Today I kneeled to tie my Chuck’s. And with the instant quality that nerves insist upon, it all came rushing back. Turning me red in the face, and wincing at the throb.
I remember a night in January that for days I wanted to forget. Somehow the day had begun badly, her and I had miscommunicated once and then again. We were sore at each other and she had to work. We parted for the day without speaking, both already waiting to sleep, tired in advance. Anger does that. Preemptive exhaustion.
That day it was rainy in the Bay Area, as I understand it has continued to be on most the days since I left. I resolved, for some odd reason, to achieve each of my goals for the day on foot. I went to City Lights, and to another bookstore, and another and a Starbucks. I had been soaked from ten minutes in. And being soaked not only accentuates one’s exhaustion, but does something sort of great for his soul.
I walked up a long long hill on the map I was learning to memorize, which I have now forgotten. A man with a fish in Chinatown slapped me with the lip of the silver thing, on accident. I wasn’t angry, because I was consumed with the thought of that fish’s short but long life in the salty depths of the Pacific, the warmest ocean in the Sea. The smell washed off anyway. I saw a movie with George Clooney an hour or two after my phone died of power failure. I was innocent, but something in me knew this would rightly make her only angrier, as my night away from home stretched far past hers.
My legs burned and tingled by the time I was done. I felt part idiot, part warrior, all parts wet. I reached her house late. It had rained since the moment I left. I realized I never had a key to her front gate, so I had to scale the seven feet of wrought iron. My descent was a jump, and somehow I landed on my right knee with a force that equaled her anger indoors, waiting anxious for my return. Each time I touch my knee, each time I bend to pray or paint, there is that awful night, warping the cartilage and begging that I shift my weight. I now wonder how long, or if I’ve reached the age that it’ll be an always sort of pain.
The fight we were pre-determined to have as soon as I arrived was one that I knew had to take place, but was completely unprepared for. While her anger and hurt had been growing, I had spent mine on the streets. It had flowed first down Laguna, and later down Gough and Stockton. All of it now long to the sea, lapping by the Fort Point under the ominous shadow and hum of a red bridge. Aside from a puddle or two between furniture stores on Van Ness, or in front of the Ghiradelli factory, the city was washed of my bitterness. I only wanted solace. I don’t remember everything, but God how I remember the way it felt to be drenched and hungry for pardon.
We argued it down, as we had no choice. I took off everything just to get dry, and she gave me towels and covers and eyes. Today I’ve been reminded of the way two people can feel toward one another when they’ve both been sorely and completely disappointed, and yet both renewed in a quick mutual sense of after. I am reminded because today there is no trace of that feeling, nothing of its purity, between me and the random people I must sometimes share a life. To be in the arms of someone who hated you all day, is to be rare and glad. That night we kissed sleepily, knocking teeth. I told her to be careful of my knee, I told her it’d be better in the morning. Maybe one day, it will be.