Wonderland in the Alley

Wedding and event planners would weep with envy over the way this friend's party fell together. Circumstances and details wove themselves into tangible perfection that we carried out at the end of the night to keep forever. Many times over the years, I pulled out my pieces of that evening and considered the possibility that he had sweated over each detail and planned everything exactly as it happened. Always, I discarded those thoughts in favor of magic, or mystery.

            Friend was a rambler. Nobody discussed his homeless status, not with him or with one another. It was – the same as his height and eye color – just our friend. Maybe we feared confirmation would taint our ticket to vicarious hippiedom. It could have been that we respected his privacy and figured he would tell us how or why he had parted ways with his family and their fortune if he wanted us to know. Our unspoken vow to let it be held fast.

            Whatever the reason, this friend became a positive constant in our lives. I looked forward to his one-knuckle, double knock on my door, to setting an extra plate on the table for him, to adding his laundry to my load, to his silent laugh and late night philosophical musings, and to finding special places for the gifts he brought to express his appreciation. And I missed him when the circuit put too many days between our turns to have him grace our home.

            The phone call itself was as much a surprise as the impromptu, come-as-you-are invitation. As far as we could remember, he had never called before. Suddenly, he knew our number and had a place from which to call it and invite us over. Curiosity propelled our immediate departure.

            I knew the intersection well, even pictured the dry-cleaner on the corner when he gave directions, but in all the years of passing that location, I had never noticed a carriage house in the alley behind the cleaners. My guy trusted our friend's word, parked on a side street, and we walked in an eerie post-spat silence--sans the spat--toward the carriage house that seemed to have appeared from nowhere.

            Feet still planted in the alley, my guy reached across the flat stoop to lift a horseshoe knocker and drop it against a metal plate on the door. His eyes settled on a row of trashcans under the windows. I looked past them to admire the symmetry of the chips in the painted brick, realized I saw them through my father’s camera eye, and regretted the many times I had teased him about photographing nothing. I finally got it; nothing could be something.

            When our friend opened the door, I stepped through the humble opening off the dreary alley and ended up in an amazing expanse of warmth and light, positive Alice must have felt the same when she found her wonderland. A forest of macramé-supported spider plants, wandering Jews, and ferns breathed life into the room, while reaching out to welcome us into this fine-wine-of-décor, aged-to-perfection carriage house.

            Fires crackled in the double fireplace on the far wall. Reflections of the flames danced off glossy shutters that covered the ceiling-to-trash-can-level windows lining the outside walls, and left a glow on the wide-planked, worn and bowed yet flawless floor. That night, I was content to sit cross-legged in my seat and appreciate the beauty of this used but obviously loved room. Years later, I would try to buy the carriage house so I could walk on the smooth floor with bare feet, and sit in front of the windows with the shutters opened and the sun shining in on me.

            An assortment of rocking chairs, each sporting a unique set of quilted cushions, and most occupied by familiar faces, circled the heavy square table that took center stage in the room. My guy  and I settled into rockers, his a porch model under a fern by the windows, and mine a bentwood with flowered cushions, close to the fire. Our friend reminded everyone that he had food and drinks in the kitchen – an over-sized, copper nook on the far side of the door – and encouraged us to help ourselves before he curled into a white wicker rocker beside the stereo. No one moved.

            The friend's reference to food brought his chili to the forefront of the comforting mix of aromas. Strangely, identifying them became more important than eating, drinking, talking, or looking to see what anyone else was doing. I wasn’t sure their presence mattered, one way or the other. Burning wood, candles, and floor wax were easy. Fresh flowers surprised me. Until that moment, I hadn’t noticed them on the square table. Nor had it occurred to me that there were no ashtrays or drinks on the table.

            I scanned the rockers. On any other night, these same eight friends would be smoking, drinking, laughing, and doing most anything other than sitting in rocking chairs, staring into a fire and listening to Dan Fogelberg. They all looked as willingly paralyzed in making something of nothing as I was.

            I don’t know how long we sat in the magic of that carriage house, or how he happened to have access to this place that was such a perfect reflection of him. Nobody discussed it, with him or with one another. At some point, the fire burned out, the sun came up, Dan stopped singing, and we returned to our lives - at least one of us forever grateful. 

One Was Never Enough

One was never enough. He couldn’t stop at one beer, one game, one joke, or one woman. One good deed led to another, the same as one drug to the next. He lived with passion, loved to excess, screwed up with conviction, lost with honor, and never forgot a friend. He couldn’t keep a job, stay out of jail, hate anyone, or pass a person in need. He broke my heart one minute and caught it the next, contradicting his brawny exterior with deep sorrow and feather light caresses.

His failure to manage his life didn’t keep him from protecting mine. As years passed and he lived more in than out of the drugged fog, he always climbed from the hole when I needed him. I saw him at funerals, heard from him when I was sick. He carried furniture when I moved, never missed a birthday, Mother’s Day, or divorce, and showed up to catch tears when I hurt.

He died before my body gave in to disability, but left his love behind to carry me. Often, as I lay struggling to adjust to my new life, memories of his smile brightened my days. Remembering his free-spirited outlook sparked hope that I would either recover my spirit or learn to lose with honor the way he had.

Accustomed to pain and resolved to fate, I went to bed one night without giving my new symptoms a second thought. Hours later, patience exhausted and fear moving in, I considered giving up. How much willpower kept me alive, and would it all be over if I just let it go?

I recognized the feather light touch immediately, and the spirit that crawled into bed beside me. The touch became a caress, followed by a full hug with an invisible shoulder to carry my weight. Somehow, I knew it would be the last time he visited. Maybe he gave everything he had left to me that night.

Maybe he knew one was enough this time.

Ship of Fools

Mike ruined everything when he referred to us as the ship of fools.

I put my early fear aside and laughed with the others. Bob Seger was in the room, so there was a slight possibility that the deeper significance might not settle anywhere. Still, I wanted him to take it back and never again suggest a name for that puppy; we couldn’t keep it and I wasn’t ready to let it go. Not even close.

The laughter stopped short, too soon for legitimate replacement emotions, too late to pretend nothing had happened. Mike slouched back in the chair and braided his fingers around his beer bottle. The four of us locked in a silent group stare at nothing. My hope sank as I watched him roll the rounded edge of the bottle on the table, aware that the others couldn’t look away either, and frightened by what that meant.

The name settled in hearts that would break now, when our puppy walked away. Determined to ride out every last second, I dared not be the first to move and end it all. I willed my bladder into submission, swallowed a sneeze, controlled my breathing, and snuggled up to the warmth of our fraying connection.

Collective passion for separate, sometimes conflicting dreams had united us, even when scattered to opposite corners in crowded places. Appreciation of the unspoken hunger we shared had bound us, like the rope that secures toddlers on a field trip. Only, our tie had been invisible, even to us.

Until Mike named it.

When Tenth Avenue Freeze-out Killed the Party

He proved my mother wrong. With him, life was a party. That alone secured his permanent position in my heart, making bonuses of the countless worthy reasons to love him.

I lived in anticipation of the excitement his spontaneity promised and appreciation for his refusal to entertain negativity. His easy, infectious laugh, hilarious antics, entertaining stories, refreshing outlook, and talent for including everyone set my smile and guaranteed our invitation any time friends gathered. My secret was that the time we spent alone was more exciting than the parties were, and the afterglow floated me through the dreaded hours when work or reality tore me away from him.

Having to wait my turn for his attention in crowds might have been the downside of loving the life of the party but even that had its own reward. I loved him more each time I watched him lift a spirit, ignite a smile, smooth a ruffled feather, or hug a friend through the blues.

I stood behind his rapt audience that night, caught his smile, and returned my keep-going-I'm-okay nod. His story was funnier the second time than it had been on the drive over, when I laughed until I cried and begged him to stop before my eyeliner ended up on my chin. He might have embellished details or exaggerated reactions for the bigger audience but I attributed the bulk of my giddiness to the fact that his arm was around Denise and she was laughing for the first time since Stan left her.

From across the room, a current goalie let me know their game was almost over and we were up next on the foosball table. A couple of guys beside me vied for the opportunity to impress one another by snapping the plastic rings that had once held their beer cans in a six pack. The doorbell announced pizza delivery. We had been in the same place, with the same people, doing the same things many times before. My thoughts and actions were automatic. I was comfortable.

He ended his story and detached from still-smiling Denise. His audience reached for wallets and purses to pay the delivery guy. I expected him to follow the food. I would say we didn't have time to eat because we had next game, and he would tell me he'd grab a couple slices and meet me at the foosball table.

But it didn't happen that way. His eyes darkened as he approached, upsetting the sameness, and confusing my predictions. Carefree turned to intense which I decided could only mean one thing - he was deathly ill.

He took my hand and led me past the pizza and beer and down the hall to a back bedroom. Terror set in when he called back and told the others to skip our game before he closed the door that separated us from familiarity.

Still somber, he dropped to one knee. A flood of conflicting emotions rushed up my throat and threatened to choke me. A proposal beat deathly ill - barely - but his obvious level of discomfort and the fact that he wasn't facing me were not encouraging. My heart stopped racing when, instead of a ring, he pulled out headphones for each of us and said he wanted me to hear something.

In the seconds it took him to turn everything on, plug everything in, remove the album from its cover, blow the dust off the record and the needle, and, touching only the rim, position the album on the turntable, my relief tumbled through several stages of confusion. I had never known him to push the button to change songs on the radio, much less select an album and play it. Deciding it was time to mow the lawn or wash the car when I played Engelbert or Tom Jones versus staying in the room if I selected Humble Pie or The Doors was the closest he had come to expressing an opinion about music. Now, he had pulled me away from a party to hear something.

His continued darkness clouded my curiosity.

He handed me one set of headphones, donned the second set, and pressed the automatic play button. As the arm settled in the grooves to deliver the anticipated music, he sat, back to the wall, on the floor and pulled me between his legs. I rested against him, comforted when I discovered he still felt like the same man even if everything else seemed to have changed.

Although far from an orchestral sound, the mellow harmonica and piano intro was more suited to Engelbert than to Humble Pie. That told me he knew my taste, and this something he wanted me to hear was for me. Maybe the darkness was in anticipation of how miserable he would be sitting through it? I pulled his arm around me and squeezed his hand just as a mournful, scratchy, nothing-like-Engelbert voice joined the mix.

Once over the shock, I enjoyed the unlikely combination of mellow music and raw voice and decided the something he wanted me to hear must be in the lyrics. It didn't mean much to me until the singer blasted my last hope of sameness with a mournful, "Roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair." I recovered in time to catch something about, "Ready to take the long walk," and "I know you're lonely for words that I ain't spoke."

My make-something-of-nothing conclusion returned me to the proposal scare but the lyrics rescued me before I went into a full panic attack. My final conclusion, after "Town for losers, pulling out of here to win," was that he had introduced me to a powerful combination of great instrumentation and passionate vocals, and he wanted to ditch our friends because they were a town of losers.

With the mystery solved, I reached up to remove the headphones and return to the party. But he stopped me. We were there for the long play.

The second song started with the drive it had taken the first song a complete verse and chorus to build up to, and with lyrics that are more upbeat. The dancer in me had trouble sitting still until I felt his heart beating against my back. I snuggled closer, knowing this was probably as close as I would ever get to a dance with him.

More into the heart dance than the lyrics, I almost let that song be nothing. Almost. He made it something when he flinched with the words about being all alone, on his own, and can't go home. The saxophone cried and he tensed again. I remembered thinking he was in pain before we entered the room and made more something of nothing.

I turned to look at him but he didn't open his eyes. His arms were still around me but he had detached and didn't seem to notice my movement. Was he crying behind closed lids, placing me in a Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out and leaving me through music?

Physically, I couldn't have been closer without crawling inside his body but emotionally I felt like I was on another planet. I wanted to go back to hearing something because I didn't like feeling it.

The seconds it took for the needle to scratch over to the next song felt like an eternity. I vowed I would only hear the music, but words broke through. "And you're just another prisoner of your dreams." I didn't know his dreams. In all that time, I had not considered the possibility of his wanting anything after the party, or that my mother could be right and the party might end. I didn't hear, feel, or think. I blocked everything until a new song started and the piano lulled me into believing this one would be simple and the music would return me to familiar emotions.

There was no blocking the pain in "Backstreets". The first hide took a piece of my heart that never returned. I tried to crawl inside my broken life-of-the-party's body, where he could protect me from that song, but I didn't find an entrance. Who was that singer and why did I need to hear him plead for whatever he needed so desperately?

The answer came in a crushing blow when my guy's body reacted to Bruce Springsteen's heart-wrenching Whah-ahh that not only sounded like he was dying, but also convinced me that he planned to take me with him.

Emotionally shattered, I resented Bruce for delivering my guy's pain to me. At the same time, I was both resentful and grateful to my guy. I appreciated his willingness to share the part of him that either I had ignored or he had hidden before, but was devastated to come to this point of no return, where he no longer wanted to protect my dreams and visions and my party would end.

I reminded myself repeatedly throughout the rest of the album that this was someone else's autobiography, not his. I heard the challenge to let him know if love is real, and thought about where I could go physically with that music. But we had been there, and obviously, it wasn't enough to feed whatever hunger made him feel Bruce's wails.

The last thing I remembered was him kissing the top of my head and releasing me from his hug following the words, "Back when her love could save you from the bitterness." That must have been what he wanted me to hear. Past tense.

There was nothing I could do to shake that freeze-out. And, Baby, I was born to run.

Bruce Springsteen website with links to lyrics.