Halfway through the movie, Denise falls asleep on Wade’s arm, and Wade is minutes away from completely passing out himself. It’s early by his standards, so I don’t know why he’s so tired, but it definitely has me wondering what he’s thinking about when he’s alone in bed.
Once Wade is laid out, I get up from the couch. I walk to your room and wish there was a point in knocking. I open the door and everything is still in place, with the addition of the box Jackson and I put together from your dorm. You’re the only thing missing. I don’t have the strength to go in alone, but I’m happy to see your stuff still here and not suddenly abandoned on the sidewalk as the latest healing ritual emailed to your parents.
I turn around, and Wade’s eyes are open now, watching me. I don’t know why, but it stops me in my tracks. He’s tired, but he also looks, I don’t know, disappointed or annoyed. I mouth “What?” and he shakes his head gently. I don’t believe it’s nothing, but I’m not going to push this, especially not with Denise here.
I join them on the couch and kick my feet up on the coffee table. I try and concentrate on the movie, but it’s not happening. I still can’t believe you weren’t actually immortal. I take a page out of Denise’s book and close my eyes.
Sunday, December 25th, 2016
This Christmas is even more off than last year’s. I know I said the same thing about Thanksgiving, but Christmas hurts more, as will New Year’s Eve, as will your birthday, as will my birthday, as will every day you’re not alive. If I’m really done with lying, I can’t lie about that.
At least the day is moving by pretty quickly. We opened presents at home, and now we’re doing the family gathering at my aunt’s. Dad promised me we won’t be staying long, especially not after the showdown from Thanksgiving. I’m hiding out in my aunt’s room to avoid my asshole cousin, but the sound of everyone’s laughter carries over from the living room. I’m not even the slightest bit tempted to explore what’s so funny, but it does remind me of how nice it was to leave my room this morning and find my mom and dad sitting on the floor beside our low-maintenance tree like it was their first Christmas together.
It’s crazy how they’re not tired of each other, or how it looks like they haven’t even lost an inch of love for each other. Second-best part of the morning is when I joined them, and my mom modeled her pajamas for both of us from the living room to the kitchen and back, as if on a runway.
Mom brings my grandmother into the room, and I help out, holding her underneath her arm as we guide her to the rocking chair opposite the TV. Mom tells me that it was getting too loud out there for her, so she hopes I don’t mind Grandma intruding on my “quiet time.”
I put on the news, which she’s obsessed with but can never actually absorb. I missed her ninetieth birthday last week in my brutal haze, but if I wanted to lie and tell her I spoke with her, she wouldn’t actually know any better.
“Is Theo coming? I want to watch his movie with the flowers.”
You’re still alive for Grandma. You’re still around making more films. You’re still around to whip out your camera phone and play one of your videos for her. You’re still around to hold my hand and kiss me good morning. I know you’re not alive, but I know I don’t treat you like you’re dead. I know you’re watching, but I know there’s a chance you’re not. I know you’re not around to live, and I know you’re always going to live through me.
I can’t bring myself to upset her and tell her it’s all over, because, well, I don’t know, if I deny her the fantasy of your immortality, I don’t know if it will ruin my mystery of where you are.
“Theo can’t make it,” I say. It’s a truth hidden in the folds of a lie. “I have his video, though.” I go through the album of videos on my phone and sit down beside my grandmother, feeling very vulnerable as I relive your creations with a woman who watches with the joy of someone witnessing magic for the first time.
Wherever you are, Theo, I hope you’re having a Merry Christmas. I’ll try some damn eggnog for you.
“I’m sorry I don’t have a present for you,” I say, scratching my gloved palm and pulling at my earlobe the entire time I go up the steps outside the subway.
“I don’t have one for you, either,” Wade says. “We’re all good.” He walks over to my left, staying there. I shift over to reclaim my side, but he keeps messing with me. “I’m going to walk on your left for a minute.”
“Nope. I’m going to walk on the left forever,” I say.
“Entertain me.”
“There’s nothing funny about this.”
“Exactly. This is serious, and you never treat it that way. I want to see what you’re like on my right.”
He’s walked on my right side before, but only when you were alive and I was on your left, because you were obviously the more important one, so it didn’t bother me as much in the grand scheme of things. Wade has never been on my right one-on-one, and allowing this feels a lot like a big deal, sort of like my first date with you. I was on edge despite knowing you for what feels like forever and trusting you with everything else I had to offer that the everyday person never experienced.
“It’s not going to last long, but give it your best shot,” I say.
The moment Wade takes a couple of steps back, as if the forces of winter have decided to blow him out of my life for good, I feel myself inching to the left to cut him off, but I remain firm until he reappears on my wrong side with freckles of snow on his shoulders and an anxious kind of smile on his face. “How are we doing?”
“It’s probably better not to draw attention to it,” I say, facing forward and refusing to turn to my left. It’s almost impossible for my neck to shift that way. The moment I give in, this experiment falls apart and I’ll disappoint him, which will snowball into something worse. “Tell me a story.”
He starts right up about this Gatorade chugging competition he once got into with his neighbor. After he won, he went home to pee but his mother stepped out and he didn’t have his own keys yet. So, yeah, screwed. He tried peeing at the bottom of the staircase, but someone started coming down and he ran away. It was daytime so he couldn’t go pee in the corner or bushes without getting caught, and he didn’t trust the outside neighbors not to snitch on him. His bladder hurt so badly, and he kept trying to distract himself but failed because puddles of water were around him and it began drizzling a little again, but not fast enough that it would scare everyone back indoors so he could pee outside in peace.
Right when he charged into the staircase for a second shot, his bladder decided enough was enough and unleashed “a fury” on his jeans, soaking them with a “never-ending piss” so great his eyes rolled back with relief before he could fully register how much this was going to suck once piss stopped running down his leg and into his sneakers.
We arrive at Wade’s building and, sort of like his story, I’ve been holding in all my anxiety about his being on my left, except I didn’t reclaim my side (or piss myself). I’m relieved once we get into the elevator and there are no more sides, just us standing opposite of each other. We get into his apartment and go straight to his room. He’s been given his TV back for Christmas break because he already finished all his holiday assignments and college applications, but he’ll lose it once school starts up again. I thought we were going to watch a movie or something and take advantage of his TV while he has it, but instead he puts on the E.T. soundtrack and sits on the bed while I relax into the chair. The first song ends and another plays.
“Wait, play it again,” I tell him.
“Why?”
“It’s relaxing,” I say.
“That’s not it,” Wade says. “Maybe a little bit, but not entirely. You just want it on repeat. I know this game, Griffin. You must hate the radio.”
“I don’t hate it,” I say. “But I wouldn’t call myself a fan, either.”
“Give me your phone,”
Wade says.
“Why?”
“I want to introduce you to the magic of shuffle,” Wade says. I don’t hand my phone over, but Wade isn’t shy about going into my coat pocket and retrieving it. “We’re going to play radio with your downloaded music. See, these are all songs you’ve chosen at one point or another and were all favorites for different reasons.”
“So I’m still in control?”
“Not really. But you’re in control of allowing yourself to be surprised.”
“I can’t control being surprised, that doesn’t make sense.”
Wade smirks. “Griffin, your comfort zone is maybe a little too comfortable, okay? It’s like you’ve got a TV with surround sound and every video game and the biggest bed ever so all your favorite people can hang out with you. But that place isn’t real and you should live somewhere a little more realistic.” Wade crosses to the corner of the room and swaps out his phone for my mine for these better acoustics. “Stay in the moments.”
He presses play, and the first song that comes on immediately takes me back.
Then comes “Be Still My Heart” by the Postal Service. We listened to this on the walk home the day we came out to each other, sharing headphones. I feel like I’ve been thrown back to the beginning of time. I haven’t listened to this song in so long, and I didn’t even realize I missed it.
“All Night” by Icona Pop. I discovered this song with Wade the day after my birthday. It was a little after you called me to wish me a happy birthday, feeling the dumbest you’ve ever felt in your life when you realized you mixed up the days. Wade and I were walking to Duane Reade, the same one where my dad gave us all a sex talk, and this song blasted from some parked car’s radio. It only planted itself in my brain for an afternoon, but I enjoyed my time with it—just like I am now.
“Take Me Out” by Franz Ferdinand: Another you song, though even I don’t have to tell you this one. It’s a little uncomfortable because I’m pretty sure Wade knows you and I listened to this on repeat after we had sex for the first time. It came up when we were all playing Guitar Hero, and everyone wanted to know why you and I busted out laughing and were so good.
“Hold On” by Wilson Phillips: Okay, this one is a bit of a downer, but it was something I really connected to in the months after our breakup. I know it’s lame, but it allowed me to feel lonely and didn’t force me to lie to myself about how I was really feeling. I understand putting on a tough face for other people but never myself.
“Carry Me” by Family of the Year: Wade’s favorite song that isn’t jazz or some film score. He shared this one with me because he knows I love songs with words, and, yeah, this one really stuck with me for a couple of weeks. There were times I didn’t even want to be thinking about Wade and what we did together, but I couldn’t keep myself away from this song, like it was oxygen.
I was right about not being able to control my own surprises, but I was wrong about how good these surprises could actually be for me. Every time a new old song comes on, I’m being resurrected. This is the true power of history. Old memories and feelings are being revived, and I’m not complaining. It’s like I still have the fatigue that got me to quit the song in the first place, but I don’t mind being woken up to it for a little bit.
Wade gets up and turns off my phone. “How was that?”
“Play another song,” I say. “You only played five.”
“I know.”
“Five isn’t one of my good odd numbers. It’s one, seven, and any number ending in seven.”
“I know. Three birds with one stone.”
I feel tricked. At least I knew what the battle plan was with the walking on my left and playing different songs, but I didn’t know he would make a move on my even numbers, too. But it’s okay, I can make my way out of this; I’ve made my way out of tougher situations before, situations completely out of my control, situations that affected me as if they were my fault. The jazz song that played before Wade started playing my songs can count as the first and sixth, and it qualifies because it is a song I enjoy and a song I would’ve wanted played again.
As for his painful three-birds-with-one-stone comment, if I were desperate enough, I could say three plus one equals four, but that’s not going to fly with me, so I need something else to settle me. Um, uh, okay, I got it. I’m going to go with the grouping situation, one group for the birds and another group for the stone.
“You okay?” Wade asks.
I take a deep breath.
“The world didn’t end,” Wade says. “You stayed in the moments.”
He’s right. The universe isn’t eating itself up like some cannibal chewing on his own arm. It feels like the universe is at least nibbling, but I’m still here, I’m still whole. I know it won’t last long, but knowing I could do three trials—three!—in one evening is a huge deal. And it’s an empowering feeling I never felt with you, not with my compulsions, at least.
“Theo made me feel special,” I say, which takes Wade by surprise. “With my compulsions, I mean. Sorry. I know they sometimes frustrated him, but I also couldn’t ever shake this feeling that they made me stand out in his eyes. And, I don’t know, I always believed Theo loved me but there was always this voice in me that convinced me to make sure I always fit with him. If I didn’t change, I would never stop being special in his eyes. Almost like, if I started trying to do stuff like we’re doing now, I might lose my spark and suddenly feel, I don’t know, faded to him?”
“Your thing . . . it’s not healthy,” Wade says. “I don’t understand what it’s got to be like in your head, but you have to do what’s necessary to not be your compulsions’ bitch. It’s limiting your life.”
Not controlling. Limiting.
I try to believe it, but I can’t. My compulsions threaten my health, physically and mentally. For example, I can’t shake off the thought that I’ve had sex with three guys—three. Even though there’s no one else I want to sleep with, I feel like I have to, otherwise the universe will close in on itself or something bad will happen to someone I love. I’ve tried making logic out of this, like how I only slept with two of the guys—Wade and Jackson—out of need, and not out of love. So Wade and Jackson are in their own category, far removed from the bubble you live in. But if I’m going to have a pattern here, the next person I sleep with needs to be out of love and not a need to feel something.
“I get it,” I say. “I’ll try these exercises some more.” I can’t bring myself to ask him for this great favor just yet, but I want him to help me, and that’s the truth. And he wants to help me. I’m not trying to make it sound like I have to give him my heart or dick in exchange for his help, but I do have to give him friendship. He’s given me some history back that I hadn’t thought of in a while and was possibly at risk of forgetting forever. I have to be fully honest with him in return.
“I have to tell you something. I don’t know how to do it delicately, but I just have to spit it out. I’ve messed up. I don’t just mean that I messed things up with you and whatever you would say we were, but I did something stupid because I was just not in my best space.” He knows what I’m about to say, I can tell from his face. But I can’t cheat him out of the words. “I had sex with Jackson when I was in California.”
Wade nods, over and over, pirate bobblehead–style. “I know.”
“You know?” Impossible. I’ve told no one, and Jackson wouldn’t reach out to him. “How?”
“Because I know you,” Wade says. “It’s what you do. Sorry, that sounds like you’re a whore or something, that’s not what I mean. You do things you know you shouldn’t. It’s like you’re wired to make mistakes when you’re not in your ‘best space,’ and it wasn’t hard to guess that was going to happen.”
“You don’t understand. You know those kisses Theo and I used to do? Theo taught them to Jackson and it pissed me off, and I told Theo I wanted him to see
me have sex with his boyfriend to get back at him, and—”
“You told Theo? I don’t understand.”
Shit. I can’t lie to him and I can’t omit any truths. I’ve said this to myself, to you, and I’m done being a liar. “I still talk to Theo.”
“For how long? Since he died?”
“Yeah. Sometimes a little before that, like something I would want to say when we got back together. But since he died, I’ve been trying to get his forgiveness for things, except I couldn’t even get myself to tell him what you and I did . . .”
“I can never win with you, can I? No matter what, best friend or . . . whatever, I will always be competing against a ghost,” he says. “No, I’m not even competing. I don’t have a fighting chance.” Wade gets up from his bed and grabs my phone, handing it to me. “I’m kind of tired.”
“Are you serious?” I ask.
Wade doesn’t say anything else. I never thought he could push me away like this, but he has absolutely no interest in my being around him right now.
“There’s more to this . . .” I thought Wade would be the first person I told about my involvement in your death, which should speak volumes to how much he means to me, but I refused to listen to myself. And I could go ahead and be an asshole and tell him anyway. But that’s not a guilt he has to carry, especially not for a shitty friend like me. “See you.”
I grab my coat and let myself out, head into the staircase and go down all twenty-seven flights. I should really stop blaming everyone and certain events for what’s happening to me. I’m the worst thing that’s ever happened to myself.
Wednesday, December 28th, 2016
I turn on my laptop’s video chat and call Jackson on an odd minute.