"If It Wasn't for the Nights."

October 2024

Collage by the author

Standing at a street corner on the Lower East Side, I imagined what I’d say if we ran into any familiar faces. Past five o’clock on a Friday evening, with the last museum tours of the day just now finishing up, odds were high that we’d see any given colleague of mine who knows, more or less, absolutely everything about us. It’s no mystery to anybody that Austin and I still talk, let alone that we’ve seen each other several times in the last month. But still. “Have you two met?” I imagined saying, tongue lodged firmly in cheek. “This is Austin! My friend!” It made me so nervous, this possibility of being seen together, like I was having an affair when, really, I was just waiting for Austin to get out of Megalopolis so we could grab dinner before seeing Joker: Folie à Deux. But there was more to the nerves than that. It was on Madison Avenue, not Delancey Street, and Austin was waiting for me rather than the other way around, but on this very same day, my first full day living in New York City, six years ago exactly, we met each other for the first time and then went to go see a movie starring Lady Gaga. Stars were born. I already booked the tickets for Folie à Deux, picking out two seats for Friday the 4th of October, before asking Austin if he’d like to join me. Talking to Shannon on the phone, she asked if this was a good idea and I told her, “Either we go see this movie on the anniversary of when we first met and it’s sad. Or we don’t and I’m alone—and it’s sad!” She understood. In fact, Shannon did the very same thing, on the one year anniversary with her boyfriend, unfortunately coinciding with a brief separation of their own. They already had concert tickets for that night so—why not? It was a fine time. Austin and I got along and the day’s significance was acknowledged and our conversation was pleasant. And, for me, that was the problem. Gifted in gab and generous with laughter, Austin gives so much of himself to people, never running out of something to talk about, and sparkling, effortlessly, all the while. These things take two, and while I wasn’t exactly a laugh a minute, I know I wasn’t dull. But listening to him, I thought to myself, He’s talking to me the way he talks to his cousins. Joining him down to the platform after the movie, I was so pleased, and maybe for the very first time, that the next train wasn’t arriving for 11 minutes. I interrupted his attempt at a goodbye with my offer to stick around until it came. Something surface level with him still preferable, for now, to silence on my own. And as his train pulled into the station, I said, “Today’s, uh, a special day, you know…beginnings.” And with the faintest catch in his throat, Austin said, “You’re gonna make me sad.” Just before turning to leave, I patted him on the arm. So strange. I don’t think I’d ever touched him quite like that before.

Commiserating in the break room after a challenging last hour, Erica listened to me and said, wryly, one wage-worker to another, “It’s like all the failures of this institution fell on your shoulders—in one single tour!” I was already more than fifteen minutes into a program I hate giving when some latecomers made their way inside this circa-1870s German lager saloon. It was two generations of a Black family, husbands and wives, one middle-aged and the other elderly. The old husband was in a wheelchair and I understood immediately why they were late. This tour about businesses that operated out of the tenement’s ground floor is the only accessible option in the building. And even on the slowest days at the museum, the route from the lift to this recreated saloon requires a trek through at least two other ongoing tours. That’s upwards of 30 strangers pretending to not feel awkward as they clear a path. There’s no way around it, I suppose, but there’s also no dignity to it. And I could tell, the moment this family got settled in the saloon, that it wasn’t easy joining this tour. A tour that, again, I hate giving. Sometimes it works. Pack that bar with a rowdy Saturday crowd and it can be a truly fun time. No dice. I was as bored as everybody else. But with the finish line blissfully in sight, I asked my visitors if they had any final thoughts or questions and it was then that the middle-aged husband said, “So, what, no Black people? None at all? Everything I’m seeing here is all about white folks. Were Black people not allowed to live here or something?” That’s not the first time I’ve been asked that question. And every time I’m grateful, truly, for the opportunity to discuss the long legacy of displacement in that Black New York story, as evidenced by the very plot of land we were standing on. At the turn of the nineteenth century, it was owned by a free Black man, only for a tenement to get built here a couple decades later that housed 7,000 people over 72 years—each and every one of them white. But I don’t suspect he thought I’d have much to say about all this. Frankly, I think a part of him hoped I wouldn’t know anything at all. But looking at him, as he gripped the handles of that wheelchair and a new expression clouded his face, maybe I should’ve just played the fool.

Walking home from the train on a Saturday night, I called Austin. He answered the phone and, more curt than curious, asked “What’s up?” Per his recommendation, I’d just seen The Hills of California, a Broadway play about four sisters returning to their childhood home to say goodbye to their dying mother. Fraught familial dynamics at all turns, it’s so utterly my kind of thing—and yet it wasn’t until an hour before showtime that I bought my ticket. It was, again, Saturday night and I was hesitant committing to an evening spent all alone. But I’m glad I went. Austin said, “Wasn’t it amazing that the same actress who played the mom also played the oldest sister?” and, lying through my teeth, I said, “Yes—so good.” I was seated in the very back row and, even though it wound up being the emptiest Broadway theater I’d ever seen, with half the balcony totally vacant, I didn’t move any closer after intermission. If I did, maybe I would’ve noticed, and seen something I’ve long understood to be true—we are our mother’s child. There wasn't much more to say and I was a moment away from home but I couldn’t bear to stop talking. The night before, I sent Austin a text, something I thought we’d both find funny, but he never responded. Not until I asked, the next morning, “Am I bothering you sending stuff like this?” He’d already insisted it wasn’t a bother, telling me he’d simply forgotten to respond, but as I took lap after lap around my block that night, on the phone with him for over an hour, I couldn’t keep from scratching that itch. We fought the same old fight. He wants me to be reasonable, I want him to be demonstrative. He sees us as friends who talk about the books we’ve read and movies we’ve watched while I don’t see that as friendship at all. And while I’ve been listening exclusively to Blood on the Tracks and ABBA’s more devastating divorce anthems, Austin said, “You’re gonna hate to hear this but—I’ve already done that. I’ve done the sad songs after a breakup thing. And I cannot do that again. It’s too sad, Brian.” I felt like a child, losing my mind over some stupid little thing, totally inconsequential, with a pat on the head for my only comfort. Taking a shower that night, with the water turned up as hot as it can get, I thought about the gentleness I longed for, the affection and the care I wished I was getting. That if he could just demonstrate his sorrow a little more explicitly, a little more publically, using the exact tone and language I want, I might just feel a little less alone in all this. And as my skin turned pink in the heat, slowly, I recognized the naked wish underlying so much of my resentment—I want him to baby me.

“Oh, Jeffrey,” my mother would say, putting on her haughtiest Hamptons affect anytime she walked past her teenage son splayed on the couch for his umpteenth episode of The Barefoot Contessa. “Back from Fire Island so soon?” Willfully mistaking Ina Garten’s devoted nebbish of a husband for a closet case, I had to forgive my mother her ignorance. Who else was gonna buy the saffron, cognac, and good vanilla I’d need to replicate those recipes? I have adored Ina Garten for a very long time. And yet I wasn’t especially excited about her new memoir, having watched enough interviews with her to realize that, as a storyteller, she’s often repetitive and almost always nervous. Ha! Downloading the audiobook within seconds of its publication, I pressed play and wished it would never end. A woman born in Brooklyn who had to survive a cold, lonely childhood before going on to run a specialty foods store, host her own cooking show, and gut renovate a classic apartment in Paris, all the while madly in love with a nice Jewish boy—I never stood a chance. Still, not expecting to learn anything new, I was totally shocked listening to Ina recall her brief separation with Jeffrey. She’d just opened the store in Westhampton and it was this frenzied and fulfilling time in her life when she felt busier and more purposeful than ever—while falling short as a “wife” because of it, and ambivalently so. “It was the hardest thing I ever did,” writes Ina. “Haltingly, I told him that I needed to be on my own…he listened quietly, thinking about my words and processing their meaning and in true Jeffrey form, he said, ‘If you feel like you need to be on your own, you need to do it.’ He made it even more painful for me because he was so damn understanding.” Suddenly, at 30 years old, in New York City, Ina Garten was all alone. Recounting that she felt like a naive college graduate who couldn’t sleep at night and couldn’t get out of bed in the morning, wrestling with the choice of a nice apartment in a dodgy neighborhood or a crappy apartment in a good neighborhood, and feeling always so very alone. “And to make it even more painful, Jeffrey—still my best friend—came to New York to help me get the apartment set up…I thought, ‘Am I crazy? He’s the sweetest man in the world!’ But I remained convinced that I needed to figure out who I was on my own before I could be an equal partner with him. And frankly, he needed to do the same thing.” Listening to this as I walked my loops around the Ridgewood Reservoir, it took all I had not to shove my headphones in the ears of the next passing stranger and say, “Can you believe this?”

There was leftover walnut-crusted salmon in the fridge but I’m allergic and, after offering it to Austin, I wondered if my text failed to send. Because while he did respond to the picture I’d just sent of a beloved Chihuahua, he didn’t say a word about the fish. Dog sitting Maya for the week, I was three blocks away from him. But for the first time, I wasn’t three blocks away from home. Rather it was a $30 car ride that got me here from Queens, my duffel bag for this four-night stay far too heavy to safely brave that Broadway Junction transfer from the L to the C. “Assuming it’s a no on the salmon?” I finally asked to which he said, with some peccant hahahas, “Sorry.” It was his attempt at letting me down easy, I’m sure, trying to decline the requisite rendezvous for this free meal’s handoff without actually saying anything. Most of all “no.” Not that that stopped me from inviting him over to the apartment that night if he finished packing early and found himself feeling bored. Leaving for North Carolina the next morning to spend a week with family, Austin said he probably wouldn’t be able to do that, but he’d let me know if anything changes. Well past eleven at night, as I got the dog on her leash one last time before bed, it was clear nothing had changed. And yet—I walked Maya those three blocks to my old apartment. Across the street but in plain sight, a tragic character in an LED spotlight, I lost count of how many times I went up and down that block. The lights were on in Austin’s room but I couldn’t see him. There was his towel hanging on the closet door, and the screensaver’s slow crawl across the television, and his outfit for tomorrow’s flight folded neatly on the desk, trucker hat and all. But as Judy sings, in a song I’ve listened to so many times now, “It never was you, it never was anywhere you.” In the next room over, Kiera’s lights were on too. Getting caught by Austin as I spied on him from the sidewalk was an embarrassment I could deal with. But if Kiera just so happened to look out her window as I stalked by, peering up at a life I used to know—God, how sad that would be. Finally, with less shame than disappointment, I pulled at Maya’s leash in the direction of home but not without taking one last look. Austin! Standing in front of the window, at last, there he was. I raced behind the nearest tree, as subtle as slapstick, hiding myself from view but only for a moment, deciding soon enough that if I made this bed, I had to lay in it. Back under the streetlight, I looked up at Austin, waiting for a reaction—and it never came. It’s possible he was putting on the performance of a lifetime but, from what I could tell, he didn’t see me. And as my heart and stomach returned to their rightful places, I looked up at him in that window and I wondered. What was he listening to in those over ear headphones? Which shirt did he just shove up against his face, checking to see if it was clean or dirty? Is this a new habit, leaving his bedroom door wide open like that? What would happen to his heart if he noticed me right now? Would it race? Or would it sink? I wanted so badly to tell him, “I can see you.” But instead, I walked away.

Out on the front patio of a Ridgewood bar, I sat down with some friends who’ve only ever known me as one-half of a couple. One morning while I was still dog sitting Maya, headed to the train for a day at the museum, I saw my old neighbors walking my way on Washington Avenue. A boyfriend and girlfriend originally from Texas, sweet and smart and a couple years my junior, Travis and Kelly lived on the third floor of our Clinton Hill brownstone the whole time that I was down on the second. With all the same books on our bookshelves, literally and figuratively, Austin and I would get together with them every couple months. “I’m so Travis,” Austin said, once upon a time, no sooner than they left our apartment and started climbing up the stairs back to theirs, “And you’re so Kelly.” Of course, they still live there. But with sincere surprise on both their faces as we hugged hello, it seems my staking of the block went unnoticed from the third floor too. Thank God. Telling me we’d hang out the next time they were in my neck of the woods, clearly they meant that. Just a couple days later, the three of us grabbed some drinks before their late night plans in Bushwick. And I was nervous. Anxious I wouldn’t know what to say, that things would feel strained, that I’d fumble the efforts of introducing myself to people I’ve known for years. But all told, all for naught. Recently back from a trip home to Texas, Travis talked about being really close with his brother, who’s getting married later this year, and that it makes him just a little sad thinking about the inevitable changes to come. That he won’t just be Travis’s little brother anymore, he’ll be somebody’s husband, and son-in-law, and—sooner or later—father. They’re both oldest siblings, Travis and Kelly, and while she’s got a very different dynamic with her younger brother, the concern in their voices sounded just the same. It won’t be New York forever, they said, and after discussing the big changes that can really only happen with a change in scenery, finally I brought it up. Whether it was their concern for my heartache or my awareness of their home address, we went the whole first round of drinks without so much as hinting at the breakup, decidedly ignoring the elephant sitting beside us on the patio. They’re Austin’s friends too, I couldn’t forget that. So when I told them how hard it’s been to try and stay in each other’s lives, I aimed as close as I could for fairness, for grace. Trying to keep my head as level as his. But reaching out her hand to rub my arm, the two of us seemingly more alike than we already knew, Kelly saw right through me.

With an hour and a half to kill before my connecting train to Pittsfield, where Cam would pick me up for a weekend in the Berkshires, I called Shannon and said, “Could James Burns, my Irish immigrant ancestor, ever even dream of this? That 160 years after washing ashore in New York City, he’d have a faggot great-great-great grandson walking around Albany on a Friday afternoon?” Surprised by how quaint it looked, I thought of my old friend Jacki who grew up here. Brassy and inviting, a consummate Taurus woman, I used to see her a lot, ten years ago now, back when she was dating the bassist in Cam’s old band, Julius Earthling. And every time she showed up to one of those basement shows, or to the nights in Cam’s living room otherwise packed with monosyllabic punk boys, when we’d hug each other hello through our imitation-down coats during that record-breaking winter with its 107 inches of snow—I felt a saving grace. I loved Cam so much and I gave him, willfully, every second of time I had to spare. But it wasn’t brothers I grew up with. After telling Jarod that I was surrounded by a lot of Amish people on this train to Massachusetts, he sent me a note he’d written a couple years back during his own Amtrak travels. It read, “Seeing Amish people, their commitment and submission to god so strong that their plain clothes and faces and deference seemed otherworldly.” Telling him I need more of this, Jarod responded, “The writing or the submission to God?” He didn’t capitalize the ‘g’ in God then, but he did now—and I think I know why. I’d be taking the bus back to New York, not the train, and as I figured out where Peter Pan pulls up to this transit depot, I happened to look across the street where someone was waving at me from inside their car. Knowing Cam was still a couple minutes away, I wondered, “Who is this girl in a hoodie waving at me in Pittsfield?” Cackling as I jaywalked his way, I finally recognized who it was. Here to pick up his own friend also visiting town for the weekend, it was Anthony—the bassist in Cam’s old band, Julius Earthling. Keep dreaming, James Burns.

As brief as it was, playing out via text message no less, a lot was said during our fight this summer, when Cam’s commentary on my life became my accusations that he’d never asked enough questions to deserve such declarations. A horrible thing to tell a friend of ten years, it turns out, let alone a friend who’s made all the effort. “Anytime we’ve seen each other, it’s only because I reached out,” he said. “I’m pretty sure we’d go years if I left it up to you.” He was right. And as soon as I was settled in my new place, I booked my tickets for this weekend at Cam’s house in the Berkshires. The high holy day had already come and gone but, as I told Jarod, “This is my Yom Kippur.” But hopping in his car and making our way to Great Barrington, in no time, it was the same old him and me. Making a pit stop at the food co-op to pick up coffee grinds, there was a whole aisle dedicated to bulk gallons of Dr. Bronner’s soap, fitted with dispensers so customers could refill bottles brought from home, and suddenly I found myself thinking about the end of Yentl when Barbra is wearing a hat on top of another hat. “You’re a true New Yorker now,” Cam said, “Because you aren’t until you’ve bougie vacationed here in South County.” Over some fussy but delicious cocktails at a bar called Mooncloud, Cam and I talked about his two-year-old son’s new school, and the stress of moving, and the dynamic with his in-laws, and the staggering weight of doing something he loves: being responsible for his family. He wants to go to therapy and I hope he does. Last time I saw Cam’s son, over a year ago now, I scared him so badly he cried, the manic elasticity of my face not so much clownish as big bad wolfish. But sitting on the floor and getting down to his level, gently, after a couple shy minutes, I had him laughing. Julia, Cam’s wife, said that one of the parents at their kid’s school is a Jungian analyst. “I’m dying to see a Jungian!” I said, ecstatically, to which Julia said, politely, “Oh!” She was already familiar with Jung’s theory of archetypes, how our collective unconscious is populated by these mythical little personas who influence so much of our behavior. But when I asked Julia who her proverbial character would be—egregiously oversimplifying the psychology, I’m sure—she couldn’t decide. I’m Cinderella, I said, but a Cinderella who won’t allow himself the glass slipper. And when Julia said we have to figure Cam out too, it only took a minute before he appeared to me, all muscly and burdened, braced up against a boulder. The quintessential Sisyphus. “Oh my God,” Julia said, “He is!”  Realizing I didn’t know his fate, I asked Cam and Julia if they remembered the end of the story. If Sisyphus finally makes it to the top of the mountain, or if the boulder crushes him on the way down, or if he just gives up altogether. But they didn’t know either. He might still be at it, suffering the same old thing, over and over again.

“I don’t know why!” That’s all Cam kept saying. He opted for a vodka cranberry while it was pilsners for me and Anthony, who joined us for this round of drinks on Saturday night. Founding member of a well-known Boston skate collective, Anthony used to live in this crumbling house in Jamaica Plain, sharing the place with God knows how many other people. Attending a couple parties there, where the lightbulb in the bathroom was always blown, as hard as I tried to adopt the requisite costuming and strike the proper poses, I remained a round peg among all those square holes. Once again—thank God for Jacki. But Anthony, then and now, was always so sweet. Placid and sloe eyed and a little bit goofy, like a cow in tight black jeans. We did most of the listening while Cam did most of the talking, telling us, eventually, about his increasingly shameful memories of college exploits. Ashamed not by what he did so much as what he avoided. Any time he got close with a girl, he said, the mental calculations would begin. That he had all these metrics, arbitrary and unavoidable, that dictated whether or not he’d risk the vulnerability of really showing up for someone. Though maybe that’s my own conclusion. Because when I did ask him why, when I urged Cam to investigate the roots of this old pattern, he could only say, albeit with total certainty, “I don’t know why!” That Cam of all people, this staunch character, so forthright in his speech and demeanor, could be so perplexed by his own actions seemed, to me, impossible. “I just can’t imagine being such a mystery to myself,” I said, and while I don’t think that hurt his feelings, he did almost immediately change the subject. It’s increasingly possible I’m too familiar with myself. That in translating my life into words, in shaping my goings on into something resembling narrative, what I mistake for understanding might, just as easily, be only projection. A set of moving images playing out on a screen, cleanly and clearly enough to entertain. If only. All the things I don’t know about myself, I’m sure, could fill a book.

The sun was in Cam’s eyes so I told him to move, to stand someplace more comfortable, somewhere I could finally tell him what I’ve never managed to say. It was the end of the weekend and we’d spent the day up in North County, driving to the top of Mount Greylock and wandering around Mass MoCA for a couple hours. I had the Pittsfield depot pulled up on my phone and knew exactly how long it’d take us to get there. And I told myself that when there were twenty minutes left of the drive, that’s when I would start the conversation. Until fifteen minutes, on second thought, seemed best. And then eight minutes seemed even better. Or, then again, maybe never at all. Cam pulled up to the curb and got out of the car to hug me goodbye and, throwing on my duffel bag, I was reminded of the weight of this weekend. With the sun setting right behind me, I couldn’t have been much more than a shadowy mass to Cam, who could barely keep his eyes open. Suggesting we move to the sidewalk, I told him how happy I was that we had such a nice time together, that we were able to put that disagreement behind us, and apologized, again, for telling him he should’ve been more curious. Pointing a finger at myself, playful and damning, I said, “I know the common denominator.” Perfectly receptive, friendly in the truest sense of the term, he echoed my relief, and explained that he just wanted to offer something different from the same old cliches I must’ve been hearing from everyone else. And I commended him for that, that he really does possess a singular perspective in my life. Which would have been the perfect time to tell him, once and for all, what kept me from sharing all of myself during that fateful first year of friendship. To reveal, at last, the secret that was once in my heart. But it suddenly seemed beside the point. Because looking at Cam there on that sidewalk, at the glint in his huge blue eyes and the smile curling at his lips, breaking through all his burdens and nerves, the responsibilities and the rancor—there was such warmth. I looked at his face and I saw nothing but love.

“‘A possibility’” said Ethan, in a group text message with our friend Rachel, quoting my non committal response to their suggestion of drinks after the play we were all seeing that night. “My god, Brian! Grow up and hang out with your goddamn friends!” Knowing Ethan, this translates roughly to “I love you, buddy.” Looking fabulous in these great jackets, purple and handsomely cropped for Ethan while Rachel’s had polka dots, we took our seats at the Greenwich House Theater for The Beastiary, starring Miller, an old colleague of ours. Once upon a time, we all worked at the museum together. When Rachel asked me a question about my new life in my new place, Ethan said, “Shh! We’re saving that for later. When we all catch up!” Bawdy, grisly, and hysterical, medieval in its trappings but modern in its sensibility, with puppets and a pregnant nun and an old lady possessed by the dark magic of unicorn blood, The Beastiary is one of the more exciting nights of theater I’ve had in a long time. On our way to Julius’ afterwards, we agreed that, even in a world where we didn’t know Miller at all, we’d still believe she stole the show. With three seats opening up at the bar the moment we walked inside, we were right across from the grill, providing Ethan with the burger he wanted and leaving my jacket and tote bag reeking to high heaven for days to come. After Rachel talked about getting married this summer and Ethan shared that there’s a new boy in his life, like a medieval fable all our own, I said, “You’re the blushing virgin bride, he’s prince charming—and I’m the bitter hunched crone!” Not five minutes passed by without some acquaintance of Ethan’s coming over to say hello. Ethan knows everybody. One of these passing friends told us he was going as Elphaba for Halloween and I asked if he’d be keeping his eyes visible or concealed, a joke rooted in discourse too pointlessly contemporary to bother explaining, and, of course, they laughed. But promptly leaning into Rachel’s ear, I whispered, “You’re like ‘What language are they speaking?’” And without missing a beat, Rachel said, “Gay!” They’re two of the funniest people I know, Rachel and Ethan, but there were more than laughs that night. Not realizing the wound was still so fresh, thinking I’d moved out of the apartment much earlier in the year, Rachel’s hand on my leg was gentle but its touch was huge. They asked me if I’ve had sex yet and were surprised by my answer (“no”) and confounded by my outlook (“and not any time soon.”) Ethan promptly made reference to my “iron curtain” and I didn’t feel offended. Rather: understood. But when he asked what I hoped to get from this next chapter, despite my countless conversations about it, the thousands and thousands of words I’ve written, really and truly, I did not have an answer. “Then why?” Rachel asked, her voice almost childlike, making no effort to mask the sadness of all this. “Why break up at all?” The more days go by, the less sure I become. Parting ways at West 4th, as Rachel stayed up on the C train platform and Ethan and I walked down to the M, at the same time and in the same arch tone of voice, Ethan looked at me and said, “Bitch…” just as Rachel leaned over the railing and said, “You two better not be talking about me!”

The last to take my seat at a desk serving as a dining table, joining Isaiah, Estefania, Grace, and Sara for this dinner with Sophie at her apartment, I pushed in my chair and my knees knocked against the underside of the desk. Filled to the brim with red wine or apple cider, everyone’s glasses immediately spilled half their contents all over this beautiful piece of wood furniture. But, grace be to God, none of them toppled over. Isaiah beat me to the kitchen where he handed me some paper towels and I pointed to the front door, telling him, “Alright, I’ll see myself out now!” For the first hour or so of the meal, I mostly just listened. Maybe I really didn’t have anything to say, but most likely I was just still embarrassed. Eating Sophie’s matzo ball soup and sweet potato latkes in her Hell's Kitchen tenement—all of us pointing out, with gleeful expertise, the 19th century ghosts of its original features—we talked about sensory deprivation and praying the rosary, who we’d switch places with for a day and how it feels to look at New York City from inside a train crossing the bridge. We all had plenty to say, eventually me too, but it was Sara who did most of the talking and I know we’re all grateful for it. She’s a Miami girl, as cool as can be, with a phenomenally throaty voice that took her a long time to appreciate. In every single way, Sara is so beautiful. She told us about going to hardcore shows growing up and how hard it was being one of the few girls ever in attendance, about being the youngest sibling in her family, and visiting the ancestral hometown of her Puerto Rican family where an old shaman guided her through a certain kind of experience that allowed Sara to embody her grandmother in the moment she gave birth to Sara’s mother. “Well, it’s like how we were inside our mothers when our mothers were inside of their mothers so, in a way, that is something you’ve already done,” I said. A Cancer woman, ever the deep feeler, Sara said, “Okay, well, now I’m gonna cry.”

We were in the break room a couple weeks ago, me and Sara, when she admitted that after meeting Austin for the first time, back at the bitter end of summer, she cried. It was the night when Austin and I had tickets for Between the Temples—the very last movie we’d see in theaters before I moved out. With some time to kill after getting off work, I joined a couple other Educators at a bar around the corner, Sara included. But Austin got to the neighborhood earlier than I expected and, after trying and failing to get in touch with me, he had a feeling where I was—and he was right. Taking a seat in the bar next to Sara, it was like our conversation hadn’t existed before he got there. Austin fit right in and, soon as I finished my drink, we left them laughing. And there in the break room, well after the fact, Sara said to me, “When you guys left that night, me and Sophie started talking about relationships, you know, being in something long-term with someone and I just—dude, I started crying!” They’re back together again but, for a year, Sara and her boyfriend broke up. It was hell, she’s said. And I have a million questions for her about it. But why the sight of me and Austin heading off to the movies, even just peripherally, was enough to make her cry—I didn’t need to ask.

Waiting for me in front of the St. James Theatre, I spotted Austin further up the sidewalk and thought, “He looks so different.” His very silhouette, in three weeks time, had seemed to change. The fit of his jeans and his denim shirt, the boots he had on, his hair—it all appeared brand new to me. He looked like a man. Once again, that very next night after dinner at Sophie’s, Austin and I had tickets for a show. It’s just that this night, for all we know, really was the last time. “I’ve been waiting to show you this in person,” said Austin, as we took our seats in the second-to-last row for Sunset Boulevard. Down in North Carolina, Austin went through a tote of old keepsakes in his grandmother’s attic, coming across things he hadn’t seen in twentysomething years—including this composition notebook in his hands. It was from the first grade. Flipping through its pages to show me his illustrations of Dorothy and the Scarecrow, already so artful at six years old, and the stories he wrote in shockingly neat print. He was so happy to share this with me—and so was I. But then, once he put the notebook back in his bag, with another half hour til curtain, like Joker part deux indeed, all I could think about was how little we had to say. I asked Austin if he had Halloween plans this weekend and he said “No.” And not five minutes later, I asked if he had any Halloween plans at all. Once again, he said, “No.” If this is doing either of us any good, these attempts at maintaining some kind of presence in each other’s lives, I really don’t know. It’s many things, this new relationship of ours, but as I struggled to decide where to fix my gaze, sitting here beside someone I slept beside for years, this painfully familiar stranger—I knew it wasn’t fun. After the show, we took the C train downtown, together but only for so much longer. Closer every moment to my dreaded transfer, as 42nd Street became 34th became 23rd, with no way of stopping this moving train, I wondered if this is what dying feels like. “I guess this is the last time we’re seeing each other,” I said and, despite the arm he immediately put around me, Austin didn’t disagree. And I knew in my heart, pummeled as it was, pummeled almost to dust, that this was the right thing. But once I got home, over text, try as I might, I couldn’t resist telling him how angry I felt. “Sadness I get,” he said. “But it’s hard for me to understand the anger.” And he never will, I fear. In bed that night, I wrote him a message I could accept as my last. Saying, without saying, that we should stop talking while saying, in words, what I still needed him to know. That I’ll leave the sheets he lent me down in the vestibule of his building, that I’ll go through those old grocery store receipts and determine if I need to pay back any of those $300 he spotted me last month, that I hope to do an oral history with him, eventually, but only if he wants to. That he will always loom so large in my heart and—like the refrain from a song on a playlist he made for me so many years ago—“I will smile when I think of you.”

Out in the hall, I heard a door shut as one of my roommates went into the bathroom. I’m certain she heard me, crying there in bed. Before I moved in, and before she opted to live in one of the smaller, cheaper rooms in our unit, my bedroom used to be hers. And when she passed by my midnight sobs heaving through her old door frame, is there anything she remembered?

Given how much Ashleigh hates living in Park Slope, I know she would’ve gladly met up anywhere else that Friday night. But I came to her, in an ultimately selfish act of selflessness, desiring as long of a commute home as possible. “...somehow I’d be doing alright, if it wasn’t for the nights…” Breathing her in during our hug hello at a cocktail bar called Saint Eve’s, looking as beautiful as always, Ashleigh told me this is one of the very few family-unfriendly spots in her general vicinity. Both of us like kids, that’s not the issue. Rather, it’s the parents that drive both of us insane, proving just as cruelly myopic here as they were in Clinton Hill. Of course, Ashleigh recognizes the beauty of Park Slope, and how lucky she is to live there, but as she said to me, in her desperate bid to escape brownstone Brooklyn for the evening, “I feel like I live in a different country.” Working from home, Ashleigh didn’t have to cope with a new commute but John Michael did. A personal trainer, he needs to get to all different parts of Manhattan, more often than not, before daybreak. And Ashleigh has such guilt about that. That since it was her idea to give up their established lives in Los Angeles for something different in New York, it’s also all her fault that they left their previous apartment in the East Village for something so lamely far away. Shouldering blame that John Michael would never want her to feel. And Ashleigh knows that. If only she could believe it. “Oh, please,” I said to her, “If I choose the restaurant and someone hates their meal, I want to step in front of a moving bus.” We talked about how much our mothers have in common, two Taurus women with their love of live music and struggle with parent-child boundaries. About the invitation from Kyla to go down to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and how bad we feel that that might not be our idea of fun. Talking to her about the merits of attending church, and how it equipped Austin and his family with this calm resilience I wish my own could possess, Ashleigh took me by such pleasant surprise in agreeing with me. She also thinks faith is a beautiful and necessary thing. For the longest time, Ashleigh used to make me so nervous. Really struggling to think up things to say to her during the altogether rare instances we were ever one-on-one. But after twelve years of friendship, after already knowing each other for so long, the conversation we had that night—it was our most meaningful by far.

The beloved kitchen table in my old apartment must have been thrown out and I only learned about it because of an Instagram Story from my ex-roommate’s best friend. Scrolling on the subway platform, I was suddenly confronted by a photograph of Austin sitting in the living room, over by the window where our dinette table always used to be. This vintage chrome and formica colossus that I loved so much—gone. “This type of modern life is not for me,” sings Madonna, in the video accompanying my tweet about all this. And while Austin didn’t engage with the post, he did send me a message. Just beginning a Saturday at the museum, I was talking to Jarod in the break room when Austin reached out to me. Telling me not to fear, that the table is safely stored in the closet and that he’s keeping it safe until I need it. And if I’m being honest—that was just what I suspected. But really believing we’d said our final words to each other for a while, it was shocking enough just to see his name on my screen—let alone read what came next. “Also, I panicked and fibbed on Thursday when you asked if I had Halloween plans, I do,” he said. “Kiera and I are having a little Halloween get together. I feel bad for not just telling you on Thursday and didn’t want you to see something online and then be upset that I lied. I’m sorry for not being honest.” Right then and there, I lost my mind. Stepping away from Jarod, as his face fell into the shadows of concern and pity, and some sadness all his own, I felt suddenly like an animal, twitchy, paranoid, barely able to think, at once both the predator and the prey. Sliding the door shut behind me, I entered a part of our break room that’s technically reserved for silent studying—despite its glass walls and zero sound proofing. I rattled off a dozen texts despite my shaking hands and when Austin didn’t respond as quickly as I would’ve liked, I called him. After a couple moments of silence on the line, as he read the messages I’d just sent, Austin said, “I don’t know what to tell you.” Rage, true rage, mighty and unmooring, came home to roost.

Standing in a corner with my back turned to the rest of the break room, as close as I’d get to privacy, and periodically checking a clock on the wall as my first tour of the day ticked ever closer, Austin and I fought. Telling him I was so hurt that he lied, that he kept something from me when I’ve asked him so many times, during this brief, doomed friendship, to tell me what he’s thinking and feeling. But that above all else, I was furious he could possibly have fun tonight. That wasn’t just upsetting to me—it was inconceivable. “How, Austin?” I asked, so many times. “How?” Knowing Al was home from Ireland for the week, I asked Austin if he was going to be at this party and, after a telling beat of quiet, Austin said, “You need to get over that. He has nothing to do with any of this.” On a summer night last year, when something irrevocable broke in our relationship, a hairline fracture that’d shatter us for good several months later, it was during a night out with Al. They only know each other because I introduced them and while it’s Austin’s belief that “at 30 years old, you cannot say ‘he was my friend first,’ that is embarrassing,” try as I might, I cannot see Al’s decision to attend that party as anything but a line drawn in the sand. That said—I don’t disagree. It is embarrassing. Because even in lying, Austin was just trying to be good. Still taking care of me, babying me, long after he was obliged. “If I could take your suffering and give you peace,” he said to me, “I would in the blink of an eye.” But I wouldn’t know peace that day, I couldn’t. Lamenting that this fight, this horrible, bitter fight, now had to be our final correspondence, our last conversation, I shot to kill and told him I hoped this party was worth it. “I love you, goodbye,” I said, hanging up the phone before he had the chance to say anything else. Too afraid of what would happen to me, of what I’d be capable of doing, of how I’d manage to survive this long night ahead of me, if I heard the bruised and patient truth of his “I love you, too.”

Whether it was drinks, or dinner, a night of theater, or my trip out of town, every night for the last two weeks, I had plans with somebody. That is not in my nature and I was so grateful for it. But I was also looking forward to an evening without obligation, a night when I could shower with plenty of time left for nothing to do, whiling away the hours before my head hit the pillow with dry hair. Sometime soon, I wanted to be alone. God laughs, but never so bitterly. The three tours I led that afternoon, much to my surprise, proved a valued distraction. Instead, it was the break room, brimming with the promise of imminent Saturday nights out, where I’d remember the newfound scorn in my guts. It was just before work day’s end, steeling myself for the loneliness to come as I packed up my bag, that Sophie walked over and said, “Brian, I’m getting dinner with Grace and Erica—come with us.” There was no concealing what I felt that day, the struggle of getting through was on my face and it was in my mouth. Everybody knew, they had to. But even if this was a concerted effort, if this offer was prompted by worry instead of some friendly coincidence, it was no less a blessing. We went to a Vietnamese place on Grand Street and when Erica decided on bún riêu, Sophie and I ordered it too. It was Grace who pointed out to me, a while ago now, just how much Erica loves food, but that so much of that joy has to do with sharing it, and knowing that the people in her life are enjoying whatever they got. Anytime Grace eats a meal with Erica, she feels that love. But it was also Grace, once our topic of conversation that night veered inevitably to parents, who said, “I mean, my mom will call me and I’ll answer—I don’t always want to but I do—and it’ll just be about…nothing! Like she’ll call me just to ask, ‘Did you have dinner yet? What did you eat? Are you full?’” Love is so hard. It’s so, so hard. As brisk as could be, increasingly aware of this subject’s shelf life, I told the girls about Austin’s party, and his lie, and how I can’t help wondering what else he’s kept from me these last couple months. Mid-sentence, Sophie interrupted me. “But listen to what you just said: ‘Austin is not a liar, I know that.’ You know that about him. So why wouldn’t he be telling the truth about everything else? Why make yourself believe that?”

The last time I stood here on Pier 45, it was a summer night and the sun was still out and old New Yorkers were dancing the Argentine tango, crawling around to a mournfully gorgeous song as they held each other near, their palms and their hips like spoons in a cutlery drawer. Now it was dark, and my jacket was too thin for the wind, and that night’s dance lesson finished up just as I began walking down the pier. We all went our separate ways after dinner but I couldn’t go home. It was only eight o’clock at night. So I walked up Essex until it became Avenue A, took a left on 10th Street, and headed west all the way to the river. I’m always walking, there’s nothing I love more, but not like this. I wanted to walk myself to depletion that night, to a point of total exhaustion—that I’d walk for so long, I just might disappear. There are these photobooth pictures of us that we kept in a frame, hanging over our bed, and last month I had a dream that Austin took it down from his bedroom wall. It prompted me to look through the little pockets on the back cover of my journals, and the pine wood box that houses this exact kind of ephemera, searching for my copy of these pictures, something that famously comes in a pair. But I couldn’t find them. Not anywhere. I have no idea where we are. The party guests were surely just beginning to show up, people who might be seeing the apartment, and Austin’s room, for the very first time, and if it hadn’t happened already, if our smiling faces behind that dusty glass hadn’t already been swapped out for someone new—maybe this was as good a time as any. If I were him, that’s probably what I’d do. That night when Sara cried after he found me in the bar, it turns out Austin got to the neighborhood early for a reason. But I didn’t know that, not until I checked my phone and read my missed messages, by which point it was too late. Austin had said to me, “You off work? I’m here. Wanna go to the photobooth on Orchard Street before the movie?” With my back to the churning waters, moving moving moving, and never to return, I faced the city and took my first step.