The night we were supposed to meet for the first time, the very first night I ever heard his voice, was my last night in New York for a while. Very cinematic. Very us.
We both had other things going on that night and timing got messy. We never made it to each other and I boarded my flight to Texas that next afternoon. But somewhere between Williamsburg, LGA, full moons, and mutuals with God complexes, a friend told us we were soulmates. And because we are exactly the kind of people who would believe something like that, we did too.
Almost every night while I was away from the city, we video called until sunrise. I learned the shape of his ceiling before I learned the shape of his body. He learned the cadence of my thoughts before he learned the curve of my spine. He understands music in this terrifying, beautiful way, as if it lives inside him, instead of around him. I think I fell in love between his encyclopedic understanding of sounds and the shared screen jeopardy games that he swore he wouldn’t be any good at.
But there were red flags from the beginning. Not subtle ones either. Big, bright, waving-in-front-of-my-face ones. For instance, during the early stages of whatever we were becoming, he fell in love with somebody else for a week.
(Only in New York can a sentence like that sound casual.)
A week later he called. A month later he offered me a place to stay while I looked for an apartment in the city again. I didn’t hesitate and moved into the life of a man I barely knew but felt cosmically attached to. That’s one dangerous thing about chemistry, it can make strangers feel pre-destined.
Living with him felt like being inside of a song that kept changing from techno to country (I’m talking Klang to George Straight). Some mornings he was soft and brilliant and motivated. He moved through the house with this quiet certainty, talking about projects he swore he’d finish, kissing my forehead and thanking my presence, making me believe stability was something within reach.
But the disappearing act never failed to return.
And suddenly the house would fill with strange noises at 4 a.m. and conversations that looped in circles and movements that made me feel like I was watching somebody disappear in real time. I left crying in the middle of the night three or four separate times, dragging bags down dark Queens sidewalks while he slept upstairs, unaware or unconcerned. I still can’t decide which is worse.
The hardest part about loving someone like him is how often they make you question your own memory. Their vices make them forget, but somehow they make you forget too. You forget how bad last week felt because today he’s holding you like you’re important. You forget the humiliation because tonight he understands you.
Maybe that’s why this movie keeps living inside me. Because in between the chaos, there were moments so achingly real that I still don’t know what to call them. Maybe he loved me the best that he could. Maybe I loved him far past the point where I should have loved myself more. Either way, among the tennis courts, hotel rooms, the eventuallys, and the versions of us that only existed at 5 a.m for the past 3 months, I came to the brutal reality once again that love is not measured by intensity, by how many of your favorite things he knows by heart, or by how deeply he understands your music taste and your sadness.
Love is consistency. Love is safety. With recognizing how cinematic this all felt, means also recognizing that it may just be that…cinema. As Taylor Swift sang in the “the 1”, “the greatest films of all time were never made.”
Check out previous “Love on the L Train” series stories:
Love On The L Train: What Stayed
Love On The L Train: Caring Past Comfort
