A Story of Leaving Chile

Good things can never last. I remember our last embrace. It was night and a cool breeze came from the open window that overlooked the interior courtyard of the house. I hugged him close as we lay on the bed, the TV was playing something pointless. I remember the softness and the gentleness, he brushed my hair, and I stared into his endless eyes. They were dark,  almost black in that twilight, like his straight, soft hair. His skin was the colour of coffee with cream in it. The beauty was unsupportable, so I looked away, but I felt free to feel his warmth, his body against mine.

We didn´t talk much but protected each other against the cold. I started to sob, slightly, the tears running over my cheek: tomorrow was another day, and I was leaving this country. This was the last taste of his sweetness I would have, the last kiss from his lips, the last chance to hold him in the gathering dark. I was going back to an old, hard place – New York. I knew her steel embrace quite well, I knew she would eat me up with a thousand chores, with the laundry, with buying food, with dieting, with broken elevators and bus conductors who didn´t speak English and policemen who didn´t care. I knew her shit would bury me, and I would lose the taste of sweetness on my mouth, the being and the soul that I held in my arms. It was as if the blood of my life would flow away; could I forget him? Is it a sin to leave real love?

It was in this way that I cried foolish tears; one must never let the ones one loves know it too well. He kissed me and wiped my tears. Who else has loved him? He turned around and held me in the bed, my head against his shoulder. The minutes passed like years – I made each second drag out in my mind. Perhaps the sun would never rise that night, and this would be the wonderful ending to a life of searching.

His hands were rough, big, powerful as they slip inside mine. I could see the sadness there behind the face I would have killed for. Eyes that are about to cry always seem larger, more vibrant, more alive, as if the feelings want to explode out of them. We are all very sensitive and alive in moments of acute sadness. He did not cry though, he turned his eyes away, and I mine. The sun was setting and gloom crawled into all corners, the light of the television was the only thing to reveal our two twisted forms in the dark; there was total silence.

A time passed, and I pushed myself away from him. It was late, and time to go home, to pack the last packets of shirts, to put toothpaste in clear baggies for the TSA, to wonder how I was going to give away everything, to take last looks at the skyline of Santiago from my balcony before I threw it all away.

When I arrived home nothing was done. I stuffed stuff into things, making rude bundles of memories and clothing that I had bought down the street from that nice old lady. I took a figurine that a friend had gifted to me. I left an expensive set of pots. There was a tea canister I bought for dollar. It came. There was a sweater that was now too large for me, it stayed.

The dawn came, and I had no rest. I texted people, telling them to come and take a slice of my life. Books, dishes, forks, a cushion, a desk chair, tables – all for them. I hugged them all goodbye. I met my lover again briefly downstairs, near the elevator. He was going up to grab a thing or two, and he suddenly hugged me in the elevator, kissed me, we lingered on the edge of things we shouldn´t say, but we said them with our bodies, with touch, looks and warmth. The doors opened and we were our normal selves – pretending not to die under the weight of the invisible.

Then I left, falling apart in the taxi to see my whole life crumpled into carry-ons. Whole eras of my life rolled by in the window, my office, the place where I went once to get breaded fish, the store where they overcharge foreigners, that café where I met my best friend in Chile for the first time, not to mention the bridge I would have to drunkenly stumble over on my way back from the clubs. A whole life in the palm of the hand, and all the people known during it, faces, names, laughs, the textures of their hands, the way they pronounced their words. Who leaves this?

New York was cold, rude, ordinary and occasionally fantastic. At once stiking and beautiful it was possible in the same day to have trash dumped on you in the street but then stand at night in awe of the lights of the city flying over the dark waters of the Hudson – lights that seemed to float between here and a dark heaven, a wonderful world that seemed almost mystical, to promise more.

By day all of that disappeared and it was all mean bosses and soggy, cranky clients. They wanted more for less money, and you were nothing. Big fat men, who noisily sloshed their tongues inside lazy mouths made decisions over your salary, your life, when you got to work – if you were hired. There was a sense of always being in the power of the other.

The nightlife was flaccid in many ways too. The liberating insanity of nights in other places, Rio, Buenos Aires, Santiago – was replaced by surly waitstaff and 18 dollar mojitos with very little alcohol.

Maybe it was something else that was really missing. Maybe folding towels had distracted me from the beauty I had experienced. Huge mountains that tower over Santiago and threaten it with destruction or wonderment at all times – the Andes, I could see them from my office window, always there suggesting a beautiful thing. Maybe it was that wonderful embrace, the secrets shared in the dark between two people who might have loved each other, the feeling of fear between us in that bedroom that only ever occurs when things start to matter dangerously.

It was there. I won´t let my parking fine make me forget it.

The other day I scraped the side of my car on the Wendy´s drive through. Am I meant to be here? What if he was here?

I had a dream:

He came to New York, but it ate him alive. I saw him, we touched hands, there was a bumping sound that his suitcase made as he pulled it toward the hotel. It was a black suitcase. His face was happy, but he didn´t know.

The next day a call came, he was lost, lost somewhere. I searched the endless twisting avenues as they turned grey, turned black, then turned back into their daytime hues. They cycle continued of normal lifes, and they did not take notice of a madman searching frantically. Questions were given to people afraid to see me. They mentioned his problems, his sadness, that maybe he killed himself and faded into oblivion.

Had it been years since arrived that day in the sunlight under the huge buildings of the city? Or had it been hours? Dream logic – nightmare logic – does not draw a difference.

The lost thing had to be found, to be collected up into my hands and arms like sand, to be splashed on my face. Like a ring of great worth and beauty, or a part of myself, an answer to a question.

When I awoke after this dream the world spun. I still thought it was real, that I had a mission and a thing to do today. I could make this a quest. I reached for my phone – remembered the real. I was just far; he was away, down there, with my memories. Safe? I sent some messages, and got a response. My silly self; what a fool I am.