"A Year in the Making."

October 31, 2025

Collage by the author

I was too nervous to focus on First Love. With a 45 minute long commute still ahead of me, despite my day at the museum beginning in a half hour, halfway out the door I remembered I needed a new book to read. Craning my neck to browse my shelves, like I don’t already know every book I’ve got, I put off The Oppermanns once again, and decided The Poisonwood Bible will make for a good first read of the new year, and accepted, at last, that Alice Munro is simply too “Canadian” for me. Finally opting for Gwendoline Riley’s First Love, the irony of this choice—somehow, someway—flew high over my head. Perhaps some part of me, the deepest, wisest, most sadistic part, knew what I was doing, picking a novel with a title like that on a day like today. Setting down that book in my lap, too on edge to finish a single page, I looked around at my fellow M train riders on this Halloween morning. I suppose October 31st is just another day for the people of Bushwick and Williamsburg, already spending all their lives dressed up in a costume. Because other than some half-assed cat whiskers adorning a couple cheeks, nobody was going all out. Not yet, at least. Falling on a Friday, this year’s Halloween was primed for an impressive turn out. Not twelve hours from now, the streets and subways of New York City would be a parade of Labubus and Elphabas, of showgirls and shoguns, each of them making their way to a good time. Myself included. And yet, with everything I had, I wished it was already tomorrow. A Friday night plan would usually be a win, let alone on a holiday as high stakes as Halloween. “Suicide hours,” that’s how I’ve been known to describe weekend nights without a place to go or people to be with. But praise the Lord, I had a party to attend tonight where most of the attendees were people I already knew, and knew well. Intimately, even! Because throwing the party in her new apartment was my old roommate Kiera. And sharing in her hosting duties for the second year in a row was none other than my ex-boyfriend Austin.

I lost it this time last year. If it was my heart or my mind, it almost doesn’t matter, just that something broke. And it was all to do with a party. He didn’t have any plans for Halloween, that’s what Austin first told me as we took our seats for Sunset Boulevard last fall, during the strange and daunting season when we tried so hard to stay in each other’s lives. Only for him to reveal a couple days later that he and Kiera were throwing a party at their apartment, the apartment that, two months prior, and for several years before that, I’d called home. He didn’t know how to tell me this in person, but he also didn’t want me to find out from anyone else but him. I would like to believe that, even then, I could see this for what it was. That one way or the other, in keeping it to himself or in sharing the whole truth, Austin was just taking care. Shielding me from the furthest extremes of my own feelings. Surely I could see that. But I couldn’t believe it. So instead I screwed up my eyes at this disbelief and willed myself to see it some other way. In the break room at work, standing in a conference room that isn’t even remotely soundproofed, I called him on the phone after learning about this inaugural Halloween bash and, as always, Austin answered. I was furious. Captive to this torrent of emotion, like mothers with a baby in peril who suddenly find the superhuman strength to lift a two-ton car. But I wasn’t saving anybody with this phone call. Quite the opposite. Desperate for an answer to my question, an impossible answer to an unfair question, I said, “And you’re gonna have fun, that’s the thing. You’ll throw this party tonight and you will have fun. How? Please explain this to me because I can’t even begin to imagine it for myself. How will you have fun?” Hanging up the phone that day, Austin and I gave up the ghost. Barring some brief back-and-forths here and there, and one or two phone calls, and a single face-to-face meeting months later, all contact was halted. We stopped seeing each other and we stopped talking to each other. The party was over.

And despite being a year removed from that breakroom meltdown, things were feeling no less impossible at the museum today. Tongue-tied and hot in the face, I wasn’t just tripping over my words, I was falling all over them. Sentences slipping right out of my hand, sentences I’ve repeated enough times that, if I’m ever an old man with mush for brains, I’ll still know word for word. There’s no phoning in a tour. Or really, there’s no enjoying a phoned-in tour. The work proving so much harder when the energy’s off—and it was. My visitors were bored, I was scattered, and the minutes dragged. None of us, not a soul, wanted to be there. Though, really, where else would I rather be? “I get why people turn to drugs,” that’s something I’ve said a lot this past year. On the days, the many, many days, when solace was nowhere in sight. Days when there was nothing I could do, no one I could speak to, and nowhere I could go that would actually make me feel better. Taking to bed and sleeping it all away not even an option for me, what with the fact that I’ve always skewed more anxious than depressed. So instead, like a fool, a deeply paining fool, it took me thirtysomething years to understand the appeal of unconsciousness. God, how good it must feel. Too good to be true.

With a taste of my own medicine, Jarod said, “Isn’t it all about a change in perspective?” That’s a line I hit him with a lot. Because with Jarod, there always seems to be something. Always with the blocks, the hurdles, the saintly tests of spirit and soul, and one right after the other. And instead of easing his plight with some warm in the eyes sympathy, I’m usually suggesting it’s all his fault. We’ll be on the clock and, in a deservedly fireable offense, I’ll be insisting his life would be so much simpler if only he believed in God. Either that or I’ll tell him, for the umpteenth time, that we teach people how to treat us. That just as soon as he cultivates an expectation that the world will take care of him, it can be life on easy street. A no less offensive notion, I’m sure. Climbing up the stairs to our breakroom, I saw Jarod over by the computers, slumped into a rolling chair and looking at his phone, all gangly angles, like Bugs Bunny with a carrot. And in the time it took me to sit down beside him, Jarod’s face knew a hundred expressions. Whether or not he deduced the one particular person who would also be at this Halloween party, I don’t know. But aware of my plan for the night, and quickly gleaning my emotional state because of it, in typical Jarod fashion, he spared me no sympathy. Saying that if I want to have fun tonight, have fun. That if I fear playing the wallflower, well, then don’t. Ready, set, hello, I’m Brian, how do you know-so-and-so. “Well, yeah, duh, that’s half the point,” said Jarod, hearing my rebuttal that parties so often feel like nothing more than a meat market. Like everyone’s just some side of beef behind a plate glass window, ready to be cut up for their sexiest, cleverest, most gainfully employed and undeniably desirable parts. And I watched Jarod’s face change one more time as he heard me say, “I just feel like I have nothing to offer.” It wasn’t the furrowed brow of disbelief I saw before me, or some clenched frown, nothing pleading or pitying on his face. Rather, I looked at Jarod and all I could see was his attention. Undivided, probing, and true. And when I covered my face, he didn’t reach out to touch me, to comfort me, didn’t utter a single word to dissuade my tears from falling. I couldn’t see him but I knew he saw me. How frustrating I must be. Better than almost anybody, Jarod understands I have something to offer. And he tried. God bless him, he tried.

High up in the air in a Financial District office building, down on Maiden Street, a street name I’d never heard before that’s now, and ever after, a personal favorite, I roamed from booth to booth with Sophie and Sara. This was a couple weeks ago now, near the start of the month, when Sara asked us to join her to this book fair. The coolest girl we know, her invitation didn’t disappoint. “Madonna,” said Sophie, within seconds of us getting to the first booth, directing my attention to her 1985 cover issue of SPIN with a $100 price tag. All told, that was on the cheaper end for this huge array of art books and magazines. All of them phenomenal, all of them out of my budget. But browsing was pleasure enough. Sophie told us about applying to graduate programs and I felt a new pang in my heart with each announcement of every faraway school. Asking Sara if she’s got anything cooking, she shared her idea for a photo series of some men we all know, hard at work. And then, meeting their equally expectant looks, it was my turn. Both of them knew what was going on. That Austin and I are back in each other’s lives. After almost a year of no contact, of boundaries compromised then respected then compromised once again, Austin and I are speaking. Once or twice a week, we even hang out. In the most literal sense of the term, we are seeing each other. And Sara was among the very first to know. She had to be. Now, and then, and every other moment that came before, she’s been rooting for this. Or, I suppose, rooting for me. But knowing what’s in my heart, knowing who was in my heart, there’s really not much difference between the two.

Standing still amidst this downtown crowd, in this carousel of big pants and tiny sneakers, I told Sophie and Sara about the tests that lay ahead of me. On Halloween at Kiera’s, but first at a housewarming that very next week, Austin and I would step back out into the world, together, kind of. I feared true panic would pierce the eyes of all my fellow partygoers at this housewarming just as soon as Brian the Crazy Ex-Boyfriend came a-knocking but Austin said not to worry. Assuring me most everybody there was already in the know. Whatever that “know” entails. Not planning to show up together to these parties, Austin and I, in every way imaginable, would be coming from two different places. And even once we were crammed into those one-bedroom house parties, for all I know, the two of us still might feel as far away from each other as Ridgewood from Clinton Hill. Just two people with a lot of history, sharing in a tentative present, all the while averting our eyes from that still uncertain future. With the stakes further heightened by the setting of these outings. Parties. Our perpetual argument, in the way that most every couple has a perpetual argument, always had to do with us being out for dinner with friends, or at a bar, or at parties most of all, where I felt like he was shining so brightly without ever noticing that I was retreating, silently and sullenly, into the darkest reaches of myself. I had a lot to prove this month. With experience all her own, and with so much care, enough care to bowl me over, Sara said, “Okay, what you need? Is a gameplan. Every possible scenario, write it out. Like, pen and paper write it out. He spends the whole time right next to you, or he talks to other people all night, or he leaves you for a little bit but keeps making his way back, whatever, write out how you’re gonna deal. How, no matter what, you’re gonna stay cool. Even if it’s just telling yourself, like, I hear you, sis, but we can’t go there right now, okay, so let’s just talk later.” And as Sara did the talking, Sophie spoke volumes. Sophie, miraculous and reverent Sophie, had the weight of the world silently on her brow. Which isn’t to say I felt judged, or that I was disappointing her, not at all. Looking at Sophie looking at me, it felt like a prayer.

All finished by three in the afternoon, it was a short day for me at the museum. Getting scheduled so few hours isn’t exactly rare these days but, for once in these lean times, I was grateful for it. And before I left, I talked to Sara and I talked to Sophie. Leaning against the break room lockers, Sara asked, “So, what’s the gameplan?” She didn’t realize this, what with her back turned to where he was sitting, but I knew Jarod was right around the corner from us. And as I side-stepped her questions, answering as briefly as I possibly could, I wondered who I was really fooling here. The night before, as they watched the documentary Harlan County, Sophie helped one of her closest friends clean her clothes. A kindergarten teacher, she dropped off a load at her local laundromat, forgetting completely about a couple crayons left behind in a pants pocket. The wax, in the industrial tumult of the wash, got all over everything before the scalding heat of the dryer perfectly set the dye. One brown and the other purple, almost every outfit she wears to school was now covered, seemingly, in shit. But after enough research, and with enough effort, using a dollar store toothbrush and dabs of Dawn soap, Sophie lifted the stains. That’s how she shows up and she knows it. Just like me, Sophie doesn’t think she’s the best version of herself at parties. And as hard as I’m trying to accept that it doesn’t need to be one or the other, both of us know that what we want is depth, not breadth. Nodding her head, I knew she understood precisely why I was so nervous about Kiera’s party tonight. And yet it sounded purely a matter of fact when Sophie said to me, “She wants you there. They both want you there. I think it will be a really good time.”

Stepping out of my bedroom and joining my roommate Hannah in the kitchen, as both of us fixed dinner for ourselves, she said, “I was hoping you’d come out of your room already in costume.” Still another couple hours until the party started, I may have spent the day preparing for battle, but I hadn’t yet donned my armor. As Hannah already knew, I was dressing up tonight as Joan of Arc. Seeing visions, even if these visions were just Chloe Sevigny’s “Bigmouth Strikes Again” take on the saintly subject matter, I knew how I wanted it to look. Joan feared nothing for God was with her, so she said. And in those last couple days leading up to Halloween, God was with me in Ridgewood. At the first thrift store I went to, within seconds of getting there, I found a dress made of thick canvas material with these vaguely medieval pleats and stitching in the bodice that had it looking like a bonafide cuirass. And best of all, it only cost me $16. And then, shimmying down barely maintained foot-wide paths through the aisles of a mom-and-pop hardware store, not so much stocked with merchandise as buried underneath it, that aforementioned pop helped me find a fifty-foot spool of rope to wrap around my middle. Outside this same store, at some point last spring, I saw a little girl contently reading a book as she sat criss-crossed on top of a pallet stacked 12 feet high with mulch. And finally, just last night, using cut-up cardboard boxes and reflective silver packing tape that he knew one day would serve a purpose, Austin made me the rerebraces for my shoulders. Giving me, happily, the protective shields I needed for the night. And while it would require the sacrifice of their strict status as house shoes, I already had my Birkenstocks to complete the look. That and some embers for burned-at-the-stake finishing touches. Jarod half-joked that this ash I planned on smearing across my face might read a little problematic. “She was French!” I said to which Jarod replied, “Um, there are Black French people!” Et voila. At work that day, and again tonight at a friend’s show, Hannah dressed up as a clown. Affixing these little black pompoms to a white button-up and white culottes, if it weren’t for the perfectly understated face make-up, I would have just thought she was trying out a chic, if whimsical, new look. And chic it was. We laughed as she told me about the Bushwick teens who walked into her workplace, took one look at her, and said, “Okay, aura!” Back inside my bedroom, with my door closed and music playing, I’m so happy I heard it when she said, “Bye, Brian!” Hannah always calls me and Rachel by our names, something that I love so much about her, but I can’t recall another time when Hannah announced her departure like that. That was a first. One of five siblings, I know she has a couple younger brothers and maybe I’m just projecting here but still I can’t deny the familiarity of my feelings. That night, Hannah felt like my sisters.

Getting on the L, I sat across from a guy in a prison jumpsuit who looked at me and said, “You Jesus?” I explained who I was and he didn’t know the reference but that hardly mattered. Because boarding our train car at the very next stop, and choosing to stand right beside me, the hem of his skirt touching the hem of my own, was a man dressed up as Jesus Christ. Of all the things I love about New York City, it’s looking around at people on the train that I love the most. It can be banal, the things I see, and it can be wretched, my heart soaring during the very same commute that otherwise turned my stomach. This subway spectacle, this “porno” of, yes, humankind but really humans of the very best kind: New Yorkers. With Halloween night offering, predictably, amplified entertainment. And while I did look around from time to time at all these people and who they chose to be, Jesus among them, I couldn’t entirely give myself over to charm. Much too preoccupied, instead, with figuring out how I’d have some fun tonight. Some might argue I’d already called upon Jesus that evening, long before he got on at Dekalb Avenue. But Catholic as I am, when I say my prayers, it’s Mary I’m speaking to. Really, I only pray to God for the smaller stuff, for the more trivial pleas and requests of daily life. Often thinking to myself, as if Mary was my mom, “No…she’s busy…I won’t bother her with this…” At breakneck pace, muttered like a mantra, I said one Hail Mary after the other. And to cover all my bases, I came up with affirmations too. Written commandments of how I was going to be. My gameplan. And on my walk from the train, two hours late to the party’s eight o’clock start but taking my time nevertheless, over and over again, I listened as Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark sang, “If Joan of Arc had a heart, would she give it as a gift?”

Before I saw him, I could hear him. Just before I pushed open the door and stepped into the party, I heard Austin laugh. In theatres on Broadway and at bars in Brooklyn, on the platform at Delancey-Essex and from my seat in Regal Essex, I’ve kept an ear out for that unmistakable sound. And here it was. A year in the making. Cleaving a path through the crowded kitchen to praise my costume and kiss my lips, so happy to see me, Austin welcomed me to the party. Needing to lay some burdens down, we went into Kiera’s bedroom where I could stash my coat and Austin could ask me, “Do you want a Xanax?” I said no but not because I didn’t want it. Recently made aware that one shouldn’t mix booze with benzos, I told Austin I already had a couple drinks while I was getting ready for the party. “With your roommates?” he asked, knowing I was never one to drink at home, let alone by myself. No, not with my roommates. Under a strawberry blond wig, wearing a blush pink dress and a tiara so tight it gave him a headache, dripping head to toe in blood, Austin was Carrie on prom night. He was tormented and I was playing the martyr. Go figure. In a brilliant showcase of his ancient wisdom, our greatest living thinker RuPaul once tweeted, “Hard to remain patient with friends who focus solely on their own crucifixion. Get off The Cross, ladykins…we could use the wood!” And as I poured myself some wine, a single glass I’d wind up slowly nursing for the rest of the night, much to my own surprise, it wasn’t a splintered stake against my back that I was feeling. It was my own two feet standing solidly on the ground.

Al, in his latest variation on an annual theme, was a guy who works for Geek Squad. Listening to the run-down of all his different “men at work” costumes over the last couple years, I said, “So: trade?” Austin was reportedly unimpressed by the look’s minimal effort but, as Al pointed out, a lot of attention was paid to the making of his name tag. A $200 bill recently got sent to my mom’s AOL email from people who claimed to be Geek Squad, a scam she only avoided because we, her children, responded to the family group chat in time. “Was that you?” I asked Al. It was good to laugh with him. That housewarming earlier in the month, that first public outing for me and Austin, was at Al’s new apartment. Al who, unfortunately, for no fault of his own, got caught in my crossfire last Halloween. Al was visiting New York, while otherwise living in Ireland, and I remember saying to him, “You better see me before you see my ex-boyfriend.” I could argue it was just a joke but, punctuating my command with the knife emoji, that would just be a lie. One thing or another got in the way and we didn’t get together—but he did attend Austin and Kiera’s Halloween party. And of course he did. Al and Kiera have known each other since high school, they’ve been best friends for half their lives. But I could only understand it as someone choosing Austin over me. Days later, when Al posted some photos from that night, I messaged him, “How was Austin at the party? Did he seem to enjoy himself?” An impossible position that Al nevertheless handled with grace, acknowledging his discomfort while still sending me love. But I was left feeling so dismissed, so hostile, and so totally embarrassed. It’s a wonder Al still wants anything to do with me. But at his housewarming, and here again on Halloween, whether or not I deserved it, he was such a good friend.

After going on twenty-two first dates in five months time, and fishing always from the same highly concentrated pool of arty boys within five years of 30 who had soulful eyes and morally upright jobs, I’ve accepted that the likelihood of run-ins will remain high. Besides, I obviously combed through the entire guest list before I arrived. So it came as no surprise when I made my way into the living room to see not just one but two of my old Hinge dates sitting right beside each other on the couch. Mistaking him for a cat, Steve was a werewolf while Alex was wearing a leather vest, smart slacks, and a sassy bob wig. He was a librarian. But before I joined this gay guy contingent on the couch, I talked to Austin’s friend Cecile who recently passed the bar. I congratulated her but she deflected the praise, sharing just how shockingly low the fail rate is for people who attended law school and speak English as their first language. However, with a noted failure coming immediately to mind, I started telling Cecile about this circa 1990 New York Post with a front page reading “THE HUNK FINALLY DOES IT” only for her to beat me to the punch, already aware that it took John F. Kennedy Jr. three attempts to finally pass. Because once she heard the good news, Cecile’s mother called her up to say, “You did what John-John couldn’t!” Something I’m sure my mother also remembers. With a picture of JFK Jr. tacked inside her high school locker, my mom was always smitten, only to one day give birth to a son who shared his birthday and, in time, inherited her same crush. Maybe, just maybe, in a very lucky past life, John-John and I went on a date.

Describing her once upon a time as “Lisbon sister blond,” Jessica was Kirsten Dunst from The Virgin Suicides. Life imitating my art imitating her flaxen life. Opting specifically for Lux Lisbon at homecoming, with a corsage on her wrist and a crown on her head, Jessica’s long white dress with its trailing pink flowers had a hole perfectly cut away at one hip. Revealing a pair of underwear that had a boy’s name written in a girl’s handwriting. The ‘i’ in ‘Trip’ dotted, how else, but with a heart. When Austin fetched me from the door after I finally arrived, as every prayer and affirmation and deep sip of strong drink was suddenly getting put to task, Jessica was the first person I spoke to. “Haughty” and “droll” and “WASP-weary,” those are some other ways I’ve fondly described Jessica in the past, her rolled-eyes shtick, much like Kiki Dunst, making for something delightfully dark out of someone so fair. But perhaps I tried to reintroduce that old rapport too quickly when I hugged her hello and said, “Fancy seeing me here.” Vim was the intention but I fear my delivery skewed venomous. And as the night went on without much laughter between the two of us, at least at first, I worried my greeting was the least of my concerns. Because even if this was all in my head and Jessica didn’t feel one way or another about breathing my same air, going forward, I know this is something I’ll need to consider. That there are people in Austin’s life who might not care for me very much anymore and that only time will tell if I can manage to change their minds. But soon enough, even if Jessica was mostly telling this story for Austin’s enjoyment, stopping herself mid-sentence, with a huff, every time he turned his back to talk to someone else, I was just happy to be there, laughing at what I was hearing. She was telling us about getting a trim earlier today at this hole-in-the-wall downtown salon that’s recently developed a following for unbeatably priced haircuts. Quality customer service not included. Trying to pay at the front desk, Jessica suddenly felt the nearest stylist grab both her shoulders and, without a single word, move her a couple feet away from his station. To her, this was appalling but I thought it was hysterical. And while laughing at her discomfort was, perhaps, the very last thing I should’ve been doing, with a sense of humor like hers, I trust she understood.

“Can you sit down?!” asked Austin as I returned to my stance at the head of the kitchen table, sipping from my latest refilled cup of water. Evidently it was a little oppressive having a six-foot-four Jeanne d’Arc looming forward every sixty seconds for his latest pretzel or fun-sized Butterfinger. Now seated across from Kiera and her boyfriend, Austin was telling us that after learning about his costume, his boss asked if he was going as Carrie before or after the prom. “Carrie before the prom? So, what, just a girl on her period?” For the life of me, I cannot remember who told this joke. If it was Austin or if it was Kiera, I really don’t know and it almost doesn’t matter, just that one of them said it and the other laughed because of it. More than once during this ongoing preliminary of ours, this trial period, Austin who never cries got upset talking to me about Kiera. After all, despite that boyfriend sitting beside her, Kiera’s couple costume was with Austin. In a bloodied white nightgown, telekinetically punctured with a dozen knife handles, she was Carrie’s mom. Austin loved living with Kiera, and she loved it too, but once their lease was up, she was ready to live alone. Back in spring, Kiera moved out. For almost a year, it was just the two of them in that apartment. And sometimes I wonder if Austin having this perfect roommate, this wonderful friend for a live-in companion, kept him from fully wrestling with the end of our relationship. That there were things he could have realized and things he might have learned if only he didn’t have the distracting joy of someone he adored right on the other side of his bedroom wall. And out of all the things I’ve done in this past year, of all the ugly thoughts I’ve had, I think this might be my ugliest. Because of Kiera, Austin was able to love his life. Because of her, he kept on living. I should grovel at her feet.

It would be a long way back. It took me an hour to get here and—past one in the morning by now, with the party winding down slowly and then all at once—I knew the trains could take twice as long getting me home. But I didn’t care. I had to get up for work in five hours and I didn’t care. My fear, or, at least, one of my fears, was that I’d need to get out before the going really got good. That I’d say goodbye to Austin and tear myself away from a party that was only just getting started, leaving behind an apartment filled with people who were young and alive and employed by a job that doesn’t require working on Saturdays. And yet here I was, wide awake, shutting down the party and among the very last to leave. Meaning every word, I said to Kiera, “Thank you for having me.” Out on the sidewalk, we waited for a car. I really was planning on taking the train but Austin insisted we share a ride, even offering to pay for the whole thing. It made sense. They’d drop him off first and I’d continue on to Queens. Where we were coming from, there was no getting home without passing by where Austin lives. I told him how stressed I was all day, how nervous. I told him that I cried at work. And I told him how much fun I ended up having tonight. Austin listened to my fears and said, “I’m not friends with anyone who’d treat you like that.” I should have known. Lifetimes ago, before anything else, before everything else, Austin and I were just friends. Pulling down his street, a street I lived on for years, before he got out of the car and scaled that stoop, before he washed away the blood and climbed into a bed we used to share, Austin turned to me and said, “You’ll come hang out tomorrow night?” He went one way and I went another and we’d see each other again soon. It didn’t take long for me to start feeling sick. Not from too much drink, or from the many speedbumps down those long blocks of Bed-Stuy, or even the nauseating backseat confines of this sedan. It was from the ropes I’d tied around my stomach. Standing, I felt fine. Seated, they were a vice grip on my guts. I had to take deep breaths to keep from throwing up. But any minute now, as soon as I got home, once I untied the knots and unwound the cords, I would know relief. Standing still in the growing heap of a hundred crowns of thorns, I was about to feel so good.