in their chairs, arguing. I couldn’t hear them, the glass was good and thick. Nozlee shook her head jerkily and her hair fell out of place, and she absently, furiously pushed it out of her eyes. I wished there was something I could do to stop them from fighting, some magic words to restore the peace. Seeing them together like this, their anger towards each other like a lightning storm, I lost my last shreds of stupid hope that we could go back to anything like the way we were, on the good nights when it was the four of together.
The night we took the Adderall, we were talking so much fun nonsense and I asked Nozlee, “What’s a song you know all the words to?”
“ ‘Strange Powers’ by the Magnetic Fields,” she’d said immediately.
“Sing it for me,” I said.
She did, in a soft voice, not particularly melodic but beautiful all the same. The chorus went like this: “And I can’t sleep / Cause you got strange powers / You’re in my dreams / Strange powers.” When she finished singing she said, “That song reminds me of you, actually.”
Why hadn’t I asked her what she meant? She had been close enough for me to touch. Why hadn’t I thought of it since?
I walked up to the glass slowly but quietly, so I could get it open fast and hear a little of what they were saying.
I caught Nozlee hissing, “It’s not as if I was lying to you,” but they both stopped talking fast when I was suddenly there. Nozlee craned her neck to take a look in the living room behind me.
“He’s gone,” she said to Ezra. With me there, suddenly they were in cahoots again. I wasn’t used to being anybody’s common enemy, it was a bullshit feeling.
“He said bye, he said he’d see you before you left the desert, and I said I would text him for you whenever you wanted,” I said.
“Well, he could’ve stayed to say bye to my face,” Ezra said.
“It’s not like you could’ve actually said bye back,” I said, and the way Ezra’s face got so mad and his eyes got so sharp at me, I knew I’d made it all worse.
“He’s a ghost, okay?” Nozlee said. “You shouldn’t take offense, he doesn’t move in regular patterns.”
“Don’t take his side!” Ezra said, and simultaneously I said, “Ezra’s allowed to be upset!” We were so much ourselves then, in that moment of overlap.
Nozlee shrugged in an exaggerated way, to express her incredulity. “Listen, okay,” she said. “I’m devastatingly sober and today has not been the relaxing spa trip of my dreams, and I really want some wine. So I’m going to go find some.”
“Yeah okay,” Ezra said.
“That sounds good,” I said.
Nozlee grabbed her purse and the front doorknob.
“Can you get me a nice dry white?” I asked. “I’ll Venmo you.”
“And can you get me some Budweiser bottles?” Ezra asked.
“Yes!” she said, exasperated. “You guys, I know what you like to drink!”
She let the door slam hard after her. And then it was just Ezra and me in that well-appointed hotel suite, everything was so clean around us.
“It’s pretty dark in here,” I said, and busied myself turning on every single light I could see, prolonging the moment before I would have to allow him to confront me, to express all his anger. The room blazed by the time I looked back at Ezra, who was sitting on the couch watching me move around. His skin was a little tan and his eyes glowed nicely in all the yellow lamplight. I couldn’t tell if he looked older or younger with the shaved head but I knew that, from the back, we didn’t look like each other anymore.
“You could’ve sent me a text, saying you were mad at me,” I said. “And if you didn’t want me here you could’ve texted me back saying I shouldn’t drive in.”
“Well today I was a little distracted by the revelation that I could communicate, indirectly but whatever, with my dead best friend, so I didn’t look at my phone until after you got here.”
“I guess, okay, that’s fair,” I said.
“Plus, I muted you,” he said.
“Oh.” I deflated; being muted made me feel so impotent.
“Sit down,” he said. He gestured widely to the big sectional couch.
I sat. “Should I apologize for being here?”
He shrugged. Now that I was next to him, he couldn’t look at me, which wasn’t great. It’s not like he’d been gone long but somehow I missed looking at his face. He was wearing this black-and-red-striped tank top he always grabbed when he was driving out to the desert, it suited him, it looked like him, it somehow matched the curve and flush of his lips (even scowling) and the way his face situated itself, now that his hair was gone.
“It’s okay, it’s fine, coming out to the desert is just a small thing, you know, comparatively.”
“Compared to what?” I asked, even though I’d rather not have to talk through his answer.
“For a whole year, you and Nozlee were able to talk to Miggy, and you never told me. I thought that after you had your big breakdown, you were scared to express how sad you were. I assumed you were worried about going off the rails again,” Ezra said.
I picked at a thread on the couch and looked at his hands, curved and still against the fabric of the cushions. I tried to tamp down all my knee-jerk rejections of his perspective, all my justifications of my actions. Ezra deserved for me to fully ingest all the ways I’d made him feel.
“But the truth was, you had stopped mourning in the same way I was,” he said. “Not telling me separated our experience and I felt it but I didn’t understand it, until this morning. I’m so mad at you. It was a big lie, Evelyn.”
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I laughed because I was hurt, and then I wanted to cry. Evelyn isn’t my real full name, I’m Eve on birth certificate, passport, and credit cards; Ezra calling me Evelyn had been one of our little nonsense jokes. Did he call me that to show me that he still loved me or to remind me of the trust I’d betrayed? Ezra and I had quarreled tons and tons, but we’d never been in a real, serious fight.
“What can I do to fix it?” I asked.
“Talk it out with me, try to figure out what we need to do to get back on the same track,” he said.
I said, “I don’t want to be mean to you.”
“So, don’t be mean to me.”
“I don’t know how to be nice when I’m in a fight.”
“So, let’s not fight,” Ezra said.
“You’ll stop being mad at me?”
“Not unless we actually fight it out.”
“You are the fucking worrrrrrrst,” I said, and crumpled over my crossed legs. So, this was how Ezra fought; he said things that made a woman feel crazy, that made them do all the work of tying themselves into knots, while he came off as cool-headed and reasonable. I told him so.
“What the fuck do you want me to do then?” he asked.
“I want you to care that we’re having a fight!”
“I fucking care!” Ezra leaned forward now, like I’d watched him do to Nozlee on those porch chairs. “You’re my best friend and I love you so fucking much, you think I don’t care? Like it’s no big fucking deal that my girlfriend and my best friend were lying to me for a year?” Ezra picked up a plastic cup that was sitting on the coffee table and slammed it back down again; it sounded dramatic against the glass but nothing broke. Ezra had once mentioned that he talked to his therapist about “very typically male demonstrations of anger.” I’d said, “Like what?” and he’d said something like, “You know what kind of stuff.” But I hadn’t known, and this must’ve been what he’d meant. You learn so much about a person when you finally fight. I’m not sure if I flinched when he slammed the glass or not, but he looked freaked out by himself.
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