All Honey, No Vinegar in The Alex Era

Yours is a haunting that I can’t seem to let go of.

It was our anniversary on November 8th. Or would’ve been. I don’t know. I’m never sure if anniversaries continue to exist for widows of men who were beaten to death. Estranged widows at that. No one is left who remembers the significance of the date but me, so I don’t know if it really matters…but I’ve been unable to shake its weight and volume.

You came through in my dream again last night.

In it, a boyfriend drops me off at your apartment-the efficiency we had on the corner of South and Park, that apartment where we had all the strange neighbors. In case death has caused you to forget your life, here is the itemized list of characters we encountered in that nunnery-cum-apartment for recovering drug addicts:

The prostitute who went on 3 day crack binges and would leave the apartment building door open for her johns to come up. We would hear her tearing her apartment apart—taking screwdrivers to the freezer, ripping cabinets off their hinges. Then it would be a prevailing and eerie silence for days upon days, where we would wonder if she was dead. One day, she puked on our door. I opened it to find her staring up at me like a fucking ringtail lemur, trying to scrub chunks off the bottom of it. She just disappeared one day, probably arrested…so many went this way.
The angry guy who didn’t talk to any of us…He never came out during the day, we assumed he was sleeping all day & partying all night. One night, we watched him run out into the streets with a machete held high in the air like some kind of lunatic warrior. Another one who simply never returned….
The daddy-long-legged drag queen, James, with the killer eyebrows–who outfitted his apartment in expensive rent-to-own goods and then broke parole and got taken back to jail…his car that had the decal “Adonis” sat in the parking lot for a few weeks before someone came to get it…I used to bake him cupcakes and leave them outside his door, trying to make friends with him. (I was so lonely then.)
The Rastafarian who would sit out back smoking weed on the back steps and merely nod at us as we entered…never said a word…He was the person who found you that time your sugar dipped so low you fell off the steps and passed out in the gravel. You woke to him standing over you, his dark eyes appraising your life’s value as you laid there, temporarily removed.
That apartment. With the weird neighbors. Looking back, it was the place we were happiest with the least, surrounded by bizarre and broken people…We fit in.

In my dream, the apartment looks identical to its real life counterpart. I know it still. In awe that I am back there, I finger all the items lovingly. The Greek plates we took from your father, displayed on the mantle. Your cheap little red penknife that you used to clean out your pipe. The decorative alligator skull with the black beady eyes. The picture Darryl sketched of you in your younger days on a thick pulpy paper…Bic pen crosshatches making your ever present 5 o’clock shadow. Bookmark from St. Mark’s, your favorite place to pilfer copies of overpriced Bukowski. The black rubber bracelets you compulsively wore long after they were fashionable, that I can’t picture you without. Your vintage taffeta scarf with the cartoon sailboats, the one you wore to the Egg when we went to see Rufus Wainwright. Your chess board, perpetually set up for play. The framed reproduction of one of Egon Schiele’s prostitutes—all ruddy knuckles, protruding rib cage and curlicue pubic hair. Crude and unflinchingly ugly. You loved it. I hated it…Preferring instead the copy of Chagall’s lovers that your printed out and taped to the wall. The Jeff Buckley DVD I bought that you shared with that addict you loved after me. Your plants you somehow managed to keep alive through all your rehab stints and drug binges.

While cataloguing everything in my mind with touch, I remember that I am there to find something. The book. Your book, your love letter to NYC and Jen, the woman that broke your heart. The story starts with your arrest in the summer sometime in the early 90s, after you return from a trip to St. Lucia that you took with your girlfriend. Upon release from the police station, you and your girl flee the city, heading to LA to try and kick your heroin habit. It never happens. You sell everything in the home out from under yourself, pushing it around in a shopping cart, to sell it on the street. You borrow money till everyone says no. You sit in the dark with Jen, on the hardwood floors, and stare at the phone that you’ve placed on an overturned cardboard box, hating everything. Sick and angry, one time, you throw the phone at the wall, not even aware how close the handset is to hitting your girlfriend. She assumes you did it on purpose because she stole your portion of the heroin. It’s clear, by this point, without money or drugs, you’ve now turned on each other. When there is nothing left to sell and no one left to borrow from, you return to the East Coast, defeated and still addicted and detox upstate at your father’s, though he is mostly a stranger to you. Jen? Jen goes back to NYC, not ready to give up the habit….choosing it over you. Her choice breaks your heart and the bitterness changes you. I know that pain well.

I stole your book that time you ended up in jail, in an effort to be close to you. I read it cover to cover in one sitting. It was good, really and truly good. You tried to publish it—I know because I found the cover letters you used to submit it. The cover letters were grandiose and arrogant in tone. You used that tone to cover up all the insecurities you actually felt about yourself. No one wanted it, though…so it remained in the 3 inch binder, the navy blue cover dusty with your disappointment over its failure.

In the dream, I know I need to find it. I can’t bear the thought of it in a dumpster. It’s like throwing out the last bit of you. And I am nothing if not extremely protective of your memory.

I start rifling through your desk. The one you kept your little packets of heroin in. The one we kept our honeymoon money in…the money you later blew on drugs. The one with your tattered birth certificate. Pictures of you as a young man, long and flowing haired in front of the Mustang that you would later ruin by not putting oil in the engine. You had no one to teach you such things, I guess. Letters to and from your exes, written and received in rehab. I read them once when I was mad at you for scoring and lying about it…You break my trust, I break yours. In one of the letters, you apologize to an ex who was in rehab. You apparently tried to choke her while you were out of your mind on drugs. The letter was written with a kind of gutty regret and remorse that was atypical of you. Her name was Martha. (What fucking kind of name is Martha for a young woman?) You hated her for not being Jen. In the end, I regretted intruding. I regretted stooping to a childish level. I regretted gaining the knowledge that there was a seed of violence in you, always at risk of growing up and out of you. I regretted that I couldn’t unknow what you were capable of. (It was that germ of knowledge that lead me to flee the apartment during our last fight, when you were high and enraged and punched the door too close to my head.) But mostly, I regretted being another Martha who wasn’t Jen.

I hear the door to your apartment open behind me. Confetti. Streamers. Noise makers. Total surprise. I am overjoyed at your unexpected appearance. I can smell the Armani Black Code you always wore, hear the jangle of the chain you kept your keys on. I hear all the Brooklyn in your tough guy voice when you call my name.

Only when I turn around, I don’t know you. You are in that tan leather jacket you loved, your ever present t-shirt and jeans…but your body is bloated, like I can only imagine it was after being a paperweight in the morgue…left unclaimed, sitting for weeks. Your stomach distended, fluid filled. Your ruined face, distorted with puffiness….your squeeze coin purse eyes. Your wild, once Beethoven-esque curly hair is flattened, straight—as though you’ve been lying on it for a prolonged period of time. Your neck holds your head at a crooked angle. It’s like looking at a grotesque Picasso. I don’t recognize you at all. The beautiful face I thought I would be reunited with is gone. The disappointment over this is a gut-twist. I start to cry. You ask me why I’m crying. I tell you, “You don’t look like you. I just want to make you look right. I need to fix it, I need to fix it, Al.” I get more and more frantic. It has become less about your appearance and more about changing what happened between us, and, ultimately, what happened to you. Finally, you pull me in for a hug and smooth my hair, trying to comfort me, “I know, bunny, I’m sorry, but it’s only going to get worse.”

I wake up.

For a minute, I try to crawl back through the coils of REM cycle to you- but ultimately know there’s no point. You are not waiting at the end of that tunnel. I am torn between trying to commit every detail to memory just to have something more of you and forgetting every horrorshow thing I just dreamed. In the end, I just weep.

I await the day when I can think about you and just feel grateful that you were in my life without having to feel all the sadness you brought. All honey, honey…And no fucking vinegar.

Last updated January 27, 2024