The Vanishing Point

I've been thinking about him a lot. That piece of my soul that fluttered so quietly into my life and left without a sound. Images of his sad eyes and wide smile keep plucking at my brain. That night I first saw him after so many years. I noticed him when I first walked into the bar. My type - tall, lanky, scruffy and definitely all wrong for me. I didn't know who he was when I first noticed him. He was just another image of what I thought I might be looking for. Drinks swam fluidly down my throat, like slippery fish making their way upstream. I remember it being a good day after a messy weekend. A Sunday night. I think I had just walked in from yet another smoke and he stopped me by the bathrooms. I can still see the image of him towering over me with that wobbly smile and long hair getting caught in his eyelashes. When I realized it was him, a blast from the past, I thought how fitting it was to find him there, in this bar, on this specific night. I can't recall the bits and pieces in between the initial greeting and the drive back to my place but there are cuts of film laying all around the floor of my memory. We drank some more, talked a lot and then drank again. I was happy to be talking with him. I think we were both standing at a corner of a high table. His murky friend lingering in the background. It wasn't long before we were sitting, side by side, legs touching, maybe even holding hands. I remember not feeling uncomfortable by the closeness we were imposing on one another. I knew we would go home together.

As the night was filtering out, I went to say my good nights to the mix of friends I had there and he made a stop to the boys room. The lights had come on and everybody, the girls especially, were making weak attempts at masking the look of too many cocktails and not enough decency. He came bumbling out of the washroom, smiling and sure of what was coming next. I looked up at his droopy face and, without hesitation, wiped the white dust off his nose. He stepped back, laughing half-heartedly, embarrassed but not really. I felt my skin start to drag. The next thing I remember is him sitting at a high top table and the two of us discussing where we would go from there. He wanted me to come to his house, just as his murky friend came by with two bubbly blondes ensuring that we were coming too. I told him that I had no interest in hanging out with those folks or in going to his home but that he was welcome to come to mine. Even as I said those words I knew that I was crossing a line that I had drawn myself, with a thick, black sharpie. We lingered in awkward silence. He, pretending not to feel any shame for what I saw, and me, for knowing better but still wanting.

The next thought or overwhelming feeling that I had has been the vanishing point for all my decisions thereafter. As we stood there in silence, the ultimate decision being left up to me, the words that came out of my mouth were surely otherworldly. They were not my own. I remember the molasses-like seconds before I spoke them. Contemplating what it would mean to me and all my belief systems, if I took him home with me. Only now I don't remember my exact words but I spoke clearly and quickly. 'Let's go.'

Now we were in my parking lot. I was locking my car door as he came around from the passenger side. I looked up and without a second to spare, we were kissing on that almost hot night in May. We kissed and walked to the building with half-smiles that only imminent lovers know.

The details of that night have been swallowed up by space and time but fleeting moments from the next morning are burned into my mind.

We woke up, hazily and clouded with remnants of the night before. Our arms and legs were tangled up in one another, relaxed and content. If we exchanged words, I can't recall them. If we made reference to any part of how we got there, I don't remember. I had somewhere to be, work, I imagine, and so did he. We gathered ourselves, our things and our thoughts and walked back to the parking lot. We stopped at the traffic light closest to my home when he told me that this was the happiest he had felt in much too long. As I remember this particular morning, I wonder if those words were spoken on another morning during that short week we spent together. But no, I'm sure it was then.

We made our way to the back alley that led to his door. The exchange in words was minimal. 'It was nice to run into you. Send me a post card, from here or there.' I watched him duck into his back door and I drove off, happy to feel the warmth of the sun that was peeking out in that moment.

An email from him at some point in the day. Kind words. The words I needed to hear. 

CUE: later that night.

I am back at the same bar, a few drinks in and I don't have his number, just his email address. I use the computer in the office to send him an email telling him that I am thinking of him and that maybe we should meet again.

My memory fails me one more time but he ends up at my house when the rest of the world is sound asleep. The words we share, the ingredients of that night evade me, like so much of the memory of him does. We wake up again, tangled and twisted like necklaces kept in a shoebox. My car is still in the parking lot at the bar so we decide to walk to the other side of the bridge on this drizzly, damp morning. A new coffee shop opened up just up from my place, which is where we stop to get our morning fix. The rain is spitting in our eyes and the sun has taken yet another day off. We walk, we barely talk. We smoke and drink our unexpectedly strong coffee. As we reach the corner of departing our separate ways, I think he gives me a kiss on the cheek and I awkwardly accept. Will we see each other again? I don't remember what was said.

The specific events and moments of the days to follow are sporadic and unclear but I can recall bits and pieces of the enormity of what ultimately refigured the molecular makeup of my being because of these said events. There were excessive text messages, many smoked cigarettes, shared beer and wine, honest declarations of self and fear and most definitely, lingering moments of close, physical proximity that acted as the final stitches or the last white highlights of a painting, to that single revealing week.

He left, we said good-bye and life carried on in its unpredictable way. I carried the weight of what he was to me for months to follow. He was the mirror that I needed. He lifted it in front of me so that I had no where else to look. He showed me the pieces of myself that I had long forgotten or thought I had discarded. He also became just what I thought he would be in those relevant moments that became my vanishing point. He spoke words that I wanted to believe, he made me feel things I thought were not possible anymore and he assured me in his honesty.

He has long since disappeared. He's become yet another memory, another piece of my distant past. Of course, he has made brief and random appearances since then, on the most arbitrary occasions but only by my provoking hands. My naturally, provoking hands.

He made me believe in the goodness of men. I restored his faith in 'good people.' Funny how I might still be the driving force in his restoration of faith, but for me, he has become yet another statistic in my volumes of uncertainty, volumes of distrust.

And with all that being said, my love for this man, this man with sad eyes and a droopy smile, is unwavering. It is stoic and honest and will never change. Our souls danced a gorgeous dance, if only for a time. Whatever it was, it was with heart and it was what it was.... just as 'I is what I is.'