If
you want to meet an available man who is well dressed, showered and
looking good, hang around divorce court. There is one in every town.
Men
shave and have their hair cut before they show up. They’re working hard
to win children back, save money, hold on to houses, and maybe impress
soon-to-be ex-wives.
I
was a 19-year-old college student ordering a cup of coffee between
classes when a man came up beside me, poured an ice water and downed the
whole glass in one long drink. He had black close-cropped hair, lightly
tanned skin and Travolta-blue eyes. He wore his suit carelessly, the
sleeves hitched up and the noose of his tie loosened. He looked as if he
wanted to break out of society’s constraints but had important business
first.
The
suit, I would learn, was a dusted-off Brooks Brothers. I didn’t know
anything about men’s suits back then. Honestly, I didn’t know anything
about men.
It
turned out that his father, who owned real estate and closed six-figure
deals over lunch, put faith in Brooks Brothers. Get a good suit, he
thought, and life falls into place. I would eventually learn that the
rebellious son I met in the diner would not put on a suit unless his
life depended on it. When I met him, his life kind of did.
“Nice suit,” I said.
“Divorce
court,” he said and laughed. His teeth were white. He was thin, fit and
had the dark pigment of sun damage below his eyes. He smelled like
cedar, sun and wind.
As
I carried my coffee to the cream and sugar station, he pulled a bottle
of Grand Marnier from his jacket. When he gestured toward my cup I gave a
nod and returned his smile. That’s how young I was. Who drinks with a
hot stranger dressed for divorce?
He
poured the alcohol into my mug, then took a swig from the bottle. That
was the start of everything: a grand turn in the rough-hewed footpath I
called my life.
A
teacher and philosopher, he wrote papers translated into multiple
languages and presented them at conferences. He had a 10-speed bike
locked with a heavy chain outside — his trusty steed.
Money
and Ritalin had fueled his childhood. One night he told me that as a
child, he rode all over the West Hills of Portland. When the sun set, he
knew he was disobeying his mother by staying out, making her worry. He
also knew that eventually she would get in her car and drive. She would
call his name in the dark until he would hear her voice pouring over the
hills, between mansions, and she would find him and take him home.
We
were the same height and weight and could swap our faded Levi’s, though
they fit my curves differently than his narrow hips. We scoffed at the
accumulation of cash as a life goal, drank cheap beer and paved the way,
in smoky old-man dive bars, for hipsters who went to those places over a
decade later.
In
some ways we weren’t matched though: He was 13 years older. When you’re
19 and he’s 32, that’s a major difference. He had burned through his
marriage and was battling his ex-wife for the right to see his daughter.
He didn’t have a girlfriend, except maybe he did. He was half-Palestinian
or Lebanese or Syrian, depending on whom you asked. He was working on
his master’s degree and Ph.D. simultaneously, or so he said. He was
unemployed, a student, a teacher. He had a black motorcycle jacket with a
yellow stripe down the arms and a motorcycle in his mother’s garage
that never saw the streets.
Once
in a while a friend might point out his nearly complete lack of income.
I would say, “I’m not in it for the money.” I could earn my own meager
paychecks. I wasn’t in life for the money. Being broke but rich in
creative capital was the Portland way.
For
divorce court, he had cut his hair in his mother’s bathroom. But later
he would let his hair grow long again. He would push it out of his face
with one thin arm, slim fingers, the clank of bracelets. Between us we
had enough hair for six people.
A
scarf around his neck trailed in the wind as he sailed along on that
old bike. With dark clothes, dark lashes and a rack of heavy bracelets,
he had an androgynous punk thing going on. We hung out under the black
lights of Satyricon, Portland’s ragged-edge hot spot, but he had a soft
side, too: He was crazy about Nutella and late nights at Powell’s Books.
He
could find more happiness in a single savored bottle of Spaten
Optimator than others wring out of a fortune. He would pet stray cats
and muse about their lives. He would throw his head back and laugh
easily, because life was a roving party.
When
we camped on nearby Saddle Mountain, our needs were minimal: a sleeping
bag, a beer, a short walk back to a borrowed car. Another night we
slept outside in tall beach grass that lined desolate northern Oregon
beaches, woke up cold under the full moon and ran for shelter. His
father had an empty beachfront house not far off.
When
this man drank too much, he might rage about injustice in Palestine or
cry about his daughter: He wanted to see her. If he couldn’t have
custody, he wouldn’t pay child support. But if he didn’t pay child
support, the custody question was over.
The
state garnished his wages so he quit working even part time. It was all
beyond my experience. I suggested that he pay child support, and he’d
rage. He’d stay out all night. He might ring the buzzer of my apartment
at 4 a.m.
Almost
five years after we met I bought an old Ford Falcon with lights that
flickered. I wanted his help with the decision, but he wasn’t around. As
soon as I drove the car away, the lights went out. I found a garage,
sat on the curb and wondered if I had bought the right $700 vehicle.
Around
midnight he called. He was out in the wilderness of the Columbia Gorge.
It was pouring. Rain tapped against my apartment windows.
He
had gone hiking with a friend but the friend left early. Now he was at a
pay phone off the highway. He wanted me to drive my unreliable clunker
into the storm to find him. He wanted me to call his name in the dark,
call until he would hear my voice pouring through the hills, and I could
take him home.
He
was 38 by then, in full retreat from the adult world. In his heart, he
was an 8-year-old on a bike riding through the West Hills, and love was a
woman willing to search for him.
It’s one thing to be carefree together. It’s another to be assigned the mother role. I couldn’t take it on.
I
have no regrets about those years together. They were full of charmed
days walking through historic cemeteries, going for midday breakfasts,
living without plans. There is a beauty in wasted time. He showed me how
to staunch despair with denial and small pleasures.
Thirteen
years later I turned 38, the age he had been when I last saw him, and I
could look at the 25-year-old I once was as if from a great height. Did
he realize I was so young when he leaned on me for my apartment, my
food and life? When he asked me to drive into the dark of that storm?
He
moved back to his childhood bedroom in his mother’s house. Later she
suffered a terrible illness. His presence was helpful, perhaps
necessary. We lost touch.
One
evening several years ago, when I was over 40, I was in a park with my
child. I had a full-time job, a house and a handsome employed husband.
Portland had grown into a city no longer satisfied with small pleasures.
It’s expensive now, and littered with aspirations. I have tried to keep
pace with this town.
A
man who may have been homeless was sacked out on the grass. I thought I
recognized his angled profile and the mottled skin around his eyes, but
I wasn’t sure. He pulled a newspaper over his face. I held my
daughter’s hand. She walked a balance beam on the rails of a planter
box. I looked for an old bike, a heavy chain lock. There wasn’t one. I
had the wrong guy.
Except
when he stood I saw how he stretched, that stray cat of a gray-haired
man. His faded curls were cut short, divorce-court style. The 501s he
wore could have just as well have been mine once. My twin, my friend, my
man, my ghost: that purveyor of simple pleasures. He pushed back his
hair, turned and walked into the city alone.
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