I hope you never heard that hideous sound.
I was discharged from the hospital after just one day. The bulk of my injuries were not wounds that would appear on an X-ray, were not treatable by a doctor (unless you count the quack who assigned me this letter to write). They stitched up my forehead, I guess where it hit the dash. Wouldn’t you know it, the passenger airbag was off. It’s almost as if the seat didn’t register me, thinking, “My, aren’t you a dainty thing.” I’ve decided to join a gym. To bulk up. Though I might not. The books say exercise is good, but also not to make any sudden changes. Once again, I’m torn between two worlds.
I came straight to see you, but your family had already descended. And you know more than anyone that they never acknowledged my existence. I know, I can hear you now. It’s not personal—they wouldn’t like anyone you were with unless they had a uterus and a nonethnic name like Beth from Payroll and knew how to do things like make a pot roast. (But let’s be honest: mostly the uterus thing.) I was not allowed into your room—family only! I was not included in your vigil. Me. The one who loved you the hardest. The one who knew you best.
I think this is what kills me the most. (Horrific word choice, given that you’re the one who is dead, but you’ll never read this and I’m not supposed to cross anything out or edit myself in any way.) Your last breaths were taken surrounded by those who didn’t know you. Only memories of you, like I have now. They didn’t know all the best parts. The things that make you laugh. The things you believe. Your passions, your art, your politics, your pop cultural references. The way you taste. The way you bite my lip playfully when we kiss. The way your dick curves just to the left when you’re at your most excited.
Remember that one time I signed your Christmas card “Yours in Christ” and we laughed and laughed as nonbelievers and at the ridiculous formality of it all? (We might have been high. I think more than anything you were stunned I sent you a card.) And the next thing you signed for me, you did the same but crossed out “Christ” and wrote “science”? It became a love language for us, a secret way to say I love you when our surroundings seemed unsafe. Yours in science. Or how every time I answered the phone you said, “That’s a corncob!” because that’s what Dustin Hoffman says to Jessica Lange in the movie “Tootsie.” Or how I could say for dinner I wanted that thing we had at that place that one time and you always knew which thing, remembered what time and the exact place. And you wanted it, too. Or maybe you were just kind enough to once again let me have my way.
I wandered the halls. Your family could keep me out of a room, but they couldn’t evict me from a building. Eventually they would relent, this family of yours who didn’t know you. Sooner or later they would crack. Someone would say, “Get that boy in here, the one wandering the halls.” They wouldn’t like it, but they would recognize that we had you in common. After a few awkward hours your mother would reach out and hold my hand in fellowship. No? At the very least someone would need me. At some point you would require clothes, you would need to be dressed. To come home, or—as it turns out—to not. They had the key to your room, but I had the key to your things. That never happened. I think they bought you a suit for the service at—god help you—the Beverly Center. That’s the thing about putting a hospital across the street from a mall. Haunt them, would you? Like, rattle some fucking chains. I want them never to sleep again. I imagine this is what it was like at the height of AIDS. This awfulness. Hateful families swooping in and erasing loving partnerships. You’d think we’d left all that in the last century, but no.
It’s this anger that’s taken over. I used to be scared of anger, and that’s because I bottled it up inside. Not anymore! It’s like vomiting after drinking too much. Sure, it’s unpleasant in the moment, but then you feel so much better! Anger is beautiful if you express it just right. Let it out. You should see the face of the woman who ran over my shoe with her cart at the grocery store. She won’t do that again! (That’s an extreme example; I probably owe her an apology.) Anyhow, I only mention this because they’ll probably tell you in Bhutan that finding a way around anger is a form of enlightenment, and I’m telling you that that’s a load of horseshit. Anger, when justified, is glorious.
Do you know what it’s like to be so close to you when you needed me most and not be able to cross a ten-yard divide? There was a minefield between us, filled with explosives made from years of brainwashing and religion and intolerance and spite. I could have made a run for it, like a soldier storming Normandy in a war film with things detonating all around me—I could have broken through. But I was so afraid. I was afraid I wouldn’t make it, that I would step on the land mine that is your mother, who would have me removed from the hospital altogether, in pieces if necessary, and if that happened I knew I would regret it for the rest of my life.
Instead I regret this.
There was a kind man who took pity on me. His name was Seth, a nurse. He brought me
