Entry Five

I heard the chirp of the instant messenger as she answered, “lol, I’m emo and you still like me?”

I really didn’t have to think to answer that one.  “Yup :)))”

Another chirp.  “Silly boy.”  Then another, “I’d run from me”.

That was typical of something she would say.  For some reason, she hated herself, but other than her self-hatred and its side effects, she was the morning sun in my eyes.  I began to type my response.

“I remember vowing that I would never abandon you, and I vowed to myself that if it was the last thing I did I would never go back on that vow.”  Thinking that was a bit too dramatic, I quickly added, “but I like you so it isn’t hard to stick around :)”

“When?”

“At least a dozen times.”

Chirp.  “It’s hard for me to say that about myself.”

“I remember the first time; your sister had run off mad at you; called her father from the neighbor’s house; you were crying”.  It was one of the first times I had really seen her cry like that.  It was so out of control, so self defeating.  Her happy little façade broke at that exact moment.  I think I loved her even more for it, for being true.  “You almost collapsed; I held you until you could stand on your own.”  I remember feeling her little body tremble from the sheer force of the tears.  I felt the tears saturate and penetrate my shirt.  “I promised I would always be there; despite what you might’ve thought about that being a childish promise, I meant it.”

That was over five years ago, at that time I still hadn’t broken the promise.  

Three years ago, I had made a sort of promise to myself.  A promise that would eventually break that earlier one.  A promise never to speak again if I couldn’t speak to her.  It was easy back then when I had no way to talk to her, when she stopped answering me.

And now that promise was slowly crumbling.  Maybe I’m not good at keeping promises.  Maybe I was doing this so that I could keep the first one.

Over that summer Connor and I learned how to speak through the cards.  He learned how to live as I had for so long and I gradually learned how to smile again.  It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows though.  Daily we felt the joys of success and the painful sting of embarrassment.

There was only about one week left before school.  I had made some progress, and I wanted to see something come of it, something more than that had already been.

I had talked to her on an old myspace account.  It all started with a long apology.  That turned over a few days into slow conversation.  Sure she avoided most to the questions I had given her permission to ignore in the apology, but I was glad just to have her talking to me again.  

I found out she was doing fairly well.  She said she missed me.  I wasn’t sure how she meant that, I could only hope that she missed me like I missed her.  Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t.  I couldn’t bear to ask.  The best part of it all, beside the renewed feeling of love that it filled me with, was that I found out where she was staying and she invited me over.

Two days later I was on a city bus on my way.  To her.  Finally, my day had come.  Connor wished me luck before I left.  I knew I would need it.  After all, I had still managed to avoid letting her see what I had become.  And it would be obvious.  I still couldn’t talk.  It was as if that part of my brain had atrophied from a lack of use.  I began to fear I would never talk again, and that’s why I was going to see her now, instead of waiting on that day that could still be eons away.

Even though I was only crossing town the ride seemed to take forever.  Tension mounted at every stop.  Fate was drawing closer, stop by stop.

The party kept drawing closer.  There had been about thirty members of Phi Life over the course of the club’s existence.  I called them up one by one, and set up a list online, where we could check off names one by one so that we didn’t end up calling the same people.  Also, we built lists of yes’ and maybes.  By eight the guest list was just short of thirty.  By, eight thirty I had called all of the Phi Lifer’s and I had recruited about ten of them into recruiting.  Actually, I had that taken care of by eight, at eight thirty I had added six names to the yes list that weren’t members of Phi Life and that list had made it to seventy five.

David was shocked.  “Seventy five!?  Are you f*****g kidding me?  How did you pull that out of your a*s?”

“Sometimes the best things you learn in college don’t have a goddamn thing to do with going to class.”  With that said we both laughed uproariously.  It was about time for people so start arriving so we started to put the final touches on things.  One important step was to put a few pilfered traffic cones by the cellar style door leading into the basement so no one would try to use one of the other entrances.

I took the basement door out into the yard to get to the shed.  Not more than five steps out of the basement I saw the lights.  Headlights on an old van illuminated a group of about twenty, milling about the front yard, beer in hand.  

“Holy s**t,” I whispered under my breath.  I really hadn’t expected people to be here so early.  A few of them spotted me and started to migrate over.  And since I had to go that way myself I walked over to them, issuing a warm “helloooo”.

As I drew nearer to the crowd I saw a number of familiar faces.  Some of which I knew and some I clearly remembered.  David popped up behind me.  I know his jaw probably dropped when he saw the size of the crowd.  “Holy s**t,” I heard from behind me.   


“I heard it was a basement party but I didn’t think you’d be popping out of the ground.”  I smiled at the sentiment.  What might have made me smile even more was the fact that the person speaking was Miguel, his hair now short and styled but, of course he was still as big as ever.  “I also never expected that you lived by cows.”  He gave me a big goofy grin.

“Hell, I grew up next to cows.  Now get inside before the neighbors see you.  They don’t much like yer kind.”  I said affecting a twangy southern drawl.  Miguel shifted his eyes around, looking mad in a non-specific sort of way.  “I’m kidding, but if you guys don’t get inside soon they might get the impression you punks are trying to rob the place.”  That got a lot of laughs from the whole crowd, last of which was Miguel.  At least it eased the grimace.

With the people out of the way and the cones in place I set a note on the front door telling anyone to come around until they saw the orange cones.  Looking out over the cars the two problems with my plan occurred to me.  One, with seventy five guests, where the hell would I put all the cars?  Two, I invited seventy five, and I assumed that number was still growing, but only four, from what I could tell, had arrived.  Yet there were about fifteen or twenty people here.  Four of which were carrying in a drum set as I pondered the situation.  Factor in friends of friends and this party could easily grow close to three hundred instead of just over one.

I ran inside and furiously typed “don’t invite anymore people.  They’re bringing people and, even my house can’t take 300+”.  Someone typed, “300+?  Holy s**t,” under that and then “have fun; maybe I can make the next 1; Bob.”

I laughed.  Well, I hadn’t solved the problem, but at least for the moment I had managed to keep it from getting any worse.

I was pouring nervous sweat under my leather jacket when I pressed the buzzer for her apartment.  The jacket was new and a hell of a lot flashier than anything I would’ve worn normally.  I wanted to make a good impression on her despite my obvious flaws.

She answered the door in a tank top and sweats.  I reverted back to my old habit of staring straight ahead for a moment as I tried to resist the urge to look down her shirt.  “Well, I really wasn’t expecting you today.”  I walked into the living room, following behind her like a love sick puppy dog follows its master.  When I didn’t immediately speak she added, “I suppose you did say you were coming today… I just wasn’t expecting you,” she said as she walked into the kitchen.  She may very well be as nervous as I am from the way she’s talking.  Of course, it could just be the fact that I haven’t said a word since I walked in.  Maybe she already knows, everybody seemed to.  

Of course, she seemed to have distanced herself from everyone we had known and even if we had acquaintances and friends in common I would’ve never known.  She had a weird way of keeping her friends separated, segregated.  She was afraid they could put together the pieces if ever they were to get together.  Of course, I had known her better than anyone and she really only had a few simple secrets to hide and they could be just as easily hidden from everyone at once like most people did.

“Tea?”  She asked from the kitchen.  Without thinking, I nodded my head.  Then she turned to face me.  I smiled realizing my mistake and nodded again.

She poured two tall glasses and walked into the living room with them.  She sat one on the coffee table in front of me and continued around sitting on the other end of the couch.  She sat her already perspiring glass down and turned her body toward me.  In anticipation I produced a small notebook and a short golf pencil and put the items on the coffee table.  This was just in case she asked a question I couldn’t answer with cards.  

Normally I was uncomfortable using them but I expected some unexpected sets of questions that even my cards, which I had prepared for the encounter, could answer.  For her I could get over it.

“So, how have you been?”  She asked with a pleasant look on her face.  It warmed me, that look.  Seeing it again made me feel good.  It was too bad that what I was about to “say” would likely wipe that look from her face.

Quickly, I produced a card from my pocket and handed it to her.  I knew what it said because it was the only one I had put in that pocket.  “I can’t talk.”

She puzzled over the card for a moment before she spoke.  “Vow of silence?  You can break it, I won’t tell anyone.”  She was still smiling.  I should’ve known she would say that.  We had taken vows of silence for gay right on the Day of Silence a few times during our relationship.  She took them from time to time just because she felt like it.  Maybe I had picked up the idea from her without realizing it.  The bottom line was she didn’t get it.  Didn’t get me.  Didn’t get what I had become.

I took the card from her and returned it to her along with two others.  In order they read “No. I can’t talk.  I haven’t said a word in about four years.”

I could already see the tears growing in her eyes, even though they weren’t visible.  I knew were there; I knew they were coming.

“Is that why…”  I could tell where that was going.  “You… Why?”  It seems I wasn’t the only one of us at a loss for words.  I thumbed through the stack for another two cards.  “I don’t know.  I just stopped talking one day and it seemed to work for me.”  I was doing well.  So far she hadn’t asked a question I hadn’t anticipated.  But there was a little more I wanted to say now that I hadn’t thought of before.  On the pad I wrote, “it was easier like this.  I didn’t have to answer awkward questions this way.”  She looked over the pad and the first tear began to appear.

“I don’t get it.”  Her voice warbled like she had a lump in her throat.

“I wanted it to be normal; that no one talked to me.  Even you stopped eventually.  I just gave up.  I wanted it to be my decision and not theirs, so I took away their ability to decide.”  I handed her the note pad and she read it over.  When she was done, I took it and added more.  First I handed her a card that said, “When I saw you that day, I tried to speak.”  Then I handed the pad which read, “you make me want to talk again.  But I can’t.”  Then another card.  “It’s like I’ve forgotten how to talk.”  I followed that card up with two more.  “Enough about me.  How are you doing?”

She seemed dumbstruck.  A tear fell from her eye and ran in a streak down “How are you doing?”  More tears came.  On the pad I wrote, “I loved you.”  Almost immediately I realized my mistake and scratched out the d.  Tears broke forth in to fully fledged sobbing.  I laid a card on the table in front of me face down and reached my arms out to offer a hug.  This would be a real test for me, personal contact.  To my surprise she almost leapt into my arms, knocking me onto my back.  She lay there in my arms sobbing until her tears saturated my shirt and rolled down the leather jacket.

“I’m so sorry.”  She kept weeping, over and over.  I felt horrible, but in a melancholy sort of way I was happier than I had felt in years, just to have her in my arms seemed to defy circumstance.  Even after all these years I knew her all too well.  

With the arm that wasn’t holding her body close I reached for the card placed on the table.

“You don’t have to be sorry.  It was my decision and besides, I love you.  You have nothing to be sorry for.”

She read the little paragraph then looked up at me with both tears in her eyes and a smile on her face and without saying a word, pulled my body closer.