I Loved You More

by Tom Spanbauer

When you say goodbye to someone you love, maybe if you say something crazy, something true, maybe he won’t stop loving you.

Somebody who does that. Reveals you to yourself. You can’t help but love.

It was a feeling I’d never felt before. Hank’s black eyes, the way they took me in. How looked at I felt.

“If we let ourselves know how sad it really is, there wouldn’t be anything left of us.”

Writers. We were going to speak a truth so real it wasn’t spoken yet. We’d carve language so deep into our living hearts the reader would rip at the pages, would throw the book across the room, would fuck the book, would open their veins and run out into the street, cursing God Almighty or whoever it was responsible for this unfair unjust beloved torment.

The silence after the song, LP scratches. Crickets. Warm, the night is warm. I’m still sweating. My eyes can’t bear to look into Hank’s, so I quick look away. The candlelight on the oak floor, the shadows around the table, the candlelight against the screen. Delicate. We are so delicate.

When shame is that close to you, when it’s a part of you like breathing, you don’t even know it’s shame.

New York City 1987. To know what is right in the dark night of your heart and pursue it with clarity during the day. I’m lucky enough to be born into a time and a society that I can say this chthonic, deep down thing out loud. I am a proud gay man. Although proud is a work in progress. Hell, I can’t even get it up.

“Hometowns, man,” Hank says. “They always fuck you up.”

I am crying. Trying to stop, trying to breathe, but really just crying and crying. Finally, one last big deep loud sob goes through me. Cramps my toes, makes my knees weak, pushes up out of me like vomit. Pain like that. How we carry it around and don’t even know it.

We’re not quite sure what’s going to happen next. But it’s the most catastrophic, enthralling thing that could possibly happen. Every deep unspoken part of us is coming up and out, becoming aware, and longs to merge. The risk of being hurt. We are so fucking delicate. The cookie cutter is so delicate. We bring our mayhem, our despair, our hopes. Who we believe we are, who we aren’t. What we know as true, what we don’t know. All our infernal lying. How much all this is like death.

I’m totally fucking jealous. Of everything. Of the life that’s going on that I can’t feel. My body wants to throw itself into a big baby torpor. For missing out. For being outside of. The sensuality. The beauty.

Sometimes Oregon is only about the sky.

No wonder everybody hates Christmas. Fucking memories, man.

When you get close to the vein that’s pulsing truth, when you open that vein, you can scrub your soul clean with the blood.

Up the stoop, below the second-story window, the plaque and the line of Auden’s poem. If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me.