tuckova

Remember the time we raced elevators in Kokura?
After 11 p.m. the elevators in my building would stop at every floor, and it
seemed to us that surely one elevator was faster than the other, so we got into
them and raced, and about halfway down some poor couple got onto my elevator,
while we were giving the play-by-play (I'm
on the fifth floor now and the doors are closing!!) and there I was pressed
to the wall, shouting to you, Please you
have to keep talking to me. Because I was clearly crazier than any
foreigner ever, except of course the guy in the other elevator shouting back at
me I'm winning, I'm winning!

Remember how my boyfriend at the time tried to get you to side against me in a
macho way, how GUYS were into this and that's why I wasn't, and you said,
"Yeah, I remember going through that stage?" You were the most likely
to side with the testosterone of any man I've ever known, but you stood beside
me then. Staunch.

Remember when we went to that baseball game and I confessed that I really knew
nothing about baseball, and you honestly started explaining that well, there are two teams…
And I thought, He couldn't possibly
think I am THAT stupid! And then years later realized that you had in
fact thought I was that stupid as far as baseball was concerned, and
liked me anyway.

Do you remember when we laughed so hard we had to sit down on the sidewalk so
we wouldn't keel over?

I touched you once in 20 years, I put my hands on your shoulders, and you sat
very still then. But when I tried to kiss you, you pulled away, because we were
friends first and always. Did I ever hug you, even hello or goodbye? I don't
remember, but I think I didn't. We were both such prickly little beasts, and
disinclined to show the soft underbelly to anybody who might poke us in an
unfriendly way.

We wrote letters at first and I always wanted to be my very most
entertaining
for you. I would sit at a dark table in the nearest bar and buy a bottle
of red
wine and write pages and pages to you until the bottle was empty. And
the
letters from you, torn from notebooks, written on the backs of fliers,
long
screeds alternating fury and humor, dancing on that line that I could
barely
walk without falling.

The internet made things easier. Remember how we
would chat for
three hours every Saturday, telling secrets, looking at pictures of art,
movie previews, anything. Listening to Portishead together, looking for
the best picture
of Ava Gardner, the perfect combination of beauty and dissolution. You
were
closer to me than if you'd been in the room.

Remember when we fought because you said I liked old lady television and I said
you loved your mother too much and we didn't talk for a year? What a waste. You
could curse me under the table, and did, and you were harsh as sandpaper. But
for your mother – it was weird what a little boy you became, so deferential.
And now I will write to her and tell her how much you loved her, which is the closest
I can be to sorry.

All these memories. What am I going to do
with this if you’re not here to remember it with me? And the last time we
talked it was just nothing, it was about the weather, it was hot and sticky
where you were and I don’t even know if I made a good enough joke, if the last
thing you remembered about me was laughing. I hope so. Goddamn it.