Sunday, October 10, 2021

Leaving Hudson Avenue, in Five Parts, With Some Pictures


This essay, which I expect few to have interest in, is a compilation of the thoughts that went through my head as I prepared to move from an apartment I have been in for 20 years. Initially I was going to publish each part separately, but then I decided to join them together. What the hell. Ultimately, this is a piece about change. I wrote it to sort thoughts in my head, but if it resonates with you then I am very glad.

Part 1: Madonna Released

June 2021

I am moving.

I have not moved in 20 years, so I don't remember much about how to move. I know that "moving" is involved, but what else other than that? How does one actually move?  

The funny thing is that the move is less than a mile away from where I am now. So maybe I am really "budging" instead of moving. Nevertheless, something is happening that I have not done in a long time. 

The other day, in preparation for the move, I gave away a large bin containing magazines with Madonna on the cover that I have been collecting for nearly 30 years, starting around 1985. I think I stopped doing so about 5 years ago, mostly because Madonna is on fewer magazine covers these days, but also because I think I care less than I used to. 

In 1985, however, pretty much all I cared about was Madonna, and the magazines were a way to track her ascension in pop culture and as an influence in my life. In 1985, I was 23 years old, and I badly wanted what she had: looks, confidence, style, attitude, sex, talent. Who didn't? As a gay man navigating my identity and manhood amidst the collage of templates in 80's culture, Madonna offered the whole package, and then some. In fact she created many of the templates herself. I cared very much about all of that back then.

But in 2021, at 59 years of age, not so much. 

If you happen to be over 50 yourself, I wonder if you notice your priorities shifting? I have with mine--not all at once--but slowly over time, like sand dunes manipulated by a gentle wind. Things that I used to care very much about don't mean so much to me anymore, and things that I did not value so much as a younger man are becoming more important. My Madonna magazines reside in the first category. 

***

When I started collecting the covers, I was very much influenced, like many young folk, by pop culture. When Madonna hit, she was both in and out, hot and cold, master and servant, slut and virgin. With her as inspiration, I realized that I didn't have to settle for just one way of presenting, or experiencing, myself. She helped me to reconcile, accept, and ultimately celebrate the dualities within myself.  

She offered so many variations of herself that it was dizzying at the time, but they were all pretty damn perfect and so believable that every time she morphed I would question whether the previous incarnation were in fact a false version the whole time. Magazines documented all of it, with great lighting, and I would buy and keep them as a sort of record, I suppose, of something happening during my time that had not happened before (and has not happened since, I would argue). She graced so many magazines, because Madonna on the cover guaranteed an audience. She was a goddess in our midst. She was both one of us, and above us, a much more appealing example of the divine than the catholic god I had grown up with (who was not one of us at all, despite, you know, Jesus). 

***

The other day, a man who found my ad on Craigslist showed up in a truck and took the whole lot from me. It was over and done with in minutes--30 years of carting that bin everywhere I moved, and now they are in the custody of someone else, to be offered to those who currently care more than I do. And that is okay. I no longer need them to anchor or guide my identity. Let them go to those who do.


Part 2: Letting Go Of The Shoeboxes

In Part 1, I wrote about letting go of my collection of magazines that feature Madonna on the cover. If you read that part, you may have come to the conclusion (understandably) that it is "easy" for me to let things go. You would be wrong, of course, but don't feel badly--I think most would come to the same conclusion. Truth is, it's as difficult for me to let go of things as it is for many people. So when I need to do this, I simply extract the emotional component from the decision and allow myself to be guided by practicality and rationale. 

We all do this whether we realize it or not. It's a crude example, but every time you flush the toilet you are letting go of something that was very recently a part of you. Most of us never even think about it, nor do we question the decision. It leads me to suspect that when it is difficult to let go of something, it has less to do with the something, and more to do with the meaning we have assigned to it. 

***

I was talking with someone the other day who was had been going through old letters and pictures, deciding what to keep and what to toss. This person does not have children, which adds a particular emphasis to the deciding process. He was concerned that if he tossed something out, the memory might be lost forever. I think he may be right. If we discard our past or there is nobody to whom we can pass on the record of it, does it disappear? And if it disappears during our lifetime, what impact does that have on present-day us? In other words, how much of our present-day self is reliant on our past self? 

Do you ever think back to a year of your childhood and wonder how much of it is lost to memory? We forget much of our lives, because there is really no reason to remember that much of it. Journaling or keeping a diary is no guarantee we will hold a memory, because I have read some of the journals from the past and cannot remember living through what I wrote about. This makes me wonder something else: is memory what makes a life, or is it something altogether different? 

***

When I was in my 20's, I was trying rather hard to not be gay, or at least not to be thought of as gay, and a female friend of mine tried to help me with this doomed project. We decided that it would be best to discard any written evidence of the gay in my life: cards, letters, correspondence from men I had gone out with that I had kept as mementos (I think I wanted evidence of being loved). We gathered many of them up and threw them out a dressing room window in the dance studio where we both studied ballet (I know, right?). The window emptied into an alley that was closed off from the street. Anything that fell into that alley would probably stay there for eternity. 

I remember watching the letters and cards of my love life float down to the ground, and wondering if I were making a mistake by throwing away my (gay) history, the written memories of my romances. At the time I (we) thought we were doing the right thing. Today, I can say in hindsight that it was a mistake, because those cards and letters would have meaning to me now--they were a record of my emotional and sexual past, a roadmap to my adulthood. At the time, they were a record of a past I was trying to forget. 

The Madonna magazines were less a record of my past and more of a record of the past--a past that is accessible anywhere on the internet today. So letting go of them was really only letting go of a physical record. I can look up any of those magazine covers online at anytime. The magazines themselves have lost meaning to me--my identity is no longer influenced by how Madonna lives her life--I find meaning elsewhere these days. 

***

My partner has more trouble than I with letting go of things. In preparation for our move, I told him that I would go through his closet and toss anything "unnecessary". Not things he needs and wants, mind you, but items such as empty shoeboxes, for example. He objected to this proposal, telling me that "You never know when you are going to need a shoebox." While this may be true, I responded, "When you need one, I am sure we can find one." Today I threw out several of them while he was out of the apartment, sparing him witnessing the carnage. I also changed out his mismatched clothes hangers for ones that match, because if there is one thing I can control, it is whether or not the clothes hangers match. 

I take my wins where I can get them. 

His challenge with letting go of things seems to be different than mine. He is less concerned with losing memories, and perhaps more worried about having future regrets. In this regard we are certainly cut from different cloths--I have confidence in my ability to pivot in the future. He would rather make the right decision in the present moment. I feel that my skill is more useful for the world we live in today, but of course I am biased...and also right. Fortunately, there is room for two perspectives in our household. 

As long as I get to throw out the shoeboxes.  


Part 3: Keeping the IKEA shit

Who has not bought IKEA furniture? The trick to doing so successfully is to know what to get, and what not to get. Trust me, there is more of the latter, so perhaps that is more important to know. Over the years I have purchased items from the store, but not too many. I am one of those people who can walk into IKEA, take a carry basket rather than a care, and not actually fill it up. But of course I can't completely live without their products. I currently have some furniture items from IKEA that have been in my apartment for 20 years, and they still hold up, perhaps better than I. 

As my boyfriend and I prepare to move 3/4 of a mile away to a new and larger apartment, I decided that I would be taking the IKEA furniture I currently have with me: a large cube bookcase, and a dining room table with extensions and chairs. I decided that I want these items to last through one more apartment before I let them go. Our plan is to stay in this new place for a couple of years, then hopefully buy something in either San Diego or Portland. 

I don't know if this is a rule or not, but I will not be taking the IKEA shit to the place we buy. 

***

I know someone who has a few million dollars. Actually, I know a few people who have a few million dollars, but this is Los Angeles, so that is not unexpected. Anyway, one of the people I know who has a few million dollars told me that when he moves to his new home, he will not be furnishing it with anything from Pottery Barn. According to him, you cannot get good furniture at Pottery Barn, or at least not furniture good enough for a million-plus dollar home. If you want good furniture, you have to buy if from a custom store or from Europe. 

I see his point.

I wonder what he would think of my IKEA cube bookshelf and dining table with extensions? I wonder what he would think of my desk made with pressed wood, the one where the pressed wood is already peeling on the edges? 

I don't know what he would think about them, but I know what I think about them. They are what you buy when you don't have millions of dollars. They are what you buy when you are in an apartment instead of a million dollar house. 

I don't take great pride in the furniture I have, but I did take some pride in it back when I first purchased it, because it was mine, and I bought it new as opposed to getting it at a thrift store. Buying new furniture, at one time, was as important to me perhaps as it is to some people to buy quality pieces from Europe. I don't blame either of us one bit, not one bit. Don't we all do our best to make ourselves feel good in our homes? And we do it within our means. 

I am not ashamed of my long-lived IKEA pieces, because they represent the best I could do at the time, and they have served me well, and will continue to do so through one more apartment. Once we buy a place, I cannot promise that I will buy European furniture--I may in fact take a look at Pottery Barn, but you never know. What I do know is that it won't be a million dollar place, but that is just fine. For me, it is the same as I suspect it is with those who have a few million: we are both interested not in what it costs, but rather how well it will fit. 

It would, however, be nice to have a desk that does not peel on the edges.

***

For the apartment we are going to, I am keeping the IKEA shit. In my book, IKEA is fine for an apartment, but not for a home. I am aware that it may be different in your book, and I respect that. We are all entitled to have our own books. 


Part 4: Goodbye, cunt!

Have you ever wanted to call someone a cunt? If you have, I would imagine that you thought very carefully about doing so, because once you call someone a cunt, you cannot take it back. There is no way to "accidentally" call someone a cunt--it is an intentional affront in every instance of usage. I have thought about calling others cunt much more than I have actually done so, which is a good sign or a bad one. I am undecided. But I do wonder what it says about my life that there are people I consider to be cunts, without a sliver of doubt, in my world. 

What exactly makes someone a cunt? Well, they must be mean, and by mean I mean they don't care much about how others feel. But wait, there's more! To be a cunt, one must not only be mean, they must also feel justified in being so; in other words, they can't see their cuntiness because they are too busy playing victim. For these people there is no turning back from cuntitude, because they have already decided that they are right and the other is wrong, end of story

I like this passage  by Hannah Croft from this page that defines cunt compared to other words used to describe female genitalia: 

"While vagina describes part of the interior sexual organ, and vulva describes the exterior, the word cunt encompasses the whole thing – it’s the only word that describes the whole shebang. More than this, vagina literally means “sword sheath”, in other words, a “dick-passage”, so you could say cunt is actually the nicer and more anatomically correct word to use.

Semantically speaking cunt is simply the female equivalent of dick, as both are signifies for a sexual organ, and when you look at it like that the whole hoo-hah surrounding the use of cunt in conversation does seem somewhat strange."

It does seem strange, doesn't it?  

What's the difference between calling someone a "dick" and calling someone a "cunt"? I guess it depends on what country you are in. In the UK, cunt is used more frequently, mostly to indicate that someone is being a jerk, whereas in the U.S. the word is seen as reprehensible and offensive primarily to women. Perhaps, beyond the meaning ascribed by the receiver, the aggressiveness is because of the hard "c", which practically begs the user to spit out the word. Americans have a hard time with hard consonants, I notice. They generally prefer soft consonants, words like prayer, flower, and lasagna. The one exception is the word God, which is practically all hard consonants, but that does not seem to bother the fussybutts. Strange. I suspect that the hard consonants are the reason that so many scream out "Oh God!" during sex--it is a primal utterance! 

"Dick" has a hard "c", and is more acceptable in society, still I find it odd that so many insults are about labeling others as sexual organs. 

***

My "neighbor soon to be ex-neighbor", who is also a "tenant soon to be ex-tenant", is definitely a cunt extremis. She is mean to the core, and only cares about others feelings when she is being treated well, or when she is playing with other cunt-victims like herself. When she is not getting what she wants, she turns on you, fast. And when you call her on this, she feigns shock, as though her wonky brain cannot fathom her own bad behavior. She is a cunt. 

She has been a cunt, off and on, for the 20 years I have known her. When I first started managing this building, I remember she came over and knocked on the door, and demanded that I unlock the electric meter panel for the power company. I asked her why this needed to be done, and she replied, "You don't need to know, just do it!" I laughed at her and slammed the door. And there you have the root of cuntiness: entitlement. Entitlement is always, always, a coping mechanism enlisted in the task of protecting one against a fear of loss.

A couple years after the electric panel incident, the police were called on her when she dragged her then-boyfriend down the street a bit as he held onto the door of her car. He wisely flew the coop, never to be seen again. 

The sad part is that, for much of the time, the cunt and I were able to achieve a sort of détente in our interactions. We greeted one another with pleasant words, and I did her favors like taking her packages in when she was away. But the civility was, in hindsight, condescending of her. She tolerated me because it worked for her to do so, until it didn't. 

Fortunately, I will never have to see her again after I leave Hudson, and hopefully I will think of her less and less. There are too many people like her out there, the funcional mentally disordered, who act like toddlers throwing tantrums but in fact are far more dangerous. The neighbor hides her cuntiness behind the veil of "social justice warrior", which justifies her meanness, because, after all, she is fighting for the oppressed! The problem is, I don't think she really cares about anyone but herself. I suspect she only helps the oppressed as a way to validate her cunty ways. 

There are so many things I would like to tell her, but I won't, because I am invested in my peace of mind at the moment more than I am invested in disturbing hers. But if I did tell her things, I most certainly would tell her that she is a cunt. The cuntiest of cunts. The Cunt Queen. Cuntilia of Cuntsville. A cunt through and through.

I am moving away and moving on. She will have to wake up to the reality of herself for the rest of her days, and I can't imagine that makes for many pleasant mornings. No matter. I am leaving Hudson, and her, behind. 

Goodbye, cunt.


Part 5: Hello Mansfield


The grass is rarely "greener" on the other side, but one could not be faulted for hoping it is at least green. That is all I want with this move. Anything more will be "gravy", as they say. Green gravy. 

The other day I had to speak with the manager of our new apartment because the electricity had not yet been turned on. A technician from the power company was there, and the manager called to assure me that all was good. But wait. He then handed the phone to the technician so that I could speak with him. "Hello", I said, "do we have juice?" (I was trying to sound cool.) He responded that there would be juice in about two minutes. 

But wait. The manager got back on and asked if they could go into the apartment to "test" the lights. I agreed to this plan. But wait. He called me back from inside the apartment and assured me that the lights were, in fact, now working when turned on. He then wanted to put me back on the phone with the technician to "thank him again". In the background, I heard the technician say, "Tell him that all is good and to have a nice weekend." That poor technician! 

But wait. The manager then proceeded to reiterate why it was the right decision for me to take the apartment, because with him as manager, I will be "safe" there. He then told me for the millionth time that he trusts me and I am a good guy and a "gentleman". He continued on until it started to wear on me, and I finally had to say to him that I had to go.

But wait. Earlier in the week, I got a text from him that said, "Do you miss me?" I assumed he was thinking he had texted another person, but it concerned me nonetheless since it came to my phone. I responded, "Excuse me?", after which he then called me to profusely apologize for sending it by mistake. I tried to ease his discomfort by joking, "You probably thought you were texting your girlfriend!", and we both had a good laugh. Ha ha ha!

New street, new apartment, new nonsense. At least the nonsense at the new place amuses me. I prefer amusement to annoyance.

***

I have never been a fan of "starting over". While I understand the romance of thinking that way, it's a fool's illusion. We can't start over! But we can change directions and head toward a new destination. Though I am only moving 3/4 mile away, I am hoping that it will be a huge change in direction for me. In fact, I am counting on it. There is no way I would have put myself though the difficulty of moving if I thought it would be otherwise. 

One thing that eased the difficulty of the move was when I just pretended that instead of moving, I was  doing a "deep cleaning". 

***

I have always had a certain confidence about changing directions. I feel very fortunate in this regard. I have read that some people, especially those with certain types of Attention Deficit Disorder, have no confidence in changing directions. Where I see fresh possibilities and the ability to adjust course if needed, they often see only negative outcomes and the potential for regret. Had I been born with a mind that worked this way, there is little chance I would have had the life I've had, because my life has been all about changing directions with confidence. 

Wherever I go, I find a way to make it work. And wherever I am, I will stay as long as I can make it work. Hudson has not been working for me for a long time. Mansfield Ave., you're up. 

***

It is perfectly okay to walk away from a situation that is not serving you anymore. But walking away is only half of the action--walking toward is the other half. I have walked away from stress, walked away from judgement, from guilt, from disrespect, walked away from being treated as a means rather than an ends. I have walked toward peace of mind and greater control over who takes up my time. And all it took was three months of hard fucking work and a shift 3/4 of a mile northwest. 

Sometimes the biggest moves are just 3/4 of a mile away. 

I wonder, at times, if my desire to keep moving in some way is caused by a fear of death or a zest for life. As I write that, I realize that a true zest for life can only spring from a healthy fear of death. Fear of death does not have to mean a literal fear of dying--it could mean a fear of not living anymore. The difference is that the former is about avoidance, and likely rooted in the future, while the latter is about embracement, and rooted in the present moment. 

When one is embracing the present, regardless of what is happening, why would you want life to end? Even in painful moments, there is an aliveness to present experience when experienced in the present. This cannot be done when one is dead, obviously. 

Perhaps my desire to move from Hudson is a little bit of both fear and zest. Perhaps. Now that I think about it, maybe saying goodbye is always both fear and zest. Maybe. I don't mind a bit of fear as long as there is some zest in the mix. 

Saying goodbye. I have done this before, and I will likely do it again. I have said goodbye to the Naval Academy, Starbucks, my brother Mark, my niece Summer, my cousin Patty, and others. It is perfectly okay to say goodbye when you are not treated well. Goodbye, Hudson. Goodbye, Madonna magazines. Goodbye, cunt. 

Hello, Mansfield. 

ANTIDOTES TO FEAR OF DEATH
by Rebecca Elson

Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.

Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.

Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:

No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.

And sometime it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:

To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.

A Dining Room fit for dinner parties

Home.


Sunday, May 2, 2021

Time After Time


In 1983, I was 22 years old, and living in San Diego, CA. I often think about times in the last century when I would have liked to have been 22 other than the time when I actually was 22, and it usually narrows down to the following years: 1922, 1950, 1960, and 1979. I have selected years where, at the age of 22, I would have avoided the drafts for wars that were occurring around those times, while still enjoying major cultural shifts. The exception to this of course is 1979 and the War with AIDS. There is no way to have reveled in the glorious glow of the Sexual Revolution/Gay Rights Movement/Disco Era without intersecting with that crisis, but I think, I think, that it would have been worth it. With COVID-19, most people who die have little to show for their suffering, whereas if you succumbed to AIDS in the early 80's, you could at least say that you had danced like a motherfucker

1983 would have definitely been on the list even if I had not been 22 at the time. It was simply a banner year in many ways. For one thing, it was a bit easier to avoid AIDS in 1983 as a 22 year-old because I came of age late enough to adjust my sexual behavior in response to the horrors around me. Had I been born just a few years sooner, I doubt this would have been the case. 

For this essay though, the main reason it was a banner year is because of the music that was released. In 1983 we enjoyed first albums by Madonna, REM, and Cyndi Lauper. I could stop right there, but in addition there were superb new albums by David Bowie, U2, R.E.M., The Police, The Talking Heads, Eurythmics, and so many more. The previous year, 1982, was when pop music embraced New Wave so much that many feel that the 80's, at least how we think of them musically, did not actually begin until 1982. Though both disco and New Wave were danceable, the latter emerged from the punk scene of the 70's, while disco came from the black, gay, and European underground dance club scene. 

While I was enamored by Madonna at the time (like everyone else), one could not ignore the impact and raw talent of Cyndi Lauper, who released her debut album She's So Unusual. Unlike Madonna, who was sexy and confident, Lauper played the other side of the hipness coin: the freaky outsider. She played it to perfection because she was not playing. Madonna was a freaky outsider as well, but her beauty and fashion sense won her entrance into the accepted crowd, so much so that she took over the room, changed it, and ruled it, whereas Lauper was forever the one screaming her head off in the parking lot. Her saving grace is that she screamed really, really well, so well that she drew a crowd, and along the way she showed them that she could also whisper. That whisper is well utilized on the ending of her iconic song "Time After Time", which became Lauper's very first number-one single. 

Since 1983, "Time After Time" has never truly left pop culture, or the culture in general. A song added as an afterthought to the album has since become unforgettable, recognized all over the world as a soulful expression of patience, the yearning cry of one who has no choice but to watch their lover struggle, recognizing that the struggle is not theirs. What greater love is there than to attend to another's pain despite the pain one feels themselves? 

I remember that when the song was first released, I did not think that much of it. I was much more into the quirky danceability of She Bop or the melodic romance of All Through The Night. To me these were masterpieces because they spoke of masturbation and in-the-moment romance, two of my favorite pastimes in 1983. But nobody is really singing either of these songs in 2021. What did I know? 

***

Currently, my partner and I manage a small residential apartment building of 16 units. In the middle of March, one of our tenants, a kind elderly woman who has been a resident for over 30 years, committed suicide in her apartment. She turned on the gas from the stove, tied some plastic around her neck to constrict her airway, and then got into her filled bathtub, fully clothed, knowing that once she passed out from the gas she would slip under the water and quietly drown, ensuring her death. I was working offsite that day, and when alerted by another tenant that there was a smell of gas in the stairwell, I sent my partner over to investigate. He ended up breaking open the door to get past the chain lock, and that is when he and the other tenant found the body. 

She was already dead by several hours. but that did not stop my partner, who is training to be a nurse, from checking her for a pulse and trying to lift her water-logged body out of the water. He could not do so, her body was already too saturated to lift easily. Eventually, the police and paramedics arrived, and they took over, and my partner frantically messaged me about what happened--messages I received in between client sessions. 

I consoled him as best I could in the moment, put my own shock in a "container", and showed up for my clients for the rest of the day.

***

Death is never the end, at least not for those who are still living. It will be months before I, as the building manager, can even begin to deal with the apartment my tenant left behind, because I am required by law to wait until contacted by either family or an executor of her estate. In the event that neither happen, then we are required to store her belongings in the rare case that one of her family show up in the future to claim belongings. In the meantime, for the next three years I will have to inform any prospective tenants, if they ask, that someone died by suicide in the apartment. That should be a draw!

My partner, in the meantime, continues to experience the aftershocks of finding a bloated dead body in the middle of a Saturday morning right before his final exams week. I cannot even imagine what he is going through, or what it was like for him to find her cold, heavy corpse. He told me that he was glad that she was floating face down in the water so that he did not have to see her face. I would take the experience from him in a fucking second, because I have 30 years of resilience and life on him, and I would rather be the one holding the memory and the pain. But I can't do that, no matter how much I want to. He has to hold it himself, while I watch and get ready to catch him should he fall.

"If you're lost you can look and you will find me,

Time after time.

If you fall, I will catch you, I will be waiting,

Time after time."

"Time After Time" is a song about wanting to ease the suffering of a loved one. Who has not felt such a desire? It could be called "love" to take on the suffering of others, but it isn't really. It's selfish in a way--while also being a certain form of caring. Real love is about trust, and belief in the tenacity of the beloved. Real love knows that suffering is bearable because it is washed through the body by sadness: the emotion that kneads a heart into beating again. Real love holds, it does not take. Real love does not bear another's sadness, instead it bears witness. Real love has faith in the beloved's ability to move through pain; real love cushions, but does not stop, the fall. 

Death comes to us all--this is not news to anyone (except those who live in Los Angeles), and yet when it comes it often feels like a poorly planned surprise to everyone involved. Surprise: life ends! (At least for the one who has died.) While many would rather not think about such things, it is the thinking about such things that makes life worth living in my book (and in the book of Existentialists, among others). 

The concept of there being time after time seems to reference the present (time) and the past (after time). It says nothing about a future that is uncertain--merely the implication that time will continue on and on, repeating itself. But if the '80's taught me anything, it is that time rarely repeats itself; rather than time after time", more often it is "time, and new time, and more time, but different". This certainly would not make a good pop song title, and takes nothing away from Lauper's timeless tune, it simply differentiates between those who take their lives and those who choose to stay and live (and bear suffering). 

Suicide is an example of the misguided interpretation of time after time--the belief that death will somehow "catch you if you fall". Newsflash: it doesn't! Life, on the other hand, is an example of time and time: the moments that ebb and flow from suffering to joy, dark to light, despair to love. Romantic notions may lead to great pop songs where relationship breakups are seen as the Hero's Journey, but they do not, in themselves, lead to a great life. 

Suicide is a fake Hero's Journey, the false conclusion that death will somehow redeem all, when in fact it just creates a bigger fucking mess. What my partner did that day was not courage but love--he acted, I suspect, from the knowledge that once you are dead there is no getting back up. You can only do that when you are still alive. He acted hoping that he could help the old woman get back up. He was, by no fault of his own, too late, and so he suffers now. And yet if anything was to be born from this death, it is my greater love for him as a result of his actions, and the knowledge and conviction that I will live to catch him if he falls. 

Lest you think I have no compassion for the old woman, let me assure you that I do. She was always kind to me, and generous in her appreciation for what I did as building manager. I had no clue that she was suffering, if in fact she was. But I can be upset at those I care for when they do things that create a mess for me to clean up. And in case you need further proof that I am not a monster, cleaning up her mess is my continued caring for her despite my upset. 

***

Cyndi Lauper does a surprising thing in her hit song--she cuts the title phrase short--twice, uttering "Time after..." rather than all three words. On first listen it is easy to dismiss this as artistic license, until you realize that she also ends the song this way. 

As I write this essay, our world is on the verge of figuring out what the "time after" will look like, even though we are still in the suffering of a pandemic. As I said earlier, when one says "time after time", they are implying that something will repeat itself, over and over again. But in our current case, we cannot rely on this implication. The "time after" may look like nothing that has come before, so can we still call it "time after time"? 

As I get older, I have fewer time after times than when I was a young man. I realize that death, when it comes, will introduce a whole new category of "time after", altering the meaning of time after time from "over and over" to "life after life". The time after my death may indeed be more time, but it will be time without me. That never really mattered that much to me until I got into a relationship I cherish. Now I think about what my partner's time after me will look like.

My dead tenant did not seem to give much thought to "time after", so now I have to give thought to it, unfortunately. I shouldn't have to do this, because her time (life) was not mine. And yet here we are. In my life today, I am focused on making choices for the time after so that my partner benefits from his time with me in the time after me. His time after me will still have plenty of me in it, if I have any say in the matter. 

But...I am not there yet. I still have time after time, or so I suppose. I still have time. Time after...