1.
My dreams have been different lately.
No matter if I drink, if I'm sober, if I take melatonin, if I go to bed at 3am, or if I pass out at 9pm–every night they stay continuously present. Last Thursday night, I dreamt a long winded re-hashing of my life that ended in a middle school classroom. There were many people sitting at the wooden desk--including a version of my middle school self. She had box-dyed pink hair, braces, and a scrawny build. She wore a shirt I used to love–some Tumblr inspired galaxy print crop top. Soft, and pilling on the inside. She said something I frowned at, and apolgized while walking out of the classroom. As she left, I felt my dream self flush with relief. She had finally left. She wasn’t around to stain my newfound present image. I reached up and felt my short hair, my artificially attached nipples, my new build, my new personality. A redefined self over a decade later. A normal change with the time given. In this dream I was relieved that I could let go of her presence, and in doing so–let go of a little bit of my past without fear. My hoarding of self could rest.
I have a hard time letting go in If I could picture my mind in a physical persona, as some sort of somatic projection–what I see is myself , as I am now, trailing a bunch of clanking cans that hold every person I’ve been in relationship with, as well as every relational identity I’ve built. Those cans hold wires that connect to smaller cans holding the experiences that I went through during that time. Every entity is holding a wired can to its ear and mouth and they're all talking across these budget telephones in garbled images. Though the present version of self is the most prominent, the noise of the past is so deafening that it obstructs, and overwhelms to the point of a paralyzing overstimulation. My present self-expression, and experiences are muddied and dulled, by the sound of the past clanging along with every new step forward.
I don’t think this is a particularly unique experience. I think many people, especially those with a consistent writing practice, hoard memory’s and stories like they are archival vintage pieces. If memory is the greatest commodity for a storyteller–why does it so often create disruptions in my day-to-day life?
There’s a painting that hangs on the wall opposite my partner’s bed. It has the sentence, ‘kill your nostalgia’ reflecting letter by letter in pastel pinks and blues. My partner is the artist. They paint observations of small beauty. Present photos of powerlines, and portals that exist outside of people's interactions. they hold themself in a way that inspire's awe. They are open and assured about what they want and live deeply rooted in the present. There art doesn't utilize portals to re-live past experiences, but instead explores portals as a journey toward parallel activity that is being experienced presently side by side, separated by material or location. They could spend hours looking at fish in a pond, the reflection of our faces on the surface, the world the fish inhabit, and the grime at the bottom that distorts the tiled pool. They watch live action change rather than a timeline of experience. I sleep next to them, under their paintings, mirroring not a parallel existence, but instead a fluctuation of time. If they are a mirror facing a mirror--I am a paper ribbon inscribed with an elementary schooler’s timeline project folded up so as to fit in a backpack. We sleep quietly with our ankles wrapped making sense of building love that can work in the day to day and I have to admit I struggle more with it--I bounce too far forward and too far back before they bring me to a point on my ribbon where we are now. Their pointer finger smoothing out a dot and pointing me forward from there. Patience inspiring gratitude and reaffirming love.
How can you hold the past without letting it pull you away from the present?
How can you honor what has happened before without believing in it now?
Can you remember events in isolation without distilling their validity?
This present/past coexistence is easy to work out in a dream-state. You can be rehashing a breakup with your highschool boyfriend, and in one fluid turn of the head, your future wife will be next to you holding a child, and that child ends up being your best friend from preschool. Everything is accepted as it is without the issue of moving ahead, there is no justification needed, and the nonsensical is expected. This feels as though it is a natural state of being--when everything already exists at once. To me, this often feels like honesty. To others, it feels like a death grip on what once was.
I rarely experience the feeling in reality, but when I do it’s usually sparked by an interaction with someone I haven’t seen in awhile, or by hearing an older family member talk about an even older family member. I listen and look while feeling structured and stable in my current self. It happens when my partner pulls on my ears and tells me they loom like my family's ears. This happens when I am Abel to stay still for long enough my present can bleed into the past. I am able to reflect while holding a certain kind of reverence for the growth that has happened. There are other times less holy when the reminders feel abrupt, when they come out of a ridiculousness in an encounter, or a message from a number long deleted off your phone. It can happen when someone you are talking to knows someone from your childhood. These are the times when the past creeps out from behind and shakes your present by becoming it.
In short, if your present can portal into your past lives it feels peaceful.
however, if your past life portals into your present it can cause disruptions.
I don't know if this is how it is for everyone but this is often how it feels for me.
2.
I stepped over the same shoelace twice.
Once sober, Once slightly drunk.
Both times with Piper.
We were walking around the West Village in loops, buying beers to drink in WSQ park. Stopping into their work after-hours to pee. Walking to the show that our friends were playing. An album release, a party for trans-joy and trans art. We drank in the park while a man yelled in two women’s faces–they laughed at him without flinching. He shed his shirt, he yelled some more, he kissed one of the girls, he took sidewalk chalk and drew a hopscotch pathway across the park’s sidewalk. All the people sitting near us were handed flyers for a party, but we weren’t offered the same. We drank our beers. We talked about psychics and friendship and ways to find purpose. I hung up my mother’s phone call twice. The next time I checked my screen there was a text, so I called back, trailing behind Piper as they led us out of the park and towards the East side.
My mother had news about my grandfather’s sickness. He is the first of the grandparent’s to be this type of sick, the type of cancer where it doesn’t make sense to pretend it’s going to be okay. I listened to my mom's voice carry through my ears, through the streets of the village. Hearing my mother say the words, biopsy, liver, and pancreas. I stepped over the shoelace from a few hours before and it felt like it might mean something. Half a shoelace, dyed black, untouched despite the time that had passed, bent in a soft U shape. A vision of consistency--and in so a little bit of hope. That something could stay the same through the passage of time, that something could continue. My mom told me to have a fun day. to enjoy the show. I caught up to Piper on tenth street and we talked about the age people are when they usually die, and how much cancer ran in each of our bloodlines.
As we approached the venue, we were swallowed into a sea of queer musicians, friends, partners of partners, siblings, parents, and fans. We ordered an old fashioned, and a negroni. I bonded with the singer's brother because we were wearing the same bag. I felt assured in the queer masses, offering a validity or an invisibility I rarely felt. I was satisfied in the immobility of my present position. 3000 miles away from home, with an early diagnosis and nothing to do about it now. I focused on people watching. Looking for people I sort of knew. Encouraging friends to talk to potential lovers, offering dollars for them to hand to burlesque performers, and dollars for buying loose cigarettes off of smokers outside. We stood in the back of the venue, drinking slowly and watching people feed in and out, as waves of preference for each act. The room was freshly painted and acrid smelling. The ceiling tiles alternating themselves in primary colors. I thought of the man from the park’s hopscotch and why he might’ve felt called to draw it in the middle of his anger. A series of squares that contort the simplistic pathway. More often than not, there is no why.
The lights dimmed for the main show and as if on queue a past lover of mine rushed inside in front of Piper and I. Inches away, they didn't glance toward me. I leaned into Piper and said, “THAT’S MY EX.” and pointed toward them, although it wasn’t really a true statement. We had been on only a few dates. Piper was dancing, and shrugged. The former lover spoke to a middle aged woman that had been standing to Piper’s left, before they disappeared into the crowd. I leaned into Piper again, “DO YOU THINK THEY HEARD ME SAY THAT OVER THE MUSIC.” Piper just said, “I’M DANCING.” and kept dancing. I realized that it literally didn’t matter. Piper was here to dance, not to ruminate over if someone I hadn’t seen for a year heard me talking about them. I felt like a spy, or a ghost, but not in a bad way– I had watched them walk by unnoticed, and I had cared and made a point to recall what once was. They hadn't and my friend had no context, so they hadn't and suddenly the past was my own to hold and it didn't feel worth it. Even if they had heard me, I figured everyone had at least one person they'd always look like a fool in front of. It wasn't the first time I had made a fool of myself in front of this person, so I wasn't shocked. I looked at Piper dancing, I glanced over and the middle aged woman stood on a bench filming, and I thought of my partner. I felt a wave of gratitude for my present position. For the music, for the letting go, for my lover at home, for Piper’s presentness, for my peacefulness. I danced and pushed Piper into the crowd. I felt held by the anonymity, by the space to grow. To pass, to change, to feel open, to talk to strangers with ease, to be foolish in the eyes of a few people that I didn't know anymore. In this moment of gratitude--as if in synchronicity I got a goodnight text from my lover. Piper moved toward me and asked about after’s, and I shrugged sure. I had nowhere to be. My lover was asleep, and I wanted to be Piper's wingman. I felt free from the lack of past interactions, and happy to be where I was in the present moment.
However, it is rarely this simple.
if you choose to stay out, the night will continue
and it will be like this:
3.
“Do you want to meet my mom?” I felt my face contort before I could stop it and they started getting red in the glow of the venue’s sign. “No no, not like in a weird way, you know just because of Jacob.” They point about 20 feet down the sidewalk to where the middle aged woman from earlier is standing with a group of gay 25 year olds.
Fucking waldorf school.
The school my step dad teaches at, the same one my past lover went to, who's mom I'm about to meet because our parents know each other. Unexpected portal I had put aside. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that Jacob and I hadn’t talked in months, that he was going through an 'abandonment' phase of fatherhood. I thought it might be funny to share the poems he kept drunk texting me as an attempt at bonding--but I decided against it.
Every piece of invisibility I had felt in the venue was shed when Piper and I stepped outside with the search for a cigarette. I had accepted the fact I wouldn’t be recognized by the ex, and that that past connection no longer needed to be something I was aware of. I had felt released. It was less than 2 minutes of being outside before we had hugged and they had asked me to meet their mom.
I was back where we started, as 12 years old in a middle school classroom. Not in a dream this time. Instead 15 years ago on afternoons I spent visiting the Waldorf school and sitting with my friends, telling horror stories of alternative public school. The ex at 13, walking the into their math class, noticing the teacher’s kid loitering. Thinking of me in some context I didn’t know about yet. I wouldn’t have recognized them but they could recognize me. More in touch with my family in this junction than I am–a weird wave of familiarity, the present east coast queer community dissolving into the past Waldorf school familial community.
I say none of this as I walk over and shake the woman’s hand, “I’m Jacob’s step-kid.” She starts talking about everything all at once, and I say responses I won't remember and the ex is blushing more before I excuse myself politely for the night. Back to where Piper and some new friend they have made are standing.
"So from what I can tell based on body language, you guys used to fuck and they just asked you to meet their mom." You say yes and the stranger laughs for a long time, so do you. You attempt to shake it off again like before but the worm of the past connections have poked from the core of your apple brain out through the skin, and your belief that they might still care is an invitation to reflect.
Care is the ultimate portal key. It is a quick start activator that can propel you from the past to the present with ease. It's easy to let go of a past experience when you have confirmation another person has. Much harder when you are offered a moment of care--a moment of their own reflection. I think this is true for a lot of things.
The music was over, which meant the dancing was too. As most people know, dancing is a portal that can bring you to the present and two your own physicality faster than anything. The ultimate override. New movement was necessary.
Piper and I talked, we milled about, we followed two people to a club and sat in an armchair while they danced through the crowd. A straight couple in their thirties laid out next to us, making out horizontally on a waterbed. Not the most exciting part of the night. The girls all held glasses of wine, moving slightly. Some on tables. Everyone queer we ran into seemed to know each other. Not Piper or I necessarily, more Piper than me. I felt the strange divide of Brooklyn and Manhattan gay people, that I always forgot existed. Location as a portal. We heard everyone else from the show had gone to a different bar so we abandoned the waterbed and wandered with the group. Piper and I, trailing behind two stranger’s schemeing about coconut water and grilled cheese. . We arrived at a new bar, wandering away to the deli buying snacks and a tall boy of mango juice. Finding ourselves back outside–drunker now. The cast of characters copy and pasted from the last venue, slinking in and out of the open doorway. Piper looks at you, and without arguing you both run away down the sidewalk, plotting separate long trips home. Gratitude for a friendship. Gratitude for psychic ability used in present-tense.
Then night comes to an end while biking across the bridge at 1:30am. Sobered up by the speed of your pedaling, and coconut water. I arrive at an empty house and my mom calls again, this time not about sickness–but about a first date she has just gone on. As we spoke 2/3 of my roommates arrive. Two 6’4” boys barreling down the hallway and crashing into me before we fall into a drunk dogpile on the floor. Waiting there in the hallway, for our fourth housemate to get home. Sitting and sleeping and chatting on the parquet flooring. The hallway a portal from the front door to our home. I relish in my unusual awake-ness and believe I will stay up all night writing something amazing. We call my mom back. We call our other roommate. I text many people. I vlog.
I write this incoherent to anyone else list on my phone so I wouldn’t forget any details:
"Drama about 12 year old
Shoelace on the ground
Walk phone call
show
walk by me
Piper saying I’m lost in sauce
Piper 2 girls
First show
There’s some people you’ll just be a fool in front of
Meet mom
Follow mutual friend to club
Follow stranger to club
Leave bike over bridge first time
Arrive to roommates
No rules in hallway"
I chug three glasses of water, and write this before falling asleep:
"Walking away from WSQ,
knowing you’re inarguably older than everyone else drinking in the park.
Old enough to get into the next venue.
Old enough to drink a $10 beer indoors.
Something can be holy even in NYC on a Friday.
There’s this half shoelace twice stepped over on tenth street.
Once sober with Piper.
Twice tipsy on the phone.
Your mother had news about your grandad–
Said the sickness was complicated,
She said she hoped you’d have a fun day, and you will.
Shoelace clipped and dyed a dark black.
This could be a lock of hair, but it isn’t.
You could be on your way home, but you aren’t.
You’ll have a fun night and you’ll be on your way out."
Stories can be time travel, even if they’re never worshipped. Even if they’re not valued over the present. Sometimes you'll just have a fun night and then you'll be on your way out.
That too, can be a portal.
4.
Three days later on your way to a wilderness area in NJ, your roommates and you are sober at 10am and you are in the backseat of a Subaru Outback experiencing gridlock. You check your phone's battery (16%) and you see that the past lover you ran into has texted:
"hi veda I'd love to."
This is in reference to you offering to catch up.
Three days out from the portal, you delete the text with a small swipe. Though it feels rude in a way, you know it would be worse to reply.
It's one thing to reflect, it's another to re-engage.
A choice to stay present
can be a portal when you choose it.
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