Today while fumbling around the kitchen and
spilling the coffee grounds over the counter, knocking over the milk,
and dropping my cigarette on the cat I remembered how you’d sit
bleary-eyed at the dining room table and howl with laughter at my
clumsiness as if you were using the door frame between the two rooms as
a camera frame and you were Mack Sennett directing Chaplin. You told me
once that that is what you were doing and it sticks in my head as sadly
terrible because you never had the chance to put that lovely way of
looking at other people’s awkwardness and self-reflected irritation on
film yourself. I think maybe you were too patient. It might have
been a sort of arrogance - a belief that you had all the time in the
world because someone with your talent had to have been placed here for
a reason, for some divine purpose, to fulfill some ultimate destiny.
I would finally gather myself out of those thick, hungover mornings
and come sit with you at the table and stare at you and think how lucky
I was to have you to love me, and how lucky I was to have you to love.
And how lucky you were to have me to tell what to do and how to do it
because you certainly couldn’t tell yourself those things and if you
could you wouldn’t have listened anyway. I’m not sure you were aware
of it but you were never wrong. You’d run your mouth in what seemed
like a never ending stream of invective and directive and pure hilarity
and I don’t think you ever mis-spoke. I’d laugh and laugh and argue
and pretend to not believe your stories about your family and pretend to
mock your worldview and try to dissect your opinions but inside I knew
you spoke nothing, nothing, nothing but the truth. So I listened to you
and you listened to me and in some miraculous way we’d move forward
and sideways and up and down and we’d just move because I used to tell
you that if I ever stopped moving I would die, like a shark. You pulled
me to you one weirdly warm winter night here in Memphis and told me you’d
never let me stop moving, you’d never let me die. And you didn’t. I’m
still here, fumbling around the kitchen, spilling coffee grounds on the
counter, knocking over the milk and dropping my cigarettes on the cat.
But you’re not sitting at the table laughing at me. Although sometimes
I’m sure that you are. I half expect to walk through the doorway and
see you there in the dirty, wrinkled suit you had slept in the night
before, crying with laughter and calling me over to kiss my boo-boos.
My boo-boos go very much un-kissed now.
I guess it might take more than a couple of years for someone to
really disappear. Sitting here today it occurs to me that I may now
remember the photographs better than I remember you. The caffeine brings
clarity and sharpens up the feelings that were knocked loose by the
alcohol last night and I won’t allow myself the quiet resignation of
feeling strange about going out and getting unrepentantly, foolishly,
desperately, unhappily drunk all by my sad, little lonesome self. Twice
in the last two years. I’m pretty sure you would allow me that one
indulgence.
For old time’s sake?
I went to the P&H early and it was a Thursday night so all our
old theater friends were there. Wanda was behind the bar and I felt a
little guilty because before she saw me she was buoyant and giddy and
beautiful in that big Wanda kind of way. Talking with, flirting with,
encouraging and berating the actors and would-be actors and writers and
would-be writers. Cracking open cans of PBR, pulling pitchers of
Budweiser, and challenging really skinny people to eat her Chili-cheese
fries. No matter how smoky or loud or sour the P&H got Wanda was
always the Belle of Ball on those nights. She looked up at the room as I
walked across it and her face changed abruptly and she started to cry.
Everyone at the bar looked over at me and then quickly looked away.
I didn’t stay long. Long enough for Wanda to buy me a couple of
rounds and tell me she always knew you wouldn’t be around for too
long. You were too even-tempered, too even-keeled for your talent.
Eventually something would give and you’d simply break up and wash
away with it.
Which you did.
I vaguely remember some drunken night (after Wanda told me that Chris
Bell still haunted the turn where he died on Jackson Ave. and that if
you stood alone at the exact spot you’d hear him whisper "I Am
the Cosmos" in your ear) when I was stretched out on the pool table
in the back with my eyes closed, refusing to get up until all my songs
were played on the jukebox. Wanda came over and sat back on the other
table and told me I had to promise to keep an eye an you. She told me
how good you were and how nice you were and how clever you were and that
there were nasty little spirits who were jealous of you and that they
would wait for an opening and seize their moment and take you away. So I
hurriedly said ‘ I promise’ because Nanci Griffith’s version of
Townes Van Zant’s "Tecumseh Valley" was coming on and I
wanted to get myself ready to cry my eyes out because of it. My crying
would always pull you away from your swearing contests with Marty the
bartender and it did that night and you came over and held me and for
some reason I cried even harder than usual because I knew Wanda was
right and I was scared I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it no
matter how hard I tried to watch out for you.
Six months after that night you were just about ready to finally give
in to Rachel’s pleas to move to L.A. so she could get you in front of
the right people whenever she needed to. I think I actually kicked you
in the knee upstairs at Ernestine and Hazel’s when you went on and on
about how your muse was in Memphis and that you wouldn’t be able to
write in L.A. and if you actually got a chance to direct out there those
Hollywood actors wouldn’t listen to you anyway except for the dumb
girly ones who would just want to sleep with you and that I’d change
if we went out there and would end up sleeping with some young actor you
were working with or somebody and how there was no way I’d ever find a
jukebox with the right songs on it and that if I did there wasn’t any
bartender who’d let me lie down on the pool table and cry about it.
For some reason that night I wasn’t amused and didn’t feel
enlightened by your words of wisdom and I think for the first time in
five years together I heard in your voice a wavering in tone and
delivery that made it seem like you were spitting out cold yellow pieces
of fear and anxiety and uncertainty like bile. Like you had swallowed
something that shouldn’t have ever been swallowed.
So I kicked you in the knee.
You stared at me like you didn’t recognize yourself for one sharp,
dark second and then laughed as you hopped over to the piano and played
about six seconds of that Chopin Prelude that you loved so much.
Stopping abruptly you reached up and grabbed someone else’s drink and
downed it and looked at me with a very confused expression. Then you got
up, hopped down the hall past all the rooms the prostitutes used when
the place was still a brothel, fell down the stairs and landed on top of
some banker. I apologized to the guy and picked you up when you bolted
for the door. You waited at the car for me to catch up and we drove down
Main past the building where James Earl Ray fired the shots and you
screamed "redneck ****-head" out the window at the top of your
lungs.
We drove down to the river and took a blanket down to the edge of the
water and spread it out. Between pulls off a bottle of Jameson we kissed
and laughed and hugged and cried a little bit and slapped at mosquitos
and stubbornly avoided talking about how we both felt like there was a
foul, little change, blurry because of the booze, waiting just outside
of our field of vision in the dark and that even in the sober light of
day it would be no more visible because it would be waiting for us in
closets and under beds and in the backseats of our cars and unlike the
changes that we had both faced together and alone this one actively
disliked us. Disliked you for your humour and your gentleness and your
sweetness and your righteous anger and your brilliance and your patience
and your sadness and your clear, quick love of me. And It turned around
and disliked me for loving all of you right back at you. It was jealous.
Like Wanda said.
So rather than keep an eye on you or protect you like I promised, I
fell asleep as you hugged me hard and whispered for me to fall asleep
fast so we could wake up sober and strong and beat the shit out of
whatever ugly, jealous little thing had started following us around.
When I woke up you were long gone. Your socks and shoes at the edge of
the grass, footprints in the mud heading straight out to the
Mississippi. But only one set.
Today I sit by myself in the dining room and look across at your
chair and wonder how it is that the slight shade of who you were still
lingers there. Leaning face down on the table. Laughing hysterically at
my clumsiness.
© dave burris 2000