Holy Wars

He didn’t live his life in complete darkness; he had one sixty watt bulb that he took with him from room to room, as needed. When his wife left him she left the coffeemaker but took the only can opener. He opened his coffee can with an ax, and then called me to tell me how angry he felt. I was surprised that she had left the coffeemaker, truth be told, but I later saw that the carafe was missing, and in its place was a pickle jar. It was easy to burn your hands pouring a cup.

He wore out a strip of carpet pacing back and forth in front of his computer, agonizing over the next sentence he was going to write. His work was of a quality so rarely seen it reaches cult classic status, but I never saw him finish anything in the six years we were friends. He would get so frustrated he would stop, or he would destroy, or he would hit the wrong button on the keyboard and accidentally delete chapters that had never been backed up to disc. He could never understand where they had gone, and after trying once to find eight months of work for him I gave up and let him stew. It was two weeks before he could speak.

One day his x-wife came and asked for the washer and dryer. He moved them for her. After that he threw his dirty laundry in the tub and showered on top of the clothes. I don’t know how he fit in that tub sometimes; the mountain would grow so large. When he finally got to the laundry it would be sage green with mold. He hung it out back on the fence to dry. It’s not often sunny here. That smell became a part of him.

What little funds he had were earmarked for smokes and coffee. He began to look as if he were dying, the way his clothes hung from his body. I don’t know if he ate anything except the food I brought him. The first time I carried the bags through the front door he admitted that his fridge wasn’t even plugged in; he was trying to keep the electricity bill low. He scrubbed a crusty plate with a dirty sock. With his back turned to me he ate over the sink. He offered to share, but I wasn’t hungry. I was scared to drink the coffee he poured from the pickle jar and placed before me. The next time that I came I remembered to bring toilet paper, and paper plates.

Sometimes, if I’d awakened from a bad dream with a panic attack, or if the hours had dripped by into the dead of night and I was still unable to calm myself down enough to fall asleep, I would dial his number. I would hear a mumbled, “just a sec”, then the flick of his lighter, a deep inhalation, a slow exhalation, and then his voice. He never got angered by my middle of the night calls and I finally stopped holding my breath and clutching the receiver to my ear until it ached. When I admitted that I had been doing that he remarked that most girls stopped that in junior high. He asked me which guy’s last name I had added after my first and scrawled on notebooks. I never ever told him the answer.

Some of the words he used were not familiar to me, so I would jot them down and look them up in the dictionary later. I was afraid he would find out I am not well educated. He tried to teach me about history, literature, sports, life, and human nature. I wanted him to teach me how to drive but I was too afraid to ask.

After four years of what he described as his first real friendship I got brave, or stupid, and told him that I loved him via a carefully written email. I lived inside my inbox all day, hitting refresh every time I passed the computer. It took him nine hours and eleven minutes to answer. “Be wise. Never profess God Feelings for a rat.” I cried until I thought my head would split open. Two more years would pass with him remaining the best friend I’d ever had, but we never mentioned me loving him or him not loving me.

Deep inside I knew I wasn’t smart enough, thin enough, pretty enough. I tried to read more and eat less. I stopped hiding behind phones and computer screens and saw him in person frequently. I admitted that I’d suffered from depression and panic disorder for years and that I’d never finished Finnegan’s Wake. I told him that I truly hated watching sports, it bored me horribly. I tried to let him in to see all of the parts I’d been hiding.

During a particularly rough patch in my life he told me to get down on my knees and to pray, to hand it all over to God. I yelled at him, “Don’t you think I haven’t tried that?” He accused me of being secular and I was seething, although I had to double check the meaning in the dictionary later, just to be certain.

One night he asked me if I had ever been so in love that I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, could hardly breathe, and could think of nothing else but being with that person. At first I lied and said no, but then I admitted that I had indeed felt that way before, and that I never wanted to feel that way again, because that isn’t love, it is sickness. He laughed, and I was angry again.

In the end I was the one who ended it, but I still imagined he would contact me again. I had somehow forgotten the times he had told me that he’d never chased after a woman who expressed no more desire to be with him. I went back to live in my inbox again, reading every email I had ever sent him and every response. Four years into the archives I cringed as I read my voice admitting that I’d fallen in love with him, and had been for years. Thinking that I knew his response by heart I was surprised to see, after the bit about being wise, and never professing god feelings for a rat, another sentence: “Don’t pout until you’ve heard the punch line.”

Almost four years later, I sometimes wish that I could pick up the phone and call him, admit that I still don’t get the joke.

Tagged as: friendship, Love