Signals Fill The Void

Hey you.

            Just checked the weather in Philly. It’s about as cold up there as it is down here in the mountains. I’m sitting in my office between students, wondering where you are right now, wondering what fills those frozen moments between your waking and sleeping. I worry too much if you’re locked in up there, on some stretch of cold concrete, racing headlong from waking to dying. I hope you’re warm, that you’re safe, but somehow, I doubt you are. You don’t know it, but I wake up every morning lately, and the first thing I think about is how thankful I am to be housed, to have this warm room and a bed and a blanket to sleep beneath every night. I cannot imagine being without shelter right now. I don’t want to imagine it.

            And I hate that I have to imagine what it’s like for you.

            I think about you and the ways I wish we could turn this whole thing around and bring you home. The sad fact is, I’m not sure there will be any joyous homecoming for you. The chance that you’ll die in the streets and return home to your parents in a box seems far too likely. It makes me so angry. You have all the love in the world, so many chances, and so many people who would do anything for you, and yet here you are. Addiction and a twisted harm reduction logic has melted your goddamn brain into this self-denying, self-rationalizing sludge.

            Nightmares of what your life is like wake me up at night now, all tangled and sweaty in my sheets, wishing I could cross the distance between here and there, between sobriety and addiction, and just hold you close, keep you safe. 

            I remember when you visited me down here in the mountains one summer, back when I still lived on Chestnut Street. You hitched down from Philly. When your ride dropped you off on the sidewalk in front of my house, you were giddy, coming down from a few lines of coke he shared with you. Back then, it was funny. Just a little unhinged, and not yet a lifelong problem. Shit, babe, it didn’t even feel like a warning sign yet. Not back then. You dropped your bag on the sidewalk and lunged at me in a rush of frenzied joy. Our bodies smashed together, hugging so hard, so tightly, and so clumsily that I accidentally punched you in the face.

            Later that night we microdosed on mushrooms and went dancing at Café Bobo when they still held those debaucherous dance parties once a month. The drug kicked in and we took flight right as we finished getting ready. In a jumble of laughter and smiles so wide they felt like they would split the seams of our cheeks, we rushed down the stairs and out the door. Hallucinatory stars hung in the air as we raced down Broadway, crossing onto Lexington Avenue.

            My memories of the party are hazy a decade and a half later. I remember at one point feeling unnerved by the sweating, scantily clad hypersexuality of the crowd. You were there in a roiling sea of gyrating bodies, heavy with desire. Spinning in wild circles on the dancefloor, shaking your ass, pulling your top off to dance in your bra. In my heightened and vulnerable state, I remember watching you roll your tongue across your lips suggestively and something about it, some deep down fear that our recklessness, our unfulfilled hungers might be our downfall, chilled me, despite the thick heat of the room.

            We closed down the bar. I remember walking home through downtown in the small hours of the morning, and just feeling like the night was so fresh and alive with so many nocturnal freaks making their way home. Everyone laughing and calling out greetings and bidding one another to get home safe from all across the avenue. I hold the image, turn it over in my mind, and it calls me back to a time when Asheville felt so vibrant, teeming with magic and possibility. When it was the only place in the world I wanted to be.

            We got home and got into bed, lying awake and letting the lingering effects of the drug wash away like sweat washed clean in the shower. It was hot, so hot that night, I kept my windows open with a fan on, to little effect. The sounds of night’s ever so subtle shift to morning wafted through the window. We laid awake there, listening. You made a passing comment about wishing I was single, so we could at least jerk off together before we fell asleep. I laughed and leaned over and hit play on the stereo. Some lost song about bottles of gasoline lighting up the night filled my room, replacing the awkward silence.

Ravenous as I was to taste you, for your stifled moans to fill my room, I wasn’t single, and I had to be up in four hours for a dishwashing shift.

            And those nights of magic are gone now. Asheville is no longer the city it once was. Forever marred, carved into ordered, organized, homogenized rows carefully curated for consumption by the cruel hands of developers. The city I love, its lifeblood and its culture bled dry for profit, with the people who made it no longer able to afford to live there.

            And you. You are out there somewhere, lost in a swirling cycle of addiction, hunger and need never sated. I don’t know if those nights live on for you, if there’s any echo of them ringing in your ears wherever you are now. So I keep them warm and alive for both of us. Somewhere, you are still hopeful, vibrant, looking ahead, and full of possibility. Somewhere you are still warm and free and set loose on a street where everyone is smiling and wants you to get home safe.

            Somewhere the unvanquishable love between two friends still hangs glittering in the air.