Come home. Write about it.

My old friend, with whom I was once in love -- he and I are back in touch.

I fell in love with him one night in my freshman year of college. There were many events leading up to that night, I suppose, but I remember distinctly the circumstances of the falling. We were at his dirty fraternity house. And I don't mean "dirty" like food on the floor and unsavory bathroom conditions. I mean "dirty" like loud music, cocaine, boys fucking girls and then hurting their feelings. (That's not what happened with my friend and I, exactly, but that's the kind of company he kept. Just trying to paint the picture.)

I should rewind, too, and tell you about the day earlier in the semester when our school flooded. It was the El Nino year, year of rains so torrential that an entire college campus infrastructure was overcome by water. The libraries flooded; important materials were lost. The day after the biggest storm, to all of our great glee, classes were cancelled. So my friend and I went on an adventure. He came and found me in my dorm and then we went to visit our french teacher. The sky was gray and the air was refreshing, moist, washed. We walked around our stunned campus that day. Spending time with him made me feel tentative and delighted.

He had this effect on me. He may have had the same effect on all the girls he hung out with, in fact I'm sure he did, because he paid such close attention. I always felt a little bit on edge around him, because he was, in fact, edgy. "Edgy" like you were never sure what he was going to say next. "Edgy" like he could leap across all boundaries of appropriateness with a single utterance. But he was also immeasurably sweet. People loved him. His frat brothers loved him. He clearly came from love, if not love and struggle.

And like I said, he paid attention. When I was around him I felt myself at a kind of tenuous balance point, teetering between a painful exposure, his piercing commentary peeling back layers before I was ready, and the surprising tenderness of being seen so clearly, with such generosity.

So, he kept after me in his odd way. Eventually, of course, we ended up making out with each other. And that night that I started telling you about: I don't recall if that was the first night that we spent together, but it was most definitely the night that the doors to my heart swung open. I remember him playing with me, locking me out of the room, and I remember how much I wanted to get back in to be with him. Then, back in the room: he rolling cigarettes, sitting at his desk, smiling at me.

I forget how exactly it happened but then there it was. The long, slow tumble towards another person, the heart's bright gasp of recognition. But it wasn't meant to be -- he fell away from me almost immediately in the ensuing days, in his maddeningly edgy and inaccessible way. I wrote him a letter demanding that he show up, be with me, let me love him . . . which, as you can imagine, was the death knell. We fell out of contact almost entirely for a long time after that.

But he found me again the following year, I think, and started reaching out to me again. And since then we've re-kindled something of a friendship. I've felt him kind of tracking me all these years, staying in touch one way or another, with a kind e-mail or a random text or chat. Our contact has been frustrating, compelling, loving. In the intervening time he got married to a beautiful woman and is achieving success as a producer. He could have gone in so many directions but he has triumphed, has chosen life. I see that and I am truly proud of him. We finally got together a few weeks ago for the first time in years, over lunch with another friend of his. It felt like no time had passed at all.

Tonight we chatted a bit online, and in our chat he wrote me something of a poem, that ended up cutting straight to my heart. It surprised me, but it also didn't, how swiftly I was transported back to our brief moment together, 12 years ago. The shock of being witnessed was as electric then as it is now, as veiled and elusive as the witness may have been. I was surprised, but I also wasn't, by the tears rolling down my cheeks.

Some living quality of our contact is frozen in time and space, caught, left behind. What has survived all the time up until now is just a piece of it, held at arm's length. But words like these cast light on the ice and melt it down. They're nonsense words, elusive, cryptic; nonetheless, they reach me. In being reached I can recall what's possible: gentleness at close range, ceasing to scramble away from contact and instead breathing quietly in its sight. And that gift yields a flood of further treasures. Later in the evening, after we chatted, I went to the dance and found myself opening up right to the edges of my body. Whirling through space I remembered trust. I remembered safety, my own; and perfection, the mystery's. I smiled wide and gave my life to Life, once more.

All because of a few silly words from an old friend.

Thanks, DOC.

~

i'll say this.

...

put your shoes on

the same way you did

when you were still under 20

and still excited to see something brilliant

or repulsive that defined you.

Come home.

write about it. You deserve the opportunity and command.

don't be so green.

You words may emit bad carbons.

or brilliant diamonds.

and that

exactly

is why it is so trying

and hard and sad

to be brilliant.

you are like you are.

there is a violin playing in my living room.

and a man speaking.

saying, "stand up"

but he is very young

and knows nothing of the world

like you

or I

which makes him so small

and you

and I

so big

and important.

feed your stream

of consciousness

and dance.

tonight,

you will not regret anything

except for not listening to yourself more

adding lamps to your bedroom

photographs to your wall

and removing the television from your home.

and of course calling me more often,

which makes me sad

because I always believed so much

in your capacity

to change the world.

and that, my dear friend.

...

is terribly sad.

the converse...

of your smile.

it is sad to wait there

and pass the last ten minutes of your evening

in something I wish i had a long time ago.

so sister,

please

live it out.

that is what the world needs.

the black and the white

the yin

the circle

the square.

and some dumb bastard to stop typing

when he's not getting paid to do it.