You See, That's the Point

I remember being tired but not wanting to go to sleep. I fell into my seat. Tucked the seatbelt into the cushion and opened the window shade. Then closed it. I pulled out a book and stared at the words. A long line of people kept passing me. I thought I might doze off. A bag thumped down next to me. I turned and looked up. An older man. He was bony and didn’t have much hair left. I tried to read again. He kept scrambling around with his stuff. Finally, he settled. I closed my eyes. I wasn’t sure if I had fallen asleep. I hadn’t been sure all month.

“Sir, would you like a beverage?” the flight attendant asked. I thought for a second. “A screwdriver, please.” The man ordered a bloody mary. I think that was the first time I caught a glance from him. Maybe a smirk? I wondered whether it had danced away as quickly as it had arrived. She came back and handed each of us our drinks. I held the rim of it and looked out the window. The plastic cup stayed close to my lips. I kept staring out. Out there. It felt the same as those other times with the ginger ale. But I knew things weren’t the same. Would never be the same. And with that thought, his voice came through. “Nothing like a drink 30,000 feet up.” Followed by that long exhale that usually ended in a muffled cough. It sounded so clear. I rattled the cup a few times. Only the ice cubes were left and they were melting fast. Faster than the other man’s. He still had big chunks of them.

The flight attendant came by again a little later. “Another one?” she asked. “Yes,” the man said. I nodded. We sat there in silence. Waiting. But it felt different. The silence was now … something. She came back with the drinks. His first, then mine. His eyes followed her reach towards me. They looked tired but there was a spark of gloss in them. More silence. I looked out the window again. I remember noticing how oddly the clouds were shaped. Then a voice. “So, you live in Charlotte?” he asked. I could see his reflection in the window now. I turned. “No, just visiting my—mother. I was born and raised here though.” He nodded his head, eyes getting wider. “It used to be home for me too, back in the ’70s, if you can believe that. It’s changed so much since then. The piece of land that my childhood house once sat on is now just asphalt—a parking lot for an arcade or brewery. But it might be an entirely different sort of hell if it all stayed the same,” he said. His face seemed to brighten.

He asked me what I was doing in New York. I told him what I did for work, how I very much disliked it. How it felt like I had stumbled into it. Had done all the “right” things and landed in hell. He chuckled. “You sound just like my daughter, Joanna. She did the whole corporate thing too for a while. They tried keeping her in the golden handcuffs. She was working at a media agency in Chicago and finally called me one day and told me she had quit, how she couldn’t take it anymore. I flew up that day to see her, and we got dinner to celebrate,” he said.

I asked him what he did. He told me he was a film and theater director. “The money's always tight and the schedule unpredictable,” he said. “But it always felt like the only way, the only real path for me. I remember my father being upset, for a long time, but that was just that and we figured out a way forward.” I’m not quite sure what else we spoke about. I probably talked about music and film, mentioning all the stuff I liked. Trying to impress him. Looking back on it, I’m sure he caught on quickly, but I could tell he liked me. That he was interested in me. God, how I needed that then. Something other than all the apologies. And I had felt ashamed even thinking how all the sorries and prayers meant nothing to me, did nothing. These were nice people, sincere people and they meant well. They had cared about him and me, but I was tired of it.

The wheels slammed down onto the tarmac. A woman screamed. But we were fine. The man looked at me with a worried face. I probably looked confused. Then he chuckled, lower this time, and smiled. I smiled back. Really smiled. “My name’s Allen by the way,” he said. He stuck out his hand. I shook it. His grip was weak and his fingers drooped. And yet there was something distinctly warm about it. Dad had always said, “The measure of a great man is in his handshake, so be firm and strong.” But maybe there was another measure. Something in the spoken word. Allen gave me his email and told me to reach out sometime. I told him I would.

I think a few months went by before I emailed him. I was in the same place mentally. Maybe a little better? It was hard to tell during that time. My message was short. I told him I’d been thinking about him, our conversation. How I hoped he was doing well and told him I’d be back in Charlotte the following week. “Would be great to grab lunch if free,” I recall typing. He emailed me back late the following night in that same distinct style of his. Warm. Inviting.

We met at a Thai restaurant on the east side of Charlotte. We sat down, this time across from one another. “So, we meet again,” he said. A big smile. The overhead fluorescent lights made his features more pronounced. Sharper. Narrower. Tom Kha for him, Pad Thai for me. Singahs for both of us. He told me about a new documentary he was working on. About a church in New York. “I’m not religious in the slightest,” he said. “But I’m so interested in the horizontal component. We about the vertical component of religion—you and God, your understanding of higher things. But it also has a very strong horizontal component too: just hanging out with other people,” he said. I think at one point in my life, I’d convinced myself that I hated religion. Especially the people. Such dogma. But I heard his words clearly. It was like he stood 10 feet out in front, holding the door open, gracefully, motioning me in and telling me to look around. Never where to look. Just to look.

These occasional meetups lasted for another three years. In places all over but mostly New York. There was the time that I met him in Santa Fe. He was directing a Chekhov play: Uncle Vanya. Theater had never been my jam. Incapable of going some place outside myself. But hanging around the set was infectious. They talked about whether there was a God and what we were really doing here. And they joked. Someone was always laughing. Then there was the time we met in Charleston. I remember just having seen My Dinner with Andre. That’s all I could think about as we ate. I hadn’t liked that Wally character. Allen seemed like my Andre.

Then there was the time we met in Bend. His daughter lived there with her husband. He told me all these stories of being a father. Joanna went pale and plugged her ears. We laughed a lot then too. He talked about the responsibility of raising a child. What it did to your psyche. How it changed your perception of reality. “This is how I see it,” he said. “You know, I’ve always sensed that we, in the West, got it completely wrong. People think we were born into the world. We were born out of it. Joanna was just another beautiful wave that the ocean produced. And I can’t control a wave. I just know I love the ocean.” And we’d go fishing every day in the Deschutes River. Sitting around a real campfire at night. The shadows danced on our foreheads. I noticed how the light needed the dark to be recognized as light. That was another one of Allen’s Eastern philosophy snippets. He had a lot of those.

I was back in New York. Sitting at my desk one day. We’d been experiencing a brutal winter. I was constantly blowing my nose. And I’d have to get up and go to the bathroom to make sure nothing was too exposed up there. I was standing in the bathroom, looking at my red nose. How awful it looked. I pulled out my phone and scrolled. A new message from joannau13@gmail.com. No subject line. I read it. Then read it again. I looked at myself in the mirror. Stared for a long time. My eyes became glossy, like that first time on the plane, then wet. I just kept staring. I moved the mirrors around. I could see myself from the right and the left. If I really tilted the mirror panes inward, my face appeared dozens of times, looking at one another in some sort of huddle. At some point I heard a few soft knocks.

Some weeks passed. I still hadn’t responded to the email. Wasn’t sure what to say. Wasn’t sure what to do. One day I got another email from Joanna. She said how she hoped I’d reply soon and how she’d like to talk to me. She was certain this was the right address. She’d attached a word doc and said that while going through some of his stuff, she’d stumbled upon it and knew that he’d want me to have it. It read:

Dear J,

I haven’t been feeling well lately. At first, I thought I was just run down. Losing a little bit of steam. But it turns out I have a particularly nefarious viral infection that absolutely stopped me in my tracks and one morning made me call the EMTs who packed me off to an emergency care and then to a hospital. I was completely drained and know exactly how it happened with all the push of the last few months. But I'm not sick often, this is literally the first time in my life I've been a patient in a hospital. Which says how bad I felt.

I don’t know much about all these terms they throw around. This medical jargon. It makes me sick just hearing it. I guess whatever I had was worse than expected. Or it progressed into something more malicious. The doctors wanted me to stay longer but I just couldn’t do that. Staying cooped up wasn’t my answer. So, I decided to travel to Boston, where I’m writing this now. I haven’t been to Boston in a while and forgot how beautiful it is here. I fell asleep under a tree in the Common yesterday. What a lovely experience it is to fall asleep under a tree. Life is beautiful but also a mofo, which is why I appreciate these moments all the more (that’s the way of things). Hope you find a tree to fall asleep under real soon.

And one more thing. Take a shot when you find it. You’ll find it. Keep playing. Creating. The point being that you had the impulse to do something and that reason is good enough. The point being that the point will reveal itself. The point being that there is no point, there will be no answer, no progress or banner with your name on it, just the pure and fleeting feeling you get from it.

Talk soon,

Allen

I’m not sure how many months passed. Too many. Yesterday, I spent the whole day at graveyards and had two very different conversations. I was exhausted when I got home. The apartment was totally dark except for the little overhead light in the corner. Under it was a chair. A big, cozy chair. I walked over to it. Careful not to step on the amp cord and the scattered books and drawings. I sat down. I was tired and wanted to go to sleep. So, I closed my eyes and dozed off.