Howl

New York cruel and generous with beauty, walloping us with overabundance.

Right now a woman I love at a bar on 11th St. getting walloped with song.

Defending myself against the overabundance again today I don't leave the apartment; I grade papers, give a (half-assed) lecture, watch some TV. Read about "relationship saboteurs" – taking consolation in the news that other people, including people I love or have loved, take a sledgehammer to their happiness with as much diligence as I do, as I have.

Phone taunting me with silence yet emanating the promise that at any moment someone inside it will ask, "Eric, are you alright?"

Like so much else once a source of happiness now a source of cruelty.

So no walloping music, for a minute. No beauty of any kind. After all, beauty demands to be shared, however cruelly.

Sure, I imagine venturing out again, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, to not be desolated by generosity. As I have desolated a few souls over the course of my life with a gesture, a calling out, openhandedness, trembling, rage.

I don't really believe in writing like this. Maybe that's why I should do it – am doing it. Tomorrow a picture of Central Park at night, Valentine's Day Eve, a long walk, a kiss, laughter. A photograph, big dumb skyscraper lights behind us in the distance seen through winterstripped trees, metaphors of hope.

But today this old brownstone is well built; the storm windows are double-paned; I'm high above the street. This howl, like so many others echoing around this town every day, won't startle – distress – frighten – concern – anyone. An indifference I've earned. A starting point, telling me the truth about myself and sending me back out into the shared Harlem night.

"Absolutely Not."

A couple of days ago – Valentine's Day – walking east on 123rd I passed a man on the phone with his daughter. He had her on speaker, or they were Facetiming, and as I passed I heard her say, "Dad, yes, they can." The voice and intonations of an eight-year-old Black New Yorker, high and forceful, swinging, confident.

The father replied, "Absolutely not. A boy cannot give another boy a valentine. Absolutely not."

The girl, even more forcefully: "Yes, they can."

And the father, "Absolutely not. Absolutely not."

They continued in this vein; soon I was out of earshot, Central Harlem mixing their voices into the city's howl.

I texted my brother Nathan. Understandably, he seemed less charmed than annoyed. He said, "Good lord. Turn around and say, your daughter is right."

"Or," I proposed, "my brother does it, so apparently they can."

I continued on to my friend Brad's up on 129th. From there down to Nomad, then over to Chelsea; eventually, home. The argument between father and daughter forgotten.

But this morning, finding it difficult to sleep, I remembered their exchange and found myself thinking about that father's "absolutely not."

In the first place I was struck by its futility. Plainly we do live in world – certainly we do in New York City – where boys can give valentines to boys. I thought, I was listening to a man defend a world that no longer exists. His daughter lives in the real world – in the actual world. And he was trying to get her to live in his world, a defunct world, the world of the past.

I suppose this experience – realizing that one lives in a world that no longer exists – is one of the horrors of aging. That horror might explain why so many older people become, relative to their younger selves, conservative, reactionary, and grumpy. In any case, their particular argument is enacted daily in various forms by millions of kids and their parents.

But beyond that, I thought, his "absolutely not" captures the horror of conservatism generally and its determination to compel us to live in a nonexistent world. To deny the world's fluidity, the permanence of change, in short: reality. The world. That little girl lives in the world. Her father does not.

My reaction at the time, having not been oppressed by that father's particular "absolutely not," was to find their argument charming and reason for hope. Nathan, who understands that "absolutely not" all to well, who has heard it ringing in his ears all of his life, wanted a fight. One must defend reality, the hard-earned world-as-it-is, against those who would have us live, whatever their reasons, in a world that no longer exists.

Ten Things I'll Never Do Again

1) Watch The Bachelor, obviously. After finishing our Blue Apron (having argued again about how long to cook the chicken). You secretly film my reactions to the Rose Ceremony. Laugh at the way I go from feigning indifference to yelling at the screen. To saying, "Can you believe the way these people sabotage their own happiness?"

 

2) Listen, still groggy with sleep, to you tell me about your night’s dreams. I squint at the light coming through the blinds. Your large eyes, unblinking, examine my face. "You should write those dreams down," I say. "I should write them all down."

 

3) Stand on our balcony and watch you drive away in a rush, the boys due to arrive. You take the left turn off Continentals Ave, accelerate – small in the gray sedan – away, up Ralston. Going to your mother's for the weekend. Until Sunday evening, when you call or text, asking when you can come home.

 

4) Walk to 122nd and Adam Clayton Powell. Take the M2 to 110th, east to 5th Ave, down to 92nd. Get off the bus and walk to 2nd Ave, to wait outside Knickerbocker Plaza for you to descend. Hail a cab or walk with you to NR. Hot ramen. Later, at Bar & Essen, a nightcap. The slow walk back. Outside Knickerbocker I hug you and tell you I love you and watch you pass through your lobby, see you say goodnight to the doorman. I walk then for a while. At some point rent a Citi bike and ride back to Harlem, using the Central Park loop, crying or trying not to cry.

 

5) Stand holding you, my eyes closed. Rest my chin on top of your head; inhale. Think: A perfect fit.

 

6) Argue with you about getting a dog.

 

7) Drive together up the coast to Crescent City, on to Portland, or down the coast to Monterey, or from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas. Or in an Uber along the Cabo San Lucas coastline. Or, most memorably, on a luminous Saturday morning, from Belmont to Berkeley, to the Wright Institute for your applicant's interview, to the beginning of the rest of your life.

 

8) Hold you while you remember your father.

 

9) Help you: edit a paper, decipher a reading, think through a patient, compose an email, cope with one of your brothers’ calls. Brew your morning coffee, brew our nighttime tea, undress you, fall asleep in your arms, fall back asleep (after telling you, "A nightmare. It’s Ok. You're safe").

 

10) Weep like this. Motionless, silent – stunned by gratitude and regret and terror. Because I don't know how to imagine a world without you. A siren goes by, fades; Harlem light, so unlike California's – colder, more severe – falls on some flowers I put in the window. I think, One day this grief will pass. But I don't want it to pass. Then you'll really be gone.