In Memory Of

Somehow throughout the service she had edged her way closer and closer to me. When I stood up after the last words were spoken, and they had declared his estate empty of anything transferrable by will, I approached his casket and placed a hand on it. I was the only other one at the funeral that hadn’t been part of his family. He was family to me, but not by blood. I was never much of a family kind of person, but his seemed okay. Better than mine, at least. His was clean, somehow. They all cried for him, even if they were the only ones to show up. He hadn’t been one for making friends, but I never knew him to be lonely.

I wasn’t sure who she was, or why she came, and neither was anyone else. I had been a fixture in his life, so they all recognized me, at least; she was a stranger. After the service, she had stood close to the casket, staring at the picture of him they had used, with a strange kind of longing. She studied it like a painting in the Louvre; like she wanted it to be the last thing she saw when she closed her eyes that night. There was no way she had ever seen him before, because there was no recognition in her eyes. I couldn’t read body language, and I couldn’t read voices, but I could read eyes, and hers were full of things you don’t feel when you stare at a face you’ve seen before, at least as far as I know. The casket was closed; he had written that he didn’t want anyone to see him like that. He had always waited until I was asleep, and then gotten out of bed. I wasn’t allowed to see him sleep, so he spent his nights on the couch. But he never complained about it.

I knew more about him than anyone else, and she knew the least. That might be why we’d been drawn to each other, aside from being the outcasts of the funeral. It was strange, hearing them all recount tales of his youth. Things he had done as a child were foreign to me; I had come late into his life, and never asked him about his past, just like he never asked me about mine. I wasn’t interested in what had changed, only what was now. I imagine these stories were just as new to her as to me. She couldn’t have known them if I didn’t. We had been polar opposites in his life. I had loved him. She had never met him.

I can’t remember the day we met. Whenever that was, it was the beginning of my inability to hold onto things. I think, after the first time I looked into his eyes, that desperate survival instinct of mine was gone. I used to clutch onto memories like they were knives, which I could use to defend myself. If I remembered what I ate for breakfast three weeks ago, the dollar value on my dry cleaning receipt, the hair color of the bank teller who closed out my account, then no one could hurt me, because I was in control.

There were not a lot of things I had under control, whether it be my mind, my body, my bank account, or the rusty wheels of my chair. I needed something; something that I could hold onto, which would not change. Memories might fade, but they don’t change. I met him, though, and I stopped giving a shit.

I don’t believe in love at first sight. That’s not to say I’m not a romantic; but I don’t need something fast and deep and heart-throbbing. I didn’t know that I loved him when I bumped into him at that bar, I just knew that his eyes were an oaken brown that made me think of fireplaces and log cabins and blankets against snow. Despite being three drinks deep, whiskey from what I could tell, he smelled like a fireplace, too. A rich, smoky scent that filled my brain as much as it did my nostrils, like a flannel jacket that’s a size or two too big, and it covers your hands as much as your arms. I’ve never waxed poetic about anyone but him. We didn’t have anything poetic, though.

He was a mute; the war did that to him. Recruiters sold him a lie about patriotism, honor, freedom, and so he goes out into the Middle East, god damn if I remember where exactly, so he can shoot some terrorists, not knowing the most dangerous ones were back home giving the orders, and he shoots who they tell him to shoot, and by the time he realizes who he’s killing, he’s one empty magazine too far past the tipping point, and the next bullet he lets loose is about to be through his skull. No amount of vet’s pay and free counseling fixes that. The guilt and the shame you feel when you’ve been used as a tool in a war machine. Before I saw them for myself, the bartender told me that he had a stack of index cards he kept on him, with phrases like “hello”, “how are you?” “shit weather, ain’t it?”. Bartender told me this after I asked how he knew to keep bringing drinks without being asked. “Whiskey. Keep em’ coming till I either can’t walk or can’t pay.” Drowning out the gunshots, I suppose.

I was about to kill myself that day. This story isn’t about me, so I won’t spill my baggage like I will his, but you don’t get pushed to that point for nothing. Paralyzed from the waist down, in the cheapest, shittiest wheelchair I could afford, I planned on spending the rest of my money on vodka and then wheeling myself into traffic. I have to guess it was a miracle that brought me to him. I would tell myself I don’t believe in miracles, but it lines up too well. By some stroke of luck, we both found ourselves outside of the bar at the same time; I had left first, but when he left, I was still staring into the street, steeling myself up. God forbid my drunk cripple arms fuck up the steering, and I end up in a nonlethal accident. What benefit would there be in that? Don’t bother wondering.

He approached me, and he had a card, and it said “need help?”, and I knew he was a good one from that. I told him that if he could push me into the fastest car he saw coming, it’d be fucking swell, but he just brought out another card. “I’m going home now,” it said, and I asked if he could make the manslaughter quick, then, but he took my chair and started to take me home with him. I don’t know how he kept it together. Through long conversations, and crumpled notes and dialogues written on dollar store notebook paper, I found out he worked in a warehouse, and he planned on wearing himself down on that minimum wage until his back or his legs or his shoulders gave out, and then he would die quietly, and I told him that sounds fucking miserable. That was the first time I got him to smile, and I realized that if I could get him to keep doing that, maybe I had a reason to stay alive after all.

I don’t remember at what point it became official that I was living with him. He never asked me to leave, I never suggested it. I used my disability pay on my half of the rent, and what he had leftover from his after meeting me halfway he used on groceries, and booze with what was left from that. I never saw what he did with the money from his job. I never asked. For a while, I assumed it was it on hookers, because my gaydar has never been the most attuned. It’s dangerous to assume your roommate is a fellow fag when he’s the one whose name is on the contract.

The first night I was there, he brought me into his shabby living room, and then left me alone while he passed out in the bedroom. Other than that, there was a bathroom, and something I struggle to call a kitchen. It was the kind of apartment you think up when you picture military pay plus minimum wage. Slightly above dirt poor, maybe, but not by much. The next day, he made breakfast, eggs that were too watery, and I told him so. “Who the fuck am I, Gordon Ramsay?” he wrote on a whiteboard on his fridge next to a grocery list that said “milk, ramen, jaeger.” He went to work, and I sat in my chair in front of the TV in a daze for eight hours until he came back. I didn’t have anything to do with myself during the hours when he was gone, when I couldn’t talk to him, even if he couldn’t talk back. I drew, sometimes. It was something I used to do, and I picked it up again, because I was bored. I drew things in his apartment, over and over and over, until I could do it with my eyes closed. After a few weeks of living like this, eating breakfast with him, drawing or watching TV all day, eating dinner, and sleeping on the couch after he helped me onto it, I asked if I could draw him, and he blushed like a child, like I’d told him he was the prettiest girl on the playground.

I guess I haven’t said anything about what he looked like. I’m not so good at descriptions. He was skinny as a rail, which complimented how fat I got after sitting in that chair for a decade. He had started balding, but I didn’t care, because no matter how many times I washed it, my hair was always too oily. He had a neck like an ostrich, and his collarbones jutted outwards. My body hair was too thick, his too wiry. My skin was spotted with scars and stretch marks, his with acne and blemishes. We were very much too imperfect to be loved, and we found comfort in each other. When I drew him, he looked startled, and he retreated into his bedroom for nearly an hour. I had been so worried that he was offended, that I hadn’t done a good enough job. When he came out, his eyes were red, like he had been crying, and he asked if I thought he really looked like that. With shame, I said yes, and he kissed me, for the first time. He sat awkwardly in my lap, and we kissed like two fags passed our prime, who hadn’t kissed anyone with more love than lust in our lives. That night, he helped me into his bed, and we just held each other until we fell asleep.

That was when I found out he didn’t let anyone see him asleep. I woke up, and he was gone, but not for work. I rolled over and got myself into my chair, and came out to see him sleeping on the couch. I didn’t ask why, but he still had a card to explain it, somewhat. “You can’t see me like that.” I’m assuming he meant vulnerable, but maybe that was just me. We never asked each other a lot of questions. Mostly, we just sat around like slobs. Sometimes he took me to art museums. He loved the statues the most; forever living in a moment. Never getting any better or worse, never changing. Never decaying. I always felt drawn to the more abstract pieces, but I think that’s because the realistic stuff bored me. I had seen what real had to offer, and if I could turn it down, I would.

I couldn’t cook, and neither could he, really. When he was at work, I picked up the takeout boxes, did my best to load his tiny, crappy dishwasher, but he had to do the laundry, take the trash out, most of the cleaning, and it made me feel like shit that I couldn’t help him. I was just the crippled queer again, useless, a drain on him. He saw me crying like a bitch over it one day, drunk as all hell, and he told me that if he didn’t have something to occupy himself with, he lost his mind. That’s why he drank; if he couldn’t fill the empty space, he killed it.

I think that’s what did him in, really. He was one of the nicest, most gentle people I ever met, and he drank like it was the end of the world nearly every night. I’m not sure if he could get to sleep without being blackout drunk. I know I couldn’t. The closest the two of us ever came to fucking was the most sober we ever were, but it made me sob to look down at my legs in that bed, and we stopped. He understood.

I’ll never forgive him for not letting himself sleep next to me. I could’ve spent his last night next to him, instead of feeling like an utter shithead wheeling myself out that morning and seeing him laying on the sofa, so much paler than normal. He didn’t have any savings, so his parents covered the funeral. His phone didn’t have a password, so I called to let them know what had happened; they had no idea who I was, but they came over right away. I told them I was his friend; his roommate. They told me to cut the bullshit and asked how long I had been dating their son. I don’t know that we were ever dating, though. I would never have called him my boyfriend. Significant other, maybe, but no other term would have fit. We were too old for words like boyfriend. I didn’t say that, though. I just said three years. They only nodded, not surprised.

They never asked me any questions about myself. I don’t know enough about what parents are supposed to be like to know if that was normal. I just know that when I helped to organize the funeral, they kept me at a safe distance, not quite cold, not quite welcoming. I wouldn’t have told them anything if they’d asked, though. At least, nothing I hadn’t told him. And that wasn’t a lot. The days leading up to the funeral were strange. Rent was paid for the month, because he liked to be on top of things, so I sat around all day, and I ordered take out when my stomach was empty, which was rare; it was normally full of booze. I tried to sketch, but everything came out so much shakier. I thought it was grief, or anxiety, but the doctor said it was Parkinson’s. I consider myself lucky; I wasn’t planning on staying here long without him either way.

After the funeral, the girl who I still didn’t know invited me out to eat. There had been food at the wake, but I hadn’t touched any of it. I told her I wasn’t hungry, but she insisted. She hardly spoke all throughout the car ride, and before and after we ordered our food, we mostly sat in silence. It wasn’t until meals arrived that she spoke up.

“Your friend was very good to me,” she said, and I nearly vomited. Some tiny amount of doubt that had never gone away told me she was a prostitute, that he had been dishonest with me, or that I hadn’t been enough. She saw the fear in my eyes, I think, and she kept going. “He helped my family very much.” Her english was a little clumsy, and I realized how foolish I was. I asked her what she meant, and she took a deep breath.

“My father was killed back home, in the war. A civilian casualty from the Americans. Three bullets, in the head, but Americans say it was an accident. With no money, no prospects, we come to America. Ironic.” I tried to say with my eyes that I didn’t quite understand, but I did. He had pulled the trigger.

“One day, he comes to my family door, with cards, trying to apologize for something. My mama, she doesn’t understand, and tells him to leave. The next week, we get an envelope in the mail, with dollar bills. Enough to make rent, and then some. From him.” Suddenly it makes more sense than I had ever thought. I had pictured it as retirement money, or enough for a plane ticket to fly somewhere far away before he blew his brains out. But he had given it all to her. I didn’t ask her how he had found her, because I knew she wouldn’t have had an answer.

“I never get to thank him, but I figure I can thank you for him.” I tell her I’ll be delivering that message soon enough, and she asks what I mean. I just tell her the doctor’s estimate, from Parkinson’s, my diet, lack of exercise, and she falls silent and apologizes. It’s not your fault, I tell her. He got her through the financial difficulty of immigrating to a new country, without a breadwinner. He put her through school, and now she’s doing the same for her sisters. She tells me about her family, and I never ask questions, I just sit and listen. I don’t even know what to say. At the end of the meal, I pick up the bill with the last of the money that was in his wallet. It’s hardly enough, so she tips. All I ask afterwards is that she drive me back to the apartment. I have about a week before the cocktail of cholesterol and disease gets me to keel over. I think about what he did, and I wonder if it balances out. I tell myself it does, that it has to, but I’m not sure. He tried to fix a problem that he made. Selfishly, I wonder if I balance out. With a week in an empty apartment, drinking myself into a coma so I don’t have to face going softly into that good night, I have a lot of thinking to do. I never believed in heaven, but if there is one, I like to think he made it there. Me, I think I’ll end up somewhere else. Maybe not hell, unless we fags really do end up there after all. I wonder if there’s a medium place, for people who never hurt no one, but who never did much good either, and I think that that’s too merciful a thing to exist. It’s a shitty last memory to have, but the final thing I see is spilling my beer all over myself with shaky fucking hands as I black out. I’m glad he did what he did for her, because it means he’s been immortalized. I’m about to die only remembered by the chinese food delivery man, but he’ll never be forgotten, and I think that’s fair enough. If anyone deserves it, it’s him.