What I Did Before I Did Nothing
The last thing I did before I did nothing was fly to New York City for Clare’s 30th birthday. The sickness was spreading, the fear was building, yet I couldn’t not. Since the moment I met her — a divine creature suckling upon the filter of an American Spirit on a street corner in what would soon become the desiccated husk of San Francisco — Clare has been a woman I am in complete and utter awe of. She is a figure of purity and light whose presence fills me with intense calm, a human Valium I am blessed to call one of my dearest friends.
She is caring, she is wise, she is, in spite of it all, from San Jose, California. I cannot believe her brain has only been completely developed for half a decade. I am convinced she emerged from the womb intellectually fully formed.
If I did not know her, I know I would hate her. She is flawless without makeup and interminably cool without effort, hot dogging on her skateboard down the sidewalk in a sleeveless Sebadoh shirt that shows off the abject beauty of her unshaven armpits. She entrances everyone within her orbit; this fact makes me feel equal parts less special for loving her and grateful that she loves me back.
She is an ingenue with the ability to speak and have said speech frequently be more important than the speech she inspires, which means she could never really be an ingenue. She is, in short and in reality, not like other girls.
I drove her to the airport when she left me — when she left us, the state of her birth. One of her bags was overweight, which meant she had to shift items in order to not suffer an egregious and impossible fee. The clock ticked; for what felt like an eternity she attempted to shove a Dead Kennedys mug she received at the birthday party of a comedian I don’t respect but didn’t begrudge her for indulging into an overstuffed duffel bag.
“You have to leave the mug,” I told her. She did. I’ve drank from it frequently since she left us. Sometimes I let others do so. It is an honor when I allow them the privilege.
She left because she disliked Los Angeles and I respected that but that didn’t mean I had to enjoy it. New York is a pit, a hell; Los Angeles is a gift, an endless sublime sunset. She is now a nation away but I carry her with me, counting down the days until she realizes her misstep and returns to the Golden West that birthed and misses her. Her presence is deeply felt in my apartment; photos of her are everywhere. I never think about them until I allow entry to someone new, which is an infrequent occurrence as I have a propensity to self-isolate. Whenever I do so, walking them from room to room, I view my fortress of solitude through virgin eyes. It is remarkable how much the banal reality I take for granted is suffused with tracers of her. Even in a framed photo wherein I am at rack focus she is in the background, as tiny as she is blurry. She is my Zelig (though significantly less problematic).
A photo strip on my fridge shows her, head shaved, staring into the distance with the divine grace of Mary, Mother of Christ. The strip is in black and white, developed with noxious chemicals I remember huffing as soon as said strip emerged from the machine in which we had posed because it was the same one which shat out the photo of Liz Phair that made the cover of Exile in Guyville. I gaze up at her in wonder; she beatifically beams toward stage right. I appear unwell, like a woman whose portrait was captured in the midst of a psychic break. She looks like my pladid, ethereal handler. The scene makes sense. When she was here, she was.
Cut to March 2020 and I had just been dumped and soon it would make sense but at the time it did not and everything, regardless and independent of my personal disappointments, was beginning to fall apart but I flew to New York for her and I didn’t wear a mask because I didn’t think it was necessary and we ate at an egregiously expensive Mexican food restaurant (I, as always, ordered a side of rice and beans and a bottomless tap water; one of the only good things about not drinking is reveling in your cheapness, letting others get loose on $14 cocktails and asking “Were you not going to finish that?” while gesticulating toward their semi-decimated plates of $16 tacos) and she clandestinely went into the bathroom to take her temperature, paranoid that the airborne illness we didn’t yet understand but knew was serious had somehow pierced her perfect exterior and begun wrecking its havoc. She was no hotter than usual so we went about our business.
She wanted to do karaoke in Chinatown — I acquiesced, of course, screaming Alice in Chains’ “The Rooster” with such violence my throat felt as though sandpaper had been inserted in place of soft tissue.
I had only seen her once since the wedding, an event in which I skulked around like a pervert capturing candids on my Canon between chain smoking sessions outside her aunt’s stately home wherein I continued to self-isolate, choosing only to interact with our mutual friend Joey, a divine presence who also makes me feel safe. Joey is a beautiful and wonderful person I love in perpetuity with the same aplomb I do Clare but this essay isn’t about him so I’ll leave it at that.
I recently looked at the photographs I took and, while there are hundreds, virtually none of them capture the presence of the friends she made since she had left Los Angeles. I must have still been bitter — I know I still am. Every time she’s come to LA since she left she’s held get-togethers in the backyards of her Airbnbs; the New York people have shown up and talked about New York things I had no comprehension of and subsequently felt nothing about until I did, but this essay isn’t about that so I’ll leave it at that.
People speak at weddings, raising glasses and expressing good tidings. At hers, I knew I had to but I didn’t know how to. One by one, people stood up and said their piece; with each toast the pressure mounted. I kept being poked by friends who knew I had something to contribute. It took hours before I was ready; even then I wasn’t truly.
Hands shaking, I rose. I quickly broke down in sobs, rambling about how she had experienced acute suffering in her life without doing anything to deserve such treatment; how this injustice was enough to make one disbelieve in the existence of any god, let alone a loving one. When she found the man who would become her husband, however, I felt as though the tide had turned. He loved her with a piety and beauty that made the gift that is life make sense. Spent, her aunt embraced me.
And so, virus be goddamned, I went to New York and celebrated the day of her birth. She was happy, loved and in love. Her apartment felt warm and inviting and her husband didn’t care when I splayed across their marital bed and didn’t focus upon him, simply her. I even liked her dog, a petite and well-behaved mutt that clearly and competently indulged her mothering instinct.
It was a good send off.
As soon as I got home, things quickly got worse; I thought I’d keep a diary during the weeks and months which transpired shortly thereafter but I only made one entry:
Sunday, March 15th, 2020
I can’t focus on anything. Can’t watch television, can’t read a book. Slept off and on as much as I could. Talked to Clare on the phone. It took her two days to make 16 croissants and she did it but “no one can eat them but us.” I told her to freeze them. She got audibly frustrated while putting a 1000 piece puzzle of Cuba together. Saw someone tweet that the convenience store down the street, the convenience store where I drove last night to buy two packs of cigarettes after Jena texted me that the city was probably going to go into lockdown within 24 hours, the convenience store where I was struck by deja vu, the memory of being in a convenience store the day before Katrina hit and witnessing a social contract being honored among the tension, I saw someone tweet that THAT convenience store was surrounded by cops, there was a possible hostage situation. I understood then why the helicopter had been circling overhead. Walked around the neighborhood before the sunlight faded, eerie calm. Brought headphones but didn’t listen to anything. Got in my car and instinctively started playing “Fear of Music” by Talking Heads and started driving around, visuals synced perfectly with the soundtrack. Asked Howard what his address was so I could drive by his apartment building; he acquiesced, it was much nicer than I thought it would be, albeit still on Hollywood Boulevard. Drove down the Sunset Strip, Laugh Factory closed while covered in billboards advertising Maron’s newest Netflix special (“End Times Fun”) and a digital billboard showing what was SUPPOSED to be taking place tonight, “Chocolate Sundays,” an all-black standup show in 2020. Howard started talking about how when comedy begins again the whole system is going to have to change because there won’t be enough stage time for everyone, how there really isn’t even enough now, and how comics who move to Los Angeles are like “surfers who move where there are no waves.”
I made no other entries and a year quickly passed and who cares what happened within it — I don’t, why would you? I rarely called her on the phone; I had too much to say so I chose to say nothing.
When she came here last month, though, I told her everything about the nothing and when she left I felt the void of her absence and it was grander than any I had experienced in a year of staring into nothingness.
I haven’t told her I’m writing this but I know she’ll read it. I don’t have to tell her anything and so I don’t. With some people, you can remain silent. With some people, silence says the unspoken. I hope you have something akin to this in your life. I want you to feel safe in light of death, embraced in spite of madness.
Dearest Clare, you make the time pass. You make me better even when I do nothing. You love and you facilitate love and as a result I love you. Because you deserve it and god can no longer ignore it. Time cannot avoid it. Time means nothing; it is worthless. I cannot wait to see you again; to be seen. I thank you for facilitating my being seen.