Figures of Speech

I’ve always enjoyed the company of plants. Plants are immutable from outside forces. Living beings without the ability to hear and therefore be changed by words around them. I feel comfortable in my garden. Since I was young, my plants have provided me with a sense of community I no longer feel with those around me.

Plants can’t mock and, conversely, can never be mocked. I often wonder what it would be like to take on the form of one of the azaleas growing outside my window. They grow well in acidic soil and can survive the harsher conditions of the cold. I like that. I imagine myself growing among harsh conditions, unhindered by the plants around me competing for sunlight.

The last time I spoke was four years ago. Not a single utterance outside of a gasp or an elongated inhale. Words don’t suit me, at least they don’t anymore. Words are like acidic soil, and I am not like an azalea that can grow amidst the harsher terrain. Growing up I heard every word under the sun –

“sissy” “femme boy” “girly”

Some words hurt more than others and some stung so much that it was hard to get out of bed in the morning.

So, I took to some of my own words. I learned how to speak with volatility, with intention to bruise. When words are thrown against you like bows to a boss, you learn how to throw them back. How to hit a bullseye knowing very little about the target.

It happened quicker than I could notice but I learned my words had more power than those around me. I would spread rumors and gossip, but my words would take root. They would grow and become the truth. It happened first in 7^th grade with Damian Paterson. At first it was a simple mention to a friend.

“Damian’s parents are getting a divorce.”

How would I know? Damian and I were never close. I was never near close enough to get an invitation to hang out at his house. I knew his parents only through school functions where they operated under the term “chaperone.” I didn’t even know what it meant to truly to get divorced. I was borrowing words I overheard from Married…. with Children. I knew the intention but never the meaning.

Word spread from one mouth to the next and with every utterance I could see the weight on Damian’s shoulders grow heavier and heavier. It was almost as if he heard before he knew himself. Four months later, the entirety of our middle school knew the fate of Damian’s parents and his father had relocated to an apartment building a stone’s throw away from the megacomplex of a house his mom acquired in the separation.

In high school, the embers of my words ignited into a blaze. When Rachel Wilton told me I was “a sad excuse for space” I started to tell people she had chlamydia. Word on the street says she was medicated and grounded by her parents two weeks later. When Ron Murther called me the F-word, I told the everyone his mom was a pill popper. Ron was gone three weeks later to help his mom pack for rehab.  When Tommy Bellet punched me in the stomach, I outed him to our whole grade. He’s married to a man named Michael now. Whether that was my doing or a previously uncovered truth is anyone’s guess.

It's not as if I was the only one talking. Everyone was pointing fingers like we were characters in a production of The Crucible. I just realized that when the others spoke it destroyed and when I spoke it created.

The creation became too much. Every word became reality, and every sentence became a weapon to tear down those around me. By the time I went to college, I learned to only speak about things I already knew to be true. They called me quiet and shy. I wasn’t shy. I was just listening. Listening to their words and how they used them to cut other people. It made me jealous. I was jealous that they could speak so freely without any recourse. They didn’t have to think twice about how they treated others; they could swing words around like sledgehammers, destroying everything around them and leaving behind just debris.

But listening doesn’t always last. Because listening becomes observing and observing becomes fascination and he was so easily fascinating to me. He was tall and sturdy in a way that made me feel immediately safe. He wasn’t the most attractive man in every room he walked into, but his energy was a bubble that drew you in and blocked out everything else around you. He smiled at people that others didn’t – like me. He smiled in a way that showed he genuinely cared and wanted to hear about that thing that even you know isn’t that interesting. He was so kind and caring and he was also taken.

I was in line for the bathroom at Shane’s Pub where I always stayed one too many drinks past my curfew, and he noticed my shirt. A graphic t-shirt that was labeled “vintage” even though its lifespan was barely twenty years long. Splattered across the front was a mountain vista with the words Jackson Hole in bold below. He asked if I had ever been, and I had to admit that it was an impulse purchase from a thrift store about six years prior. He pushed on though, asking me about where I’m from, what I do, where I want to go…. “home with you” I thought for a moment before stopping myself. He was clearly from a different stratosphere. About eight rungs up the ladder from where I perched in the social stratification of college. “Mikey” he said he was called.

“That’s a cute name.”

Uh oh. That’s a step too far. “Retreat, retreat!” my mind was screaming. But he smiled and let out a small laugh. Embarrassed? I couldn’t tell.

“Thank you. I like to think so. And what’s your name, cutie?”

At this point I blacked out. I’m not sure if I said my name back or if I passed out in front of him. Everything was a blur until I found myself at home an hour and half later, riding off a childish high that had me smiling in my bed until I eventually fell asleep.

It took a total of 19 minutes, 4 google tabs and 12 Instagram searches to find him. Mikey Aristi - the Italian name suited his looks. Immediately my heart sank when I saw it – six out of his first nine posts showed another man about seven rungs up the ladder from where I was. A smidge below Mikey but close enough to have his heart. I didn’t even bother to look up his name. I spent the rest of the day mixed in a dangerous combination of stupidity and envy. I wallowed my way through the day, daydreaming in every class and binge eating cliff bars.

As they say, though, time heals all wounds and eventually my infatuation passed, and I moved on to the next thing and the thing after that. That is until I saw him at the gym four weeks later and my wound was opened back up and blood poured onto the ground right in front of his feet.

“Jackson Hole!”

He remembered me….my heart leaped! Suddenly I become acutely aware of how I looked – sweat dripping out of every orifice of my body as I jogged at a measly pace on the treadmill while watching HGTV.

I stopped the treadmill and we talked. And we talked. And continued beyond what I thought was a normal amount of conversation until we were talking about his mother and her recent stint in the hospital. In some bout of bravery I’ve never experienced before, I decided to ask about his dating life. And Mikey brought him up. I feigned surprise even though I could tell you exactly what part of New Orleans they spent his last birthday in.

“Three years together, can you believe that?” he told me.

“That’s amazing. I’m so happy for you” I said with as much of a smile as I could muster.

He touched my shoulder and told me how good it was to see me and that I should get drinks with him and his long-term boyfriend soon.

“I’d love to” I replied with perhaps too much fervor.

I know myself well enough to know that I was in too deep at this point. I was someone who watched and observed. I never let myself get involved because the second I do, I’ll want to talk and as soon as I talk reality as we know it will change.

But we went to drinks. And drinks eventually became dinner and meeting their friends. And meeting their friends meant I became part of the friend group. I hoped over time my crush would fade but it only became stronger and harder to ignore. They would hold each other, and I’d feel a deep pang in my gut.

“Stay out of it” I’d tell myself as I scrolled through his Instagram account late at night. And for the most part I did.

I’m not a big drinker. I learned that alcohol creates loose lips, and my loose lips not only sink ships but send the boat off on a new course and onto a rocky shoreline. Overtime, though, I grew cocky. I’d been good and had remained a neutral party. “I’m in a good place.” I’d tell myself, half convinced and half attempting to convince. I barely even realized I had said it when I did, but it only took two days to realize what I’d done.

“I heard they’re not happy with each other anymore.”

An innocent comment made after a late-night binge with a friend. Or at least it should have been, but I can never say anything innocently.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know…. I just heard they’re starting to fight more. I probably shouldn’t talk about it.”

“Who told you? Was it Mikey?”

“No. I’ve just started to see them fight in public. It gets awkward.”

It wasn’t even true. They communicated so well. I’d seen them fight once if you can even call it that. What started as a small tiff blew up in my imagination to be a fracture in the relationship. An opening that I could climb through like a small mouse. I just needed a sliver, and I would squeeze my way in.

The sliver turned into a wide gap. The following Friday we had a group dinner planned at one of our friend’s place - the one who was organized enough to throw a dinner party. Mikey walked in thirty minutes late with a sour mood I’d never seen before. If he was experiencing any frustration before, he had never let it show. I watched him across the table as he ate his meal in silence. He didn’t have to say anything, I knew it was my doing. I’ve played this game enough times before. And that’s how I viewed it – it was a game and I needed to play it. Opportunity struck and I suddenly saw my chance to intercept.

The second comment was innocuous enough. Just something I had heard “from a friend.”

“I heard he’s thinking about moving away and Mikey didn’t take that news well, so they’re fighting again.”

And fight they did. They fought at Shane’s, they fought at our friend’s, they fought at home (so I heard…) and they even fought once in the library.

“What happened to them?” people would ask. I shrugged my shoulders and acted just as surprised. “They were the perfect couple, I thought.”

I worked on crawling my way through the gap, but with every effort I made, I found I was blocked on the other side. Their breakup was inevitable. They could barely be around each other without starting something. Mikey moved out into a sublet studio apartment around the corner. I brought wine and said I’m there to listen if he wants to talk. But Mikey never did. His mood soured with the relationship. The buoyant guy I met a year and a half ago was becoming harder to reach. He withdrew himself from our friend group and started to spend more time on his own.

“I need to focus on studying” he told us.

I fought the urge, but I couldn’t help it. My crush was now a full-blown obsession and I had to have it returned. Every day that Mikey drifted apart, I spent my time trying to draw him closer.

“I heard Mikey’s sublet is coming back early.”

Mikey crashed on my couch for the next five days. He was so consumed with finding another place to live that I’m not sure he even noticed me. He said “please” and “thank you” but I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted to offer my bed, but I was afraid of the rejection.

The weeds of greed and envy took root in my mind and were beginning to overgrow and consume me. My friends no longer knew how to interact with me. My friend Adam drunkenly called me “a gossip” and I called him “a failure.” He had to drop two of his classes six weeks later because his grades hit an all-time low.

I was getting pulled out to sea and every comment I made became a life raft I was using to stay above water.

“Mikey’s ex is moving to Mexico.”

“Mikey isn’t hooking up with anyone right now.”

“Mikey and I hooked up.”

I said it before I could even process I was saying it. I had wanted to say it for so long, but I bite my tongue every time and swallowed my words. Tempting fate was dangerous and rewriting it was a sin.

Unlike Hester Prynne, I had sewn my own scarlet letter onto my clothes. The immediate reactions were harsh and accusatory. Questions of my loyalty and my morals. “Why would you do that? They were trying to sort things out.”

It didn’t take long before I was ostracized from the group. In my crusade to get what I wanted, I failed to realize that everyone else was rooting for them to get back together. They were offering support and love and a helping hand while I was widening the gap, driving barriers between them.

And still, I waited with excitement for my words to become true. I waited for days for the two of us to finally be together. I started to doubt that I still had the power I once had. Maybe in my ruthless campaign, I had run my abilities into the ground. But it happened one morning after a drunken night and a need for a place to crash. Mikey and I’s relationship had withered away in almost the same fashion it had with his ex. But the power of proximity and a need to be touched is almost as powerful as attraction itself. I waited for him to kiss me before I returned and when I did the years of anticipation suddenly fell to the floor. This thing I dreamed about for almost two years was happening and, yet, I felt like he was a million miles away. Between his anguish and my guilt, we couldn’t actually be together.

We finished and lay next to each other without saying a word. What was there to say? My mind was racing, but I knew this was the end of us. I had sewn the roots of distrust and here they were about to flower and separate the two of us.

“I don’t think we should do this again.”

I didn’t respond. I was hurt but I didn’t disagree. He put on his clothes and left and that was the last time we ever spoke.

I got up to use the bathroom and as I did, I caught my reflection in the mirror. My face had taken on a sinister look. I had let lust and envy transform me into a person I no longer recognized. So, I wept.

I cried for Damian and for Rachel and Ron and Tommy and so many others. I cried for Mikey and for his ex. And I cried for myself. I tried to forgive myself, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t justify the words I had thrown against others for my own sense of retribution. In the scales of justice, my actions far outweighed my justifications.

It was never a conscious decision. I slowly worked my way into silence. I had no words for a week after I last saw Mikey. I withdrew from others out of fear of what I might do to them. I began to find solace in plants – in my ability to foster growth with my hands and nothing else. No words were necessary to help them grow, and any words said would never hurt them.

A few friends reached out to ask how I was doing but those messages still sit on my phone waiting for a response. Over time people moved on or away. We lost touch. And with fewer to people to talk to, there’s less to say.

Sticks and stones may break my bones…. but words….words will shatter.