On Loneliness

At five in the morning tomorrow a cab will arrive at the little apartment in which Kate and I have shared these last few months. The cabbie will be yawning, likely surly, as I stuff my bags into the trunk – why did I bring so many sweaters? I am leaving Nicaragua for Canada to prep for the next big thing; Kate and I embrace, then she will wave goodbye through the bars.

Today I am flipping through a photo album of the mind. After dinner, I squash the plantains and fry them twice, and serve the tostones with ice cream. We are walking the Managuan streets, sunburnt and pasty-mouthed, tumbleweeds of garbage rolling past our ankles; she slips her hand into mine. She is lounging in the hammock in the gazebo; I appear with a plate of cheese and crackers. I write down the strange things she says while asleep and read them to her in the morning. As we reached the dregs of my movie collection, Kate agreed to watch the following Arnold Schwarzenegger movies: Twins, Kindergarten Cop, Junior, Terminator 2, Conan the Barbarian, Running Man, Total Recall, and Conan the Destroyer. She rubs aloe vera on my sunburnt neck. I withdraw a splinter from her finger – she kisses me and calls me doctor. In the morning she extracts snuggles from me while I mumble, zoning in and out. Rare nights she gets cold her toes – frosty as the grave – cross the bed’s median, and vampire my heat. Sometimes I sing her sea ditties.

We fight, but our super-power is talking things out. She wishes I was more athletic. I wish she was zanier. She loves nature and hates animals. (I don’t hate animals!! I’m just a bit indifferent, she says) I love animals and hate nature. We have lived in a shoebox together for two years now – I feather-step around her for five hours after she falls asleep; she is sensitive to the slightest noise. In the morning she clangs the pots making breakfast and my snore continues unabated. She calls me Guapo and I call her Ladybug. She turns off the air conditioner, I turn it back on. We have cheese and I get flatulent; she retreats to the garden. I think she is naïve about people; she thinks I am naïve about money. When she was training for interviews she asked me to help coach: “Stressed in the interview? Just pretend the panel is naked.”  I said, wearing only a clipboard. Her career is flourishing, mine is a madman’s gamble. After Nicaragua she is going to France; I am going to China. After this period of remarkable closeness, we will be apart for almost a year. I will miss her terribly.

I remember loneliness – once we were as close as Kate and I are now. He has been lurking outside the front door of our apartment, often in the scorching heat, sometimes in the rain, like today. He is a man – portly, in a too-tight jacket. He keeps his gaze downcast, mumbling to himself; he lacks the local tongue. See his eyes, that spark of intelligence and sensitivity: those double-edged gifts and their price tag of pain. It was he, when my parents were fighting, who lifted the curtain and said, “Hide in here.” After I skipped grade three I would have been friendless but for him. He waited for me on the playground, sat next to me as I drew shapes in the sand with a stick. After that, he taught me to wear a clown’s mask. I remember moving to a new town in the middle of high school – all the cliques fully evolved. I was an automaton; got rides from the football coach after practice straight to the boxing gym. Loneliness and I would nap for half an hour on a pillow of handwraps before the next workout started – my body a shame and a pride, but always a wall.

He was there in the crowd when I read my Dad’s eulogy. This time, I hid behind a booze curtain. Emerging, I went to sea with the Navy, where you wake up at work and sleep at work, too – we were all turning into ships. I would see him, sometimes, sitting on the focsle, throwing stones into the water. In port, his reflection in the emptiness of bottles. In Afghanistan men and women were not allowed to touch; fraternization was forbidden. But it was fine to reach out to your enemies, so long as your fingers were missiles. For the first time I felt completely empty – no love, no infatuation, no crush – just my old friend. I came home and went back to school, older, jaded, brain-bucket overflowing with memories of people being blown apart. I couldn’t identify with my fellow students around me and they couldn’t identify with me: I was too big, too strange, too much, too severe, too critical, too hard. Or this is how I saw myself.

Remembering his kindnesses I let Mr. Lonely in from the rain. For it was he who taught me to string words and held my hands as I learned the piano – I have already set the chessboard for a game. Behind the curtain he opened books, at the gym he loaded another weight on the rack. He sits down across from me, taking off his sopping cap in front of the chessboard. He moves a pawn.

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