Maximilien was Erik’s favorite restaurant, and it was here he told me he loved watching the sea turn into the color of dusk. My food had arrived by the time he showed up. We had awkward hesitating appetizers, pausing to eat and wrack our brains. For the main course he talked about himself while I listened as in the past. He talked about how his birth family found him, how they met and connected, how he checked into rehab when he realized addiction ran in the family, how excited he was to be moving close to them. He talked about the places he had been, the men he was with after me, and his last breakup. It was then I realized, I had not been with anyone else after him. He had left an enormous crater, an indelible scar.
We watched our last sunset
Last Supper (Ascetic Fugitive)
seated side by side;
seeing the sea
change turning
into
sky.
Afterwards we walked back together, the hostel I was staying in was near the train station and Erik’s apartment. Erik stopped at the steps of Benaroya Hall.
“I remember the first time we met, it was Memorial Day. And I dragged you here and gave you a big lecture about it. What was that about?” Erik laughed.
I tried bringing up the topic of our relationship. “You know, I felt trapped and lonely. They were all your friends and I had no one.”
“Yeah, sorry about that” he said.
I persisted “I felt very much In your debt. I didn’t know how I could pay you back”
“No – I don’t feel like you owed me anything. I was glad I could help. You were something stable in my life when I needed it.” Erik said.
Then he deflected “Next time you’re in Seattle, you should catch some shows here.”
“I won’t be back. I came to see you before you left.” I replied. We continued walking the dark empty streets between us. The same streets I had followed many times and fretted how to escape my trapped existence.
“Ah, you can see my building from here!” Erik exclaimed when we arrived at the hostel. I did not tell him how perturbed I was earlier when I checked in and found the two blocks separating us had recently been demolished giving me a straight view of his building.
I am just a building away;
Close (Ascetic Fugitive)
I wonder if I should call
to let you know I’m near
– like I used to.
I catch myself, knowing
you have not thought of me
in a long while.
I tried one more time to broach our relationship. “I…I wanted to ask you something. I’m…I’m always grateful to you for giving me a way out. I hope I didn’t … I hope you weren’t hurt with how our relationship … “ I trailed off, unable to find the words.
“No. My friends ask me about that. I tell them it was a like a dead limb, like a fruit that shriveled up and fell off. “ Erik replied.
I stared at him with a panged heart – I was already dead to him yet I had kept him alive in mine buried deep down, how else could I get by? Erik told me he had someone staying over so he wasn’t going to invite me – one of his travel buddies. I winced in recognition of the name and understood the hint. No grand reunion, no reconciliation like movies on fated loves, not that I expected one. Not even a kiss, nor even a hug, we shook hands like strangers. “I’ll see you again. Come visit.” I watched from the doorway as his back disappeared from view.
When the Cascades train pulled away from King Street station towards Vancouver the next day, I began crying involuntarily; I knew that would be the last time we would see each other. My tears flowed for the entire train ride, as my goodbye crossed the Sound and spanned the Cascades.
I kept looking back across the Sound
Cascades (Ascetic Fugitive)
while the train carried me away
memorizing the last time
I’ll see the mountains
from this perspective
There were delays along the way, by the time the train arrived in Vancouver it was late. I had prepaid a hostel room near the train station so I thought I would check in and try to find some food. When I got to the hostel, I had a bad feeling about the place. Maybe it was the crumpled bedding that looked like bedbug heaven, maybe it was the hum of broken fluorescent ballasts, maybe it was the other men in the room wavering in and out of stupor. Whatever it was, I did not feel safe. I locked up my backpack and headed out for food, and to find alternative accommodations.
I pounded the streets and made several calls, there were no vacancies in the downtown area that night, at least not within my budget. It was past 10pm and I was getting desperate. I was on Davie street, I recalled there was a gay bathhouse on the street and that Marcus had mentioned something he did with someone in a private room. I had never been to a bathhouse before but it seemed the best option available. I gingerly tapped on the attendant’s window. Did he have rooms to rent? Was there someplace to store a backpack? I explained I was looking for an alternative to a seedy hostel that I did not feel safe in. He asked me which hostel, I told him. “That’s funny!” he exclaimed, “The same thing happened to me the first time I was in Vancouver in that same hostel.” He assured me the bathhouse was safe, the rooms lock, there was space for a backpack. I rented a room and went back to the hostel to collect my belongings.
After I sorted out my backpack and belongings in the rented room (which was lockers and a vinyl clad twin mattress), I decided to check out the bathhouse. Marcus had told me about his exploits in the bathhouse, I had never been in one and was curious what it was like. There were some men standing apart and jerking off to porn in the viewing room. There were some men working out naked in the gym. There were some men doing it here and there. There were some men watching them do it. But mostly it was filled with men wandering around quietly, getting repeatedly rejected, waiting to be acknowledged by another. I found it rather depressing. I also discovered I am invisible – no one wanted to come near a middle-aged Asian body (to my relief, I wouldn’t know what to do if approached). I took a shower and decided I might as well take advantage of the sauna to relax my travel-weary body.
When I entered the sauna, I was hit by steam and the stench of chlorine from the bubbling hot tub. I had to remove my fogged glasses. I peered around the empty sauna as my eyes adjusted sans glasses, and the dim lighting. I could only make out shapes. I started laughing – at myself. In the latter part of our time together, Erik would take off to the sauna to read when he visited me. He said he liked the quiet. I would work on grading papers or my thesis, or preparing immigration and job applications while he was gone. He would return in the evening and we would go out for dinner together. Alone in the sauna with the stench of chlorine, I laughed at my naivety, my misplaced loyalty and guilt when I was with another (driven by distance and craving for touch and intimacy). Erik would toss his stuff around my room when he returned from his reading sessions at the sauna. I would tidy up before we went to dinner. Alone, and laughing at myself in that same sauna, I remembered his paperbacks were always pristine with no signs of water damage.
Sometimes Erik would rent an apartment for the weekend he was visiting because my room and mattress was too small and uncomfortable. I did not begrudge him. He would show me the apartment he had rented from their website, and I would wait in the car while he picked up the keys in the afternoon. After dinner he would drop me off and head to the apartment. Come to think of it, I never once saw the inside of those rented apartments.
The next day I decided to take the Hastings bus that went past my old apartment and terminated at the university. I was curious what had changed since I was away. As the bus drove past dilapidated shops, new buildings, shops familiar and unfamiliar, emotion overcame me unlike last night in the sauna. I had always said I would return someday, but I had not realized how much my memories and landmarks of Seattle and Vancouver were inextricably linked to the time I was with Erik. I felt the eyes of the other bus passengers trying to make what of this sobbing man trying to hold it in.
After you leave
Vacate (Ascetic Fugitive)
it will also be
my last time in this city.
It has nothing
left for me.
I met up with Marcus at a bar for dinner and drinks later that evening, I was surprised he agreed to meet. I had originally contacted John, I wanted to treat him to a nice dinner as a token of appreciation for the dinners and support he had offered me. John declined; he was glad my struggle with citizenship was over, that our lives intersected for a while, but preferred to keep that as a pleasant memory for the sake of domestic tranquility. As I wandered through downtown that afternoon, I stopped by the Chihuly fountain. It was on the same street as John’s building, we would often pass by it when we went for dinner. I stopped and gave it a little salute of gratitude; perhaps it was a meaningless gesture, a meaningless proxy but I felt I needed to do something more than signing off thank you in an email I would never get a reply to.
Marcus arrived wearing a cream cable knit turtleneck. As if testing his hold over me, his first words were “Sorry I’m late, I had to look for this sweater. I know you like it when I wear this type of sweater.”
I raised my eyebrows “I never said that!”
We bantered a bit trying to track who said what and it turned out he never listened (which was a charge I levied on him when we broke up). He told me about his string of failed relationships; I lent a sympathetic ear, I secretly felt somewhat vindicated. When the topic turned to our past, he said he was sorry. I stopped him “There is nothing to be sorry about. I knew I would get burnt, yet I went ahead with it anyway.”
I told him the story of the bedbug hostel and my resorting to staying in the bathhouse. He was incredulous I had not been in a bathhouse before. He wanted details of all the naughty things I did. I told him nothing happened. “That’s right, you don’t like sex.” Marcus snickered.
“Correction. I don’t like sex with people who don’t treat me right” I replied.
Marcus extended an offer to crash on his couch instead of staying at the bathhouse. I turned him down. He showed me his new crush who was less than half his age (I was older than his usual fodder when we first met, I suppose I should have taken it as a compliment?) Marcus insisted he was mature, smart and funny and showed me some of his texts which I personally found puerile.
“Marcus, if you want to stop getting dumped, you have to stop chasing after 18 year olds. They are now old enough to be your son.” I sighed as I got our checks.
After I learned my grandmother passed away shortly after I fled Singapore, I decided to learn her favorite song. I was surprised to discover a song laden with the heartbreak of parting under the rather cheesy accompaniment in the recordings I had heard; so I rearranged it. It was this same song that ran through my mind when I spent my final night in the bathhouse, thinking about the men I had loved and their scars like the continental plates that no longer converged, causing basins to form as the ground collapsed. I reflected how much I had changed and left them behind while they stayed the same, that somehow this reunion became another parting. Like those same continental plates that changed directions, our lives no longer converged but now increasingly slip past one another. It had been 12 years since I came to North America, a full Zodiac cycle. It is time to start anew.
Pain and regret is precious, that was the gift from the bunnies to me. Someone had mattered, influenced my life and thoughts regardless of place, time, bipolar, schizoid etc. A statistical improbability against the hundreds and thousands who passed and vanished like ships. I understand now – I had loved and that is a miracle for this broken heartless monster. That is enough, I can now let go the threads taut that pulled me apart and in all directions through the years. The music in my mind interspersed with the muffled moans and shuffles of men around me trying to make some sort of connection however brief; and I thought how lonely we all are.
为什么要对你掉眼泪 (Why are my tears falling in front of you?)
情人的眼泪 (Tears of a Lover)
你难道不明白是为了爱 (How can you not understand, it’s because I love you)
要不是有情人跟我要分开 (If it weren’t for my lover wanting to part with me)
我眼泪不会掉下来掉下来 (My tears would not be falling, not be falling)
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