the_guy_from_the_train kerry "i saw you on the train," you said later, perched on a barstool beside me. not too far, not too close. a respectful distance. "i saw you too." "i wanted to talk to you but, you know, it's something you don't do. approach women on the train." "that's true." you were in the bathroom while i was lingering in the other room, skimming your bookshelf, your rows of paint tubes, squinting at the post-its on your desk trying only to examine your handwriting without reading what you'd actually written. i don't know what to make of it. i wonder if you are left-handed. you were by my shoulder right when i spotted a paperback penguin edition, face-down in front of your computer monitor, and began to reach for it. before i could read the title on the spine you slid in front of me, blocking my view. "don't look at that," you said, eyes twinkling. a week ago you'd said, "i got you something." i was, still am, not ready to receive gifts from you. part of me wanted to run. it must've been the look on my face that made you add, "don't worry, it's something small." you're a chatterbox. i listen while you speak, amused and saying nothing, wondering how long you'll talk before you run out of words. it's a game i'm playing with myself. much of the time i'm surprised by what you say. the floors are hardwood, sleek and warm. a black kitten with a white splotch on his chest and glowing green eyes scrutinizes me from the computer chair. lazing about in your bed on top of faded black sheets, i'm still not ready for gifts but i enjoy your strange and sometimes unanswerable questions. i am quiet here, but it's a settled, safe quiet. when we are close together i take off my glasses. we are so close that i don't need them to learn your face. twice now you've said that you've been hurt in the past, but like so many others it's a statement you skate easily over, so i don't know if i'm supposed to ask you to tell me about it or just wait for you to decide you're ready tell to me. while we waited for indian take-out to arrive, we laid close together on your bed, facing each other. "do you like me? or do you like-like me?" you asked. the answer is so obvious that for a moment i'm silent, trying to decide how to respond, how earnest to be. i don't know how much of this question is a joke, which is something that happens a lot with you. "well, i like indian food," i said. "for chrissake." you were laughing, kind of. "i like indian food," i said again, "and i like-like you. why would you even ask me that?" "oh, i don't know." 221206 ... kerry another evening on barstools, this time eating dim sum under pink lights. i'm continuously surprised by how much you tell me, especially after vague comments like "a bad thing that happened." little morsels, nothing that makes me pause, but that feel intimate all the same. what a good cook your mother was, that you learned how to use chopsticks as a child. (my mother, on the other hand, was an unadventurous cook, leaving me to explore various cuisines on my own.) i struggled with the chopsticks but was too self-conscious to ask for a fork. determined not to admit defeat. how you're "an uncle who never sees his niece," how you busted your head open as a kid when you and your brother were leaping between couches you'd turned upside down. how your parents who fell in love as teenage gymnasts in the junior olympics, had you, and drifted apart and then back together again. later, you said, "i saw that look in your eyes." i laughed nervously. "i didn't give you a look, whatever that means." "yes, you did. you know the look," you said, your face both gentle and victorious. i told myself i have no memory of this. i told myself i never give my thoughts away, that i keep my feelings entirely to myself, but it's not true. i turned away, gazed at the ceiling. part of me regretted the look. another part of me felt helpless. "oh well," i thought. said nothing. last night i had a dream you found this blathe. you skimmed my words narrow-eyed while i sat on the floor feeling suddenly totally naked. humiliation, dread, then resignation. you said "hmm" and put it down, wandered away to do something else. 221212 ... kerry you said thinking about someone else this often is uncomfortable for you because it's very uncommon. i said the same. you said the idea of depending on another person was terrifying to you. i said the same. 221220 ... kerry it had been a couple weeks. though we'd talked several times while i'd been out of town i realized standing in front of your door under an iron gray sky that i was feeling nervous. the doorbell doesn't work. i always have to call or text you to come let me in. i can hear you clattering down the wooden stairs, open one wooden door and then the iron one. the floor is always covered in mail. your green bicycle is locked to the stairs, its back tire deflated. you say you've been too lazy to repair it. there are little balls of cat hair and dust in the corner of the stairs. the drk wooden table has been pulled out from the corner--you threw a small party the night of the first, since you'd had to work on new years eve. you'd called me that night, stumbling home, exhausted, frustrated. you stayed on the phone while you went into 7/11 in search of snacks and i listened while you paid for a frozen pizza at the cash register. there's death metal blasting from the speakers and the black cat is perched on top of the bookshelf. as usual i go straight for the sink, get a glass of water. you don't have enough furniture. you don't have a lamp. i feel somewhat shy. i'm wearing a black velvet blazer and a blouse i got from the sari shop with emily when i was in atlanta, black boots, seamed black pants. before i came over i sat on the rug and massaged leather oil into those boots until they were shining and soft. when you'd said you wanted to take me out, wine me and dine me, i said i don't get dressed up for anybody so you better feel special and you said oh yeah? is that so? we go to japanese cafe downtown, where there is an unmarked izakaya downstairs. it's so dim we can barely read the menu. we get the tasting menu--i've never done this before--and what they bring is a surprise, whatever the chef decided to create on a whim, and it is delicious. after dinner we trot down the wet sidewalks of the gayborhood in search of a bar you love that turns out to be shuttered. we wind up at dirty franks, a cash-only dive. you and the bartender complain about the jukebox playing "rumours" over and over. we put a crisp dollar in the jukebox and pick three songs. i only remember two of the three songs we chose, "sound and vision," some filthy 90s rap song i forget the name of, but i do remember you interrupting yourself to dance next to me where i sat on a barstool laughing until my stomach hurt and later the feeling of both our hands in the left pocket of my blazer. 230104 ... kerry impromptu lunch at triangle tavern. it's dim and the barstools are too low for the bar; i feel like a little kid. "fletch," a 1985 chevy chase movie, is playing on the screen, subtitled. at the bar are mostly older men in flannels drinking beer and reading the subtitles or staring into space. a woman called waffles takes our order--a meatball sub with raw onions and a burger, cooked medium, no cheese. ("waffles? what kind of a name is that?" a name for a cat, i think, but i don't say it out loud. "i've known her for 15 years and her name is kelly but she always introduces herself to people as waffles so i follow suit.") waffles has baby bangs and wears a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. she looks like someone you wouldn't want to fuck with. she's a pool shark, plays on a team. ("i got my ass beat real bad the other day," she says, "and i hear my team talking shit about me, and i'm like guys, i'm standing fucking 10 feet away, don't you think i can hear you?" she rests her chin on her fist. "don't we all get our asses beat sometime or another?" he says. she nods, slowly. "sure, we sure do.") he says he had a weird dream last night. i'm looking at his overbite while he tells me about it. there are some things about him that i find unattractive on their own but combined with the things i like, it all fits together neatly like a puzzle. i suppose, if we're being honest, we can't like every single thing about anyone. this is something i'm learning as i get older. he dreamed someone was teaching him how to be a wizard. something about water, and a man made out of stones. there's a whole narrative there. i said i dreamed about snow. "snow? just... snow?" there was more to it, there was a whole landscape of snow and some people i know and love and some people i created and loved in my dream, and some facial expressions i remember--hope, anticipation, understanding--and there was ice and a creek with slick rocks and beyond there was a frozen blue lake, but i don't feel like struggling to describe all of that in a way that would make sense to anyone besides me. "pretty much, yeah. snow." 230208 ... kerry he said was telling his friend chris about me. he did this thing again where he almost says something and then says he's not going to say it and i say obviously you want to tell me and then he gives in. i don't know how intentional it is. i know he has a tendency to think before he speaks. he told chris there was something about me, about us, that made him nervous. he said he was worried that he's so excited about all this not because of what it is and because of who i am but because of what it isn't and who i'm not. apparently he said chris told him to stop doing that thing where he looks for something wrong because he's afraid of being happy. i asked if chris was right and he said yes, chris is always right about the stupid shit i do. 230319 ... kerry his mother is dying. she's been dying for years now. he wants me to meet her and this seemed more urgent after she had a stroke a couple months ago, but it kept not happening and not happening, and while it's kind of a trek, an event, since she lives out in lancaster and neither of us drives, i thought he'd changed his mind. i also didn't understand why he hadn't gone over there himself. she can still speak, is still herself, but doesn't a stroke mean maybe more strokes? he said i should nag him about it, it wouldn't bother him because he keeps forgetting, and i said that's not my job though i did ask him once. then i decided not to anymore. we were lying on his bed, eating raspberries and crackers with hummus and sour worms. i asked why he hadn't at least gone himself, and did he change his mind about me going, because if he did it was okay, but at least tell me. "it's a hard thing to understand," he said, looking away from me. "i've kind of come to terms with it. i freaked out a long time ago. so many surgeries, watching her get weaker, plus she has my sister to take care of her. what really worries me is getting that damn will done, cause i don't want my brother and my dad swooping in and making a mess out of what's left once she's gone. i don't want anything, maybe a book or two, i don't even want the house, let kari have it. i just don't want the fighting." i know she lost both her breasts a long time ago. she doesn't have the strength to kayak anymore. she smokes marlboro reds, always has, and has developed an interest in chinese soap operas, which he finds amusing. he's right, it's hard to understand. i don't know what it's like to watch a parent slowly disappear. i wonder what he will be like when she finally dies. i wonder what he will need. when she had the stroke he texted me at 7:45 am, something like "call me when you're up. it's important." he sounded weird on the phone. he made me a key to his place in case he has to leave so someone can feed the cat. in the dark hardware store, the key resting cold in my palm, i didn't know how to describe the emotion in me. but it was like leaping, perhaps into a body of water, but time has slowed down and you're still in the air. he was kind of blank, though. he said he was hungry. the other day around 10am i was on the train going to work. he texted me "call me when you have a chance." my chest was tight. then my phone buzzed again. "it's not an emergency." i called him as i was ascending the stairs, climbing into the heat. he was laughing. "sorry for that first text. i realized you probably thought my mom was dead." and then he said he talked to her on the phone and how about next weekend, let's take the bus out there, she was pretending not to be excited but she said she'd look for a hotel since she has something like five cats and i'm incredibly allergic. "i just have to find someone to feed doom. i'm gonna ask rob." he texted me late that night. "we're good to go." that was it. 230724 what's it to you? who go blather from