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If love is surrender
Then whose war is it anyway?
The edges of the post-it that I had those lyrics scrawled on is starting to curl at the edges and I've had to re-stick it to the screen of my computer at least half a dozen times since I've been sitting here. I'm trying to write a letter to my brother, but all I've been able to get out so far is "My dearest Albert." I've tried out half a dozen greetings, trying to force intimacy where time and rotting flesh has pulled us apart. How do you make up for four years absence? Today is Albert's birthday, and I have missed it. I was going to call him at three twenty two this morning, when he was born, but I couldn't make myself dial the number. I picked up the phone, my fingers too clumsy to dial the series of international codes and eleven digit numbers that I know by heart. I sat there, on the edge of the bed, frozen in a place between fear and anxiety. What would I say to him? Would I wish him happy birthday first? Would I tell him I was sorry that the most he's heard from me in the past four years were quickly scrawled postcards from a slew of different cities. Missing you in Paris. Wish you were here in Venice. I'll come see you soon from London. New York is beautiful in the winter, you would love it. I love you in all these places, but not enough to come see you. Not enough to come home. Those last parts aren't written, but we both know it's implied. I can't imagine what he thinks of me, now, but somehow where all other opinions never mattered, his does. What he thinks of me matters more than I can really explain, and I keep trying to make him proud of his big sister, but I always seem to fall short. The angry sounds of a phone off the hook for too long startle me out of my thoughts, and I put it back on the cradle. I can't make myself do it, and I feel like a coward. I get up off the bed and wander out onto the balcony. I watch the city move at a sluggish pace, and I feel a sense of kinship with it. We're both moving slowly at night; but still moving. During the day, we both go fast with the hopes that people won't notice. Won't ask questions about why the trash hasn't been collected in three days, or how when you look past the old charm, the brownstone buildings just look unkempt. I love this city, and I hate it. I love what it makes me, but I hate how it reminds. How it catches a person at night, when they are off guard, and it makes you think of all the things in your life that you have done wrong. Makes you think and regret where you are trying to live things to the fullest. To erase regret and find completion; if only for a night. For an hour. For a moment.
My dearest Albert. It sounds so formal, but I have to accept the fact that I have become a stranger in his life. When I see young boys his age, I like to imagine what he looks like now. How puberty has changed his features from boyish to masculine. I imagine that he has become handsome like our father. I think maybe he has delicate hands like our mother, and that he uses them to play something graceful and elegant. Like the piano or the violin. I imagine that he does well in school. That he has lots of friends and is never lonely. I imagine that he misses me, somewhere deep inside, but doesn't think about me often. I imagine that he shows his friends my room and talks about the kind of girl I was when we were kids. I imagine he tells them that I was a good big sister, and that one summer I am going to send him a plane ticket so he can travel the world with me. I imagine that he spends some of his days daydreaming about the adventures we've had and the ones that have yet to come. I imagine that he's starting to think about girls and girlfriends, and I imagine that he looks for a girl like his big sister. Someone with honest eyes and a smile that puts the sun to shame. I imagine all these things about my little brother. I imagine that when he goes to school on Monday that his friends will have made him posters and cards, congratulating him on turning a year older. I imagine he is excited about being sixteen and on the cusp of manhood. I like to think that he has big dreams about university and what he wants to do with his life. I like to think that my little bother, my sweet Albert, will grow into a man that is honest and kind. A man that is good to his wife and rolls in the dirt with his children. I imagine he will be a man that other people look up to, and it is only when I imagine my brother's life ten years from now that I resent that I won't be there to see it. I resent this disease that is eating my body from the inside out, and I am angry with a God I never knew and my own frailty. In these moments, I think about going home and spending my time with him. What time we have left. I become selfish, and I want to see him. I want to take long walks with him like we used to, and listen to how his life has changed and become different in these years.
I pour myself a drink in these moments, and I look at this wrinkled post-it and I remember that I can't. I remember that all I can give him are picture postcards and promises we both know I will never keep. I love you in New York, I'll love you in Chicago and Cairo and I will never forget you when I return to the mountains of Tibet and embrace what most people fear. I'm angry again, because this isn't fair. I throw the drink and watch with a sense of satisfaction as it shatters in a sunburst pop of glass and brandy. I crumple the post-it for the third time tonight, but I can't make myself throw it away. I hold it in my palm until my knuckles turn white, and I scream into the crook of my arm until my anger is spent. I uncrumple the sunny yellow slip of paper and I pray that the adhesive hasn't worn off as I press it to the screen of my computer again.
If love is surrender
Then whose war is it anyway?
My dearest Albert. New York is fabulous and it wishes you were here to see all it's wonders. Happy birthday! Sixteen is a fabulous year, and I know it will treat you well. I miss you, and I can't wait for our big adventure this summer. I have a theory about sixteenth birthdays. Would you like to hear it? I think sixteenth birthdays are special. Like wishes. Make beautiful wishes on your birthday cake, Albert, because this year they will all come true. I love you always and forever. Past the moon and the stars and into the infinite. Be well my little brother. I will see you soon.
Margo
I look at the note I have penned on the back of an I love New York postcard, instantly feeling better. I search the small desk for the book of stamps that I bought earlier today and stick several on it. I scrawl the address to my parent's house in Vienna on it, being careful to print his name so that the postal workers can read it. It's four am, and I am smiling as I get up, walk into the closet, and put the postcard in the shoe box filled to the brim with all the others. There are so many postcard promises in there, that I can hardly get the lid closed again. I make a note to find a bigger box tomorrow, and climb into bed. By four twenty two I am asleep again, dreaming of my dearest Albert and the look I imagine will be on his face when he gets the happy birthday postcard that I will never send. In my dreams, he is perfect, and that is how I will remember him always.
Cool these engines
Calm these jets
I ask you how hot can it get
And as you wipe off beads of sweat
Slowly you say "I'm not there yet."
This is the fourth night in a row that I've woken up freezing despite the pile of blankets on the bed and the heater turned up at full blast. These things stopped worrying me two years ago, and now I just accept them as part of a normal routine. I know in a few days the chills will go away and I will start to get tired. I know after that I won't feel like eating and pretty soon I will look like a skeleton of my former self. These things are the realities of living with this disease I carry and the only thing I can do is tumble through the episodes as best I can. Within a few weeks they will be gone and I will be myself again. The sun isn't going to rise for another three hours, and sleep has proved elusive. This disease of mine, it is both a blessing and a curse. It leaves a person a lot of waking hours to think about their life and sometimes, those thoughts aren't ones you necessarily want to entertain. Me, I remember back to a time when I kept my thoughts in paper journals. When I was young and full of romantic ideals. I've started transferring my old journals onto this computer, and the nostalgia is something that comes bittersweet. I turn on Davis and listen to the sounds of good Jazz fill the hotel room I've come to call home. On mornings like these where I wait for the sun to rise and get lost to thoughts of the past, I find that they always come back around to one person. I don't know if you could call Joseph Abrams a person so much as a force of nature. His initials, JMA, I would have carved into my skin and never lamented the ugly scar it left behind. I have an entire journal devoted to Joseph and the three months that we tumbled through something like love, obsession, and education all rolled into one. I will always love Joseph Michael Abrams and the way he looked playing Armstrong and Davis. Not to say I haven't loved those before and after him, in my own way, but he was the first. That one experience that lingers with you always, and on mornings like these, I swear I can see his smile in the curve of my glass or the taste of his cloves on my lips. I changed Joseph Abrams in as many ways as I was changed by him. He was electric, and I think part of me will always miss that spark. He was the first of my lost boys.
I was twenty-one years old when I met Joseph in Chicago. He was angry and I was grieving, and we seemed to have some kind of animalistic attraction to each other. He was a force of nature, and I was captivated. Enchanted by his sharp green eyes and scoundrel smile. I fell in love instantly with the way his hair rested across his forehead and always got in his eyes. He was working as a busboy at The Green Mill, taking a break from studying music at North Park University and had just lost his father to a stroke. It happened suddenly one day on a job site and Joseph and his mother hadn't been notified until Joe senior was already dead. I think he felt guilty that he hadn't been there. Hadn't told his dad often enough that he loved him or thanked him enough for working so hard to put him through music school. The way we met was like something out of a movie. Our eyes connected across the dimly lit room, and I knew then. I knew that this was it. That I would leave knowing Joseph Abrams fundamentally changed. He didn't speak much. Not at first, anyway. Nothing more than a few words as he scrawled his phone number on a napkin and slipped it under my third vodka martini. I never got the chance to call it, because I went home with him that night. Maybe I didn't really realize what I was getting myself into; it was impulsive and probably dangerous, but I didn't care. I didn't care, or I just didn't realize it. I don't think we exchanged names or details that first night. It was anonymous and passionate in ways I can't even put to paper. The man was like an addiction, and I couldn't (and didn't want to) stop. I knew without him telling me that he was a musician, because he played me that night. He made me sing in ways I never could have imagined possible. He had beautiful hands, and I loved to watch them when he played the upright bass and the trumpet. I loved to watch them when he played me, making my body sing for him sometimes like a steady Jazz rhythm and others like a Beethoven concerto. I didn't care that I didn't know this man. I didn't care that he could have killed me in my sleep that night, because he made me feel alive. He made me feel alive and electric when I had spent the last six months of my life being told by surgeons and specialists that I was dead.
I didn't seem him for nearly two weeks after that first night. It was the longest twelve days of my life; itching for my fix and remembering so vividly what it was like to feel him against me. What it felt like to have him inside and around me. To be touched and respond in a way that was nothing short of poetic. It sounds silly and romantic, but he made me feel beautiful. He made me feel like I deserved to be coveted. I don't know why I waited so long to see him after that first night. Maybe because I was ashamed of how easily I had tumbled into his bed. Maybe I was afraid of what would come of spending hours of my day tangled in his bed sheets. Afraid of what he would say when he found out. How he would look at me differently; treat me like I was made of spun glass. It was a Friday when I finally found my way back to The Green Mill. It was an open mic night, and I could hear the sounds of poorly played Jazz spilling out into the street. I almost didn't go inside, but someone seemed to know I was coming, and the music changed. One performer stepped down and another stepped up as I shook the Chicago rain from my clothes and took a seat near the edge of the bar. I was prepared to run if I caught sight of him, or if the music turned sour. It didn't turn sour that Friday night, and the minute the first note hit the air, I was captivated. He played Flamenco Sketches, and I was caught on the gentle flow of his music. I was spun into another world where everything was beautiful and perfect. After he played, he pulled me into the coat room and murmured sweet vulgarities against my neck as he pushed my skirt up around my hips and made me sing sweet songs I didn't know I had in me. He told me his name that night, and I fell in love with the sound of it on my tongue. I fell in love with the way he looked at me, and how each time we were together from then on, he devoured me whole. I came to see him at the club every night for three months. Some nights we would talk about our lives and the things we had seen and done; the things we wanted to see and do. Some nights we wouldn't talk at all, and I would trail his shadow home and fall into a symphony of bed sheets and muted words. We never did talk about anything of consequence, those nights in the club and in the post-coital first lights of dawn. I never did tell him that I was sick and he never did talk about his father. Our relationship was both profound and minimalist. We never staked claims or exchanged rings or promises, but I loved him with every fiber of my soul. I loved him for making me feel human again, and for showing me that there was something beautiful to this life after all. I met him in January, and it was a day in late March when the weather had turned from winter to spring almost overnight that I stopped coming to the club. We never said goodbye, and he never tried to find me. We both knew better than to ruin something that had been so unspokenly perfect in the ways that it was complicated without being complicated.
I wouldn't see Joseph Abrams until two years later, when I was in New York for the first time. I'd had many lovers since then. Many lost boys, but none like him. None that captivated me from across a room and held me under their spell for so long. None that could make me sing the way he did. To this day, Joseph Abrams is still the most amazing sex I have ever had; because it wasn't about sex, it was about music. It was about Jazz. When I saw him again, he was playing at the Blue Note Club. He still had that look about him. The wild and unkempt look, though time had aged his face and I could see the lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes in the way the light shone just right. His hair still fell enchanting across his forehead, and maybe it was for old time's sake, or because I never could refuse him anything that I went home with him that night. We didn't sleep, and when morning came earl grey against the twists and tangles of his sheets and me as I got dressed to go back to my hotel, I asked him one question. Something simple and built hazy with nostalgia.
"Joseph," I started, still warm and slurred from what we had shared. "Do you still play?" He sat silent for a long time, and I got the feeling that my question had struck him somewhere deep.
"No one like you, Margo." He gave me this charming, boyish smile and I kissed him one last time before I walked out and never looked back. I have never regretted the time I spent with Joseph Abrams, rather rejoice in the memories of a man who made me feel alive when I was sure that I was dead.
It's nearly seven am, now, and the sun is starting to peek over the horizon. The glass of brandy that I poured myself hours ago is gone, and the sounds of Miles Davis have faded into the first morning light. My memories have all left me, and when I crawl into bed it is with a smile and an observation I can't help but make. My sheets make silhouettes of a girl much younger, tangled in the arms of a man who made her sing. I will dream of Joseph tonight, and when I wake it will be with a clove smoke smile and the taste of Flamenco Sketches on my tongue.
The skies over Manhattan opened up and it rained for six solid days. There was no respite from the thick ropes of water that washed away the last of the winter snows and filled the rivers to the brink. Slicker clad weathermen were waving their arms around the TV screen and warning people about travel with flash flooding starting to make the roads dangerous. Men and women she didn?t know kept saying it was the worst storm in years and the hotel was alive with people running to and fro to prepare for the end of the world. People braved the rising water to rush to the grocery store and stock up on canned food and bottle water like they were on the brink of a nuclear holocaust. While the world rushed insane around her, one woman found the time to pull on a pair of blinding pink galoshes and brave the weather to meet a very dear friend. She was soaked by the time she reached the corner caf? and rather than fuss over the state of the vintage cocktail dress that was now dripping off her like falling lilac petals, she tilted her head into the onslaught and laughed. It was a hardy and unrestrained sound that had soaked passersby watching her curiously before they too were swept away by the torrents of water.
?You?re soaked, Margo. That can?t be good for your health.? Joseph Abrams had always been an awkward mother hen, but he played his part with large clumsy hands as he pulled off his blazer and tucked it around her shoulders.
?Isn?t it wonderful outside, darling? I absolute adore the rain.? She deflected his worry with a radiant smile that almost brightened her ashy skin and brought life back to her eyes.
?You don?t look well, Margo.? He was persistent and even the dim light of the caf? made her look hollowed out and older than her time.
?Why, what an awful thing to say to me, darling. So I haven?t been out in the sun, who cares?? She was playful in her admonition, even if they were starting to hit closer to home. She pulled a soaked compact out of her purse and flipped open the top to pretend to touch up lipstick she wasn?t wearing.
?I?m sorry. You know I?m just worried about you.? He looked uncharacteristically sullen, and his apology was more to his hands than the slight woman in front of him. It was almost as though he was afraid to look at her.
?I know, darling. No need. I?m perfectly well.? She lied with a smile on her face and even reached across the small bistro table to tick his chin up with her index finger. She made goofy, childish faces at him until he smiled back at her and leaned forward to catch her cheek awkwardly. He was bumbling in contrast to the sleek almost movie star way she held herself. It was hard to imagine that they had once been lovers.
?How have you been? Really?? He was like an old hound on the scent of something juicy. His expression changed to a frown when she sighed at him and shook her head in another silent scolding. She was easily half his size, but she always seemed to be able to reduce him to little more than a shuffling schoolboy.
?Really, Joseph. You are such a doom and gloom type. It?s not good for your health, you know. You really should smile more often.? She smiled at him to emphasize the point and illustrate how it was done. She was being purposefully coy and they both knew it. He was growing frustrated with her, and she could tell by the way he fumbled with his glasses. He took them off and put them back on again at least half a dozen times before he rammed into the point of the visit with all the subtlety of a freight train.
?So, he loves you.? Sullen again and sulking like a child whose favorite toy had been taken away. He spoke to his coffee rather than the enchanting woman across from him, enduring her soft disapproving noises and affectionate hand patting.
?He does.? She confirmed neither sounding overjoyed nor upset.
?They all do.? It seemed ironic coming from a man who had professed undying love to her not so many years ago. They realized it at the same time and exchanged ironic smiles, hers softening into something heartbreaking as she reached across and squeezed his hand.
?I?ll always love you best, darling.? Glib, but jokingly so. Joseph laughed outright and twisted the wedding ring around his finger awkwardly.
?You?re a terrible liar, Margo.? It was his turn to admonish, though it was done with a boyish grin. ?Do you love him back?? It was the question he dreaded asking.
She was quiet for a long time, looking around the caf? and the world coming apart outside the fingerprint smudged glass. The longer she stayed quiet the more visibly awkward and nervous her companion appeared. When she finally answered, he was shifting in his seat and shuffling his feet back and forth like he was getting ready to run a foot race.
?I don?t know if I do, Joe.? She used his name rarely, and the shortened version even less.
?I don?t like it.? Sour words to accompany his sour stomach.
?Now that?s not fair, darling. You?re off the market and you don?t expect me to spend forever pining after you.? She teased him easily to cover up what they both knew was wrong.
?That?s not what I meant, damnit!? His fists landed heavily on the table, rattling the cup of coffee so hard that it tumbled off and shattered in a spray of liquid and glass all over the floor. A frazzled barista behind the counter sighed audibly and turned to go find a mop and broom.
?No need to get so upset, darling.? She continued to play light and coy with him, which only made him angrier.
?Stop playing games with me, Margo Bruin. Does he know? If he doesn?t and he loves you and you love him back then you need to tell him. This is not fair.? He was caught somewhere between heartbreak and a childish tantrum. Where she had been poised and playful before, her name on his lips pulled her apart at the seams and she was leaning forward to hiss sharply at him.
?No, he doesn?t know Joseph and you aren?t going to tell him, do you understand me? You promised and I?m asking you to honor your word. I never said I loved him, but IF I did, I would want what little time I have left to be filled with things other than death and the business of dying. This is my damn life and I will live it as I please.? She was raising her voice progressively in response to what he had told her, and by the end she was nearly shouting. The chatter in the coffee shop had stilled to a stunned silence and blushing, she sat back down in her chair and glowered across the table at him.
?It?s not fair to him, love. You know it, or you wouldn?t be cross with me.? His voice was soothing, and it only seemed to put her more on edge.
?It?s not his choice. I?d rather him remember me as I am now. Besides, I won?t stay long enough for him to really see me get sick or grow too attached. He?s loved me since I was a child, did you know that? Before I was sick and all this happened. Don?t ask me to give that kind of love up. Not when I?ve never had it before.? She was close to tears by the end of it, and rather than let her old friend and confidante see her cry, she jumped up from her seat. She peeled off the borrowed coat and tossed it over the back of her chair.
?Margo.? He was rising with her, reaching out to catch her arm before she left. ?Margo.? Softer than before, sad now. ?I didn?t mean to upset you.? He sounded so hopeless that she had to smile at him and lean in to brush her mouth across his. Affectionate and nostalgic before she pulled her arm from his grip.
?I know you didn?t, darling. Chin up; it looks like the rain has finally stopped. I have a million and a half little silly errands to get done before tomorrow. I have to find a hat at Barney?s for a friend. I?ll be in touch.? She hurried off before he could protest or lecture her further on how what she was doing was unfair and wrong. She cried the whole way home, her sobs muffled into the arm of her rain slicker; it always had to rain somewhere.