The first time BC and I truly met was on the sidewalk half way between our house's but on his side of the street. I was eating pears out of a can with a fork. Wearing real Levis, you know 501 button fly jeans, a rolling stones t-shirt, and a black eye. Most likely I was barefoot.
He was walking away from an argument he and his then wife were having. Rolling a smoke wearing a scowl. The weight of his world right there in the blue of his eyes.
Of course as neighbors we knew each other, or we thought we did. But there on the sidewalk we walked up to each other neither of us prepared to encounter the other. Both of us walking in our opposite directions and suddenly meeting face to face.
"Is my kid at your house?" I asked him. He answered an unsure yes. Told me my son had come by to get his bike fix. He left unasked the obvious elephant; doesn't he have a dad to do that? I would guess at that point he already knew what most of the street knew- the man I was married to was what is often called a functional alcoholic (FA). That means he was an alcoholic who went to work everyday.
BC told me he had helped my son and as far as he knew the boy was riding with his friends in the alley that ran along the side of BC's house. Then he stopped wallowing in his cloud of angry and looked at me.
He opened his mouth his hand beginning to point to my face when his wife stepped out of the house and called his name. He turned to see her. I slipped my sunglasses down and stepped out into the street I walked wide around him before he could ask me how I had gotten that black eye.
We have never talked about it except to mention the canned pears and how odd he found that.
Months later in the middle of the same street but this time right in front of my house BC would hand me the first beer I had had in over 2 years. I had stopped drinking to help heal an ulcer. One can only imagine how I got an ulcer while going to school, raising 2 kids with an increasingly unpredictable FA, and working fulltime.
We were playing street soccer and he opened it and handed it to me before anyone could tell him I didn't drink.
Being who I am I took it and drank it. To this day it is the best beer I have ever had.
And months after his wife left him we would meet again on the sidewalk and he would tell me that he was in love in with me.
15 years later both of our houses on that street belong to total strangers and the last of our ties there have faded. BC drives past Hollywood Ave and sees something beautiful that he built- the little blue house.
And look way down the street towards my house & I see sickness. I raised a family there. I sent kids off to their first day at school and they all learned to ride their bikes on that street.
I learned to drive a stick shift. I returned to college. I took call with the Surgeons. I left for graveyard shifts in the ER. I stumbled home from nights on the Burn Unit and the SICU.
I started and I stopped drinking there and then I started again. I was scared and I was hurting. Then I found love- twice. I let it go the first time but the second time I held on.
I even brought 2 babies home from the hospital; one at one house with one man and one to another.
My sister spent her last few months alive there. The people who left her to die alone lived there in the house beside BC's. Then they moved away.
I wrote my first novel there. I lost a baby there. I found my love for running on those streets. I called poison control 3 times; twice for the same kid. I called 9-1-1 only once.
I was a refugee and BC was a worn out warrior. Together we met, fell in love, and moved away. Resettled on the valley floor. We started over again.
Somethings are exactly the same about us as they were in that first real moment together. We stand in the middle between his way and mine, but on his side of the street. He carries anger but he walks above it. I carry damage that I still try to hide.
But alone with all those hours while he and Beach were away for the total eclipse I was able to unpack some of them. Get a look at what I have been carrying around. It's a lot of shit.
I explained it to BC that it's like 2 soundtracks running at the same time and I can hear both of them clearly. I can also tell which one I want to follow and which I need to leave behind.
No one simply walks away from a past like mine, I have said that a hundred times trying to explain or maybe even justify my decision to keep carrying the weight with me. But I have reached a point like I did with my sister's death that my want of something for myself out weights my fear of letting go.
Letting go means there will never be justice but there might be peace... like the stillness that fell across the ground when the sun slipped behind the moon.
No one simply walks away.
No matter what man I walk beside he will be the man I am with in my dreams. It alarms men to learn this but I have known for so long it does not seem strange or startling to me in the least. My mind is trapped beside him even though my heart has long since freed itself. I know it is the reason I seek the shelter of men to stand behind like a child playing hide-and-seek in the forest. I moved from tree to tree looking for someone’s shadow strong enough to eclipse the Devil’s sun.
~prologue to Burning Down the Sun, mlb
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