The Teenage Prayers are a good band. Check out their website and songs. Just heard a show at Pianos. They have songs that stick in your head. But what sticks is not the song as it sounds when they play it live, but rather a stripped out, melodic version, heavy on the lyrics and rhythm changes. I don't know if that's a function of me, or if that's rather instead the ideal state of the song. It could be an important question: the band has a rock and roll edge to it, while the songs are rather sui generis, I can imagine them as orchestral events, smoky jazz tunes, country for sure, etc.
Wouldn't it be nice to have a band that could flip through all these types of music to find out where the best fit is?
I have other notes also: Goodbye Baby. Is there a redundancy between what the guitar plays and what the organ plays? What opportunity does this present? If this song is reorchestrated to allow for more freedom in the guitar, a continuous background solo, what does this suggest for the orchestration of the band?
I am bored because I have heard all the songs before, and now each show sounds very much like the last? Do I prefer a "live" band, a risk taking band?
Should there be a stronger emotional arc to the set- an arc I feel is lacking right now?
Intersong dynamic range is still, in my mind, too low. some songs come down to nothing, but there still needs more ebb and flow.
The lyrics are great: how do you get this same lyricism of voice in the instruments? As Remy said a year ago: your band is only as good as the musicians in it. Should one of the songs be given to another band and see what happens?
that and more.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Update
There are so many possible narrative streams. Perhaps it is exactly that choice of what to note, similar to the skill of a photographer's frame, that creates an ongoing story worthy of merit. Of being read. Here I would ask my readers to comment on which stream they prefer. Only the dearth of readers prevents me. For instance:
1. I dyed my couch's slipcover and rearranged my apartment. For this to be of general interest, I suspect it would have to veer suddenly to the comic, the universal, or simply be elevated to prose of the first rank.
2. Visited with my sister and my nephew. Possibly, with backstories, these would be of interest.
3. Working on the revisions of a short story, prompted by an excellent read by Ian Vollmer. He also has a nice site:
http://www.ivollmer.org/
4. Ruined my keyboard, and had to run out and get a new one. At the Apple Store.
Be rest assured that the style of this post does not bear repeating. It is only out of sloth that these words were put down.
1. I dyed my couch's slipcover and rearranged my apartment. For this to be of general interest, I suspect it would have to veer suddenly to the comic, the universal, or simply be elevated to prose of the first rank.
2. Visited with my sister and my nephew. Possibly, with backstories, these would be of interest.
3. Working on the revisions of a short story, prompted by an excellent read by Ian Vollmer. He also has a nice site:
http://www.ivollmer.org/
4. Ruined my keyboard, and had to run out and get a new one. At the Apple Store.
Be rest assured that the style of this post does not bear repeating. It is only out of sloth that these words were put down.
Update
There are so many possible narrative streams. Perhaps it is exactly that choice of what to note, similar to the skill of a photographer's frame, that creates an ongoing story worthy of merit. Of being read. Here I would ask my readers to comment on which stream they prefer. Only the dearth of readers prevents me. For instance:
1. I dyed my couch's slipcover and rearranged my apartment. For this to be of general interest, I suspect it would have to veer suddenly to the comic, the universal, or simply be elevated to prose of the first rank.
2. Visited with my sister and my nephew. Possibly, with backstories, these would be of interest.
3. Working on the revisions of a short story, prompted by an excellent read by Ian Vollmer. He also has a nice site:
http://www.ivollmer.org/
4. Ruined my keyboard, and had to run out and get a new one. At the Apple Store.
Be rest assured that the style of this post does not bear repeating. It is only out of sloth that these words were put down.
1. I dyed my couch's slipcover and rearranged my apartment. For this to be of general interest, I suspect it would have to veer suddenly to the comic, the universal, or simply be elevated to prose of the first rank.
2. Visited with my sister and my nephew. Possibly, with backstories, these would be of interest.
3. Working on the revisions of a short story, prompted by an excellent read by Ian Vollmer. He also has a nice site:
http://www.ivollmer.org/
4. Ruined my keyboard, and had to run out and get a new one. At the Apple Store.
Be rest assured that the style of this post does not bear repeating. It is only out of sloth that these words were put down.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Back To Reality
the new yorker shouts and murmurs that was published instead of mine was so much superior. Structurally, even. It took one genre, the travel description, and applied it to a situation you never would, a small new york apartment. and then used the fanciful categories "ATM" right next door, because you will need a lot of cash to be with me in my apartment -- etc, to create a humorous description of the desperate tenant. fantastic.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Whitney Biennial of American Art
Every two years the Whitney curates a highly prestigious and well attended review of contemporary American Art. Remy and I went to the show. We were not impressed. Three floors and seemingly a hundred artists: paintings, drawings, photographs, videos, sculptures, installation rooms - variety of type was not the complaint. What was lacking was much more fundamental.
Initially, what was evident was a diminution of craft. This is not only in art, this trend is throughout society. Even in the bottom barrel of television craft is swiftly fleeing. A "hit" show like Queer Eye lacks in its production values exactly that Eye that the show purports to create in your home. These ingredients: space and proportion, time and narrative, these were the elements that were missing. These to me are the key staples of creation. Content and form, political comment: these are temporary attributes of a work, a temporal relationship between the work and the audience. As time passes what is left are the commonalities that remain: beauty, harmony, balance. Don't get me wrong, dissonance, imbalance, and horrific images are not precluded as timeless elements.
The only rationale, the only point the show could have been making, is that this is the end of the world as we know it, that art reflects that worlds failings, and that no one can make good art anymore. None of the art looked new. The videos were ugly, shot without compositional skill. One sculpture of personal objects would have been fine, except a girlfriend of mine was doing exactly the same work in 1987, with better results.
Ultimately, I was able to only really say what was missing in these recent works only came to me when I was visiting the adjacent Hopper and Calder rooms. These pieces, besides the evident craft, transported the viewer. They engaged the viewer to took to a psychic place beyond the artwork. The pieces in the Biennial did not have this quality. They did not engage the audience. They seemed about themselves. They will be judged harshly by time. Most of the pieces in the exhibit would not pass even the lesser test: would someone salvage them from the roadside?
The ability to engage and stimulate the viewer is a critical element, the defining quality of art. It is inclusive of, and supersedes, that awe that we feel and has been posited (Clive Bell, I believe) as the definition of art.
Here, what we saw, only made Remy and I feel good by knowing we were already doing better work ourselves. As to awe, I can only weakly say it was awful.
Initially, what was evident was a diminution of craft. This is not only in art, this trend is throughout society. Even in the bottom barrel of television craft is swiftly fleeing. A "hit" show like Queer Eye lacks in its production values exactly that Eye that the show purports to create in your home. These ingredients: space and proportion, time and narrative, these were the elements that were missing. These to me are the key staples of creation. Content and form, political comment: these are temporary attributes of a work, a temporal relationship between the work and the audience. As time passes what is left are the commonalities that remain: beauty, harmony, balance. Don't get me wrong, dissonance, imbalance, and horrific images are not precluded as timeless elements.
The only rationale, the only point the show could have been making, is that this is the end of the world as we know it, that art reflects that worlds failings, and that no one can make good art anymore. None of the art looked new. The videos were ugly, shot without compositional skill. One sculpture of personal objects would have been fine, except a girlfriend of mine was doing exactly the same work in 1987, with better results.
Ultimately, I was able to only really say what was missing in these recent works only came to me when I was visiting the adjacent Hopper and Calder rooms. These pieces, besides the evident craft, transported the viewer. They engaged the viewer to took to a psychic place beyond the artwork. The pieces in the Biennial did not have this quality. They did not engage the audience. They seemed about themselves. They will be judged harshly by time. Most of the pieces in the exhibit would not pass even the lesser test: would someone salvage them from the roadside?
The ability to engage and stimulate the viewer is a critical element, the defining quality of art. It is inclusive of, and supersedes, that awe that we feel and has been posited (Clive Bell, I believe) as the definition of art.
Here, what we saw, only made Remy and I feel good by knowing we were already doing better work ourselves. As to awe, I can only weakly say it was awful.
Friday, April 14, 2006
Top of the World
I received a rejection notice from The New Yorker! For those of you not in the know, apparently this is a rather rare event. Which means they read my piece, and it was worthy of comment.
line up to worship, please.
line up to worship, please.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
The Tide Turns
Today I finished a piece to send to Shouts and Murmurs. Finished (but not 100%) a short story, which I sent off to a couple of capable readers. Successfully held out for a better rate on the job that called for tomorrow. Talked to people I hadn't spoken to in ages, Cornelius and Antonito. Talked to Remy and Tim. Accomplished everything on the list but negotiating up my rate at Rolling Stone. Geez, maybe I should have hit on some chicks in the gym, but I did speak to the chick at the production house who I threw a smile to outside the work building only to have her walk up and introduce herself as the person who just hired me (oops? or good, one or the other).
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
What a Disaster
I got nothing done today. I went over to Remy's. Some contractors came to fix the water damage on his wall. They didn't have any tools, and seemed wholly unprofessional. We went to buy some wood for a shelf at Home Depot. We got two pieces of sanded plywood. Then when we went to cut them using the landlord's table saw, he remembered that he had given it away. Somehow he hadn't remembered this a week ago. Then we had to pay 40 bucks to get the plywood cut. We started screwing the pieces together, and it was clear I had made some design orientation errors and we were building a clearly second best design. Then we noticed these great air gaps in the plywwod we had bought, really inferior wood.
It was dark, so I came home. My camera batteries died after taking two pictures. I have a headache from what I ate for lunch. I should be charging more for the work I do. I wanted Remy to rev up my ipod. I have to send out my reel. I have to finish my writings. The phone didn't ring all day.
That's Remy and his wife, Orianna. Photo #3 was flash, #4 needs a bounce card.
It was dark, so I came home. My camera batteries died after taking two pictures. I have a headache from what I ate for lunch. I should be charging more for the work I do. I wanted Remy to rev up my ipod. I have to send out my reel. I have to finish my writings. The phone didn't ring all day.
That's Remy and his wife, Orianna. Photo #3 was flash, #4 needs a bounce card.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Check Out Jessica Delfino
Here are a couple of pictures of my friend Jessica Delfino. She's hot, she's funny, and she sings the most seemingly innocent songs, none of which would ever get past the FCC. Maybe she can be on XM.
Click on the title and you'll go to her blog, although she may be down a bit because he beloved man is incarcerated, and he isn't even black! More of a political prisoner type.
Jessica was kind enough to come over and play her guitar, while I struggled along on the bass, although when I listened to it, it sounded good, I didn't object to my playing.
Click on the title and you'll go to her blog, although she may be down a bit because he beloved man is incarcerated, and he isn't even black! More of a political prisoner type.
Jessica was kind enough to come over and play her guitar, while I struggled along on the bass, although when I listened to it, it sounded good, I didn't object to my playing.
Sunday, April 09, 2006
I want to be the president of Turkmenistan
I was eating with my friend Aaron. I asked him, what do you want to do? He goes, I don't know, I'd do something if I felt passionate about it, there just isn't anything I feel passionate about. I used to be exactly the same way. I just couldn't get excited about anything, I could not find my calling. Now I know.
I want to be the president of Turkmenistan. Not that there isn't one already, indeed, he is showing the way. He named himself president for life. Then he wrote a book that contains all the necessary wisdom in the known universe. Everyone has to read it. You don't think so? Then you're not going to pass your driver's license test, which relies heavily on the book. In fact, everyone has to carry the book around, cover forward, so it's clear you are reading the book. Protesting puts you in the Gulag.
There's more. He's renamed the days of the week after himself. Buildings are named after his mother. There is no press, and no books are published without his approval. Raise your voice and you are in the gulag. I presume he uses the national treasury as his personal checking account. He suspended most professional visas.
I can only assume he has a harem, the best chef, and a string of dachas.
Now this would be a job worthy of me.
I want to be the president of Turkmenistan. Not that there isn't one already, indeed, he is showing the way. He named himself president for life. Then he wrote a book that contains all the necessary wisdom in the known universe. Everyone has to read it. You don't think so? Then you're not going to pass your driver's license test, which relies heavily on the book. In fact, everyone has to carry the book around, cover forward, so it's clear you are reading the book. Protesting puts you in the Gulag.
There's more. He's renamed the days of the week after himself. Buildings are named after his mother. There is no press, and no books are published without his approval. Raise your voice and you are in the gulag. I presume he uses the national treasury as his personal checking account. He suspended most professional visas.
I can only assume he has a harem, the best chef, and a string of dachas.
Now this would be a job worthy of me.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Cut To The Chase
It's time to stop all the bullshitting and hand wrangling, and holding. There is one problem in the Middle East that dominates all other problems. None of the other problems are going to go away, unless this problem is addressed. The problem is the doctrinal belief that anyone who is not a Muslim is an infidel, and being an infidel is punishable by death.
Take Iraq for instance. While the country is dissolving towards civil war, reports now state that the Sunnis have declared anyone not a Sunni to deserve death. The Shia say the same. In Afghanistan, simply not being a Muslim is punishable by death. Elsewhere, Muslims are exporting their death threats. Theo Van Gogh, Salman Rushdie, Wafa Sultan (the woman in California who spoke her mind.)
I believe in tolerance. But we have discovered tolerance is not a universal desire yet. Until it is, those of us in favor of tolerance will have to use power to enforce those ends. This requires a world effort.
I'm no fool. The recent crackdown in Syria reinforces that virtually all those in power take staying in power as their objective. Not making the world a better place. Not using power for good, or even for national benefit.
This is the world we live in. Now it is time for us to build the world we desire.
Take Iraq for instance. While the country is dissolving towards civil war, reports now state that the Sunnis have declared anyone not a Sunni to deserve death. The Shia say the same. In Afghanistan, simply not being a Muslim is punishable by death. Elsewhere, Muslims are exporting their death threats. Theo Van Gogh, Salman Rushdie, Wafa Sultan (the woman in California who spoke her mind.)
I believe in tolerance. But we have discovered tolerance is not a universal desire yet. Until it is, those of us in favor of tolerance will have to use power to enforce those ends. This requires a world effort.
I'm no fool. The recent crackdown in Syria reinforces that virtually all those in power take staying in power as their objective. Not making the world a better place. Not using power for good, or even for national benefit.
This is the world we live in. Now it is time for us to build the world we desire.
Monday, April 03, 2006
New Story!
Title: Why Is This Girl Smiling?
I’m not going to sit here and say that I, Katie Turner Starr Khoury Evinrude, would have done it differently. The world doesn’t work that way. You close your eyes asleep and then your dream erupts, are you telling me that you have control over that dream? If you do, just stop right now. When we say we wish it were a dream we mean we can wake up and find that dream world gone.
I wish Nairobi was a dream, that Matt in Nairobi was a dream. Not Matt was a dream, no, I love Matt. At times, I think he was the only one I really loved, certainly the only one I ever wanted to have children with. Him and I: to build that in a little rolling shrieking bundle of joy, that would have made my life. But ... So I wish Matt in Nairobi was a dream, because, if it was, everything would be different.
Matt wanted to go, he begged at his office to go. Kenya is civilized for Africa. It was going to hurt like hell to let him go. Three months, maybe three more if things went well! We hadn’t even been married that long! My husband, my baby husband, off to do his part to change the world. We were raised to do good, in that old-fashioned Midwestern way, Matt and I, and that was part of the attraction, the trust, the us. That’s what had brought us to Washington to work, and that’s what took Matt to Nairobi.
When it happens, it’s like a car accident. This can’t really be happening AND WHY IS IT TAKING SO LONG TO HAPPEN? A phone call. Turn on the TV. Why hasn’t he called? Where was he when the bomb went off? He wasn’t there, I know he wasn’t there, but he could have been there, so I don’t know he wasn’t there but I don’t know that he’s dead, I know he isn’t dead, have I ever been wrong before I have been wrong before but I’ve been right before too, right about Matt, about us, of course he hasn’t called, it’s chaos and since when did the phones ever work there (ha ha) but look at all the smoke and fire and glass except they would say if a westerner was dead – it’s not fair that’s just how it is - unless he was right there when it went off and that’s where he’s supposed to be oh my god help!
I thought that was the worst day of my life. What can your mom say, or Matt’s boss Larry? No one knows anything beyond their thoughts and prayers and little hopes. But when the phone rang I knew it was him. I didn’t stop crying, but you can’t tell tears just by looking at them.
He was two blocks away when it went off. Just dumb luck – like the night back in school when we both needed to read the same reserve book. Was it fate? Of course, the world that is is, and we just swim in it, facing the current, presenting the illusion of the fight, because when you turn your back that’s when you get swept away, lose your bearings, slam into the concrete wall.
None of us were prepared for what happened next. The Nairobi office closed, of course, and the staff flew back home. On the plane, Matt was reading a book and the next minute he felt a little dizzy, his fingers tingled, and then his heart stopped. You want a miracle? The pilot had a defibrillator on board, and he knew how to use it. How do you say thank you to that?
Would you be nervous if you were me? Would you wonder if those simple dreams of living and growing and being together were going to happen? Of course. For a while it seemed we cried every night, we were just so happy to be together. And that first night, I said I want a child right there and then, but Matt said let’s stick to our plan, nothing’s changed. A year is not going to matter. He’s here now, he’s not going to die. The scare is over. All he has to do is take his medication. We have to protect your career, he said, we’re in this together, it’s not just about me.
July 4th. We had a fight, we never fight. But why did he want to go overseas again? Why did he tell me now, on this boat in this stupid filthy river? Yeah, I’m pissed. This is a decision that is ours together. No, I don’t want you to go. Why? Gee, I don’t know, what happened the last time? I love you, I know you love me, but why take the risk. Even the office doesn’t want you to go. I know it will make you a better person, but it won’t make me a better person and I don’t want to be alone for three months and Yes I need some air and I’m going up top.
I felt it, and I had to grab the rail with both hands just to stay up. I felt it, and I’ll always feel it. I’ll never forgive myself, never. The slightest thought of it brings it back roiling in the cauldron tht is the bottom of my heart. Surging. The pain you feel in your heart. There has to be some medical term besides a broken heart. I felt a snap, too, at the instant. And I heard Matt from inside of me , calling for help, calling for hope, calling for me “KATIE SAVE ME.” Inside of me. We were that connected. So why wasn’t I there? Why did I have to stomp off? Why did I trigger this? Why didn’t I die instead?
I ran and ran and ran and pushed and pushed and pushed – to get to my angel – no no no and finally there he was, it couldn’t have been more than seconds and I smothered him, let my love bring him back and then they were unpacking his defibrillator –
The moment I cannot escape. At the slightest it’s back in a flash. More me than me. Forever. But I can’t dwell there and stay on the deck like I did for so long. Moving on is more important, now. Not at first, though. It was all of me. Every little thought. Every suggestion, every moment of the sun, or not sun. We had that conversation 10,000 times, 10,000 times we hugged we kissed, we conceived, we lived forever. Only once-
After that it just didn’t matter. I’m not a crier, but there was no point. Mom came, I love her, but what can she do? She can’t bring back Matt. Oh and everyone else, they tried, I even tried - but
I laugh at those little girls who need constant approval from the outside to have any little smidge of self-worth. Have a spine! So it’s not like, oh Matt is gone now I am nothing. It was Matt is gone, and really, I just don’t want to be here. I am, but why? It has to get better, or it has to end. I can’t go on like this.
I know I stopped swimming and the current swept me away. I left DC, I was never one for haunted houses. New York is the place to go to get lost. New York has no illusions. You are alone, and New York let’s you know that you are alone. You walk the streets, there’s no one, no one you know. What, you walk around expecting to know somebody? No looks of sorrowed pity, no there but the grace of god. No one calls you, and surprisingly, there are a dearth of public spaces. New York has no joy because there is no joy.
When the settlement money was gone – and what a joke that was – I took a job. Not a bad job, in my field, a public/private service job to help the less fortunate. But 65k in New York isn’t much. I took another job, a writing gig, on the side. An internet how to invest account, might as well get some use out of my MBA. Stay busy. time is bad is time to dwell and that’s time for Matt except he is not here. So move on. Move on to being alone, move on to my all black exterior and interior. Move on to this best of all possible worlds, thank you God. Indeed, how can I ever thank you?
New York is there for you when you need a slap in the face. Because it doesn’t know how to pull punches. Sure there are people at work, but the men are all gay, the women, somehow different. Cheery even. You navigate through them with a few polite demurrals from your social obligations and everyone gets the hint.
The multitudes of New York? The ones you see at the deli and Spin City, at the DMV and the MTA? These people do not talk to you, why would they? Hello Yemen. Other than when you spend money no one cares. Does it hurt? Yeah, it hurts, but given the circumstances, just what are you expecting? You hope to die, comforted that there are many forms of suicide.
Sometimes you splurge. That once a month gush of hope (irrational). You get dressed up, you put on make-up. You go to dance class or go eat sushi alone. Mostly you just go home and sigh at the end, (rational). Still, you were surprised. He was just there talking suddenly, so easy so natural, like maybe we had met before, and it makes you smile, beam even. He says let’s go see a movie. You jump a bit when you heard you said yes. Your body does have a mind of it’s own.
Khoury is over the next night. I give him the grand tour of my now cleaned squalor. Boys are curious, and even older boy are still boys, still curious, and Khoury saw all the pictures and the plaques and the memorabilia. He even snooped around a bit on his own. So I gave him the big test “Did you notice?”. He failed. That should have been it, the end, but somehow it endeared me to him even more. We never were apart again after that night.
Don’t jump on me here. Life wasn’t all that pleasant. Maybe Khoury wasn’t the most sensitive the most adept observer, the brightest bulb in the box. His me and my me were very different, but I caught on right away his me was the better me. In his me, I wasn’t a widow, I wasn’t crying myself to sleep every night, I hadn’t vowed never to open my legs again, or laugh again, or live again. He didn’t send flowers and he didn’t apologize for being insensitive, he never washed his hands and every now and then he introduced me to the kids in the hood as the widow. What do you see in me, I pestered. Your smile, always your smile.
Khoury wanted sex. Matt, I realized for the first time, didn’t want it that much, that often, or that anything. Once a week was normal, or was it that I didn’t want it either? I did with Khoury. It made me feel good, it made me forget, and being wanted was being wanted and trust me I was not wanted before, not by me even. Okay, enough on that.
Like I said, we were together every night. When we first met, I said, under my breath (why did I say this?) that “this is my New York fantasy.” Of course, Khoury heard that, although I promptly denied saying it. But isn’t that the way it should be? You meet someone, you like them, and then you are together? It was that way with Matt. Why wouldn’t it be that way again? It’s not like the other person has to be perfect – God knows Khoury has his list of shit, arrogance, cold, bitter, demanding, isolated, and I suppose I had my list too (no blowjobs!) –just about as perfect as you. And happy, happy goes a long ways. We were happy.
Because life with Khoury was so much better than life before Khoury. Call it the honeymoon period but that’s all we knew. It seemed like Matt and I had been brother and sister. Khoury said of the all the people he met, and he met everyone, I was the only one he ever considered marrying. Mostly, he just made me happy in a million little ways. I knew he was going to ask, and couldn’t wait to say yes.
We decided to go upstate for Memorial Day. A mini-holiday. Khoury had a boat, an inflatable boat, so we were going to put in as he called it. He knew a great little motel, not too expensive, right on the river, the Cottonwoods, and the guy who ran it, Jeff. Used to be one of those forlorn motels on the abandoned federal highway, but nothing’s abandoned in the Hudson Valley anymore and so they built a ingenious hallway to cover the exterior doors and redid the rooms in retro. Ours had a Jacuzzi. 99 dollars a night. Yes Khoury earned more than me, and together we earned enough to be comfortable, to splurge, but that just wasn’t who we were. We’d rather save. There were going to be changes. We had to prepare. Khoury was a planner.
Knowing what I know, why would I be eager to say yes? I almost died when Khoury mentioned he had a bad heart! And a father that hadn’t busted out of his 40’s! It came ball, all of it, but I swallowed it. Oh, he said, I am too old, too slow, for someone as sexy as you. Maybe he just said this to get a rise out of me. Or maybe he really thought he could go at any moment. Well, I said, life is a risk. I’ve bet once and lost once. But I’ll bet again if you will. Love, plain and simple.
He asked in the hot tub! Of course I cried, but like I said, you can’t tell tears. The ring was wonderful, understated. It fit (how did he figure that out?). Should we start right now I said? Yes, but first we have to go into the river. It’s great once you’re all heated up. Trust me I was already heated, my nipples had never been that hard before, but off we went over the cold night ground to the river, naked! Khoury slapping around half up already. We laughed as we jumped in. It wasn’t deep, but it hit like a tub of cold concrete. I jumped up, and out but Khoury didn’t. He was in head first. NO! This can’t be. How can this be? No. He was so heavy. I fell in and that was going to be that. No traction. No breath. Chaos. You can tell I’m holding back here. I am, yes.
In the end, I tried, Jeff tried, the paramedics tried. We went to the hospital to try. They jumped him up out of the surgery bed with the voltage. Nothing. Who was more numb, my Khoury or me?
The tide was going down, and so I went until the floor was there. Because when there is nothing left, where there is no where to go down, to go out, to be for, there is the floor. There is always a floor. The lowest possible point. I was there. I couldn’t get up. What I realized was is, the floor was the place for me. Hard and fast, flat. Here I dissolved. My heart, that caustic mix of self-immolation spilled through all of me and then washed me out until I was as thin as a jug of water on an infinitely flat surface.
There’s no use going on. In life, or in my tale. Somethings you can’t describe. You look at someone, you know there is a hole in their heart. I wonder, back in World War Two, that people didn’t look at you and say, you will die soon, I can see it. For me, the floor was enough. No one came, I never went out, I tossed the mirror.
My mother? I hadn’t told her about Khoury, and I had already learned to lie on the phone. His funeral. It was so pathetic I could have cried just about it. Me, a couple of bud he worked with. That was in. He was alone. I knew then that I was always alone, had always been alone, and for whatever moments I dreamt I had not been alone, those were the cruelest illustions.
What hurt, because the pain simply was, a huge dial turned to zero, Zero, zero pointing at me, sorry I couldn’t resist one more dig, what hurt was that it wasn’t going to get better. Ever. I gave myself a nickname, The Destroyer. If I just talk to you, that could be it. My Back of the Village Voice Ad: Painless Death! Decide to Marry Me and I’ll take care of the rest! Liquid Sky 2.
Sleep was not good. So I didn’t sleep. TV. McDonalds. Carbs. There are many forms of suicide. Not that any of this answered the big question: What sin had I committed to deserve this? Clearly in another life I was …. Stalin! Because in this life, alright, I was a piece of shit, but not bad …
What was left but my delusional escape? My period, I’ll miss my period, we had been fooling around, why not? Then Khoury and I will live forever. Of course I’ll name him Matt. Khoury will understand, and if he doesn’t why doesn’t he come here and we casn talk about it?
I was with my high school friend Charlie Schmidt on a church trip to eastern Colorado. Keanseburg. We skipped out to eat by ourselves. The town idiot came and sat down with us. Too stupid to shoo him away we listened. He was fat 40, and knew he was stupid, useless. He said, I used to read the Playboy and get all excited. But I stopped. No one is ever going to want me. I am going to be alone. All I ever wanted was to go to Disneyland. Then my uncle died. I had to go to Anaheim. The last day I went to Disneyland. To stand in the parking lot, by the gates. Hoping. A ticket was 40 dollars! When have I ever had 40 dollars? Ever. So I just stood there. Then up came Jackie from Keanseburg. He said You need a ticket don’t you? He bought me a ticket! From Keanseberg, what are the odds? Zero. There are angels in this life, I know it for myself.
My period was late! I’m never late! I danced! I was me, finally, the me I wanted to be, not the other mes! Finally!.
That lasted for a day. July 4th. There are angels. Some are just different. I became a woman of action. I didn’t know what I was going to do next. But at this instant, I knew I needed to leave my apartment. With the inflatable boat.
A greater consciousness is at work, your body the mere tool. For once I was free.
The tide was going to the east river, but now I was back to swimming. I sling the sack on my back and went to the Hudson, across the Hudson, on a water taxi. To under the ticking Colgate clock. Next to the toxic waste dump, right at the marina at the edge of endless sea. My symbolic world making some sense finally. Is it going to hurt? Yes, but those are the circumstances.
At the end of the pier I pulled out the boat and the pump. I’d done it once before, it wasn’t too hard. 10 minutes of sweat. Did I pause once or twice? Did I have to beat down once more the caustic spill of my brokenness? So. I can do it. I’m not useless, I can do this. I am good enough.
I drunk in all the boats, the softening gloam. I edged the boat over the wall into the water. There was a shot right behind my head, and every frayed connection in me fizzled. I lost the tow rope, but stepped on it. Whoopsie came from behind me, with a cheer and an expectancy I rarely have felt. Gave you quite the fright didn’t I? He was the most beautiful old man, with an overactive champagne bottle. You were about to give me the fright of my life, dearie, tossing that swimming pool toy into our ocean here. Had to run here to save you.
Am I just that fucking sap that involuntarily smiles? Am I all autonomic nervous system? With all the development of an 18 month old? Can’t I complete even the most simplest of tasks?
Of course by now his entire crew was over. It was decided. I was going on their boat. “You would have died on that thing!” they joked. I know! Their boat just happened to be 138 feet. Come on, the fireworks are starting!
So the old geezer has my arm. Introducing himself, I really wasn’t even paying attention. Tonight is tonight, and tomorrow is tomorrow and there is the floor, waiting for me. The boat, that will have to be sacrificed for now. There are many ways to do it, my friend.
You’re Katie Turner, he gushed! I know you, I read your column! And so he did. What were the odds people? That it was my turn to have an angel? That it was my turn to be saved? I’m Bob, he said, and that’s the Evinrude. That Evinrude. Was his second wifes, she got it from her husband before, her third, and now it was his except he was all alone, except for the crew, you know. Cheers.
I let my last ray of hope fade. If I jumped from the boat they would have fished me out anyway. And Bob, he was like a father to me, especially since we never could do it, this being in the days before Viagra and all. It took him halfway into the fireworks to propose.
Stop it. I am not insane. I told Bob what was going to happen to him. He laughed. Every day he wakes up is a surprise to him, so he didn’t care. But I have to live with myself I said. In mere seconds I would have been afloat ready to find the swirls under the Narrows. There was going to be no tomorrow. And what, I am just supposed to add this on top? That you are the next? That your silver hair, your compassion, your carefree smiles, that this too, I shall undo? He laughed. That’s a hell of a story from a young girl like you. What you need is an agent. I liked his me …
We got married at sea, and he was buried at sea, eleven days later. Didn’t even both to go back into port. Why? No one was there, and I knew what was in his will, hell I wrote it. The crew runs the boat just like nothings changed, Florida in the summer, Newfoundland in the winter. I figure we have enough for 50 cycles. They’re my boys now.
Yes, that’s my picture on the bow. How do I look? You see, on the one hand, nothing’s changed. I’m not getting married again, I’m not even going to so much as hold the hand of a man. Because I am the widow-maker. The floor is still under my feet, touching me at every moment while the tide swirls and the only question in life is to swim or not swim. And every night is black.
Then again, there’s that little picture of me at the front of this, smiling. Now why would I be smiling?
(Note: frontpiece to this article is a very nice piece of art, in broad sunny stokes, of a very very happy woman on the bow of her 138 foot boat.)
I’m not going to sit here and say that I, Katie Turner Starr Khoury Evinrude, would have done it differently. The world doesn’t work that way. You close your eyes asleep and then your dream erupts, are you telling me that you have control over that dream? If you do, just stop right now. When we say we wish it were a dream we mean we can wake up and find that dream world gone.
I wish Nairobi was a dream, that Matt in Nairobi was a dream. Not Matt was a dream, no, I love Matt. At times, I think he was the only one I really loved, certainly the only one I ever wanted to have children with. Him and I: to build that in a little rolling shrieking bundle of joy, that would have made my life. But ... So I wish Matt in Nairobi was a dream, because, if it was, everything would be different.
Matt wanted to go, he begged at his office to go. Kenya is civilized for Africa. It was going to hurt like hell to let him go. Three months, maybe three more if things went well! We hadn’t even been married that long! My husband, my baby husband, off to do his part to change the world. We were raised to do good, in that old-fashioned Midwestern way, Matt and I, and that was part of the attraction, the trust, the us. That’s what had brought us to Washington to work, and that’s what took Matt to Nairobi.
When it happens, it’s like a car accident. This can’t really be happening AND WHY IS IT TAKING SO LONG TO HAPPEN? A phone call. Turn on the TV. Why hasn’t he called? Where was he when the bomb went off? He wasn’t there, I know he wasn’t there, but he could have been there, so I don’t know he wasn’t there but I don’t know that he’s dead, I know he isn’t dead, have I ever been wrong before I have been wrong before but I’ve been right before too, right about Matt, about us, of course he hasn’t called, it’s chaos and since when did the phones ever work there (ha ha) but look at all the smoke and fire and glass except they would say if a westerner was dead – it’s not fair that’s just how it is - unless he was right there when it went off and that’s where he’s supposed to be oh my god help!
I thought that was the worst day of my life. What can your mom say, or Matt’s boss Larry? No one knows anything beyond their thoughts and prayers and little hopes. But when the phone rang I knew it was him. I didn’t stop crying, but you can’t tell tears just by looking at them.
He was two blocks away when it went off. Just dumb luck – like the night back in school when we both needed to read the same reserve book. Was it fate? Of course, the world that is is, and we just swim in it, facing the current, presenting the illusion of the fight, because when you turn your back that’s when you get swept away, lose your bearings, slam into the concrete wall.
None of us were prepared for what happened next. The Nairobi office closed, of course, and the staff flew back home. On the plane, Matt was reading a book and the next minute he felt a little dizzy, his fingers tingled, and then his heart stopped. You want a miracle? The pilot had a defibrillator on board, and he knew how to use it. How do you say thank you to that?
Would you be nervous if you were me? Would you wonder if those simple dreams of living and growing and being together were going to happen? Of course. For a while it seemed we cried every night, we were just so happy to be together. And that first night, I said I want a child right there and then, but Matt said let’s stick to our plan, nothing’s changed. A year is not going to matter. He’s here now, he’s not going to die. The scare is over. All he has to do is take his medication. We have to protect your career, he said, we’re in this together, it’s not just about me.
July 4th. We had a fight, we never fight. But why did he want to go overseas again? Why did he tell me now, on this boat in this stupid filthy river? Yeah, I’m pissed. This is a decision that is ours together. No, I don’t want you to go. Why? Gee, I don’t know, what happened the last time? I love you, I know you love me, but why take the risk. Even the office doesn’t want you to go. I know it will make you a better person, but it won’t make me a better person and I don’t want to be alone for three months and Yes I need some air and I’m going up top.
I felt it, and I had to grab the rail with both hands just to stay up. I felt it, and I’ll always feel it. I’ll never forgive myself, never. The slightest thought of it brings it back roiling in the cauldron tht is the bottom of my heart. Surging. The pain you feel in your heart. There has to be some medical term besides a broken heart. I felt a snap, too, at the instant. And I heard Matt from inside of me , calling for help, calling for hope, calling for me “KATIE SAVE ME.” Inside of me. We were that connected. So why wasn’t I there? Why did I have to stomp off? Why did I trigger this? Why didn’t I die instead?
I ran and ran and ran and pushed and pushed and pushed – to get to my angel – no no no and finally there he was, it couldn’t have been more than seconds and I smothered him, let my love bring him back and then they were unpacking his defibrillator –
The moment I cannot escape. At the slightest it’s back in a flash. More me than me. Forever. But I can’t dwell there and stay on the deck like I did for so long. Moving on is more important, now. Not at first, though. It was all of me. Every little thought. Every suggestion, every moment of the sun, or not sun. We had that conversation 10,000 times, 10,000 times we hugged we kissed, we conceived, we lived forever. Only once-
After that it just didn’t matter. I’m not a crier, but there was no point. Mom came, I love her, but what can she do? She can’t bring back Matt. Oh and everyone else, they tried, I even tried - but
I laugh at those little girls who need constant approval from the outside to have any little smidge of self-worth. Have a spine! So it’s not like, oh Matt is gone now I am nothing. It was Matt is gone, and really, I just don’t want to be here. I am, but why? It has to get better, or it has to end. I can’t go on like this.
I know I stopped swimming and the current swept me away. I left DC, I was never one for haunted houses. New York is the place to go to get lost. New York has no illusions. You are alone, and New York let’s you know that you are alone. You walk the streets, there’s no one, no one you know. What, you walk around expecting to know somebody? No looks of sorrowed pity, no there but the grace of god. No one calls you, and surprisingly, there are a dearth of public spaces. New York has no joy because there is no joy.
When the settlement money was gone – and what a joke that was – I took a job. Not a bad job, in my field, a public/private service job to help the less fortunate. But 65k in New York isn’t much. I took another job, a writing gig, on the side. An internet how to invest account, might as well get some use out of my MBA. Stay busy. time is bad is time to dwell and that’s time for Matt except he is not here. So move on. Move on to being alone, move on to my all black exterior and interior. Move on to this best of all possible worlds, thank you God. Indeed, how can I ever thank you?
New York is there for you when you need a slap in the face. Because it doesn’t know how to pull punches. Sure there are people at work, but the men are all gay, the women, somehow different. Cheery even. You navigate through them with a few polite demurrals from your social obligations and everyone gets the hint.
The multitudes of New York? The ones you see at the deli and Spin City, at the DMV and the MTA? These people do not talk to you, why would they? Hello Yemen. Other than when you spend money no one cares. Does it hurt? Yeah, it hurts, but given the circumstances, just what are you expecting? You hope to die, comforted that there are many forms of suicide.
Sometimes you splurge. That once a month gush of hope (irrational). You get dressed up, you put on make-up. You go to dance class or go eat sushi alone. Mostly you just go home and sigh at the end, (rational). Still, you were surprised. He was just there talking suddenly, so easy so natural, like maybe we had met before, and it makes you smile, beam even. He says let’s go see a movie. You jump a bit when you heard you said yes. Your body does have a mind of it’s own.
Khoury is over the next night. I give him the grand tour of my now cleaned squalor. Boys are curious, and even older boy are still boys, still curious, and Khoury saw all the pictures and the plaques and the memorabilia. He even snooped around a bit on his own. So I gave him the big test “Did you notice?”. He failed. That should have been it, the end, but somehow it endeared me to him even more. We never were apart again after that night.
Don’t jump on me here. Life wasn’t all that pleasant. Maybe Khoury wasn’t the most sensitive the most adept observer, the brightest bulb in the box. His me and my me were very different, but I caught on right away his me was the better me. In his me, I wasn’t a widow, I wasn’t crying myself to sleep every night, I hadn’t vowed never to open my legs again, or laugh again, or live again. He didn’t send flowers and he didn’t apologize for being insensitive, he never washed his hands and every now and then he introduced me to the kids in the hood as the widow. What do you see in me, I pestered. Your smile, always your smile.
Khoury wanted sex. Matt, I realized for the first time, didn’t want it that much, that often, or that anything. Once a week was normal, or was it that I didn’t want it either? I did with Khoury. It made me feel good, it made me forget, and being wanted was being wanted and trust me I was not wanted before, not by me even. Okay, enough on that.
Like I said, we were together every night. When we first met, I said, under my breath (why did I say this?) that “this is my New York fantasy.” Of course, Khoury heard that, although I promptly denied saying it. But isn’t that the way it should be? You meet someone, you like them, and then you are together? It was that way with Matt. Why wouldn’t it be that way again? It’s not like the other person has to be perfect – God knows Khoury has his list of shit, arrogance, cold, bitter, demanding, isolated, and I suppose I had my list too (no blowjobs!) –just about as perfect as you. And happy, happy goes a long ways. We were happy.
Because life with Khoury was so much better than life before Khoury. Call it the honeymoon period but that’s all we knew. It seemed like Matt and I had been brother and sister. Khoury said of the all the people he met, and he met everyone, I was the only one he ever considered marrying. Mostly, he just made me happy in a million little ways. I knew he was going to ask, and couldn’t wait to say yes.
We decided to go upstate for Memorial Day. A mini-holiday. Khoury had a boat, an inflatable boat, so we were going to put in as he called it. He knew a great little motel, not too expensive, right on the river, the Cottonwoods, and the guy who ran it, Jeff. Used to be one of those forlorn motels on the abandoned federal highway, but nothing’s abandoned in the Hudson Valley anymore and so they built a ingenious hallway to cover the exterior doors and redid the rooms in retro. Ours had a Jacuzzi. 99 dollars a night. Yes Khoury earned more than me, and together we earned enough to be comfortable, to splurge, but that just wasn’t who we were. We’d rather save. There were going to be changes. We had to prepare. Khoury was a planner.
Knowing what I know, why would I be eager to say yes? I almost died when Khoury mentioned he had a bad heart! And a father that hadn’t busted out of his 40’s! It came ball, all of it, but I swallowed it. Oh, he said, I am too old, too slow, for someone as sexy as you. Maybe he just said this to get a rise out of me. Or maybe he really thought he could go at any moment. Well, I said, life is a risk. I’ve bet once and lost once. But I’ll bet again if you will. Love, plain and simple.
He asked in the hot tub! Of course I cried, but like I said, you can’t tell tears. The ring was wonderful, understated. It fit (how did he figure that out?). Should we start right now I said? Yes, but first we have to go into the river. It’s great once you’re all heated up. Trust me I was already heated, my nipples had never been that hard before, but off we went over the cold night ground to the river, naked! Khoury slapping around half up already. We laughed as we jumped in. It wasn’t deep, but it hit like a tub of cold concrete. I jumped up, and out but Khoury didn’t. He was in head first. NO! This can’t be. How can this be? No. He was so heavy. I fell in and that was going to be that. No traction. No breath. Chaos. You can tell I’m holding back here. I am, yes.
In the end, I tried, Jeff tried, the paramedics tried. We went to the hospital to try. They jumped him up out of the surgery bed with the voltage. Nothing. Who was more numb, my Khoury or me?
The tide was going down, and so I went until the floor was there. Because when there is nothing left, where there is no where to go down, to go out, to be for, there is the floor. There is always a floor. The lowest possible point. I was there. I couldn’t get up. What I realized was is, the floor was the place for me. Hard and fast, flat. Here I dissolved. My heart, that caustic mix of self-immolation spilled through all of me and then washed me out until I was as thin as a jug of water on an infinitely flat surface.
There’s no use going on. In life, or in my tale. Somethings you can’t describe. You look at someone, you know there is a hole in their heart. I wonder, back in World War Two, that people didn’t look at you and say, you will die soon, I can see it. For me, the floor was enough. No one came, I never went out, I tossed the mirror.
My mother? I hadn’t told her about Khoury, and I had already learned to lie on the phone. His funeral. It was so pathetic I could have cried just about it. Me, a couple of bud he worked with. That was in. He was alone. I knew then that I was always alone, had always been alone, and for whatever moments I dreamt I had not been alone, those were the cruelest illustions.
What hurt, because the pain simply was, a huge dial turned to zero, Zero, zero pointing at me, sorry I couldn’t resist one more dig, what hurt was that it wasn’t going to get better. Ever. I gave myself a nickname, The Destroyer. If I just talk to you, that could be it. My Back of the Village Voice Ad: Painless Death! Decide to Marry Me and I’ll take care of the rest! Liquid Sky 2.
Sleep was not good. So I didn’t sleep. TV. McDonalds. Carbs. There are many forms of suicide. Not that any of this answered the big question: What sin had I committed to deserve this? Clearly in another life I was …. Stalin! Because in this life, alright, I was a piece of shit, but not bad …
What was left but my delusional escape? My period, I’ll miss my period, we had been fooling around, why not? Then Khoury and I will live forever. Of course I’ll name him Matt. Khoury will understand, and if he doesn’t why doesn’t he come here and we casn talk about it?
I was with my high school friend Charlie Schmidt on a church trip to eastern Colorado. Keanseburg. We skipped out to eat by ourselves. The town idiot came and sat down with us. Too stupid to shoo him away we listened. He was fat 40, and knew he was stupid, useless. He said, I used to read the Playboy and get all excited. But I stopped. No one is ever going to want me. I am going to be alone. All I ever wanted was to go to Disneyland. Then my uncle died. I had to go to Anaheim. The last day I went to Disneyland. To stand in the parking lot, by the gates. Hoping. A ticket was 40 dollars! When have I ever had 40 dollars? Ever. So I just stood there. Then up came Jackie from Keanseburg. He said You need a ticket don’t you? He bought me a ticket! From Keanseberg, what are the odds? Zero. There are angels in this life, I know it for myself.
My period was late! I’m never late! I danced! I was me, finally, the me I wanted to be, not the other mes! Finally!.
That lasted for a day. July 4th. There are angels. Some are just different. I became a woman of action. I didn’t know what I was going to do next. But at this instant, I knew I needed to leave my apartment. With the inflatable boat.
A greater consciousness is at work, your body the mere tool. For once I was free.
The tide was going to the east river, but now I was back to swimming. I sling the sack on my back and went to the Hudson, across the Hudson, on a water taxi. To under the ticking Colgate clock. Next to the toxic waste dump, right at the marina at the edge of endless sea. My symbolic world making some sense finally. Is it going to hurt? Yes, but those are the circumstances.
At the end of the pier I pulled out the boat and the pump. I’d done it once before, it wasn’t too hard. 10 minutes of sweat. Did I pause once or twice? Did I have to beat down once more the caustic spill of my brokenness? So. I can do it. I’m not useless, I can do this. I am good enough.
I drunk in all the boats, the softening gloam. I edged the boat over the wall into the water. There was a shot right behind my head, and every frayed connection in me fizzled. I lost the tow rope, but stepped on it. Whoopsie came from behind me, with a cheer and an expectancy I rarely have felt. Gave you quite the fright didn’t I? He was the most beautiful old man, with an overactive champagne bottle. You were about to give me the fright of my life, dearie, tossing that swimming pool toy into our ocean here. Had to run here to save you.
Am I just that fucking sap that involuntarily smiles? Am I all autonomic nervous system? With all the development of an 18 month old? Can’t I complete even the most simplest of tasks?
Of course by now his entire crew was over. It was decided. I was going on their boat. “You would have died on that thing!” they joked. I know! Their boat just happened to be 138 feet. Come on, the fireworks are starting!
So the old geezer has my arm. Introducing himself, I really wasn’t even paying attention. Tonight is tonight, and tomorrow is tomorrow and there is the floor, waiting for me. The boat, that will have to be sacrificed for now. There are many ways to do it, my friend.
You’re Katie Turner, he gushed! I know you, I read your column! And so he did. What were the odds people? That it was my turn to have an angel? That it was my turn to be saved? I’m Bob, he said, and that’s the Evinrude. That Evinrude. Was his second wifes, she got it from her husband before, her third, and now it was his except he was all alone, except for the crew, you know. Cheers.
I let my last ray of hope fade. If I jumped from the boat they would have fished me out anyway. And Bob, he was like a father to me, especially since we never could do it, this being in the days before Viagra and all. It took him halfway into the fireworks to propose.
Stop it. I am not insane. I told Bob what was going to happen to him. He laughed. Every day he wakes up is a surprise to him, so he didn’t care. But I have to live with myself I said. In mere seconds I would have been afloat ready to find the swirls under the Narrows. There was going to be no tomorrow. And what, I am just supposed to add this on top? That you are the next? That your silver hair, your compassion, your carefree smiles, that this too, I shall undo? He laughed. That’s a hell of a story from a young girl like you. What you need is an agent. I liked his me …
We got married at sea, and he was buried at sea, eleven days later. Didn’t even both to go back into port. Why? No one was there, and I knew what was in his will, hell I wrote it. The crew runs the boat just like nothings changed, Florida in the summer, Newfoundland in the winter. I figure we have enough for 50 cycles. They’re my boys now.
Yes, that’s my picture on the bow. How do I look? You see, on the one hand, nothing’s changed. I’m not getting married again, I’m not even going to so much as hold the hand of a man. Because I am the widow-maker. The floor is still under my feet, touching me at every moment while the tide swirls and the only question in life is to swim or not swim. And every night is black.
Then again, there’s that little picture of me at the front of this, smiling. Now why would I be smiling?
(Note: frontpiece to this article is a very nice piece of art, in broad sunny stokes, of a very very happy woman on the bow of her 138 foot boat.)
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Our Own World Cup
The World Cup is upon us. Alternately billed as the world’s largest sporting event or the world’s largest television event, the 64 final games rocket the world’s attention to soccer. Yet at East River Park, just off East 6th St, there is a soccer field that qualifies, if not as the World Cup of soccer, than at least as its United Nations.
The World Cup features teams from 32 countries, the winners of 2 years of qualifying matches that feature nearly every country on the earth. Cyprus, Trinidad and Tobago, Qatar, American Samoa. Regardless of how small or seemingly sports unfriendly the country may be, they field a soccer team in international competition. The soccer pitches(aka fields) at the East River Park feature players from an astounding number of countries. The difference is they are all on the pitch at once.
A Sunday visit to the pitch captured a usual slice of diversity. Granted on the full-sized pitch there were back to back league games for 11 on 11, in this case the women’s elite league. But right behind the net, there was a run of Astroturf seeing a spirited game.
Limited in size this game is more typically a six on six, or thereabout, with duffel bags forming the goals. And here’s the roster of countries, in order of who I spoke to: Japan, Japan, Italy, Bulgaria, Puerto Rico, Spain, England, Nigeria, Iran, New Jersey, New York, Columbia, Hungary, Poland, Japan, Japan, Mexico, and as I left, another group of Statesiders.
Now, this is virtually everyone playing on the small field at one time. Is there a more diverse group of people in New York at given time? In the world? Or a more mixed team? Not at the world cup.
This group had two female players, including a very young Japanese high-schooler now living in Queens. Players had all different reasons for playing. Exercise, said Jorge, nearing 60, originally from Puerto Rico and now living in Brooklyn. David from New Jersey had come down for softball practice but now was staying for soccer. Others were regulars who remember back when the field was dirt not turf, and a tumble meant a serious opportunity to experience some glass or other trash first hand.
Among the regulars is Taiwo, late from Nigeria now living on the LES. There were other places to play, from Chelsea to uptown, he said, but all of them in some way or another had rules, formal or not, to keep people from playing, from feeling welcome. That is not what the game of soccer is about, he continued. Often when he traveled to London he would bring his shoes (ie look for a game) and never had to look hard to find one. And that is what soccer is about, it is an open game for an open world, a friendly world. Taiwo said that in Manhattan, this was the only field where you could come, knowing you would always be “promised to play.”
Taiwo went on. Visitors to the city will come to east river park, whether it is for the summer or just for a week, because they have heard of the field. Soccer he declared, should be New York City’s official or unofficial sport, for exactly those qualities: universality, openness, and friendliness. This particular field, he described as “everything to everybody.”
This is not to say there aren’t politics on the field, or concerning use of the field. A sticking point is that in the days before the turf, when every day really was a glass hunt, the field was no less used. Daily there would be three games going the short way, or if it was a weekday or early AM, one game full field. Yet the day the turf was finished, it seemed the leagues arrived, the high schools to practice, the necessity of getting a permit seemed to arise, and the very people who used the field so heavily, no doubt inspiring and campaigning for the restoration (petitions did circulate) – that these very people are now in some ways, shut out of the pitch in prime time.
Yet in some ways, the leagues have cut into the flavor of the park. Back when I first started to play, it was not unusual to see of the six teams engaged playing across, to see one team of Japanese, another team of Ecuadorians, Columbians, and Peruvians, a Mexican team., a mostly European team, and of course the American team, the mutt of the group. Countries retain their styles, their philosophy, and their aesthetic flair in their soccer teams. No one who is the least familiar with soccer will fail to distinguish Germany from Brazil from Senegal.
For myself, there was a wonder watching the precision of the Japanese, the spirit of the Ecuadorians. I myself played with the Reggaeboyz. Their verdict? “You’d be dead boy if that was a real game.” The greatest single play I saw came from an Irish central defender that as the forward with the ball came rushing towards him he merely held his position perfectly still but perfectly placed. The ball stopped, the forward hurtled forward to the turf as the defender started up the field. That’s how we play, the defender said, strong.
Raza. late of Iran, and that day the elder statesman of the pitch, for he had been coming for over 8 years, had a more sanguine approach. The leagues are just here in the summer he said, but I am here all year round, all winter spring and fall, so there is plenty of time to play. There are other places to play next door, notably “The Cage” – a fenced in short field. I don’t like the Cage, said Raza, it’s too easy to get hurt. The fence. This is where I play. See you here again.
The colorful teams still exist, it is just a bit more of a process to play. Perhaps some spontaneity is lost, some promise to play. In any case, time moves forward, and no one would ever wish to go back to the dirt field.
Which leaves us with the soccer pitch at the East River Park. Today, the way it is. The everything to everybody. The United Nations of soccer. The most diverse place in one of the world’s most diverse cities. Our own World Cup of Soccer.
The World Cup features teams from 32 countries, the winners of 2 years of qualifying matches that feature nearly every country on the earth. Cyprus, Trinidad and Tobago, Qatar, American Samoa. Regardless of how small or seemingly sports unfriendly the country may be, they field a soccer team in international competition. The soccer pitches(aka fields) at the East River Park feature players from an astounding number of countries. The difference is they are all on the pitch at once.
A Sunday visit to the pitch captured a usual slice of diversity. Granted on the full-sized pitch there were back to back league games for 11 on 11, in this case the women’s elite league. But right behind the net, there was a run of Astroturf seeing a spirited game.
Limited in size this game is more typically a six on six, or thereabout, with duffel bags forming the goals. And here’s the roster of countries, in order of who I spoke to: Japan, Japan, Italy, Bulgaria, Puerto Rico, Spain, England, Nigeria, Iran, New Jersey, New York, Columbia, Hungary, Poland, Japan, Japan, Mexico, and as I left, another group of Statesiders.
Now, this is virtually everyone playing on the small field at one time. Is there a more diverse group of people in New York at given time? In the world? Or a more mixed team? Not at the world cup.
This group had two female players, including a very young Japanese high-schooler now living in Queens. Players had all different reasons for playing. Exercise, said Jorge, nearing 60, originally from Puerto Rico and now living in Brooklyn. David from New Jersey had come down for softball practice but now was staying for soccer. Others were regulars who remember back when the field was dirt not turf, and a tumble meant a serious opportunity to experience some glass or other trash first hand.
Among the regulars is Taiwo, late from Nigeria now living on the LES. There were other places to play, from Chelsea to uptown, he said, but all of them in some way or another had rules, formal or not, to keep people from playing, from feeling welcome. That is not what the game of soccer is about, he continued. Often when he traveled to London he would bring his shoes (ie look for a game) and never had to look hard to find one. And that is what soccer is about, it is an open game for an open world, a friendly world. Taiwo said that in Manhattan, this was the only field where you could come, knowing you would always be “promised to play.”
Taiwo went on. Visitors to the city will come to east river park, whether it is for the summer or just for a week, because they have heard of the field. Soccer he declared, should be New York City’s official or unofficial sport, for exactly those qualities: universality, openness, and friendliness. This particular field, he described as “everything to everybody.”
This is not to say there aren’t politics on the field, or concerning use of the field. A sticking point is that in the days before the turf, when every day really was a glass hunt, the field was no less used. Daily there would be three games going the short way, or if it was a weekday or early AM, one game full field. Yet the day the turf was finished, it seemed the leagues arrived, the high schools to practice, the necessity of getting a permit seemed to arise, and the very people who used the field so heavily, no doubt inspiring and campaigning for the restoration (petitions did circulate) – that these very people are now in some ways, shut out of the pitch in prime time.
Yet in some ways, the leagues have cut into the flavor of the park. Back when I first started to play, it was not unusual to see of the six teams engaged playing across, to see one team of Japanese, another team of Ecuadorians, Columbians, and Peruvians, a Mexican team., a mostly European team, and of course the American team, the mutt of the group. Countries retain their styles, their philosophy, and their aesthetic flair in their soccer teams. No one who is the least familiar with soccer will fail to distinguish Germany from Brazil from Senegal.
For myself, there was a wonder watching the precision of the Japanese, the spirit of the Ecuadorians. I myself played with the Reggaeboyz. Their verdict? “You’d be dead boy if that was a real game.” The greatest single play I saw came from an Irish central defender that as the forward with the ball came rushing towards him he merely held his position perfectly still but perfectly placed. The ball stopped, the forward hurtled forward to the turf as the defender started up the field. That’s how we play, the defender said, strong.
Raza. late of Iran, and that day the elder statesman of the pitch, for he had been coming for over 8 years, had a more sanguine approach. The leagues are just here in the summer he said, but I am here all year round, all winter spring and fall, so there is plenty of time to play. There are other places to play next door, notably “The Cage” – a fenced in short field. I don’t like the Cage, said Raza, it’s too easy to get hurt. The fence. This is where I play. See you here again.
The colorful teams still exist, it is just a bit more of a process to play. Perhaps some spontaneity is lost, some promise to play. In any case, time moves forward, and no one would ever wish to go back to the dirt field.
Which leaves us with the soccer pitch at the East River Park. Today, the way it is. The everything to everybody. The United Nations of soccer. The most diverse place in one of the world’s most diverse cities. Our own World Cup of Soccer.
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Rest of the Story
I’m not going to sit here and say that I, Katie Turner Starr Khoury Evinrude, would have done it differently. The world doesn’t work that way. You close your eyes asleep and when the dream erupts, are you telling me that you have control over that dream? If you do, just stop right now. Because when we say we wish it were all a dream we mean we might wake up and find that world gone. No one dreams pleasant dreams, no one I know. Maybe I only know myself, maybe every dream I’ve ever had has been a nightmare.
I wish Nairobi was a dream, that Matt in Nairobi was a dream. Not Matt was a dream, no, I love Matt. At times, I think he was the only one I really loved, certainly the only one I ever wanted to have children with. Him and I. To build that, in a little rolling shrieking bundle of joy, that would have made my life. It didn’t. So I wish Matt in Nairobi was a dream, because, if it was, everything would be different.
Matt wanted to go, he begged at his office to go. Kenya is civilized for Africa. It was going to hurt like hell to let him go. Three months, and maybe three more! We hadn’t even been married that long! My husband, my baby husband, off to do his part to change the world. We were raised to do good, in that old-fashioned Midwestern way, Matt and I, and that was part of the attraction, the trust, the us. That’s what had brought us to Washington, and that’s what took Matt to Nairobi.
When it happens, it’s like a car accident. This can’t really be happening AND WHY IS IT TAKING SO LONG TO HAPPEN? A phone call. Turn on the TV. Why hasn’t he called? Where was he when the bomb went off? He wasn’t there, I know he wasn’t there, but he could have been there, so I don’t know he wasn’t there but I don’t know that he’s dead, I know he isn’t dead, have I ever been wrong before I have been wrong before but I’ve been right before too, right about Matt, about us, of course he hasn’t called, it’s chaos and since when did the phones ever work there (ha ha) and that was before but look at all the smoke and fire and glass except they would say if a westerner was dead – it’s not fair that’s just how it is unless he was right there when it went off and that’s where he’s supposed to be oh my god help!
That was the worst day of my life. What can your mom say, or Matt’s boss Larry? No one knows anything beyond their thoughts and prayers and silly little hopes, you know. When the phone rang I knew it was him. I didn’t stop crying, but you can’t tell tears just by looking at them.
He was two blocks away when it went off. Just dumb luck – like the night back in school when we both needed to read the same reserve book. Was it fate? Of course, the world that is is, and we just swim in it, facing the current, presenting the illusion of the fight, because when you turn your back that’s when you get swept away, lose your bearings, slam into the concrete wall.
None of us were prepared for what happened next. The Nairobi office closed, of course, and the staff flew back home. On the plane, Matt was reading a book and the next minute he felt a little dizzy, his fingers tingled, and then his heart stopped. You want a miracle? The pilot had a defibrillator on board, and he knew how to use it. How do you say thank you to that?
Would you be nervous if you were me? Would you wonder if those simple dreams of living and growing and being together were going to happen? Yes you would. For a while it seemed we cried every night, we were just so happy to be together. And that first night, I said I want a child right there and then, but Matt said let’s stick to our plan, nothing’s changed. A year is not going to matter. He’s here now, and he’s not going to die. All he has to do is take his medication. You have to protect your career, he said, we’re in this together, it’s not just about me.
July 4th. We had a fight, we never fight. But why did he want to go overseas again? Why did he tell me now, on this boat in this stupid filthy river? Yeah, I’m pissed. This is a decision that is ours together. No, I don’t want you to go. Why? Gee, I don’t know, what happened the last time? I love you, I know you love me, but why take the risk. Even the office doesn’t want you to go. I know it will make you a better person, but it won’t make me a better person and I don’t want to be alone for three months and Yes I need some air and I’m going up top.
I felt it, and I had to grab the rail with both hands just to stay up. I felt it, and I’ll always feel it. I’ll never forgive myself, never. The slightest thought of it brings it back stewing steaming in the cauldron of my heart. That surge in your bottom of the heart pain. There has to be some medical term besides a broken heart. A snapping too, just then, at the instant. And I heard him inside of me, calling for me, calling for help, calling for hope, for life, for anything “KATIE SAVE ME” he shouted inside of me. Why wasn’t I there? Why did I have to stomp off? Why did I trigger this? Why didn’t I die instead?
I ran and ran and ran and pushed and pushed and pushed – where’s my angel? – no no no and finally there he was, it couldn’t have been more than seconds and I smothered him, let my love bring him back and then they were there with the defibrillator –
That moment I cannot escape. In a flash it’s all back, part of me now forever, but I can’t dwell there and stay on the deck like I did for so long. Moving on is more important, now. Not then, though. It was everything. Every little thought. Every suggestion, every moment of the sun, or not sun. We had that conversation 10,000 times, 10,000 times we hugged we kissed, we conceived, we lived forever. Only once-
After that it just didn’t matter. I’m not a crier, but there was no point. Mom came, I love her, but what can she do? She can’t bring back Matt. Oh and everyone else - only the floor seemed true. Because I had hit the floor and I couldn’t get up. I wasn’t planning on being on the floor, I didn’t expect it, really, but until Matt comes back or it’s clear he never left for the first time –
I laugh at those little girls who need constant approval from the outside to have any little smidge of self-worth. Have a spine! So it’s not like, oh Matt is gone now I am nothing. It was Matt is gone, and really, I just don’t want to be here.
I stopped swimming and the current swept me away. I left DC, I was never one for haunted houses. New York is the place to go to get lost. New York doesn’t hide it, either. You are alone, and New York let’s you know that you are alone. You walk the streets, there’s no one, no one you know. No looks of sorrowed pity, of there but the grace of god. No one calls you, and surprisingly, no where to go really. In New York there is no joy because there is no joy.
When the settlement money was gone – and what a joke that was – I took a job. Not a bad job, in my field, a public/private service job to help the less fortunate. But 65k in New York isn’t much. I took another job, a writing gig, on the side. Stay busy. time is bad is time to dwell and that’s Matt except he is not here. So move on. Move on to being alone, move on to my all black exterior and interior. Move on to this best of all possible worlds, thank you God.
New York is there for you when you need a slap in the face. Yes, you will meet some people at work, but all the men seem gay, all the women, somehow different. A few polite demurrals from social obligations and everyone gets the hint. Don’t ask don’t tell. And the rest of New York? The ones you see at the deli and Spin City, at the DMV and the MTA? These people do not talk to you, why would they? No one cares. Does it hurt? Yeah, it hurts, it’s supposed to hurt. Time will desensitize, that’s the best you can hope for. Death would be welcomed, but there are many forms of suicide.
Sometimes you splurge. That once a month surge of hope. You get dressed up, you put on make-up. You go to dance class or go eat sushi alone. Mostly you just go home and sigh at the end, because you are not a hedonist and this just isn’t reason enough. Still, you are surprised when it happens. He was just there talking to me, so easy so natural, like maybe we had met before, and it makes you smile, beam even. Your body does have a mind of it’s own, oh, yes of course I want it, him, my Khoury. He says let’s go see a movie and it’s a surprise to hear yes.
Khoury is over the next night. I give him the grand tour of my now cleaned squalor. Boys are curious, and even older boy are still boys, still curious, and Khoury saw all the pictures and the plaques and the memorabilia. He even snooped around a bit on his own. So I gave him the big test “Did you notice?”. He failed. That should have been it, the end, but somehow it endeared me to him even more. We never were apart again after that night.
Don’t jump on me here. Life wasn’t all that pleasant. His me and my me were very different, and can anyone sit there and say his me wasn’t the better me? In his me, I wasn’t a widow, I wasn’t crying myself to sleep every night, I had never vowed not to have sex again, or laugh again, or live again. He didn’t send flowers and he didn’t apologize for being insensitive and every now and then he introduced me to the kids in the hood as the widow. And he wanted sex.
Matt, I realized for the first time, didn’t want it that much, that often, or that anything. Once a week was what I thought was normal, or was it that I didn’t want it either. But now I did. It made me feel good, it made me forget, and being wanted was being wanted and trust me I was not wanted before, not by me even. Okay, enough on that.
Like I said, we were together every night. When we first met, I said, under my breath (why did I say this?) that “this is my New York fantasy”. Of course, Khoury heard that, although I promptly denied saying it. But isn’t that the way it should be. You meet someone, you like them, and then you are together? It was that way with Matt. Why can’t it be simple? It’s not like the other person has to be perfect – God knows Khoury has his list of too quiet, too loud, aggressive, a boor, arrogant, cold, unrealistic, overly romantic, and almost a loser, I mean what had he done with his life up till then? – but they just have to be about as perfect as you. And happy, happy helps.
Because life with Khoury was so much better than life before Khoury. Call it the honeymoon period but that’s all we knew. It seemed like Matt and I had been brother and sister. Khoury said of the all the people he met, and he met everyone, I was the only one he ever considered marrying. Mostly, he just made me happy in a million little ways. I knew he was going to ask, and I was going to say yes.
We decided to go upstate for Memorial Day. Khoury had a boat, an inflatable boat, so we were going to put in as he called it. He knew a great little motel, not too expensive, right on the river, the Cottonwoods, and the guy who ran it, Jeff. Used to be one of those forlorn motels on the abandoned federal highway, but nothing’s abandoned in the Hudson Valley anymore and they built a hallway to cover all the exterior doors and redid the rooms in retro and ours had it’s own hot tub. 99 dollars a night. Yes Khoury earned more than me, and together we earned enough to be comfortable, to splurge, but that just wasn’t who we were. We’d rather save. There were going to be life changes. We had to prepare. Khoury was a planner.
Now I should have been the one with the doubts. Plus Khoury had a bad heart! His father hadn’t busted out of the 40’s, he could be next. Yes, I felt a little pop in my heart, a little pop of that memory, but I swallowed it. Oh, he said, I am too old, too slow, for someone as sexy as you. Maybe he just said this to get a rise out of me, it always
worked. Maybe he was afraid. I wasn’t, I’d been there before.
He asked in the hot tub! Of course I cried, but like I said, you can’t tell tears. The ring was wonderful, understated. It fit (how did he figure that out?). Should we start right now I said? Yes, but let’s go into the river first. It’s great once you’re all heated up. Trust me I was already heated, my nipples had never been that hard before, but off we went over the cold ground to the river, naked! Khoury slapping around half up already. We laughed as we jumped in. It wasn’t deep, but it was like a tub of cold concrete. I jumped up, and out but Khoury didn’t. He was still in, hunched over. NO! I jumped in and pulled him out. He wasn’t breathing. This cannot be happening!
It was. It did. I tried, Jeff tried, the paramedics tried. We went to the hospital to try. They jumped him up out of the surgery bed with the voltage. Nothing. I can’t tell you who was more numb, Khoury or me. I couldn’t envision this nor close my eyes and believe it wasn’t real. Wake me, please.
The tide was going down, and so I went until the floor was there. Hard and fast, flat. I dissolved. What was in my heart, that caustic mix of self-immolation spilled into all of me and then washed me out until I was as thin as a pool of water on an infinitely flat surface.
Despair is hard to encapsulate. To describe to share. Do you want some of this, I would have said but I could never have hated you that much. Rather then I was silent, numb. Now, looking back on it, I can let it out, I can share, I can vent, I can rage, but that’s not how it was. I wouldn’t let it out then. The sergeant on the grenade to save the troops. Because if it had spilled out, if I had gotten up off the floor, if homicide and blame and why has God abandoned me been part of me – but that’s not me. Silent me. Timeless me.
That was the worst of it, the endlessness of it all. This was not going to get better, this me. Time rolls on thinning out even that infinitely thin existence, that paper wisp by which I clung to life. Why was I the destroyer instead of the creator? Why was this, the blackest of black, the swelling of death in me, this eviscerating omnicity of my pain, why was this still better than my dreams? I must be strong now, and never sleep again, the risk is too great, and those imagined worlds of pain somehow worse than this unbearable collapse.
Without sleep, without reason, without promise, without leaving my shuttered apartment, what was left but delusional escape? My period, I’ll miss my period, we had been fooling around, why not? Why not me? The future can be different, or was that just a brief stab of light, a false retinal impression from skewering your lids too tight?
And then my period was late! I’m never late! I wanted to dance! I wanted to be me, the other me, of all those mes I was so tired of this me.
That lasted a day till I bled. July 4th. Funny, ha ha. I can’t say I was thinking, I’m not sure what you call in when you are in that state. You have something to do, and it’s not like you work out a plan, you merely grab and go. A greater consciousness is at work, your body the mere tool. For once I was free.
The tide was going to the east river, but now I was back to swimming. I sling the sack on my back and went to the Hudson, across the Hudson, on a water taxi. To under the Colgate clock. Next to the toxic waste dump, right at the marina. Symbolic sense, finally. The ticking clock of my life next to the pile of shit and the water, the graves of my love, my destination. Does it hurt to drown? More than to be me on the floor? This was the time to not swim, to let the tide do the work.
I made it to the end of the pier. Boats all over, heading out to the fireworks. I pulled Khoury’s inflatable boat from the sack. I’d done it once before, it wasn’t too hard. 10 minutes of sweat. Did I pause once or twice? Did I have to beat down once more the caustic spill of my brokenness? So. I can do it.
I was just about ready to put in when I heard the shouts and the shot. He was half-running towards me, this most beautiful man in a suit. With a champagne bottle.
You’re not putting that in, are you? It’s my boat, of course I am. Why don’t you come one my boat instead? He waved behind him to a solid 118 feet. I froze. Should I let his dissuade me? This was my opportunity now. To give it up would be mostly for forever. Or should I let him be the one? Or just, should I stay here a bit? I’m Raf Jacman, and that’s my boat. What’s your name. Katie Turner Starr. No, I know you, you have the financial column online, or you used to anyway, right? Sadly I shook my head yes. That settles it, he said. He thrust the bottle at me, took the boat over his shoulder, and the rest of the gear, and off we went.
Now what were the odds that he knew me? Or that I should be saved? What had I done to be here in the first place? Nothing, and so why now the rescue? I was half-expecting his boat to be the black widow, but it was the Evvy. Evinrude, he said. Son of the scion and his second wife, well she had the boat when he died and then we got married and then she died and now I have the boat, and well cheers.
I let my plan slide. If I jumped from the boat they would have fished me out anyway. And Raf, he was like a father to me, especially since we never could do it, this being in the days before Viagra and all. And then he proposed! How sweet!
I am not insane. I told Raf what was going to happen to him. He laughed. Every day he wakes up is a surprise to him, so he didn’t care. But I have to live with myself I said. In mere seconds I would have been afloat ready to find the swirls under the Narrows. There was going to be no tomorrow. And what, I am just supposed to add this on top? That you are the next? That your silver hair, your compassion, your carefree smiles, that this too, I shall undo? He laughed. What you need is an agent. I liked his me.
We got married at sea, and he was buried at sea. Didn’t even both to go into port. Why? No one was there, and I knew what was in his will, I wrote it. The crew knows what to do, Florida in the summer, Newfoundland in the winter. I figure we have enough for 50 cycles. They’re my boys now.
Yes, that’s my picture on the bow. How do I look? You see, on the one hand, nothing’s changed. I’m not getting married again, I’m not even going to so much as hold the hand of a man. Because I am the widow. The floor is still there under my feet, and the tide still swirls and the real question is to swim or not swim and sometimes it is black on black.
On the other hand, that’s a million dollar smile.
I wish Nairobi was a dream, that Matt in Nairobi was a dream. Not Matt was a dream, no, I love Matt. At times, I think he was the only one I really loved, certainly the only one I ever wanted to have children with. Him and I. To build that, in a little rolling shrieking bundle of joy, that would have made my life. It didn’t. So I wish Matt in Nairobi was a dream, because, if it was, everything would be different.
Matt wanted to go, he begged at his office to go. Kenya is civilized for Africa. It was going to hurt like hell to let him go. Three months, and maybe three more! We hadn’t even been married that long! My husband, my baby husband, off to do his part to change the world. We were raised to do good, in that old-fashioned Midwestern way, Matt and I, and that was part of the attraction, the trust, the us. That’s what had brought us to Washington, and that’s what took Matt to Nairobi.
When it happens, it’s like a car accident. This can’t really be happening AND WHY IS IT TAKING SO LONG TO HAPPEN? A phone call. Turn on the TV. Why hasn’t he called? Where was he when the bomb went off? He wasn’t there, I know he wasn’t there, but he could have been there, so I don’t know he wasn’t there but I don’t know that he’s dead, I know he isn’t dead, have I ever been wrong before I have been wrong before but I’ve been right before too, right about Matt, about us, of course he hasn’t called, it’s chaos and since when did the phones ever work there (ha ha) and that was before but look at all the smoke and fire and glass except they would say if a westerner was dead – it’s not fair that’s just how it is unless he was right there when it went off and that’s where he’s supposed to be oh my god help!
That was the worst day of my life. What can your mom say, or Matt’s boss Larry? No one knows anything beyond their thoughts and prayers and silly little hopes, you know. When the phone rang I knew it was him. I didn’t stop crying, but you can’t tell tears just by looking at them.
He was two blocks away when it went off. Just dumb luck – like the night back in school when we both needed to read the same reserve book. Was it fate? Of course, the world that is is, and we just swim in it, facing the current, presenting the illusion of the fight, because when you turn your back that’s when you get swept away, lose your bearings, slam into the concrete wall.
None of us were prepared for what happened next. The Nairobi office closed, of course, and the staff flew back home. On the plane, Matt was reading a book and the next minute he felt a little dizzy, his fingers tingled, and then his heart stopped. You want a miracle? The pilot had a defibrillator on board, and he knew how to use it. How do you say thank you to that?
Would you be nervous if you were me? Would you wonder if those simple dreams of living and growing and being together were going to happen? Yes you would. For a while it seemed we cried every night, we were just so happy to be together. And that first night, I said I want a child right there and then, but Matt said let’s stick to our plan, nothing’s changed. A year is not going to matter. He’s here now, and he’s not going to die. All he has to do is take his medication. You have to protect your career, he said, we’re in this together, it’s not just about me.
July 4th. We had a fight, we never fight. But why did he want to go overseas again? Why did he tell me now, on this boat in this stupid filthy river? Yeah, I’m pissed. This is a decision that is ours together. No, I don’t want you to go. Why? Gee, I don’t know, what happened the last time? I love you, I know you love me, but why take the risk. Even the office doesn’t want you to go. I know it will make you a better person, but it won’t make me a better person and I don’t want to be alone for three months and Yes I need some air and I’m going up top.
I felt it, and I had to grab the rail with both hands just to stay up. I felt it, and I’ll always feel it. I’ll never forgive myself, never. The slightest thought of it brings it back stewing steaming in the cauldron of my heart. That surge in your bottom of the heart pain. There has to be some medical term besides a broken heart. A snapping too, just then, at the instant. And I heard him inside of me, calling for me, calling for help, calling for hope, for life, for anything “KATIE SAVE ME” he shouted inside of me. Why wasn’t I there? Why did I have to stomp off? Why did I trigger this? Why didn’t I die instead?
I ran and ran and ran and pushed and pushed and pushed – where’s my angel? – no no no and finally there he was, it couldn’t have been more than seconds and I smothered him, let my love bring him back and then they were there with the defibrillator –
That moment I cannot escape. In a flash it’s all back, part of me now forever, but I can’t dwell there and stay on the deck like I did for so long. Moving on is more important, now. Not then, though. It was everything. Every little thought. Every suggestion, every moment of the sun, or not sun. We had that conversation 10,000 times, 10,000 times we hugged we kissed, we conceived, we lived forever. Only once-
After that it just didn’t matter. I’m not a crier, but there was no point. Mom came, I love her, but what can she do? She can’t bring back Matt. Oh and everyone else - only the floor seemed true. Because I had hit the floor and I couldn’t get up. I wasn’t planning on being on the floor, I didn’t expect it, really, but until Matt comes back or it’s clear he never left for the first time –
I laugh at those little girls who need constant approval from the outside to have any little smidge of self-worth. Have a spine! So it’s not like, oh Matt is gone now I am nothing. It was Matt is gone, and really, I just don’t want to be here.
I stopped swimming and the current swept me away. I left DC, I was never one for haunted houses. New York is the place to go to get lost. New York doesn’t hide it, either. You are alone, and New York let’s you know that you are alone. You walk the streets, there’s no one, no one you know. No looks of sorrowed pity, of there but the grace of god. No one calls you, and surprisingly, no where to go really. In New York there is no joy because there is no joy.
When the settlement money was gone – and what a joke that was – I took a job. Not a bad job, in my field, a public/private service job to help the less fortunate. But 65k in New York isn’t much. I took another job, a writing gig, on the side. Stay busy. time is bad is time to dwell and that’s Matt except he is not here. So move on. Move on to being alone, move on to my all black exterior and interior. Move on to this best of all possible worlds, thank you God.
New York is there for you when you need a slap in the face. Yes, you will meet some people at work, but all the men seem gay, all the women, somehow different. A few polite demurrals from social obligations and everyone gets the hint. Don’t ask don’t tell. And the rest of New York? The ones you see at the deli and Spin City, at the DMV and the MTA? These people do not talk to you, why would they? No one cares. Does it hurt? Yeah, it hurts, it’s supposed to hurt. Time will desensitize, that’s the best you can hope for. Death would be welcomed, but there are many forms of suicide.
Sometimes you splurge. That once a month surge of hope. You get dressed up, you put on make-up. You go to dance class or go eat sushi alone. Mostly you just go home and sigh at the end, because you are not a hedonist and this just isn’t reason enough. Still, you are surprised when it happens. He was just there talking to me, so easy so natural, like maybe we had met before, and it makes you smile, beam even. Your body does have a mind of it’s own, oh, yes of course I want it, him, my Khoury. He says let’s go see a movie and it’s a surprise to hear yes.
Khoury is over the next night. I give him the grand tour of my now cleaned squalor. Boys are curious, and even older boy are still boys, still curious, and Khoury saw all the pictures and the plaques and the memorabilia. He even snooped around a bit on his own. So I gave him the big test “Did you notice?”. He failed. That should have been it, the end, but somehow it endeared me to him even more. We never were apart again after that night.
Don’t jump on me here. Life wasn’t all that pleasant. His me and my me were very different, and can anyone sit there and say his me wasn’t the better me? In his me, I wasn’t a widow, I wasn’t crying myself to sleep every night, I had never vowed not to have sex again, or laugh again, or live again. He didn’t send flowers and he didn’t apologize for being insensitive and every now and then he introduced me to the kids in the hood as the widow. And he wanted sex.
Matt, I realized for the first time, didn’t want it that much, that often, or that anything. Once a week was what I thought was normal, or was it that I didn’t want it either. But now I did. It made me feel good, it made me forget, and being wanted was being wanted and trust me I was not wanted before, not by me even. Okay, enough on that.
Like I said, we were together every night. When we first met, I said, under my breath (why did I say this?) that “this is my New York fantasy”. Of course, Khoury heard that, although I promptly denied saying it. But isn’t that the way it should be. You meet someone, you like them, and then you are together? It was that way with Matt. Why can’t it be simple? It’s not like the other person has to be perfect – God knows Khoury has his list of too quiet, too loud, aggressive, a boor, arrogant, cold, unrealistic, overly romantic, and almost a loser, I mean what had he done with his life up till then? – but they just have to be about as perfect as you. And happy, happy helps.
Because life with Khoury was so much better than life before Khoury. Call it the honeymoon period but that’s all we knew. It seemed like Matt and I had been brother and sister. Khoury said of the all the people he met, and he met everyone, I was the only one he ever considered marrying. Mostly, he just made me happy in a million little ways. I knew he was going to ask, and I was going to say yes.
We decided to go upstate for Memorial Day. Khoury had a boat, an inflatable boat, so we were going to put in as he called it. He knew a great little motel, not too expensive, right on the river, the Cottonwoods, and the guy who ran it, Jeff. Used to be one of those forlorn motels on the abandoned federal highway, but nothing’s abandoned in the Hudson Valley anymore and they built a hallway to cover all the exterior doors and redid the rooms in retro and ours had it’s own hot tub. 99 dollars a night. Yes Khoury earned more than me, and together we earned enough to be comfortable, to splurge, but that just wasn’t who we were. We’d rather save. There were going to be life changes. We had to prepare. Khoury was a planner.
Now I should have been the one with the doubts. Plus Khoury had a bad heart! His father hadn’t busted out of the 40’s, he could be next. Yes, I felt a little pop in my heart, a little pop of that memory, but I swallowed it. Oh, he said, I am too old, too slow, for someone as sexy as you. Maybe he just said this to get a rise out of me, it always
worked. Maybe he was afraid. I wasn’t, I’d been there before.
He asked in the hot tub! Of course I cried, but like I said, you can’t tell tears. The ring was wonderful, understated. It fit (how did he figure that out?). Should we start right now I said? Yes, but let’s go into the river first. It’s great once you’re all heated up. Trust me I was already heated, my nipples had never been that hard before, but off we went over the cold ground to the river, naked! Khoury slapping around half up already. We laughed as we jumped in. It wasn’t deep, but it was like a tub of cold concrete. I jumped up, and out but Khoury didn’t. He was still in, hunched over. NO! I jumped in and pulled him out. He wasn’t breathing. This cannot be happening!
It was. It did. I tried, Jeff tried, the paramedics tried. We went to the hospital to try. They jumped him up out of the surgery bed with the voltage. Nothing. I can’t tell you who was more numb, Khoury or me. I couldn’t envision this nor close my eyes and believe it wasn’t real. Wake me, please.
The tide was going down, and so I went until the floor was there. Hard and fast, flat. I dissolved. What was in my heart, that caustic mix of self-immolation spilled into all of me and then washed me out until I was as thin as a pool of water on an infinitely flat surface.
Despair is hard to encapsulate. To describe to share. Do you want some of this, I would have said but I could never have hated you that much. Rather then I was silent, numb. Now, looking back on it, I can let it out, I can share, I can vent, I can rage, but that’s not how it was. I wouldn’t let it out then. The sergeant on the grenade to save the troops. Because if it had spilled out, if I had gotten up off the floor, if homicide and blame and why has God abandoned me been part of me – but that’s not me. Silent me. Timeless me.
That was the worst of it, the endlessness of it all. This was not going to get better, this me. Time rolls on thinning out even that infinitely thin existence, that paper wisp by which I clung to life. Why was I the destroyer instead of the creator? Why was this, the blackest of black, the swelling of death in me, this eviscerating omnicity of my pain, why was this still better than my dreams? I must be strong now, and never sleep again, the risk is too great, and those imagined worlds of pain somehow worse than this unbearable collapse.
Without sleep, without reason, without promise, without leaving my shuttered apartment, what was left but delusional escape? My period, I’ll miss my period, we had been fooling around, why not? Why not me? The future can be different, or was that just a brief stab of light, a false retinal impression from skewering your lids too tight?
And then my period was late! I’m never late! I wanted to dance! I wanted to be me, the other me, of all those mes I was so tired of this me.
That lasted a day till I bled. July 4th. Funny, ha ha. I can’t say I was thinking, I’m not sure what you call in when you are in that state. You have something to do, and it’s not like you work out a plan, you merely grab and go. A greater consciousness is at work, your body the mere tool. For once I was free.
The tide was going to the east river, but now I was back to swimming. I sling the sack on my back and went to the Hudson, across the Hudson, on a water taxi. To under the Colgate clock. Next to the toxic waste dump, right at the marina. Symbolic sense, finally. The ticking clock of my life next to the pile of shit and the water, the graves of my love, my destination. Does it hurt to drown? More than to be me on the floor? This was the time to not swim, to let the tide do the work.
I made it to the end of the pier. Boats all over, heading out to the fireworks. I pulled Khoury’s inflatable boat from the sack. I’d done it once before, it wasn’t too hard. 10 minutes of sweat. Did I pause once or twice? Did I have to beat down once more the caustic spill of my brokenness? So. I can do it.
I was just about ready to put in when I heard the shouts and the shot. He was half-running towards me, this most beautiful man in a suit. With a champagne bottle.
You’re not putting that in, are you? It’s my boat, of course I am. Why don’t you come one my boat instead? He waved behind him to a solid 118 feet. I froze. Should I let his dissuade me? This was my opportunity now. To give it up would be mostly for forever. Or should I let him be the one? Or just, should I stay here a bit? I’m Raf Jacman, and that’s my boat. What’s your name. Katie Turner Starr. No, I know you, you have the financial column online, or you used to anyway, right? Sadly I shook my head yes. That settles it, he said. He thrust the bottle at me, took the boat over his shoulder, and the rest of the gear, and off we went.
Now what were the odds that he knew me? Or that I should be saved? What had I done to be here in the first place? Nothing, and so why now the rescue? I was half-expecting his boat to be the black widow, but it was the Evvy. Evinrude, he said. Son of the scion and his second wife, well she had the boat when he died and then we got married and then she died and now I have the boat, and well cheers.
I let my plan slide. If I jumped from the boat they would have fished me out anyway. And Raf, he was like a father to me, especially since we never could do it, this being in the days before Viagra and all. And then he proposed! How sweet!
I am not insane. I told Raf what was going to happen to him. He laughed. Every day he wakes up is a surprise to him, so he didn’t care. But I have to live with myself I said. In mere seconds I would have been afloat ready to find the swirls under the Narrows. There was going to be no tomorrow. And what, I am just supposed to add this on top? That you are the next? That your silver hair, your compassion, your carefree smiles, that this too, I shall undo? He laughed. What you need is an agent. I liked his me.
We got married at sea, and he was buried at sea. Didn’t even both to go into port. Why? No one was there, and I knew what was in his will, I wrote it. The crew knows what to do, Florida in the summer, Newfoundland in the winter. I figure we have enough for 50 cycles. They’re my boys now.
Yes, that’s my picture on the bow. How do I look? You see, on the one hand, nothing’s changed. I’m not getting married again, I’m not even going to so much as hold the hand of a man. Because I am the widow. The floor is still there under my feet, and the tide still swirls and the real question is to swim or not swim and sometimes it is black on black.
On the other hand, that’s a million dollar smile.
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