In Which We Crave What Has All Gone Wrong

Living with Me

by DAN CARVILLE

Dear Daniele,

Tonight an exceedingly rash act was performed by a man who should know better. It may be that there is no completely moral act, only I hope there is.

The lights on Mott Street were fading to almost nothing on the way back. I walked from there to Astor Place, where I saw a kissing couple bang on the door of the McDonald's. But it's always open.

I used to take you to a bookstore near there. They kept all of the fiction in the back. Up front were the true things. It may be that there is no completely moral decision.

The rest of the way home I saw them pressing against each other, lights interchanging, flashing. It is a way to communicate, but not the last remaining method left to us.

Dear Daniele,

I understand why you felt all that was too impersonal, like I was addressing an effigy. Your analysis of me is nearly always dead on, a frightening fact that will scare our children when they read these old letters. I can pray they will not know even what a letter is by then.

Well, when I got home I did call you too many times, but that is just excitement. I remember when I slipped on the ice and hit my head (I was eight or nine that year) and all I wanted to do was tell the person who meant most to me. This was sort of like that.

If you had answered, I am sure I could have convinced you.

You were so composed, sitting on your own couch. Picking the place to fall apart is as important as selecting the time.

Dear Daniele,

I have been back and forth to the hospital too many times. The food is even beginning to taste good. I would be stupid to think this evokes any sympathy in you. That kind of caring is short term – what we feel for the suffering of others. You were more capable of the long term variety, which my mother calls devotion.

Changing someone's mind is very hard. I know that changing yours is impossible, an aspect of how it was constructed in the first place.

Then, of course, I met someone else. You couldn't pin down the reason for her beauty. The difficult god had returned. It was in the clear low span of her forehead, when her eyes found someone farther out than I could see. You don't want to know my problems.

Dear Daniele,

That night, I got off the subway a few stops too early. I wanted to see who was really awake, if I could be provoked into dismissing all of this. The following weekend I went to the country. The more decisive any act is, the more chance there is of it being absolutely moral.

The hibiscus, the crafted fern. Deep in the woods the smell of a hostage to the trees. I sat peacefully, I was at rest. Here you could forget about what brought me to this farm, what brings to me to this prolepsis.

You see, I am a different man! Completely! I wrought all the meaning out of what I went through! The plasmids, the certain, last goff! You could see me at the apex, and then prancing down like someone you barely recognize! That will be me, holding the bale!

There were bats in the barn. I don't know what they fed on exactly, flies or bugs, maybe?

Dear Daniele,

I am back in the city now, and I feel somehow you know these things, what I think to tell you before I say it in my own inimitable voice. We sold the lingua franca, we bought the flowers and a potted plant that it could be said might last for decades. Those last hours in the arbor, before forty-five minutes of stopped traffic on the FDR. Are things becoming worse or better? For you, I mean?

Candidly, I hope you dream of me. A promised life is real enough. I can't meet another woman in a sweatshirt, or find something derelict next to the castor oil. I am not that type of person, or even if I am, I am not the type of person to realize I am that type of person.

It is always kind to shut the door on the way out of your room.

Dan Carville is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in Manhattan. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

In Which We Cared About So Many Of Them

My Friend, Who At Last

by LINDA EDDINGS

My friend said her boyfriend broke up with her last night. When pressed to explain the reason why, he told her, "Things don't feel quite right." They had planned on moving into an apartment with ceilings just as high as the exaggerated windows, too tall to see out from clearly. Cleaning them is such an ordeal.

My friend said she took the train to Saratoga, and saw cows and horses along the way. When she arrived, her host told her that she was late even though she always comes early. Morning somewhere new is such a lucky chance.

My friend said that her boyfriend had become markedly less communicative. She asked me for ways to alter this trajectory. "I don't want to just pull away," she said. I said that it seemed like she was afraid of losing him even more. My friend said she was concerned she might lose herself.

My friend said the high line is the worst time, since it makes no sense to wander quietly away. My friend said that just once she wants to bring a guy into a bookstore and have him not be checking his phone the whole time.

My friend said that when the most recent guy disappeared, she actually went to confront him. "I just want to know," she said softly, since that is the best to express pain without showing its true depth. "I'd like to know why you stopped answering my calls and texts without the slightest word." He sort of brushed back his hair and said that it was August.

My friend said it is best to not expect anything. My friend raises her arms and leans forward to stretch. "You never know what exactly keeps them coming back," she said, holding a picture of herself as a child in the light.

My friend said that a psychic explained the reason why some of us are unhappy. My friend said that the earth revolves around the sun. We are like the earth, she told me, only we do not know what to revolve around.

Flies spring up in this stagnant swamp.

My friend said that she has another test, since the bookstore rules out so many men so completely. "I get in a elevator," she said, "and I press every button. If an expression of utter dread comes over his face, I get out at the next floor."

A spider dropped down from her web, halting before the linoleum.

My friend said that she struggles with intimacy in a way she never did before. "He holds me in his hands, and it only reminds me of other ways this has happened before. I wonder if I am rushing home from work to something that is never there." She has alopecia, and wears a wig when we go out. No one notices except for her.

My friend has this analogy of a strange thing pressing against her leg. She doesn't know exactly what it is that makes the sensation, but she has a general idea.

My friend said that her boyfriend's mother loves her. All her boyfriend's friends love her. So why doesn't her boyfriend love her?

It is best to sample each ingredient. These fine things, arranged on the softest pillow imaginable. Tasting one will give you a sense of the whole. Tasting them all will make you sick.

Linda Eddings is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Manhattan. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here.

In Which We Were Not There To Take His Place

Composting Now

by DAN CARVILLE

Around late January, when Christmas was just the echo of an echo of crumpled wrapping paper, I ran out of ways to convince you to come back. 

Apologies in advance for the second-person. I know it is the dirt worst, even worse than consecutive semi-colons, but you can lay the blame on my total lack of composure. I was pricing a belt at T.J. Maxx on Wednesday and tears ruined the buckle, rusted it out. 

A lot of bad things have happened, if I'm being honest. I know in a relationship, a real relationship that is what you have to be, or it catches up to you. A phone call out of the blue announces the lie has evaporated. 

I don't lie anymore, not even to myself. 

One of these unfortunate occurrences put me inside of a hospital. (It was nothing you did, and it was not really happening to me, anyway. He only goes after those we love, especially when we love ourselves too much to risk it.)

Hospitals all look the same, halls too wide for human occupation. Signs point us in the wrong direction, away from the place we need to be. I remember one time I was in a hospital; I was just a little boy, I had seen The Rocketeer; it was supposed to keep me awake, only the thing was it put me to sleep instead. 

I should have known that basic irony would be the defining jest of February. The reason I give a gift is to show who I am, the kind of person I might be under better, more favorable circumstances. I guess what I started thinking is, what if I am that person now, and the gift just proves how much further I had to go. 

Why you left is nuncupatory. The fact is you are not down in the Metro when I go there, and believe me I questioned city personnel. I keep thinking to myself how I never did anything bad to you except not take the trip you wanted me to. You never suggested I go, but you should not have had to ask. It eats at me a lot that I did not do that for you, but it is not even the biggest bite. 

Day one of therapy was like a bunch of swarming minnows, taking plankton-size chunks. My metaphors run away from me. Writing is inadequate to this particular task. There is something missing from it that can only be conveyed by the actual passage of time, not the gasp between paragraphs. 

I did go back. I also returned to where we first met, hoping I would glimpse you through an aquarium. That first day we met I was not really looking forward to seeing you. I canceled the night before, wrapping myself in a thin black blanket and reading until all my bad thoughts went away, of how maybe I was not the person you thought I would be, and would I hate myself for the lack of authenticity?

My therapist gave me this idea. He asked me what kind of person I thought I was. The only way I could answer is this: I never do things for the sake of them. He told me that some people might view that as a character flaw. I wanted to scream. 

But I did not. There is no anger there, even that has faded with the time we are given to get over ourselves. The training for this in the life of a man is minimal. I am, like plenty of others, not unfamiliar with being dismissed, but the way you did it.

That has nothing to do with it. It is what I tell my class (I am teaching now, you never let me tell you, it is great fun and you always told me I should do it and I did, I'd talk to you about it in these warmer nights if you let me, my lips brushing against a pillow like a perpetual greeting). What I tell my class is, the way you say something doesn't matter at all. If you're saying the right thing, you could tell it backwards and we would still shake at the end. 

March comes on like a refrain. Everyone is telling me to be social. "Don't retreat into yourself," a friend says. "It takes too long to realize nothing's there." I have my books and movies. I finished Carrie: the ending was just awful. I tried another Theodore Dreiser, and I noticed a theme. A woman is humbled, and she takes a man with her into the gutter. She makes a choice to save herself or save him, and whatever decision she lands on, she regrets. 

You must have some regrets. I never met anybody that didn't second guess themselves, but I suppose that is why you are not here right now. I would have liked to watch that movie with you, and I wish we had never disagreed. It is another character flaw, to enjoy bouncing hard against something soft, and then doing the reverse. I'm working on pushing the soft parts together, says my therapist. 

It is the opposite of what you are supposed to do in writing, and maybe that is what I find difficult about relationships at times. It feels like pressing the cathodes of a battery against each other, nuzzling their charged tips. 

I pray a lot now, which is funny considering I told you how silly I thought it was. Well, now I know why people do it: it is for when you want something real bad and divine intervention is the only way they can think to get it. I pray for you to come back in my life, and sometimes for wonderful things to happen to you. I figure if you are happy maybe it doesn't improve my chances, but it couldn't hurt them. Plus, you'd be happy.

That's not where these pleas to God end, however. I don't imagine just having you around. That's peanuts. I imagine marrying you in front of everyone I know. It gets worse. Even though we're already wed, I propose again. We could renew our vows. I was looking for a ring, but it wasn't good enough. The only thing that would say what was in my heart right now is seaweed and grass. I go back to the earth — I'm even composting now. I miss you. When you walk through the door, you won't recognize me. I ran to lose weight, and I kept doing it because I know you would have wanted me to. I'm volunteering for Hillary. I've seen so many places on these travels — the end of the park, choruses of concrete, metal detectors exchanging compliments, lightning bugs kneeling and circling my big stupid head. That's not all. You're here and praying too. My clothes are better, my spirit is larger. I am king of all the animals, and I sprinted a block to return a dollar that had dropped out of a girl's pocket. You won't recognize me at all. 

Dan Carville is the senior contributor to This Recording. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.