LE DELUGE
Epiphany in the déluge: “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” Blake Edwards interpretation of Truman Capote’s novel. ©Paramount Pictures
It was a dismal time in 2016. I’d spent seven glorious years to make New York City my home and witnessed the Obama era coming to a screeching halt. Social media was about to eclipse what was once considered social life. I experienced increasing unease; something dark and soggy hung in the air, a horror of growing old, fat, and slow. I compensated by going to gallery openings, bars, happy hours, and impromptu private parties. When the latter thinned, I gathered people in my bat cave on East Broadway, a 5th-floor walkup with views of both bridges. The best part about that place was that my friend J, my confidant, and escort to all outings, lived only two floors below.
One rainy night, J failed to materialize at a gallery opening and the following bash at China Chalet. He wouldn’t answer my text or pick up the phone. Lacking my usual sounding board, the place appeared vulgar. The cynicism of aging Chinese servers in their formal uniforms serving a rowdy crowd of young art groupies in various stages of high seemed particularly depressing without J’s commentating. My intellectual carpet had been yanked out underneath my Margiela Tabis.
I snuck out and hailed a taxi. The cinematic Chinatown lights smeared over the cab’s window, evoking Blade Runner. The wipers yawned over the windshield while Adele moaned Hello from the radio. I left J another message. For the first time, I felt utterly alone in the city.
At a traffic light under the Brooklyn Bridge, I spotted a silhouette emerge, gliding over the glittering pavement. The figure’s graceful stride appeared effortless, although it moved fast and efficiently, barely touching the ground. I stared in awe, the taxi idling when I realized the runner was my friend J! I pushed the car door open, rain whipped my face, and called him to get in the car. J stopped and turned at a distance. Standing in a puddle, his clothes clung to his delicate frame.
He reached out his arms. “No,” he shouted, “I love this. My legs, my body. Life is magic!” An oncoming car silhouetted him and gave him a golden halo. J had become a saint.
Combing my mind for a persuasive counterargument, he carried on and disappeared behind Manhattan Bridge’s gigantic pylons. The cab drove on through the deluge. It hadn’t escaped me that the encounter had some poignant similarities to the end scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
I climbed the stairs to my apartment, sober, I passed his door without knocking, feeling betrayed by a friend who preferred the rat-infested asphalt to my company. J had cheated on me. As I lay awake, I revisited the movie scene. According to the logic of the movie, I was supposed to persuade J aka Holly Golightly to come with me and confront the demons of his partying past. But wasn’t it the opposite? I was the one who held on to this dated idea of a beautiful mind in a wrecked body. Plus, just like Truman Capote, or the narrator J was gay. I never had the Hollywood illusion of a kiss at the end. We were friends and chosen family! As I mulled these conundrums, I was mostly mad with envy, imagining myself in vain swishing through the wet nocturnal city with J’s athletic ease.
The next day, I drank my coffee without dialing his number. The day passed without him reaching out a single time. After sunset, I slipped into a pair of Chucks and went downstairs. My ear pressed against his door, met more deafening silence.
I continued to the East River. Slowly, I began to jog, attempting to channel J’s words about the magic of legs, body, and life. I tired quickly, my legs felt leaden, and my breathing labored. Only my heartbeat galloped in my chest.
No matter how much of J’s energy I tried to manifest, I couldn’t recruit a single endorphin. Below Williamsburg Bridge, I took a breather, turned around, and trotted back. About to throw in the towel, I saw a runner in the twilight moving toward me. A woman, confident, with big curly hair flopping and a colorful outfit. She reminded me of the sprinter legend Florence Griffith Joyner, FloJo, who broke world records in the 80s in one-legged leotards and long creative fingernails. I’d admired FloJo as a child and was shocked when she died at 38, choked by an epileptic seizure in her sleep.
This runner here was fit and graceful, the age of FloJo, had she lived to that day. I now felt too embarrassed to give up in her presence. I was so much younger and still wanted an easy out. I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other, imagined myself light and elegant, not letting on my exhaustion.
Suddenly, I understood what J meant. How great it was to run. How fantastic to be physically able to do so. To be allowed and capable of running at all! To will oneself to go harder, faster, push oneself. To reach beyond one’s limits, real or imagined. What a privilege it was not to be choked in a fit by an epileptic seizure. That everyone should be delirious with the joy of breath and heartbeat. The single opportunity of life. That we all have only one and a sole body, I persevered. For J, for FloJo, for the runner lady, and above all, for myself.
As I passed, the woman nodded and spread her long-nailed fingers to a V. "Good job!" she murmured in a deep timbre. I glanced over my shoulder; she’d meant me, I was the only one around. High on life, I sprinted toward my building and gasped up the stairs. On the third floor, I bumped into J, geared up to go for his run. I hugged and kissed him. Good job! I said, my fingers spread to a V.
September 2021
