Stopover

I always stopped at the same place after I left Joel's house. A half-mile away. Thursday night around ten or ten thirty. Joel's family's house was the only one within a few miles. The radio would be playing "American Pie," or "Vincent" or "City of New Orleans." If the weather was warm or hot summer or cool Fall, or even cold winter, I would turn off the ignition, roll down the window, and have the music playing low. No one from his house could see me around this bend. I would sing, badly, to whatever was playing. I would say, "Joel, I love you." I would cry a bit. Then I would go on my way.

I never was happy, not before him, not since. But during him—my god! It was called, I seem to remember, feeling alive.

Whatever good is in me, whatever creativity I might have, what dreams I have, what I believe, what shakes me to the core—he is Joel—and he is my heart. I can't explain love. I can't explain why him. I've been called to account. I've had glassy eyes stare at me in defiance, in disbelief mostly. I've lost friends when they found out, which I think means they weren't friends to begin with, though it still hurts when I'm treated back to role of outcast.

He was beautiful. He was this class act carnival in my eyes and I secretly danced with him, and I still do because he was Joel, and nobody else NOBODY is Joel. How odd a thing a name is. As a very good poem from a nice guy says. And of course there is Maria in West Side Story. I think those of us who are forlorn tend to still do lonely boy things as though we are still boys and I mean that in both interpretations of the phrase "still boys."

I think some of us were on the cusp of being born, and my birth was Joel's delivery deep inside me, his looks, his voice, his clothes, his hair, his poetry, his books, the minutes and seconds of his life I hide in forevermore. I still sing my songs to him and I still believe I can get back there. To him and to me of then too, for I miss me then also.

Sometimes I wish I did not feel, did not care, could be normal, but to have, as another friend pointed out recently, not have had Joel in my life—would I excise him if I could? The answer is a resounding no. I've not been alive in lots of ways since that April day he said goodbye to me and smiled his Joel smile, as he waved to me one last time, as I walked out of his parents' house and to my car, to drive away. I have never driven away.

I have this habit of crying often these days. My mother cried often. I thought it was an act to make people feel sorry for her. Well, some of it was, but me? Now I do it too and it's embarrassing as hell. I cry for no reason. For every reason. I miss being born. I miss being an almost. I miss my dream. I miss, my god, Joel.

For every explanation there is some foolish answer. They are in books and on TV chat shows and in magazines and in movies. But one thing always eludes these purveyors of quick one or two liner answers—when a person is deeply, from the first second, in love with another human being, words don't fit, words don't count. You cannot take this love and examine it and dissect it and say this living entity is not stillborn, is nothing at all, and does not deserve to have ever lived.

I was—with him. I walked railroad tracks in deep Autumn—with Joel. We listened to music. We let each other borrow books. There was Joel. And that is a moment of my life of lasting measure. I used to give a damn what other people thought of this, I used to rush my heart words to tell them—now I have finally gotten hit with enough brickbats from oh so moral individual types who twist slowly in the wind of rationality and death inside, I can't and won't bother telling them again how death inside me, the autumn of me is the birth of me waiting to be, is a burgeoning, not a seed shrinking smaller of the kind Conrad Aiken warned about.

And that is the type of life I believe in. That is the type of birthing, of coming redemption in which I have faith. I flew in those days and I sang and I was askance and I was giddy and I was brilliant because Joel was brilliant and askance and giddy and flew and danced and sang.

An attachment is a word. An obsession is a word. An analysis is a group of words. Words can be incorrect. Love for Joel is correct. Love for all these years that keeps me opening my heart as I sit down at this computer keyboard, love that keeps me singing my song to Joel, love that keeps me remembering fast frames and slow nights and laughter and my name in his mouth, and his hand in my heart—these are real. I said Joel and he smiled and was happy to be with me. The unspeakable beauty of that allowing..

There is no need to destroy me over them. He waits inside me and some day like Joe Bonham, I shall sneak away, and they can put material possessions in their places and they can move the world round as a stage play presuming their own reality as they please and there will be one more microsecond, there will be one finite motion of a forgettable entity once here that was me, and they shall continue on their appointed rounds, with a forgotten sign of not even noticed slim breath of more room.

I never told Joel I loved him. I celebrate him, as a friend says, I take him from my imagination and my memory and I make and re-make him and I toss a dream to the winds of cyber space and I say come look at the heart of golden darkness, come feel his golden long hair, and remember-- peace, brother? And the Age of Aquarius and "..how can people have no feelings; you know I'm hung up on you...easy to be cold; easy to say no." And if you are not young, then remember young and flowers in our hair and neck chains.

And love children. And love. I say I and I say Joel with every mention of that word. He and I are one—we are a seedling wrapped in a seedling. I never think one thought, write one sentence without him in the forefront of my mind. I've been through my own species of hell, just as has or are or will everyone. Forget Joel? I am lost then. Am I not lost now? Yes and no. I should then be far more lost without him.

He could not birth me. Therefore, I have seen fit, impossible not to do it, birth him in me. Still, in me, yet. Both meanings of that phrase as well. And some day full of fearfully made, I shall birth him and he shall do the same for me and everything-the air, the ground, the deep Autumn, the house, the hands to be held, the necklaces to be taken so carefully off, the hearts to find simultaneous beating—these will all be Joel—as every season and every book I've read and every song quotation and writer's quotation I've memorized and which I hold deep in my heart for solacing—all of these too are Joel.

Count the stars. Throw the oceans at me and I shall and shall not survive because I have Von Helsing's cross—I know the territory—I know the words said and the words read and the dime store mentality that says health is our most important product—buy yours now at a mark down rate today only—here, let us categorize it for you because you need to take such baby steps when we who deserve to be around, we who condescendingly understand your poor reasoning—to which I say In Your Hat Charlie...you know nothing. There are no actuarial tables where I live. This to be place between the lines of my face and the palm prints of Joel's hands inside me.

Dwell in the wellspring of me, Joel, for it has been impossibly lonely, for there are nothing but the morning stars and they are so strangely silent, for I remember them once upon a time in the greatest fairy tale ever. bounding up and pulsing with sheer and utter joy and rapture. Touch me again and remind me that time, that time I waited late night in my car on that country road, listening to "Vincent," how I heard your voice and looked with no fear but for the first time, total lack of fear, at your face, outside my driver's window---and your patented Joel smile and your hand to me—to dry my tear--

--To finally touch in an instant and I'm out of the car and holding you and the music is not sad anymore, and the sky says born—and the stars pulse and bounce and dance—and I was right about one single small enormous thing in my entire stupid mistaken fall down idiotic painful shameful ungraceful ungrateful ridiculous never-was failure of a life, I was and am right about one integral ingredient of magic forever shining bright---

Joel is my darling. Happy Valentine's, Joel. From Barry, with much love. I never forgot. I am good at this one thing—I never forgot. And I still love Joel.