2002-10-10 - 12:25 a.m.
Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free...
Like a worm on a hook, like a knight from some old-fashioned book, I have saved all my ribbons for thee.
Maybe it was hearing this song that started me thinking, in the odd moments of my busy day, about someone from my past. I suppose that is part of what it means to be human, that all the raw material of your life circulates on some endless loop and makes you process it again and again. This song always reminds me of a man with whom I had a seven year relationship. And I doubt that he ever even heard the song, but every time I hear it, I think it sounds like something he could have said to the world.
His name was Bruce, and we met when we were both working the night shift in a hospital. He was a big, charming guy with curly blond hair, who looked (and was) very Scandinavian. I was a mere trainee at this job but he was a well-respected respiratory therapist and emergency medical technician, known for his cool head in life or death situations. We hit it off right away and I followed him to two other hospital jobs in two different towns, before we came back so I could finish school.
We could talk to each other in a way that most men and women never do, and we would sit at the kitchen table and talk for hours, processing our days together. That was probably the glue that held us together. He was also cute and funny, a good dancer, the life of the party-- which almost camoflaged my shyness.
Initially he drank a bit to calm down after the disturbing days in the hospital emergency rooms. And then he drank a little more, and more often. Not just on the weekends. Not just when we could afford it. And eventually he lost all control of it and just lived for the next opportunity to drink. I knew it was happening, but I was not allowed to question his drinking, even when he spent the rent money, even when he got violent and kept me up all night yelling at me.
It was always about something else. Sometimes it was something I had done, or something that happened at work. Sometimes it was left over pain from a former marriage to a woman who had cheated on him in a cruel way. Often it was just a lifetime of rage at his family. He had lived a life of being the least-favored child, caught between two professional older brothers (an admiral and an doctor), and two high-achieving younger siblings (an architect and a pharmacist). There was so much anger in him. It terrified me when he would fly into rages and hit walls and throw chairs. He never did hit me, but I think I have some insite on why some women stay with abusive men. I also saw the pain in him, and the sorrow that followed these episodes the morning after. I thought things would change as soon as.....(the holidays are over/we move/ he gets a new job/ I finish school.....) there was always something in the future I thought would make things better. But it never did.
I learned a lot about alcoholics: some of the most incredible people are alcoholics. Because some people are too sensitive to handle how hard the world is, and they need a refuge. A chemical one kind of backfires on you, though, but it works for a while and sometimes that is all that matters. And another thing I learned is: as long as you are drinking to kill the pain, you never really deal with the source of it. So the drinker stays in this endless cycle of torment. When he sobers up, not only does he have to deal with a chemical dependency, but he has to figure out how to fix his life.
And if I have ever been unkind, I hope that you can just let it go by.
And if I have ever been untrue, I hope you know it was never to you.
To talk about him and about that relationship is to talk about how very complicated and relative life can be. On the face of it, he was a decent guy who became an alcoholic and I left him because our life together had degenerated into a wasteland of drunken emotion. Nothing was going to change. I finally realized we had no future.
In the final year, I saw this big strong man reduced to tears of panic because he had to make a four hour drive to another town and stay for a week of job training. And we once had such a violent argument that I picked up a wooden clog and winged it at his head. Luckily I missed, but it shook me up to realize that I was being pushed into violence, too.
But I also remember that he was the one who carried my son on his shoulders after Cary pitched a winning game, and rushed us to the hospital in the middle of the night when Cary had asthma attacks. He once borrowed money to give us a big surprise on Christmas and bought me a sewing machine and Cary a mini motorcycle. He helped me get through school and was unequivocally proud of me and supportive of me as an artist.
We had been through a lot together, and when I left I didn't do so with a sense of self-righteousness. Right before I left, Bruce and I and Cary went swimming in the river. Although we weren't saying so, we knew it would be the last thing we would do together, and it felt sad and symbolic to wade into the water and feel the current flowing by so fast. There has been, as they say, a lot of water under the bridge.
Like a baby stillborn, like a beast with his horn, I have torn everyone who reached out to me.
But I swear by this song, and by all that I've done wrong, I will make it all up to thee.
I moved away in 1983, and we never saw each other again, although we said we would keep in touch. I heard that he had gotten married and had a child, and been divorced. And that he quit drinking for a while, but had returned to it heavily. In 1996 I got word that he died from complications of alcoholism. He was forty-five.
The thing that haunts me is that he used to tell me that he would never live past fifty. He sometimes attributed that knowledge to a near-death experience he had as a teenager, when he was in a terrible motorcycle accident. I never knew quite what to believe. Maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophesy, but he lived like he knew he would have a short life.
He always loved airplanes, and when we were still together, he started building those little radio controlled planes out of balsa sticks and thin plastic. The little motors and control units were so expensive that he had yet to acquire all the necessary equipment to fly one of them when I moved. But he wrote me a letter, the only one he ever wrote me, to tell me that he had finally flown his plane. And that he hoped to see me again sometime.
I thought then that someday we would run into each other when we were both old and maybe just reminisce, or catch up on each other's lives. Then, it was time for distance, time for me to change the circumstances of my life and Cary's.
Today I looked up his name on the internet, just to see what was there. His family has a genealogical web site (wouldn't they just) and provide a long list of the noble accomplishments of all of his siblings. But beside his name there are only dates: 1951-1996. Still the black sheep even in death.
When I think of him, I remember the way he signed his letter: "Wings level. Eyes on the horizon." I hope that motto helped get him through some of life's bad weather. It helped me.
I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch, and he said to me, "You must not ask for so much."
Saw a pretty woman leaning on her darkened door, she cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?"
(Song quoted is: "Bird On A Wire" by Leonard Cohen)
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