But Still It Lingers - 1. But Still It Lingers

Do you remember the last time we saw one another?

It was a long time ago. But I still remember that day. I remember how kind we were to each other, on that afternoon when it no longer mattered. I had thought it was going to be hard. We had been fighting for so long; the battle lines were long drawn, reconciliation long abandoned. But it wasn’t like that at all, was it? It was easy. Familiar. Comfortable. We had Bellinis at Gato Negro, and we talked about those halcyon days when we were young and in love. When we were immortal. We talked about Lisbon, and the little blue house on Croft Street, and Orpheus and Eurydice. We talked about the time we got caught in a blizzard and bivouacked on Mount Inglismaldie and almost died. We did not talk about the divorce. Even then, those were distant memories. Now, they’re almost surreal. It is hard to fathom that we ever were those people, who did those things.

And then it was over. We finished the last drink, and smoked cigarettes on a bench outside. We embraced, and for the first time that day, it was awkward. We said goodbye: our last. Did you know it would be the last? I knew, I think, but I could not believe. I had loved you for so long. And then I had hated you longer - a visceral hate, reserved for those we once loved. In that moment I couldn’t fully comprehend me, without you. But it was the end, wasn’t it? At last.

I thought about you a lot in the weeks afterwards. Did you think of me? I foolishly thought of how kind you had been that day, when kindness cost you nothing. I thought about falling in love, which is never quite so heady as when we are young. And when I feared I would forget, I thought of all the awful things we had done to one another. I grieved.

They say that time heals all wounds. But when we are young, and certain, and so sure we see more clearly, we are convinced this isn’t true for our injuries. Our hurts, we know, are unique in magnitude: wounds of the soul that will never diminish. But they do. Until, one day, I didn’t think of you at all.

Even that day was a long time ago, now.

I remember you that evening, when I left for the last time. That was a long day. Why do you think it took so long? Was it fear? Inertia? Or maybe we just weren’t ready to face what would come after. I remember steeling myself. I had had a few drinks, and I was braced for battle: for tears, and wailing, and the gnashing of teeth. But it was nothing like I had expected. It was quiet, almost cathartic. A relief, I think, for both of us. There was much I had wanted to say to you, but when the moment arrived, we actually said very little. We had fought before, and would fight again after, but on that day we reached a weary accord. An understanding. A shared confession. And, afterwards: the unmistakable feeling that something had happened.

Do you remember when we used to drink port and read each other poetry? I remember you liked Yeats. I liked Eliot. We bared ourselves with the poetry we shared: starving, hysterical, naked. I remember those languid summer evenings on the veranda, with Orpheus and Eurydice purring at our feet and the crickets almost deafening in the twilight. Fireflies flickering in the dusk; the evening sun sinking like molasses in the sky. God had never felt so close. I remember the fleeting sense of peace. That holy stillness. There was a certain vulnerability to those interludes. A brief respite.

We were happy, then. I used to think that we were never happy, but we were. For a long time, as young men measure such things. For many years I missed that quiet contentment: having someone to share in all of life’s little details. Someone to help shoulder the burden. That’s not what I miss now. I miss the ecstasy, and the agony. The intensity. The shattering of ego - losing myself completely, foolishly, recklessly in another human being. That youthful, vain folly: the certainty that no one else had ever felt what we felt. Falling in love the way the stories tell it. Tristan und Isolde.

Do you remember the day we first moved to Croft Street? To our little blue cottage? That was the apogee. I remember the feeling that we had finally made it. That we had all those things for which we are supposed to strive. I remember finally summiting the mountain, and feeling nothing. I was not prepared for that.

That was the beginning of the end: the dawning realization that the years had irrevocably changed us. That we were no longer starstruck lovers, but pilgrims on different journeys, whose crossing paths had been ephemeral and unforeseen. That we weren’t looking forward, but rather back at versions of ourselves that no longer were. Could no longer be. It lasted long afterwards, but that was the beginning.

I think the hardest part was admitting the banality of it all. Acknowledging that our moment was not extraordinary, or singular, or worthy of elegy. But rather a crucial, inevitable, fallible part of the human condition. Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, Orpheus and Eurydice. It never ends happily ever after.

Odi et amo. Excrucior. I hate and I love. It hurts. That was Catullus, over two thousand years ago. It always seemed to me to capture so much. Such an immense part of the human experience, distilled into four words. It sounds poetic, so filled with awareness. But in the moment, it was painful, and confusing, as we grappled with our sins, and reconciled life as it was with life as we had dreamt it would be. It hurt.

That was a long a time ago. But I still remember.

I remember you too, on that day that we first met. How many times I must have told that story. It has been many years, but I think I still remember how it goes:

We met on the train to Lisbon. I was coming from Barcelona, you from Madrid. We were both backpacking alone. We were both young, and firm, and beautiful. We were going to the same hostel. We shared a meal of cuttlefish and vinho verde in Alfama that night. We walked along the banks of the Tagus in the moonlight. We drank port and listened to Fado music in a crowded bar. It’s a good story, the kind you can tell your parents. The kind that makes your friends who met on Tinder jealous. A story you imagine your best man recounting at your wedding in a drunken toast.

But it’s not the truth, is it?

It is the story we told, a well-rehearsed lie. Do you remember what really happened that day? We met in Lisbon, but at a nightclub. We made out like teenagers on the dance floor. I was drunk; you were high. I sucked your dick in the bathroom, and we both got thrown out. I woke up in your bed, with another guy. Whatever happened to him? Do you think he knows that he’s a footnote to our story? We missed our bus, and drank the day away on the beach at Cascais. We made love on the rocks without care or shame. The sea was beautiful that day.

I haven’t told that story - the true story - in a very long time. I almost remember the other one more. I always thought I preferred our lie, but now, I think I prefer the truth. It reminds me of someone I used to be. Of being young, and immortal. Of being passionate, and impulsive, and more than a little bit foolish. It reminds me of those things that only happen once. Of falling in love, for the first time. And nothing else is ever quite the same as that.

I remember you that night, the last time we fucked. The house had sold, and we were saying a final goodbye. I remember the unbearable heaviness of that moment. The weight. As we walked through the hallways and said goodbye to a life that was, and another that might have been. There were no more lawyers or words or pretences. There was no love or lust or hate. There was just… relief, and regret. And, finally, indifference. Whatever disillusions we might still have held were stripped away. It was suddenly honest, and real, and raw.

I remember being pushed up against the wall of our bedroom. I remember your eyes, your shoulders, your chest. Your dick. I remember the spark, igniting one last time. It was awkward, and uncomfortable. There was no furniture, no towels, or sheets, or soft music. It was passionate, and it was ungentle. But it was good. It hadn’t been good for a long time, but it was that night. I remember afterwards, smoking Marlboros and drinking Wild Turkey on the veranda in our boxers. A light came on at the neighbours’ house. Curtains twitched. I remember the stillness of that sticky summer evening. I remember the reckoning: all that had happened. Us. I remember the afterglow. There was a certain melancholy, as the finality of it all stared us in the face: stark, ugly, irrevocable.

There never was another Troy for us to burn.