Take me back to the start. Take me away from this walk. Mood blue and quiet, my steps were yielding easily to a strong emotional gravity that afternoon. The day was nondescript, if my memory served me right the sky outside was cloudy and grey.
Earlier a slight smell of Patchouli had been in the air as I moved past the tree of life bedspread. It was rumpled, the bed more made than unmade. Still it was more or less covering the twin bed in that narrow room. Softly my footfalls drew me toward the door and out. The age of the hippie was already in the past despite these vestigial trappings. That age one that spoke of love and of accommodation would be nothing but a memory soon.
Traversing the short distance to the door my ear picked up strains of a new song from the next new big thing, that bisexual pop phenom from Britain, David Bowie. "There's a panic in Detroit, he looked a lot like Che Gueverra….".
Looking back and down the hall that was all this apartment really was I could somewhat sense I was leaving for the last time. Nothing was certain but we were both young then and mobile. No chains of obligations bound us in space to a specific locale, not yet at least. No regrets really, not yet. Consciously I did not realize how much the few times I had spent here in this 750 square feet had changed my life. Today I know in a dispassionate way. It has taken years to get here.
Is there a purpose to this all? Are we chess pieces for the battle between God and the Devil, pawns in a more metaphysical battle between good and evil? Is the question even worth asking? When you are 19 and walking out the door of the first real love of your life these issues don't matter. Hormones and unrefined emotions overrule any focus on meaning and value.
In my my mind I told myself better days are coming. Nayh I didn't think that as I pulled the white painted wood framed door closed behind me. I was just going. My soul was empty. My mind was empty. The anger was gone. The rage had washed over me and was gone like a spring storm. Breath, walk, breath just go.
In the back of my mind I wondered if she would remember me when all was said and done. When she was doing something simple a decade later, would I cross her mind? Maybe she would be putting on an old blouse and notice a loose button. Wondering at first, then maybe a smile of recognition and she might remember how I struggled to gain access to her lovely breasts after an evening at the wine bars all those many years ago.
Do men and woman have these kinds of feelings in common? Do we all want to leave a mark on the hearts that have touched us? Is it a compulsive need to feel that our worth will be validated? I don't know. Maybe for some people the contact means much more than for other. Me I have never been able to separate the person that the face I remember represents from the fuck. Despite Erica Jong I have never been able to detach my emotions to the level of "casual" sex, to enjoy the zipless fuck.
Walking down the sidewalk I wasn't making the kind of journey that is made immortal in ballads. No last train was about to depart. No snow was falling. I was simply walking down the street to a bus and then to a subway. This was not a sepia toned memory captured in a fading mental photograph. It was just a departure.
Life was lighter then. No suitcase, not even a kit bag, all I had was a dark burnt orange Jansport backpack. If my toothbrush and deodorant were in the outer pocket my life needs were handled. To leave her given the layout of that odd apartment I had to pass through the bedroom to the front door. Guessed I was leaving some things behind as a glance over to the dresser revealed some change that had been in my pocket the night before and a ticket stub from a concert a few months back. It was a Dead show back when they played small halls and new music still was in the pipeline. Wow, it really was a long time ago.
Looking at the pictures on the wall I realized how much they how could to mean to me. A poster for the Beaux Arts Ball still remains in my memory. The theme that year was the Sacred and the Profane. That phrase seemed to mark the two spheres of my psyche. A pastel picture hanging crooked on that wall that depicted a wheat field in golden late summer sunlight with the sky's blues bleeding toward night made me homesick for a time that was once mine. Looking into that picture and I was making a trip when I was eight years old. It was a trip in the back seat of my parents' car that I had made a hundred times or more. It was a trip measured by looking up from the back seat at tree tops and knowing exactly where I was. Reaching for the door I did not know where I was or where I was going.
Beyond the first couple of stages of the trip nothing much was set. At some point I would be at the onramp to a freeway with a thumb out. If I had come up with a plan I might have a piece of cardboard with a destination spelled out in 5 or 10 inch letters on it. I might even paper clip a five spot to communicate clearly I was in for sharing expenses.
There was no use in shedding tears. This wasn't a departure with shouting.
I loved her but that hadn't helped at all. I would have done almost anything for her. The waves of events rolled over me; there was the deferral of my personal desires and the focus on her goals and dreams. The seconds dripped off my hands, off my finger tips as I waiting patiently for her choice of whether she could make a commitment to me as strong as the one I was willing to make for her. Long as a Russian winter the time passed but still there was no sign of a decision. It was time to go.
Now was the time to leave this town. The moment had slipped away. Did we do it on purpose or had the days just stripped it away and out of our control? If we had talked more would it have been different? A hand placed in another hand. A hour spent together just talking with no focus no agenda, would that have changed things? What about a sharing meaningless secrets, would any of it have altered the path that lead to this hallway, that lead to this door, that lead to this sidewalk and to the distance?
In the end we had to do the things that mattered. Good byes and thanks seemed so hollow. I had to go, no destination just movement forward. Breath, walk, breath.
Perhaps there would come a time of second grace for us, I thought. In maturity with cellos in a rich festival hall we might meet with hands extended and no emotional memory of what we had been done to each other. As we waited for the concert it would be almost as if we were sitting in the sun of the first days of our long past romance. Sunday's on the beach with smuggled red wines lingering on the palette.
Why were we already so weary? Why was this were the story had to end?
At the end of that day I was waiting by the entrance to the highway heading west. It is hard to hitch a ride westbound at the end of the day. In the late day light the sun is in a driver's eyes. As a result all of the cars seemd focused on the road. A hitchhiker is weightless and ephemeral in the blinding rays of western sunlight. Only an angel's intervention would take me away and offer me some comfort as the loneliness really began to come on.
My leaving her is in my mind a small art house movie, a melodrama. Camera angles are tight and the feel of the scenes is claustrophobic. Close up of faces now drained of emotions fill the screen talking heads rambling on about things that anyone watching know don't matter. So what if you are going to visit your aunt. So what if my shoes are worn too far out to be much more than a Platonic notion of what a shoe should be. Scream about what's wrong. The audience wants it. But we don't have the guts to play this scene out this way. If this movie could have a theme it would be a piano repetitively striking a soft melodious chord. It would be a plaintive sound crying out for the next step up in the melodic sequence that would turn this repetition into a song. But the result won't be that easy for the audience. Nothing in this is easy. The chord just repeats and fades and then it is gone.
Then I hear it coming now from far away. Among the drone of all the others hell-bent on getting home before the last food is gone, the last person is in bed, the last light is turned out someone is coming for me. I don't know the make of the car because it is almost dark, but I can hear its wheels and its transmission are slowing. At this spot and at this time there can be no other reason for the change in the sound except that the driver is willing to take a chance and pick up a stranger. This car will be the 16 hour drive to where I want to be. Come on, come on stop, stop now. Really there is just as much danger for a hitchhiker as there is for a driver, come on I will take the chance if you will.
On the highway headlight after headlight passes and we are on and into the night. The hours will slip away. What is next I don't know, but the place it will happen is not here. Not anymore.
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