Hiya gang,
I thought I’d occasionally start putting up some creative writing stuffs. Here’s a short one:
Leaving
Ran into you on the street the other day, standing outside the bar, smoking. You always were a sexy smoker. I didn’t want to chat, really, was rushing off somewhere or other, but I found myself asking what was new and how you were which led to your reciprocating, to a conversation. You told me that your furniture-making was coming along – said things about tongues and grooves that I didn’t really understand but that sounded like progress. We talked about our friend’s band, how they really deserve a record deal we both know they’re never going to get. Then you asked about me. And I told you. And your face dropped a little, then brightened. You said you thought it was a great plan. You were happy for my “escape,” you called it. I think you meant it. Everyone seems happy for my escape. We’re all struggling, and going elsewhere suggests less struggle, great hope – escape. We all love this city, but we all yearn to flee. As we parted, you hugged me, looked at me intensely, hugged me again, closer, “In case I don’t see you.”
“You’ll see me.”
“You never know.”
As I walked away, past the laundromat with its murals of clothes hanging on lines out in the idyllic countryside where you imagine I’ll be living soon, I thought of the first time we met.
It was two years ago, maybe more, an unseasonably warm night for whatever season we were supposedly in the midst of. The streets were filled with people, and we walked through the neighborhood for quite a while, stopped at the park, a café, the bookstore. We had just been introduced by two mutual friends, whom we followed on our journey, and my dog, who sometimes followed, sometimes led.
We got flirty and narrative, talked our way through courtship, moving in together, getting married and having kids – two girls, we agreed, two years apart. Somewhere along the walk, though, it occurred to me that you were more than a little crazy, and you could see me realizing it. I backed off, and then you did too, a fairly amicable divorce. We walked for a while in silence, listening to our friends argue the merits of a former wrestler turned actor. Since that day, and our fifteen minute lifetime together, we say hello on the street or in the bar or at the café, we shoot the shit, that’s pretty much all.
But saying “that’s pretty much all” belittles our knowing each other. For me, leaving you and others I know from the bar, the café, people I’ve spent hours procrastinating with in the bookstore or just always said hello to on the street corner, people I’ve served goods to or been served goods by – this will be the hardest of all, because so many of you I may never see again. We’ll exchange email addresses and phone numbers, of course, and I’ll keep them in a desk drawer as I move from place to place, or grow old in the place I’m leaving for. And, while we’ll look fondly at those pieces of paper each time we clean out our desks, then put them back, we won’t write or call because that’s just not how we know each other. We know each other from the neighborhood, and I love you, and I am leaving.
