Jay Elias | You can take it with you

"I have wasted Time, and now doth
Time waste me"
- Richard II

2002-06-20- 1:31 a.m.

You Were My Miss Washington D.C.

There were so many things I was dying to show you; so many things I wanted you to see.
It is all over now; there aren’t really even any ashes left to scatter, no embers to fan. The rapidity of it still stuns me a little. I find myself wondering if it was always this way, and I simply didn’t notice for whatever reason or that it has been so long that I’ve lost the sense-memory of it all. Or is the funny feeling I get on my skin right, and this is something a bit new, a little different, and we were supposed to let the falling apart linger a little longer. That sounds like a question, but really isn’t. I don’t really think any of us know how things are supposed to end any more than we know how they begin.
This is the part where I’d say something pithy, perhaps about how I think there is a large part of us that are still teenagers, making it all up as we go along. I’d like it; it would make a neat summation for a couple of my thoughts. You’d say that a large part of me is still a teenager, and perhaps wonder if I was ever going to grow up. And even before that, you’d tell me I didn’t need to hammer the audience over the head with it.
Sometimes, when I’m reading a good book, one I am really loving, I’ll be disappointed when I feel the stack of pages to the right grow thin. I’m a rereader; books I love never live on just in my memory, because I can’t resist the temptation to pick it back up and try to recapture the magic it wove over me the first time. I own hundreds of books, largely because I cannot bear to part with them. They are my old girlfriends, my ex-lovers, and I want to take them on another whirl. But sometimes, when I’m reading one for the first time, I’ll put it down for a week or two as I see the end approaching. I’m just not quite ready to say goodbye, even if it is just for now.
Usually, I just ignore the street vendors lined up along Manhattan’s sidewalks, pawning off last week’s magazines and knock-off Prada backpacks. It is part of the scenery, as much so as the buildings reaching skyward that no real New Yorker looks at while walking. But I harbor a special love for the ones who sell used paperbacks along 86th Street. As a child, my father used to take me to endless parades of used bookstores, where you never knew if they would have what you were looking for or even something you’d want at all. There is a certain magic there though; when you are forced to wander aimlessly among the stacks of poorly sorted paperbacks you find yourself not only a voyeur in the past reading habits of someone you’ll never meet, but also opened up to a world of literature you didn’t even know of, books who appeal to you even though you know nothing of them. No one recommends them to you; they aren’t by your favorite author or come with the stamp of approval of the New York Times Review of Books and the Oprah book club. These books become your most special loves; in rediscovering them, you feel for a moment like Magellan.
Manhattan is a bit crowded for those sorts of used bookstores. Real estate is a little more valuable than whatever one can reap selling old titles for five dollars a dog-eared copy. But walking along 86th Street, vendors on the sidewalk can sell you used paperbacks, beach novels from three years ago and college reading with the bright orange “USED” sticker on them. And a few years ago, I picked up a tattered copy of Russell Banks’ Continental Drift to reread that I never quite got through. Now that I’m alone though, I’ve got a little more time on my hands.
About three quarters of the way through, right about when I might have stopped to prolong the experience, I found a scrap of yellow paper. Written on it, in the loosened cursive of a girl grown up, were the words “Transition Dave” and a phone number. Lying there like a little mystery. Was Dave some transitional guy our unnamed girl was seeing? Or is there something more, or less, to the story that I’ll never really know? The note is fascinating and appalling at the same time; a window into a life and a story I’ll never know more about.
But I’ll always remember this. On the page where that yellow note was tucked in, Russell Banks had written these words: “Bob has become one of those fortunate few men and women who have learned, before it’s too late to enjoy it, that sex is just sex and it’s all of that as well. He can take it and leave it, which is a much happier condition than having to do one or the other.”
I don’t have any pretense that I understand what that means. I don’t really understand sex, or love, or loss. Part of me wishes I did. Part of me thinks if I knew about those things, really knew them, I’d be happier. The truth is, though, that I doubt knowing would make me any happier. I would understand, which right now seems really important. But I understand a lot of other things, and it hasn’t helped me much so far, but I do know that wishing I knew things won’t make me know them. Like the identity of Transition Dave, some things will remain forever mysterious.
I can live with that though. I’m not the gumshoe I was when I was younger; I am no longer compelled to search high and low for the answers to the question of what exactly happened and what went wrong. What haunts me most now is how the story finishes before its plot. There were so many things I meant to do, plans we’d made, things I wanted to show you and let you show me. I can’t help but to think sometimes when the credits roll that you would have really enjoyed that movie, or to set aside in my mind a song you might have liked if I was there to play it for you. Sometimes I walk by store windows and I see little things I might have liked to buy for you.
Unlike a lot of people, I’m pretty good at goodbyes. Until the time comes for me to let it all go myself. I don’t understand that either. But I can’t help wishing I did.

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Doesn't Take Much and That's Messed Up - 2004-03-15
Like Water Under Bridges - 2003-09-08
Jesus On The Dashboard - 2003-08-13
An Administrative Announcement - 2003-08-11
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