Every small step
an essay in honor of boygenius' 'The Rest' EP
Hi, this is an essay in anticipation of boygenius’ EP ‘The Rest’ (plus the unreleased song “Boyfriends” linked in section 5). The EP will be out on October 13, but I couldn’t help myself when I heard the live versions. If you want to support this project as a whole, considering upgrading your subscription. xoxo.
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1.
I remember when I saw the first picture of a black hole four years ago. I wanted to be close to it. The screen between my eyes and the picture was a stark declaration that kind of closeness was impossible. I couldn’t stop looking at it because it reminded me of staring into someone you love’s eyes. I guess I should say that every person I’ve been in love with has had dark eyes.
The dream of the black hole is the desire to float forever. With weightlessness, everything that matters becomes irrelevant—or maybe the black hole is a dream of destruction. A maze, not a labyrinth. No way out except further into darkness. The same dream I dream when I dream about destroying my life. Entertaining the dream of destruction is easier than doing the brave thing. Walk away, change the dead lightbulb in your bedroom, don’t sever connections out of an inherent selfishness, don’t call them. Don’t fall in, don’t look it in the eye. Who knows if you’ll ever be strong enough to do the hard thing? But sometimes it’s true. I just need to hear your voice.
2.
I never smoked a cigarette until I moved to New York. I picture dark clouds spotting the bubblegum pink lungs I’ve worked hard to protect. It’s enough to stop. Even though that terror is its own beauty.
I have never been on a motorcycle. I think of a man I went on some dates with last spring telling me about how he crashed one in Colombia. He spent two weeks recovering on a beach, camped out with locals who fed him booze and coke until he forgot time and pain existed. I got scared and ran off when he told me his mother died a year before. Grief scares me, or maybe I’m scared to witness someone in their grief that feels so separate from me.
I have never lived on a place that’s on fire. This summer, when smoke from Canadian wildfires consumed the skyline, I wondered what would happen if the sky stayed orange forever. I found myself saying, we’ll remember this day for the rest of our lives. Two months later, I leave the office because the management company for my building sends a casual text to inform me the fire alarms are going off in my building. No one is home. I text Madeline what’s happening. She responds that she dreamed of fires the night before. When I reach my block, there’s no smoke. False alarms.
I have never not worried about money. I wish the first thing I thought about in the morning was a person, but it’s about my bank account. Whatever fantasy of wealth I have is not a desire to spend endlessly. It’s a fantasy of comfort.
I have never dreamed of drowning. Though one of two of my near death experiences happened in water. A whirlpool when I let go. I was immediately pulled under until my father dove in and pulled me out. A weightlessness I haven’t felt since.
I have never been scared of heights. At the top of a hillside in Berkeley, the swing set overlooks a steep decline. We pump our legs harder so we’re momentarily suspended over what I suppose is a valley. I’m a kid again who believes I could fly. I’m the kid who leaned back and let go of the swing’s handles to see what it felt like. Then and now, I only learn by experience. Gravity wins.
Walking alone in a city that’s not mine, I couldn’t be further from everyone I love. Fog obscures the moon. I will myself to put on the brave face. This feeling is nothing new. It’s time to go to sleep and accept the ending I got was never going to be the one I wanted. I don’t mean to make it all about me. This summer, when you were in so much pain, I wanted to take it from you. You told me it had nothing to do with me.
These conversations that end with me acting out, and hurting someone else. I’m saying I love you just to hear you say it back. A glitching phone erased every conversation. The metaphor, as usual, isn’t lost on me. Words lost to faulty memory, or a careless one.
I want to blame anyone but I can only blame myself. A life I tangled myself into because I found a small opening. Insistence can only get you so far. You can’t convince people to love you. I know this now. That I can’t leave is my own choice. I’m a willing participant. A week later, you left without saying goodbye.
Here under the moonlight, I turn my face toward the shining thing that looks crueler here than it does back home. The night is cold. This city is so empty. I’m ready to be home. In the morning, I board a plane and rewrite this scene over and over until I fall asleep. How can I rewrite it into an ending that makes more sense? I understand that whatever you took, I willingly gave.
4.
The city is trying to flush us out. Rain that is uncontainable. Rain that people who don’t live here call you about because they’re worried. Water everywhere, but we move with it. We seem to always be in rain. I catch him up on what he’s missed since our almost one month separation. I stop myself several times to catch my breath once I realize I’m spilling my guts once again. To catch myself before I become too histrionic. All these bad things I’ve done, or am about to do. He says, you want to be more unethical than you actually are.
Because I am obsessed with the idea of the ethical, it prevents me from having any idea what it means. I want to be bad, when I’ve spent so much time being good. In a span of a few weeks, two people tell me I’m selfish. I want to be the good guy but I don’t know how much I want to try. Years from now I’ll realize I always had the power to choose. I just chose wrong.
(That’s the thing about us, I once said to him. We do what we want. He said, Not really, not me. Hardly ever. I said, You’re right, I don’t either.)
5.
My boyfriends want space.
One doesn’t want to give up the freedom to live alone. A one bedroom apartment suits him fine. No cramped bathrooms, complicated kitchen choreography. Maybe one day wants kids with a yard for them to play in. I try to convince him a backyard is a state of mind.
One has a flooded basement. He doesn’t need my help.
One waits for everything he owns to make it across the country. It takes a month. Every step of the way, I packed and moved the things that make him who he is. He joked I should jump into the truck when it departed New York. When it finally gets there, he calls me to ask where I put the knives.
One wants to know what his life is going to look like in a new part of town. When he finally gets to leave. What his life will look like then.
One has a garden that he’d rather stay in all day. His hands bury themselves in the dirt while mine couldn’t garden without gloves. I wonder what that is like. To not worry about bacteria entering my lungs, still innocent because it lives in the soil. To stay outside all day when all I do is stare at the walls and ceiling of my too-small apartment.
One wants to talk after saying he never wanted to speak again. A call I haven’t returned. One boyfriend says I don’t have to.
One wants what he has. A life that looks like he always pictured. Now we have a year between us, a life that we’ve shared in milestones and landmarks. We list what’s happened since—falling in love, losing it, seeing live music, having sex—all leading to where he is now. Where he wants to be, which is somewhere closer to settled down and satisfied. He teaches me about grace, about the joy of something quiet. To be patient with everything unsolved in my heart.
One stays. He doesn’t turn into water that slips between my fingers.
if you’d like to read the companion piece to this essay on the record, you can click the link below:
this was fucking beautiful
this is so gorgeous