An Artist’s Hug

When I met John, I was visiting Jen, a former co-worker on the Cape, still drinking frequently in bars. and we went to watch the Patriots and have a few beers at the Beachcomber in Wellfleet. I turned around and noticed a man, shorter than many, with dark hair walking into the bar with an Andy Capp hat on. I remember thinking,

“What an odd little man,” as I watched him greeting a few men sitting close to the bar.

Little did I know we were to strike up a unique and lifelong friendship.

After a brief conversation that flowed easily (I thought all of my conversations under the influence flowed easily but the only thing to consistently flow was the booze,) we exchanged emails.

Over time, I was delighted to get to know this oysterman/photographer. His humor was infinite, and soon I was comfortable enough to share bad dating stories, and even talk about sex. Sometimes we spoke on the phone. I had a wall phone with a long spiral cord, next to a takeout menu tacked up on the wall of my Cambridge studio apartment. I’d drink, talk on the phone, occasionally smoke, and doodle or write men’s phone numbers on the menu. We complained about our love lives, and life in general, but always laughed and laughed.

My parents’ condo was fairly near John’s so it was natural that at some point I would visit him. I was struck by the quaint charm of his tiny cottage; the colored glass bottles on the windowsills, watercolor landscapes and drawings he had done on the fridge, prints framed of Van Gogh and photographs by Broussard. Kilim rugs and African masks, a rustic cutting island in the kitchen, his guitar, fishing and photography gear, a black leather couch and a ladder to a sleep loft; a Mexican blanket from his trip with his ex; I was enamored of his lifestyle seeming to echo the life of a true artist. Perhaps the only one I had really ever met.

He spent a lot of his time in his tiny dark room, but I loved hanging out in the kitchen. Everything looked like a classic still life; he kept his butter out in a dish, he always had a bowl with potatoes and sprouting onions, there was usually coffee made, a baguette half eaten on the sideboard and a half drunk bottle of a neighbor’s homemade wine sitting open. Above the fridge were the serious bottles of liquor.

He had an acoustic and a fancy lap style Dobrau guitar. I had started playing electric bass so once we had the crazy idea I would come down and we would jam. He played by ear and was completely untrained, whereas I had to painstakingly learn a piece which took hours, memorize it and practice it until it was able to sound at all like music. Together, these two learning styles did not lend itself well to “jamming,” and we ended up sounding like two toddlers playing with our parents’ instruments, pounding away percussively and dischordantly at times. In the end, he made me vodka tonics and I got my usual drunken ADD before we crashed in separate rooms, me in the loft and he in his tiny back bedroom with the small old fashioned TV.

I had to be careful if I needed to use the bathroom in the night; the ladder was absolutely vertical and over an unforgiving heat grate. The cottage was like a Tiny House just before the Tiny Houses became a lifestyle concept. I also had to make sure I didn’t trip over his black cat Jojo, who was very laid back for a cat and didn’t seem to move around much unless he was outside.

John was always asking me if his house smelled. Or his truck. He claimed to have no sense of smell. I always had a very keen sense; how could someone not have a sense of smell? I was bewildered. But his oyster gear just had that vague rubbery smell and a hint of old seaweed. And certainly I loved the smell of the chemicals in the dark room. I assured him nothing smelled bad.

We would eat scrambled eggs, home fries and toast, sometimes drink espresso from a stovetop pot. He was incredible in the kitchen, effortlessly shaking the eggs in a mason jar to scramble. They were brilliantly orange gold eggs from his own chickens. He loved his hens so much; one got taken by a hawk and he was so sad he even wrote her a song and played it on the Dobrau.

We would drink cup after cup of coffee and talk and talk and talk; he had a decent if old stereo and would play Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Etta James and some African music. He spoke of his relationship with two exes; one was a farmer from Western Mass, and one was a landscape designer. To me, his women always sounded like crazy nymphomanics. My ex, a lawyer for the state working with social services cases taking children away from their mostly drug-addicted parents, had been in touch with me on and off over the past 8 years and I was done with his lack of emotional availability. It would seem he didn’t believe in himself or love himself enough to understand how I could love him. I also couldn’t handle dishonesty. I ended up running all over Boston, drinking with friends in clubs and bars, attracting a plethora of harmless men to follow me around until I would reject them, one by one, having lost their usefulness other than assuaging my hurt esteem from the dishonest lawyer. I was in no place to fully be there for a romantic relationship; the friendship with John was a safe haven where we could be truly ourselves and not worry about judgement.

Sometimes we would drive to Provincetown and look around in the Army Navy store. We got coffee and breakfast once in an old school diner run by two Portuguese brothers because he didn’t want to pay tourist prices in the fancy gourmet places. I called him cheap. We would always run into people who knew him, and he would talk and talk as if they were his best friend. Once or twice we went to The Wicked Oyster for a splurge on a fancy burger. The snob in me loved that bar; it was classy and had great food and ambience, and I could usually bum a smoke in the shell lined parking lot out back. It felt like the local VIP bar, where the rich and famous who summered in nearby Truro would go. John ate his food too quickly, always, and wanted to leave, whereas I wanted to linger and mingle and keep drinking. Alcohol gave John headaches, though most of the time with me we would partake, and it often seemed he only drank with me because he knew I liked to drink. But he always gave the time to the locals who stopped to say hello to him. Always friendly, he joked his friends would see him with me, “the hot blond” and would want to stop to talk to him more often than not to check me out.

We went for drives to the beach, especially in off season. I didn’t mind the freezing winter winds lingering in early spring when we went to scout out some rare white sandpipers. Another time we sat in his truck and watched people parasailing. He made a coffee table book of his photos of the famous kettle ponds, and would take me through them on one of his small boats. Or we took the dinghy out in the bay to check on his oyster farm. On one of our ways back on the winding sand drives in the scrub pines, he stopped the truck and asked,

“Are you sure you don’t want to have sex with me?”

I honestly didn’t see the point. At this time, we had been friends for at least four years and I didn’t want to ruin that friendship.

Later in life, I briefly consulted a therapist and she suggested for a project I do some memoir style writing. At the very least this compelled me to go back and read old journals. I had kept a journal most of the time since I was 9, and though I’d lost most of my material possessions in a fire as an adult, the box of journals and my electric bass were spared, sitting in my car.

I found a section where I’d written that John had once been having sex with a local woman, possibly married, when I called. His pants still down, he couldn’t usher her out the door fast enough to get to our phone conversation. Yet he had admitted that when I left after one of my visits, he would wave and wave out the window as my little black car would depart, long after it had gone out of sight.

I had decided I wanted a life of working with horses. He wanted to stay on the Cape forever. We both needed our jobs in order to sustain our passions and livelihoods. How could we possibly have been happy together?

Part of the fun was sharing dirty little secrets about our relationship attempts. Why ruin a perfectly good friendship getting physical or romantic, with all the risk and damage that seemed to bring on?

“Is that a mouse in your pocket or are you happy to see me?” He joked his ex used to say. He would quip,

“Is that a moose in your pocket or are you happy to see me?” About himself.

I had the occasional habit of getting my tarot cards read from time to time. At one, I asked the psychic about John. She said “He is your soulmate from a past life. You guys have already gone down that road, there’s no need to repeat it.”

The times we would visit gradually grew farther and farther apart. I had taken a dream job working for an event trainer who took her horses to SC each winter for a few months to get a jump on the spring competitive season. Shortly before I left, I was scrolling through Facebook and something made me stop dead.

“Prayers were needed” for John Nathanielson, for he had suffered a major stroke and was in the hospital not doing well.” I was mortified.

It had been so long since I had seen him and I was completely unsure what the correct protocol would be in such a situation. I was always the person too busy working and unable to take time off to go to funerals and travel, and in this case, there were no relatives I knew off to contact to ask questions about John.

Was he vegetative?

Would he even know who I am?

Was he going to die?

So I avoided it.

Until right before my drive south for the winter months. I had finally packed up the horses and sent some off with commercial shippers to be received by my boss and her working student. I had a few precious days off to pack myself up and make the drive. The last thing I wanted to do was drive an additional three hours each way to the cape. But I knew my conscience would not rest.

I had tried contacting John via text, email and even on Facebook and had received no reply. I tried getting in touch with Jen but she has agreed it was horrible but had heard no details.

I decided to just show up at his house, the newer one that he had built himself when his mom had passed. I had also seen that his artwork was on display at his local library. I checked their hours and decided if I couldn’t find him, I could at least see his artwork and go to my parents’ condo for the night.

I made the drive and pulled up towards his house. It was a modern bungalow a short distance from the original tiny cottage. I had been once before and was impressed with his raised garden beds, chicken coop, skylights and sunlit rooms. He had started painting more before the stroke, and once again I had loved seeing his artwork and hanging out in the corn yellow kitchen with Tintin mugs and the feel of a Paris loft with the still life potatoes and onions, espresso pot, and cast iron skillets. The last time I was there he had bought Guinness and Jameson for me. I had played him all of my current favorite songs on his stereo.

On this tense occasion, I was newly sober and determined to keep it that way. I noticed as I approached his front door a sign saying to knock, and if he was not home, please leave the food on the porch for him, and thanks. So it would appear that people were making him meals and bringing them after his stroke, and that at least it meant he was no longer in the hospital.

I had not shown up empty handed but had brought two large cannolli from my favorite Italian bakery. I took a deep breath and rang the doorbell. John appeared quickly and looked great, exactly the same. I held my breath for a moment. Would he recognize me?

But a huge smile proved he did, and as he opened the door, his extreme happiness was clear and my profound relief that he was still himself was huge. He gave me a big, strong hug and held it for longer than normal. I knew the risk I’d taken coming here had been well worth it.

His right arm was hanging useless and his speech quite limited. But he was good at communicating non-verbally and I found we soon slipped into an easy dialogue, perhaps having worked with horses made it easier for me to read him wordlessly.

He had me take off my shoes and gave me a tour of his latest artwork, some of which was hanging in frames on his walls. He managed to paint them all with his left hand, and had retrained it to do his art. Jojo was still alive and healthy, sleeping in the sun. He made me coffee and asked if I would help him pick up some of his paintings from the library.

I was surprised he could drive but his new minivan had a special knob on the steering wheel and handicap plates. He was angered to find that someone had parked in the handicapped spot outside the library who didn’t have handicapped plates.

We went in and a choral concert was just about to begin in the hall. We walked through and looked at his paintings anyway. His use of color and angle and pattern made his talent evident, in a style somewhere between Cezanne and Matisse. I would have liked to stay longer and ask him about them, but our communication was still so new and people were filing into seats in the hall, making me self conscious. I helped carry things to the car, and then he said he wanted help at the liquor store.

I was feeling mixed emotions. So newly sober, I wasn’t thrilled about the temptation. John probably figured I still loved my alcohol and I wasn’t sure if that lent itself to this task. But winter was upon us, and I wanted to do something, all that I could, to help him. If liquor was walnut he wanted, that’s what we would get.

The liquor store was tiny, but well stocked and surprisingly marketed to appeal. Busy already, it seems many locals wanted to stock up for winter by the sea. We walked around and around the store and he put bottle after bottle in his cart. I was walking slowly like a kid in a candy shop, eyes wide, just staring at the pretty colors and lights reflecting off the beautiful bottles. Had I ever noticed the beauty of many of these jewel like bottles in their shapes, and prismatic colors?

The blue glass bottles of vodka and gin, from domes to skulls to sleek cylinders all beckoned like an unpainted still life. Or a modern cityscape skyline. The tequila alone made me immediately crave silver Patron or Milagro, with all the good times that came along with it. And of course, the mysterious sultry red wines, with their sediment allure of history and hidden treasure. John chose several bottles of a French liqueur that reminded me of Calvados and the time I had housesat and sneaked some to mix with Coke or Ginger Ale. Then he got a case of white Bordeaux, some Jameson Whiskey, Stolichnaya and Jack Daniels. As we added bottles to the two cases and I helped carry them to the car, I really hoped two things...

One, that he wasn’t buying this liquor in the hopes of luring me into staying

Two, that I he wasn’t buying this liquor to drink himself to death.

On the way back we stopped briefly at the same beach where we once watched people parasailing. We sat there awhile, watching the few people walking with dogs. Every now and then he would begin a sentence with a word or two, and then just taper off, unable to find the right words.

I didn’t care, I could tell it was still him in there. So he didn’t make me laugh as much. He was still a true artist, and still had all the good humor in there somewhere he used to have. It just couldn’t always be expressed.

We drove back in mostly silence.

Back at the Tintin kitchen, he ate the cannolli and looked happy and healthy. I made sure we had each other’s correct phone numbers so we could stay in touch. I slipped on my shoes, and we hugged goodbye. I gave a quick wave and got in my car and drove away, not looking to see if he was still waving.

A week or so later I texted him and asked him how he was doing. He wrote

“Who’s this?” So I responded,

“Karen” and he wrote back,

“I don’t know anyone named Karen,”

I had no more words to write.