Oblivion

I first ran into him on a cold, hard Sunday towards the front end of February. It was the beginning of a particularly strong cold snap, with the temperatures only expected to get lower. Much lower.

           That particular morning, I was late for mass. I didn’t layer enough, and the instant I was out my door frigid cold slapped me with ferocity. The morning burned violently across my cheeks, my forehead, and my scalp within a few steps, and before I turned the first corner it felt like I was encased in ice.

           It also felt like I deserved the slap and the burn.

I hurried towards church, realized within a block that I hadn’t grabbed a hat, and had to keep going.  I blew into my bare fingers—I certainly hadn’t had time to find my gloves or get them on—tightened my scarf around my neck, and jammed it into the front of my jacket. That was the one thing I had brought, the only protection I now possessed against the record breaking cold, but it was only because it had still been lying on the couch where it was unwound last night, and it’s relief was minimal. I felt the cold stabbing at me in between the weaving, this cold brutal enough to get in where other cold couldn’t.

           The cold attacked my thoughts on my way to church, too. I felt panicked, but thickly, like my anxiety was freezing and my synapses hardening with ice, slowing down each step as if I was slogging through four feet of snow.

           That was the worst part of it. I wanted to panic but I couldn’t. I wanted to stop and scream, to heave and hyperventilate for release. At the very least I wished my breath would burst from my chest in giant ripping expulsions, or that I would simply collapse on the frozen cement and lay there until I solidified into crusty cracked ice they had to scrape away on Monday. I just wished something would happen, but nothing was so all I could manage was to feel mildly short of breath. Each inhalation was only slightly more difficult than it should have been but not hard enough to make me stop. I could wheeze weakly in the cold but no more.

           I pushed on, in between inhalation and exhalation, breathing but not quite, unable to suffocate but fine enough to keep going. The chill across my teeth caused me to hiss every once in a while, but even that was vague, more of a rattle, a zombie moan from a creature that didn’t want to be dead any longer but couldn’t enter the other world yet, either. It was the sad sound of being stuck. Trapped.

           In that haze, strangled and frozen, I pushed on the best that I could to St. Philomena’s. It occurred to me that I might have been faster on the bus—maybe even made it on time—but I couldn’t imagine standing still just then and waiting at a bus stop. My frozen, strangled anxiety propelled me forward, no matter the speed.

           I had to keep moving. Movement was progress. Movement was direction towards a goal that was distant, closer towards away than here, and so if I kept going it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except movement.

Then the bus passed me.

I saw it in slow motion, and I knew what it was when it rumbled by but a good several seconds passed before I thought about running to try and catch it. At that I said, “Shit,” and broke into an awkward run.

The bus started to slow at a light, the red of its brakes a brief flash of hope ahead of me, and I started waving my bare icicle hands as best I could in case the driver or someone on the bus saw me and decided to have mercy.

           I pushed ahead. One brief freeze-frame moment flashed, and it seemed like I might make it. Surely the bus driver saw me now because I was there at the light, level with the bus, and then I jammed and lurched through the intersection right past it, even though the light was red on my end and I had to dodge between two cars, and I knew I’d been spotted and was saved.

Then the light changed and the brakes released, and the exhaust coughed its smoking black little laugh as the bus began moving. I surged even faster, even though bright fire raged inside of me from the cold and exertion. The bus passed me, but I kept going even though now I really couldn’t breathe and my head was pounding with the force of all the earth’s magma built up inside of me. I was almost at the back of the bus, close enough to wheeze and gasp in the exhaust, and I reached out like I might latch on to the bumper. Someone inside turned, and I was close enough to see the expression on his face, but it mottled and twisted in the cold frosted glass. Was it empathy, or mockery? I was almost close enough to rap on the back, but then the bus changed gears, coughed one more time and sped up, and his face and the answer faded.

           I waved my arms one last time and slowed.  The letters from the ad on the back grew smaller, a strawberry flavored condom receding slowly like a dream that was about to end, and I shouted out at it and then stopped. The engine chuckled as it sped up even more, chortling back at me. I was being laughed at, derided for having made the choices I’d made and for now being frozen, stranded, late to mass, and unable to do much more than wheeze.

I said, “Shit,” again and shook my fist at the retreating bus.

As if that would make a difference.

I checked my phone. Eight minutes until mass started, and I was still a good fifteen minutes’ walk away. The opening prayers would be over when I arrived, likely even the readings. Father Oliver would be standing there at the pulpit as imperious as the end of time, and I’d walk in and all his words would come crashing towards me like waves. They’d hit like great frothing words of condemnation rushing over the pews, one after the other, as they always did.

It was suddenly as if I were already in mass, right there in the biting bitter cold. The remnants of Father Oliver’s tenor boomed inside of me, and I pictured his finger raised right out in front of his chest, his other fingers curled in towards his palm and his voice shaking the walls of the cathedral as he hacked at the congregation’s sins.

I stood in the middle of the sidewalk. Which evil would it be today? Last week he had railed on about adultery, drawing from the story of the woman whom the leaders of Jesus’ day had been about to attack with stones for being with another man.

The week before that had also been about the sin of being with another man.

I gritted my teeth and sucked in a breath of cold. A buzz started somewhere deep in the back of my brain.

We are facing darkness, Father Oliver said. We are facing darkness, and we can either step into it, or we can step away from it.

The buzzing grew louder.

I took out my phone again. Four minutes until mass started.  At this rate I’d miss the homily. I could go for the second half, and I wouldn’t have to hear Father Oliver rail with thinly veiled disgust against what it meant for God and for heaven when two men got together.

           If we step towards the light, we can be assured of the Lord’s embrace. If we step towards the darkness?

           Two weeks ago, Father Oliver let the silence after his question be its own answer, and then he’d gone on about pleasure. All the wrong kinds of pleasure.

Countless pleasures of the flesh are readily available for us, and we reach for so many of them in the darkness.

I shook my head, but the words resounded over the buzzing.

We reach for them in the darkness because part of us knows they’re not right.

The white noise was no match for Father Oliver’s trembling timbre, even two Sundays later.

We know it, so we use the darkness to sin. We use blackness for these pleasures. We use oblivion, so we can turn away from God.

I turned, as if to start back for home.

The oblivion of a dark bedroom. The oblivion of a strong drink. The oblivion of turning our mind off and giving in to lust.

But I couldn’t go back home. What’s his name was still there.

We seek the oblivion of tuning out. We seek the oblivion of lies, to tell us that what we do in the darkness is okay. We seek the oblivion of forgetting God is talking to us.

What’s his name.

I couldn’t remember his name.

Had I ever learned it?

I closed my eyes and swayed. Bile rose inside of me and now I burned from the inside as well as the outside.

I hadn’t.

God wants to show us the way forward in the light, but we refuse it.

No. That wasn’t right. I had. Of course I had learned his name. I didn’t not learn their names.

So was it Terrence? Or Torri?

Trevor?

Bile continued to rise and I almost threw up.

Tony? Was it Tony?

No. That wasn’t right, not at all. Absolutely it could not have been Tony.

Tobias, then? Teddy?

Trey?

It started with a T, I was sure of it. Was it two syllables, then? No, maybe just one. Todd. Ted.

Was it a nickname? Maybe it was a nickname. It was something unique, that much I remembered.

Tag?

Tan?

I shook my head. This was stupid. I couldn’t stand there dithering about names I was pulling out of my hind end. I was stuck on T but I wasn’t thinking clearly, not now, not then. I hadn’t been thinking clearly last night, certainly not after our first drink, which meant I hadn’t been listening clearly, either to myself or him. His name could have been Noah or Ono or fucking Magellan for all I knew.

I swallowed, but the vile taste of vomit remained. So, too, did the taste of last night.

We refuse the light, and we convince ourselves we’re on the right path, that those pleasures are what we really want, because in the darkness, we can see whatever we want to.

I hadn’t brushed my teeth since some time yesterday morning, and so everything was still there, the remnants like espresso shots gone bad: a dark, acrid trace across the roof of my mouth, a strong punch of bitterness that made my face twist and tighten and made me want to start clawing at my mouth, as if I could rip them out one by one.

I tasted, too, the deeper moments from last night, the last kisses as the night faded, as we faded, as one of us got lost first and then the other followed, both of us eventually melting into the sheets and into each other. Tastes fused and so did we, beginnings lost in endings, everything dizzying, fluid, swirling so that sour and bitter and sweet and salty all happened at once. The first drink and the last went hand in hand around us both, gathering us in, tipping us over, twirling us so that we couldn’t tell when everything started or when it was supposed to stop.

I tasted lemon and vanilla, and my face twisted even tighter. This was sour at work, the taste of a drink I hadn’t wanted.  I had wanted to say no even less, though, and so there I was with a vile drink and even viler regret.

We choose the oblivion of purposeful forgetting, of not taking responsibility.

Why had we chosen that? Which one of us had let lemon vodka happen?

I swallowed again, but some of the vomit remained and sluiced in my mouth. For a moment, all else faded except the urgent need not to let it all out. I began to count.

I shut my eyes tight, swallowed again and tried to at least make it to ten. Father Oliver’s words cut across number four, slicing right down the middle of it.

We want to let go, to give in to the pleasures, and oh. Oh, we do let go. We let go with ease, with abandon, with glee. With relish.

Five, six, seven.

We let go of God.

I lost track of where I was and started over. I lost track again, started a third time, and put fists to my temples. I stood there and wished I would throw up, let that out at least, but I’d been repressing it through several failed attempts to get to ten and so now the foulness just curdled in my mouth, all the tastes mingling. None of them were as intoxicating as they had been last night, and so my face twisted even more tightly and my fists pressed even harder against the sides of my head because it was all sour, wrong, rotten in my mouth, in my neurons, everywhere inside of me.

I still hadn’t made it to ten.

We let go of God, and we step into oblivion.

I still couldn’t remember his name.

And at first it feels amazing.

I couldn’t remember how many drinks we’d had, couldn’t remember the first one. Or the last.

There’s the promise of so much goodness, isn’t there? The lure of so much fun, of so much happiness. We’re thrilled. We’re in lust. We’re with someone, and it feels fantastic.

The lemon vodka blended into the next drink, and the image of us dancing—where had we gone dancing?—blended into us on top of each other, and that blended into me waking up horrified, hungover, late for mass, and late for the chance to connect with God.

And so we turn towards the lust, towards the other person, like they’ll fulfill us. We turn towards the darkness because the promise of what we want to see is so strong.

I squeezed my temples even harder and said, “No,” out loud.

As if that would make a difference.

We turn towards the oblivion, towards that false promise, and we run, full speed ahead.

“No,” I said again, and I turned, blindly, my eyes still tightly shut between my fists.

“Stop it,” I said. No one was around but I said it anyway, stop it, even though that wouldn’t work. Of course it wouldn’t work, because nothing else was working and I had nowhere to go to make it work. I couldn’t keep the vomit down but I couldn’t throw up. I couldn’t go to mass and yet I couldn’t go back to my apartment. I couldn’t remember his name but I couldn’t forget him, either. I was in between worlds, in between darknesses, reaching for one while stuck in the other.

I just needed to go, to get away from the taste in my mouth, from the darkness, from the memories that blended and twisted and sank into oblivion.

I dropped my hands and started running.

And that's when I crashed into him.