Looking Back, Looking Forward

I wonder if you ever found the note
I left in our flat in Somerville
folded beneath the sugar jar.
Beloved Aine,
I’m sure it began

(2025-07-02) 

 

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Backstory

After college, I was living in Allston with my buddy Sam. He met this girl, Jenn. One day, in late April, there was a little party at Jenn's place in Somerville, and I went because of Sam. And there I met Jenn's roommate, Áine. I don't want to say it was "love at first sight", but I was definitely captivated. She was amazing: mysterious, charming, worldly, bohemian, cute, funny, serious. She was wearing this ankle-length white eyelet skirt, and leather thongs; she had a silver ring on one toe. She had on a baggy saffron-colored knit sweater which hung off one of her very slender shoulders, both sleeves pushed up above her elbows. Gesticulating animatedly with a large glass of sangria in one hand, she talked about how her aunt was fighting for women's equality in Ireland. She was swaying to "Kind Of Blue" on the phonograph. I became a mute idiot in her presence.

(Not merely Miles Davis, but vinyl, first pressing, still in its original sleeve. The one with the liner notes with the mistake. You could probably get at least a hundred bucks for this on eBay. But she would never sell it; it was her dad's, and is precious to her beyond any price.)

Sam moved in with Jenn, and for complicated reasons I followed him a month later.
And there we lived, the four of us -- Sam and Jenn in one room, me on the couch in the main room -- until September, when Sam and Jenn decided they needed their own place. Then I got their room.

(One of the things I found charming, if not exactly endearing, about Áine was that she was a staunch Bostonist. She loves the Cars, Jonathan Richman, the J. Geils Band. (She could even bury you under arguments about why Aerosmith is the greatest hard rock band ever -- even though she personally doesn't care for them.) She used to rail against the Big Dig... but now that it's done she'll defend that, too.)

(One day when we were just hanging around she said she liked my shirt. My favorite shirt - a white Oxford with multicolored stripes, from LL Bean, I got second-hand. Like an idiot, I impulsively gave it to her. She didn't even want it. I never saw it again.)

(One day, as the weather was starting to turn really cold, I went to this cool shop down in Cambridge - I remember they had singing bowls - and bought her some gifts: incense made in Afghanistan and Moroccan mint tea, both in boxes of hand-made paper.  I left them on the little table with the mail and the keys, along with a stupid little poem I wrote, and then I disappeared for twelve hours. I didn't want to be there when she found them. Why did I do that? 🤦🏼)

So for about six months I shared Áine's fridge, stove, sink, TV, toilet, shower, air. But never her headspace, her heart, her heat. Oh, we were good friends and we got along fine. Did she ever know how desperately in love with her I was? Every now and then she'd bring a guy home. That absolutely devastated me every time. By January, I finally concluded that I couldn't stay. I had to be in a different house, a different city, a different life.

On the 6th of January - Epiphany - the afternoon was preternaturally dark, louring, ominous. I didn't pack. This wasn't a holiday, it was sheer flight. What I did do, however, was write her a note, because I didn't want her to worry - or call the police. I left it on the kitchen table. But I had also written her a letter, over the preceding week, where I poured my heart out. This one I folded and hid carefully under the sugar canister. I figured she'd probably find it in a few weeks. Then I grabbed my keys and sped away in my beat-up old Corolla just as the first enormous drops of rain began to stream up the windshield.

Forwardstory

The rearview mirror still shows the streaks from the last time she breathed on it and rubbed it with the cuff of her sweatshirt. He knows he must wipe it clean... eventually. But not yet. Not today. 

The bright lights of Boston recede in the distance behind him. The miles of pavement between him and Somerville cannot be planted quickly enough. 

He clutches the steering wheel as if it were a floatation ring.  Great drops stream down his cheeks, as if to reflect the rain on the windshield. 

The dashboard illuminates him like a late-night evangelist. He punches every button on the radio, flailing against the impersonal machinery, hoping to get some Elvis, and getting only Orbison instead. 

He questions himself, just for a moment: Why I am trying so hard to keep the car on the road? 

He sees the bridge abutments and thinks: If I paint myself across one of those, it won't be the worst pain I've felt today.

He drives headlong down the deep black tunnel of New England forest and overcast sky. He does not have a specific destination in mind. At each intersection he chooses the road which seems more likely to lead to oblivion. He thinks he will go to the edge of the Arctic sea. Is not the end of the world the most fitting place for the end of life? 

He runs into the arms of the night, the stars, the void - the eternal unquestioning lover.

Coming round a bend deep in the Acadian forest
I thought I caught a glimpse of your ghost in my headlights 

Just before dawn, he finds himself standing at the northernmost brink of Prince Edward Island, under a crisp cloudless sky, transfixed by Arcturus and the whole icy panoply wheeling overhead. 

The understanding hits him: why the ancients thought the heavens were full of angels. 

Under the bright gaze of these angels, the world turns. Lovers in Taos feel the warm embrace. People in Christchurch are enjoying a balmy stroll under the stars. 

His project of self-annihilation can wait. He will go to Lisbon and Barcelona. He will go to Santorini, and to Petra. He will see for himself what the stars look like from the top of Ararat.