Love Hurts

“We became friends,” he says. “It seemed unlikely to me. I’d never been friends with anyone who looked like him.”

… my eyes close I flash on a memory of driving a car along a rural back road in upstate New York on a lonely and desperate night during college when I impulsively turned off the headlights and plunged myself into the pitch black without stopping - I drove blind in the dark, heart racing, gripping the steering wheel, not slowing down, knowing I might crash, even die, nearly manic with the accumulating risk – and then I hit a bump and swerved and got scared, turned on the lights, righted the car, slowed down a little, then a little more, and at last pulled over. I sat panting in the idling car, smell of petroleum and scorched rubber in my nose, wiping away angry tears, angry at myself, at the world, at my family and God, with no notion that life was going to improve. That was just eight months ago, right before I’d met Derek, before I could even imagine there was a life like this waiting for me. This is my life, my luxurious life, this is our home, this is me and Derek getting better together.

I was already telling myself stories about Zack. I still am.

In the light of day, I see that he’s taller than I realized, over six feet, with a long, lean torso and a firm ass that looks great in his jeans. He’s one of those hot guys I swore I’d never fall for.

I was still the new kid… I remember as well what it was like to feel awkward at a party, planning an exit not long after entering. I’d had little practice in high school or college, never having been claimed by a social world before. Yet here I was, among the select few invited by the ever-surprising Eliot to come bearing cake.

I’d crossed a line. We cross them all the time, these delineations between who we’ve been and who we’re becoming, but only rarely are they as clear as black and white.

And then, when those lonely solo walks had become unbearable and praying had ceased to work and I’d learned to drown explosive feelings in boozy binges with my fellow film students, Derek appeared. Whenever I look back and wonder, why Derek, why was he the one? I land on this: he smiled.

I’d led a sheltered life, so that hard truths when they hit, overwhelmed me. I was a person capable of great love, a young man absolutely boiling with sexual desire, but always with the lid on, rattling from the steam. I had no outlet. I felt that no one could know my true-self, or they’d shun me, mock me, even destroy me. I learned to tamp down feelings except in my notebook or in stories I composed in private and showed no one. But what if you’re consumed by anger about your own state of being? How do you protest that?

Zack steps in closer, leaning into my ear, his breath hot against me. “I have a present for you.”

He says, “You must be so sad,” a simple and obvious sentiment but one I haven’t yet voiced. “It’s okay to let it out,” he says, which is all it takes, and then I’m crying the tears I haven’t yet shed, while he holds me and rocks me in his arms.

“Come to San Francisco,” he says, his parting words. “Don’t wait.”

He confesses that after the night of his car accident, he became overwhelmed by thoughts of death. Then came a night, driving on the George Washington Bridge, when he was struck by the idea of driving over the edge. He even dared himself: Do it. He gripped the wheel and sped up the car, believing for a few seconds if he swerved hard enough into the guard rail, he could flip the car over and drop into the Hudson.

“What stopped you?”

“Another car came speeding by, honking its horn, this complete nut-job, and I thought, That guy better slow down, he could’ve killed me – and that made me laugh. The instinct to live is so strong.”

It all sounds heart-thumpingly seductive to me: Avenue A, the noise of the streets, an artist named Pierre. “I’d settle for anywhere that’s not my parents’ house,” I say.

As we reach Tompkins Square and pass through its wrought iron gateway, I feel newly energized by the grimy city; these smart, open-hearted new friends; even the pizza, a crisp, tangy, genuine New York slice.

There’s hope for me still, I think.

I want him to see the person I might become, who might shed his old skin and earn a place in this vibrant and risky world. I want to, but I don’t yet have the language.

“It’s time,” I say, “to get a place of our own.”

“I talk. No one listens.”

“Worrying about you is what I do.” She is a stereotypical Irish mother, on alert for calamity at every turn. When she hugs me, I melt a little. I’m not too old to need my mother.

“See? He wanted it. He said he was fighting it, but he wanted it.”“This is fucked up, Derek.”

”You wrote that you’re in love with him.”

“I wrote that for myself.”

”I tell you everything,” he says, voice cracking.

He read my journal?

“I just wanted something for myself.”

“This is so incredibly fucked up.”

“Your lying Is what’s fucked up.”

“When this thing with Zack started, I wanted it to be mine, not something I shared. Everything else in my life has been ours. And then it got deeper.”

“That’s not our agreement! Are you even in love with my anymore?”

“Not after you’ve read my journals.”

“I knew you had a secret. I tell you everything. God, you suck.”

When it’s time for me to go, he grips me tightly, and I feel what I’ve often sensed in his good-byes, that he treats each one as if it were the last. “Get home safely,” he urges, and though we are at his apartment, I drunkenly reply, “You too.”

Go ahead, slap me, push me, give me a reason to be free of you. Better a big explosion than another relationship fizzling away with everything unspoken.

Your life is immeasurably valuable, and unless you start believing that it will easily be taken from you.

“Kiddo, you got a lot of living to do. Most of it ain’t going to involve me.”

I love you, I miss you, I forgive you. Please forgive me.