Happy New Year (Emerging Writer’s Contest Winner: NONFICTION)
Our nonfiction winner is Ennis Smith, for his piece “Happy New Year.” This year’s nonfiction judge was Elisa Gabbert. Of Smith’s essay, she writes:
This beautiful, swift, and complex portrait of a friend (“if that’s what you called that in-between place where ex-lovers lived”) is also a remembrance for times and places lost, for youth and freedom, “that past full of risk and careless joy,” written in a stylishly refined, wise, and slightly bitter prose that puts me in mind of an art critic drawing on all the thought and pleasure of years, in a voice that breaks with emotion at times—it gave me chills.
Ploughshares Marketing Associate Ciera Miller wrote the following questions for Smith about his piece and process.
Ciera Miller: What inspired you to include lyrics from the Pink Floyd song, “Wish You Were Here,” for your epigraph?
Ennis Smith: Dan, the focus of this piece, was a big fan of Pink Floyd. He taught me an appreciation for the group, and respect for art rock in general. That song, like my piece, is about loss, and the lyrics give a nice foreshadowing of the inevitable without my having to name it. Those two men are saying goodbye to a shared past, just as they’re saying goodbye to each other, in a way. The last line of the song—”Running over the same old ground, what have we found? The same old fears, wish you were here”—echoes their relationship dynamic.
CM: Because you include lyrics in the beginning, what music did you listen to while writing “Happy New Year”?
ES: Pink Floyd’s soundscape evokes a particular feeling because of our shared affinity for the group, so I listened to them a lot. Finding myself in the midst of caregiving felt surreal, which is their stock in trade. Though I’m a musician, I’m not big on listening to music as I write. But in the moments I spent stewing vs. actual writing, everything from Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were” to Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” to The Police’s “King of Pain” played in my head. Any music that evokes the feeling as well as the when, or historical timeframe, of what I’m writing can be useful.
CM: Did anything surprise you while you were writing this piece?
ES: I didn’t go into it with any preconceived notions of structure or theme. I like to stick to simple goals; my aim with this was just to chronicle the day. It surprised me how quickly the shape of it evolved into a toggling between the present and the past.
CM: What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?
ES: Susan Cheever, my first year MFA writing instructor, encouraged us to plagiarize ourselves. Revisit your old ideas or abandoned drafts. The distance of time might spark a new perspective on an earlier attempt; sometimes you can resuscitate it, write it better.
*
So, so you think you can tell heaven from hell? Blue skies from pain?
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
—Roger Waters, “Wish You Were Here”
We were in our twenties then, stoned on cheap beer and homegrown weed but I remember the joke. Hanging out in our first New York apartment, Dan was spinning an elaborate fantasy about wanting to retire to a communal house once he’d reached his doddering years. Certain details of this fantasy were nonnegotiable: the place had to have a porch, rooms to accommodate guests, and a field of marijuana to beat back all the aches and pains sure to accompany late-life infirmity. He’d call it The Peak, the same name he’d given to the Cincinnati house he’d shared with fellow Beta Alpha Gammas George and Rodney after they graduated from DePauw. His hope was that the three of them would live out their last years on this imaginary plot, but on that Manhattan night he expanded his dream of The Peak to include me. He reasoned thus: “Well, of course you’ll have to come,” he’d said. “You’re younger than us, which means that when we’re incapacitated, you’ll still be in good shape, and, well … every estate needs a family retainer.”
It was funny but offensive, and to make my point, I whacked him hard on his arm. His yelp made me laugh. He’d say stuff like that to get a rise out of me. It didn’t matter that he had two degrees under his belt. His humor—sophomoric, hazily racist—proved you could take the white boy out of Michigan but no amount of education could erase an inheritance he wore like a tattoo.
That had been ten years before. As we sat in Washington Square Park on a frigid New Year’s Day, I wondered if he remembered that night, or the joke. In those months the language of humor had left us, not that there was anything to laugh at. At age thirty-six, I’d been his primary caretaker for almost a year. I shopped for him, coordinated his care, and took him for walks while managing our small army of friends who’d rallied to pitch in. No doubt I wore the ravages of worry and sleeplessness like someone perpetually hung over. As for him, one would be shocked to learn that he was only two years older. AIDS had made him ancient and broken; tucked in his wheelchair, he’d resembled some frightening male dowager, a Citizen Kane whose rosebuds now dangled from his chest, those feeding ports through which he now received medications and his primary nutrients. We’d left what had become his phantom limb—an IV pole—behind.
We were a long way from how we began. Gone were the two men who’d met in college, fell in love, moved to New York, and lived together happily until Dan grew restless and left. What people saw on that New Year’s Day was a black guy in a skullcap and a thrift shop greatcoat sitting next to a white guy in a wheelchair, swaddled in navy blue wool and a baseball hat, his size nines dangling from the footrests. To a stranger, maybe I was what Dan had once hoped I’d be, a retainer keeping watch over his charge. I was something more. We were friends, if that’s what you’d call that in-between place where ex-lovers lived. I was the one who stuck around, who forfeited a holiday trip or invitations to New Year’s Day parties to keep the first man I ever loved company, a man whose restlessness had turned him into someone not quite young, or able, anymore.
From our bench we squinted against the sun’s glare as wind-whipped faces rushed by in a blur. The park was filled with people: boyfriends with girlfriends; couples pushing strollers filled with pastel bundles; rainbow-or-black-hair-dyed grunge artists. All of them crisscrossed and dodged one another, shortcutting through the park on the way to a movie at the Angelika, a festive brunch at a restaurant, or maybe a friend’s open house. Flocks of pigeons alighted on ground beneath trees splayed like claws against the sky. They pecked in vain; I saw no lingering traces of what had been New Year’s Eve—maybe the wind swept up the celebratory remnants and whisked them away, leaving only cigarette butts and a few dry leaves.
The night before we’d made plans. In the afternoon I’d come down from our old place in Washington Heights, bundle him in his wheelchair, and take him to the park where we’d have privacy in public. On the phone he’d said he wanted to see his neighborhood, but I could tell that what he really wanted was to escape his loft’s claustrophobic vibe. His folks were two people too many for a loft that barely held him and enough medical equipment to stock a hospital ward. I could ease their crowding, if only for an afternoon—push the wheelchair, take him to a restaurant, give him the gift of sunlight and fresh air. I could take him to the world.
It’d been hard to get them to leave Dan’s apartment, their fear the fuel for what I could only describe as a kind of self-entombment. Their seclusion read as penance, a deliberate foregoing of pleasure for the sake of appearances. The way his mother held her head when she’d brush off our offers to sit with him was a performance of nobility: don’t worry about us, we’ll just stay with our sick son. It didn’t matter that I and his friends had cared for him for a year before they even knew he’d been sick, or that it was his choice to keep his illness from them until its progression made telling them a necessity. Having colluded in the deception/omission, we were not to be trusted. Their one-upmanship: “Well, now this place is truly clean,” Joyce declared after her swipe at housekeeping, implying that without her, we’d let him wallow in filth.
Her focus on cleanliness was a defense against all the city represented. Manhattan—the city where her son had gotten sick through means that were unspeakable—loomed as a threat. So did I, and all of his friends, an unavoidable fact we experienced in every conversation, when they weren’t holding us at arm’s length. They wore their Midwestern superiority as a shield. Never in the history of the world had we been so talked down to, making it clear that we were oblivious (“How can you live in such an expensive city?”) and irresponsible (“So you’re an artist—does that pay anything?”).
The idea of an adventure excited him, but it wasn’t a promise I was sure I could deliver. I expected his folks to resist. But Joyce and Bill, begrudgingly, went along with it. His mother wanted him to wear his father’s coat out, but Dan chose one that had once belonged to me. A Chesterfield, they used to call it, made of wool with raglan sleeves. You could buy one in any thrift shop—I’d pulled it from a rack at Canal Jeans, though neither of us was able to affect that staple of ’80s style, rolled up sleeves, because our long arms made us look silly. Its frayed wool cuffs gave away its age as something dating back before we were born. The thick tweed had been a drab brown speckled with white, but I had it dyed navy blue. Somehow the coat became his. In it he resembled a very tall crow, an image enhanced by his large beaked nose and how he always walked at a clip, conjuring a wind that flared its folds into ersatz wings.
The wings were at rest, shrouding his shrunken frame. As I pulled up his coat collar, he gazed across the park. Kids and couples rushed by, laughing, laden with the spirit of the day. Behind them rose that northern border of redbrick townhouses, a splash of color on an otherwise gray canvas. I imagined him taking mental snapshots to file for reference once he was back, though maybe he was peering at something else: sadness or merely physical discomfort, which made me question whether the decision to bring him outside wearing only the coat was wise. Maybe I should have made him wear a thicker hat or brought a blanket, not that I could convince him to use it. Weak as he was, Dan would’ve balked. Still, maybe he was dreaming himself forward, beyond winter to those days when the park’s magnificent trees would burst with leaves. I told myself we’d be back, dressed in shorts perhaps, witnesses to the first buds. I propelled to the future, thinking that for his birthday—in May—I’d buy him a new pair of Nikes, something comfortable that wouldn’t aggravate his neuropathy.
I can’t remember which one of us decided it was time to leave. Soon we fell into the flow of people on the sidewalks; his wheelchair thumping over the cracks, we headed toward the exit on Washington Place. When we reached the corner of Greene Street Dan asked to stop. He’d shown me this spot years earlier: it was the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. As we read the building marker in silence, I wondered whether he was sharing a slice of the life he’d lived in the neighborhood. Surely he’d passed this landmark often on the way to his local Red Apple, the Shakespeare & Co. bookstore on Broadway, or a night at The Cock in search of a new fuck. Did he stop every time? The building loomed like a tombstone, a lonely expanse of blond-brown bricks and windows empty of light.
Like a summoning ghost, a quick wind hissed. This was hallowed ground, from that corner stretching back to Washington Square Park, a former graveyard that had also been used for public hangings. I learned that from him, too, and allowed it to mingle with our own history on these streets. As young actors, we spent marathon days at the Public Theater, showing up for open calls, being assigned a number that wouldn’t be called until the afternoon. We’d wander around before winding our way back to the theater to wait with other actors for an audience with some assistant who hadn’t an iota of clout, let alone the power to cast us in their shows.
Farther east was McSorley’s. On Sundays we’d treat ourselves to a pitcher of beer and a platter of cheese served with thin slices of onion and crackers, a real splurge back when neither of us had much money. Afterward we’d walk up and down St. Mark’s Place, weaving in and out of tiny shops crammed with hysterical drug paraphernalia—like a plastic bong molded in the form of a naked woman that he’d purchased as a gift for a Midwestern pal.
Color and chaos, all gone, but so vivid in my mind’s eye that I wanted to wheel Dan beyond this East Village back into that past full of risk and careless joy. When the sidewalks on the Bowery hummed with crazies and addicts, where burnouts mingled seamlessly with NYU students, day-trippers from Jersey, and squatters pushing carts of useless stuff, all of us wading past each other through the stink and garbage. When, having had our fill of the carnival, we’d wander back through the park over to Christopher Street for the number 1 local back to our first New York apartment: two-and-a-half rooms on Riverside Drive in Washington Heights.
Turning left onto Broadway, another shock of wind made my eyes tear as Dan muttered a barely audible “Jesus.” Cozy Soup n Burger was open: it was a diner I’d passed a million times but had never gone inside. The place looked full, but once we entered, his wheelchair got a waiter’s quick sympathy and a table. Our arrival felt like a victory; having rescued us from the cold, I felt flushed with an odd, fresh happiness. I ordered two hot teas, vegetable soup, and a cheeseburger we opted to share.
We fell back into our quiet. Such silences had been a point of sensitivity between us. When they descended during our last year together, I’d told myself it was something relationships went through. I understand now that he knew we were ending. But then, all I knew was that our talk had stopped, and the reality of it filled me with an unbearable panic. Suddenly there were no more jokes or shared observations, no updates on happenings when we weren’t with each other. Lights out, just like that.
It stayed that way—tentative, careful—until he moved out, and we transitioned to a new “friends” version of ourselves. Slowly, what we’d shared came back. We could talk about theater, movies, books, our acquaintances and families. He came to see me perform, and pressed me to read the latest draft of whatever play he was writing. Occasionally he’d make a joke about someone I was dating, something like, “He’s cute, but what a blockhead.” I’d met a couple of his men, beautiful, fair-weather types who weren’t looking for anything serious, but I could never bring myself to voice an opinion about them. Too close: any observation would only court comparisons—to me, and I feared I’d only come up short.
We never talked about the nights that brought him to his present—the ones spent in backrooms where he reclined in after-hours slings while strangers sucked him off or invaded his insides with glee. I never shared my not-so-dissimilar life of sometimes thrilling, ultimately furtive encounters with men I’d met on subways and barstools. I was too ashamed of the lonely nights I tried to fill with the busy work of apartment chores, pretending to shrug off the hurt when men didn’t call. I didn’t want him to know how I’d been rebuffed by the men I’d loved with the hope they’d love me back the way he had. He would not confess regret at letting me go, or acknowledge, as I had to myself, that we’d been each other’s great love. Love would’ve been a cruel thing to discuss. Maybe it would happen for me one day, but Dan would have no more courtships. No more romance.
Once his illness confined him to his apartment he no longer had much energy for words. Was he thirsty? Cold? Did he itch? Was he tired, or in pain? It got so that I no longer needed to be told. I could glean his needs from the look in his eyes. It worked both ways. Often I’d look too long, and when he caught me I tried to disguise my fretting with a reassuring smile. Sometimes he’d smile back, or pout, as if to say, yep it’s hell. I know.
When our meal came, he just stared at the plates. The days had passed when he’d made such a big stink because his head hurt from hunger. Life would lurch to a halt, just so he could shove something in his mouth. His relief was always a big performance—I’d laugh when he closed his eyes as a repertoire of overdone moans and sighs spilled from his food-stained lips. He was the king of cheap eats: a stack of toasted white bread slathered with butter; burger and noodles with chopped onion; a pan of macaroni and cheese, the four-boxes-for-a-dollar kind from the local Foodarama.
In college it was over a Coke and a cheeseburger that he’d offered himself to me—be my boyfriend—so simply as we sat in the campus food court surrounded by students preoccupied with scoring joints, trips to Europe, and work-study jobs. What followed were Domino’s Pizza nights, convenience store stops in his Ford Pinto as his beloved Pink Floyd blared from the car’s cassette deck. Riding the gravy train wailed the car’s speakers as we ate Doritos on our way to a movie, or his studio apartment to make love.
The waiter broke the spell, asked if we wanted anything else. I ordered more tea. When he walked away, Dan broke our silence with the subject of his mother, Joyce. How she saw his illness as his personal failing. How she moaned about the unforgivable way he let her down. Her demand that he not just lie there, confusing since the neuropathy brought on by the drug DDL left him unable to stand. Did she expect him to go to a gym, or go back to work? Her threats to take him back to Ohio, away from his friends, and “this filthy city.” His hurt was palpable, and I thought how eternal, the way gay men are tyrannized by hopes of an acceptance that rarely came from their families. He’d been their big investment. I thought, how exhausting to have parents who’ve pinned all their hopes and dreams on an only child who wouldn’t give them grandchildren, who’d instead become an inconvenience, a wrench in their plans for a standard-issue retirement. Only a week before, they’d left him to go on some trip (“We’d had these plans for months,” Joyce said), leaving him in the hands of his friends.
Music began to play—it was something soft and vaguely classical. Outside, the East Village afternoon faded into early night. Inside, people murmured; stainless steel pinged against porcelain plates and coffee cup walls as the restaurant filled for dinner. I don’t think either of us wanted to leave, but we’d been gone awhile and he showed signs of fatigue—he had such a short shelf life by then—so I asked for the check, unfolded his cumbersome wheelchair, and sat back down. He stared at me. I looked back and held his gaze. His eyes were the standard by which I’d forever judge a man’s attractiveness. Protrusions of bone pushed against his parchment skin, but the restaurant’s glow eased his wizened look. The twenty-two-year-old boy—the one with funny ears, a once-broken nose, and lips set at perpetual sneer, who’d ambled barefoot into my life too many springs ago—emerged, a welcome trick of the light. I put on my coat. He’d never taken his off.
Wheeling him down Waverly Place, I instinctively glanced up at the row of fire escapes on his building’s façade. Last summer, my long distance runs from our old place in Washington Heights would end here; turning off Fifth Avenue, I’d look up to see him propped up against a pillow, reading, wearing his bandana. From the street, I could see his legs, once long objects of desire that had dwindled to bones and skin. I’d let myself in, grab a glass of water, and join him, our small talk drifting in and out of the conversations wafting up from the street below. I stayed no longer than half an hour, afraid he’d read my lingering as neediness, anathema in the land of friends who used to be lovers.
Joyce waited at the door of his loft, her eyes narrowed in a reproach she tried to disguise with concern. Once we settled Dan on the sofa, Joyce and Bill retreated to his kitchen, busying themselves with Lean Cuisine. I listened to them clang the pots around, argue over whether a salad was too much food, and the correct oven temperature. The television was on, turned low, some sports thing. I took off his shoes, and put his feet on my lap. Covering them with a blanket I rubbed them back to warmth. So small they felt, like a child’s, and I probed deeper in search of what was once familiar—his high arch, a hint of callus on his heel and the ball just below his stubby big toe.
He pulled away from me. I worried that I’d hurt him somehow, but he was rearranging himself so that his head would rest in my lap. Such a public display of affection had been unlike him. But with his parents less than fifteen feet away, he curled up with barely a sigh—he no longer cared about appearances. He closed his eyes.
His head in my lap. That was how we began. I was nineteen and we’d known each other less than a month when he invited me back to the house he shared with his housemates to run lines for a play he’d been cast in. We’d had a beer or two, were talking about nothing I can remember, before he laid down his head with the same ease. I kept talking, but he just looked at me, his blue-gray eyes wide before he reached up and pulled my face to his, just as I hoped for from the moment we met.
While Joyce and Bill puttered behind us, he lay still and quiet. His eyes opened briefly then closed, defeated by the effort. I put my hand on his head. So soft—his wisps of hair, the patches of skin covering the dips in his skull. My Sleeping Beauty, except there was no magic kiss to wake him up, sweep away the briars, and turn back the clock to the way it was. He was.
When I got up to go, I left him on his sofa, asleep. On the way to the train I walked back along Washington Square Park. I remember a hazy night where the cold had painted everything blue, and I could barely feel my face. Warm amber light spilled from those townhouse windows. I imagined the people inside, lit with drink and the love of their husbands, wives, and children. Then laughter from somewhere beyond the trees, buttoned by happy shouts. It was a New Year’s Day sound, and I turned to look for the source. The voices were loud, then soft, before fading. Silence.
