Before He Goes Down

This Monday, I found out that Uncle Bob died.  I spoke to his children on the phone, my cousins, who seemed grateful in that way you do when an illness goes on too long and your nerves are tied up in balls; when after tripping over anxious moment after moment, the news finally arrives, the body sighs, and the silence settles in.

I didn’t go to the funeral because the scheduling and driving would have been bad.  Too much coffee, too much bustling, too much forgetting, too much strategizing…all so I could tell cousins I haven’t seen for years that I cared.  I called them instead.  They seemed grateful of the fact that there was one less person they had to thank for condolences that they really…that no one really ever wants.

So instead of going there, I pretended that Uncle Bob was with me all day on Tuesday…a funny thought because trotting around with a gay New Yorker is the last thing that U. Bob would have done.  Still, death must have loosened him up because I felt a distinct presence.  We drove together to my account in Long Island and with his help I turned an incredibly bad situation around.  After that, I came back to the city and enjoyed two successful business calls, a quick stop at the gym, and some productive, smart work on the computer over a martini and a small meal.  Then, like cards played out in a perfectly stacked deck and the evening was magic

I’ll tell you a short story, but I’m not sure why.  About three years ago, I met this cute jew-boy.  Couldn’t have been more than 20.  He’d been flirting with his homosexuality for years and I was his first plunge.  After a day of laughing and fake spars and too many touches that were supposed to be casual, he was back in my apartment and we were kissing very softly.  After a few minutes, he took my hand in his and held it up next to my face.  Then as though being lowered into a pit, he slowly sank to his knees.  He never stopped looking at me and that look I’ve never forgotten nor really ever understood.  A challenge?  A plea?  I don’t know.

Back at the farm, I’m watching my dog trot merrily through icy fields.  In her mouth she carries the bloody entrails of a recently gutted deer.  The paradox is disturbing.  The golden, morning light reflected not only off each white, frosty blade and her own truly satisfied self, but off the rust-red and dried blood of these ripped guts. For all I know, that deer once trotted those same fields, maybe as recently as one week ago, and now this upside down, inverted turn of events; this implosion of life or what we think is life:  same trot, same field, same guts, entirely different happening.

I have read that once decapitated, the head remains alive for a bit, staring, blinking, wondering at it’s own bodiless self.  I think about Uncle Bob come to live for a day in New York City and me in bed lost with a man who feels like a woman.  In the end, how will the others and I be?  The same march of petulant thought, the same clamor of squalls, but this time through the back of our eyes and through ways inside we never thought possible.