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(Based on a text that I wrote in January 2016)
“Have you ever thought about your last words? What they’d sound like?,” River says shrugging his shoulders. He keeps them there as if he needed to embody the question, become it to truly think about it.
No, I almost say, but I smile instead. Perhaps? A hundred percent. A quote from George Hinkenlooper’s “Factory Girl” comes to mind, one that I’ve repeated whenever and wherever I could: “… creating chaos and uproar wherever she went. Divorced as many times as she married, she leaves only good wishes behind.”
I like its weight, the commitment of each word to defining a distinct human being. I like how it feels to pretend to find myself in them.
“When you die, I mean,” he says. “The last words you’ll ever say, ever.”
I raise my eyebrows waiting for him to elaborate. He’s still staring at the wall in front of him, concrete arched to fit into the shape of the bridge we’re sitting under, the corners of his eyes wrinkling as he smiles. He looks at me just like he does when we’re alone – catching my eyes in his, entwining thoughts, almost in awe… always brief, on the verge of heartbreaking.
“Can I tell you mine?,” he says.
The second I take it in, it’s gone.
I feel deflated, but I smile. “Let’s hear it,” I say. I know I have no choice in the matter anyway. He’s going to tell me whether I want to or not.
“Well, the last thing I’d do would be call my friends, or the sons of my friends, maybe their grandchildren,” he says tilting his head to the side. “And I’d tell them: boys, I’m dying. Tell your parents that I love them, that we’ve spent together the best, best moments of our lives, that I’m never going to forget them. No way. It’s been an incredible time, and I’ve had so much fucking fun. So thank you. Bye. Now I die.”
He nods as if he needed to reassure himself that those words are the right ones. I can’t help but giggle at how pleased he seems.
That River had a rough time as a child was no secret to any of us. When I first met him in sixth form, his posture was defying, denying the slightest hint of pity. He crossed lines, broke things, took every chance he could to make fun out of life. He was intelligent beyond the belief of any teacher. He wanted to travel for a lifetime.
“I believe it, that you would say that,” I say. “But, what if you have a family though? Don’t you want to say goodbye to them?”
At first glance, his lack of compliance made him seem detached, out only for himself. I think this lead a lot of people to see him as unreliable. Once you got to know him, if he let you, you realised what a mistake you had made. His love letter to friendship is incomparable to anything I’ve experienced.
He takes a moment to stare at the ceiling before looking back at me.
“No,” he says laughing. “No, I don’t think that’s the life I’m going to have. I have all the family I need in my friends. They’re my brothers. That lasts for a lifetime.”
We’re sitting on top of a piece of cardboard on the icy gravel of a London winter morning. We woke up as Carolina was leaving for work, River’s fingers pulling my arm out of bed before the light had finished washing away the hues of the night before. We took the Central line from Ealing Broadway to Bethnal Green, ran around Victoria Park and even wrote on a piece of paper that someone had abandoned on a table before fitting it back between the wooden beams. “Hi stranger, we’re having an excellent morning, yourself?,” or something like that. Then we landed in the Nomadic gardens and their dishevelled beauty, and I pretended not to be scared when River tried climbing a steep slippery slope to the top of the bridge.
To be with him is like being in a land that craves to be nurtured. To be with him… He’s a present human being, in more ways than one. From the way he walks head to toe in 90’s leisurewear, hands in pockets always one step ahead, to the way he sees, absorbing everything and everyone. He breathes life, in and out, just as much as I try to live around it. Independence like a breeze is his thing, and I’ve been jealous of it.
“Do you want to know what I’d say?,” I say sucking my lips in. I really wish to become a part of this memory, if he ever thinks back on it. “If I died now…”
Think…
I’d probably start with something about having felt loss and lost for a really long time. I’ve only ever felt as a being made of halves of a person, adding small bits of others, sucking in spare parts of others. Was there ever a whole, solid, me? (I’ve never fully understood what I’m supposed to be doing, or how…)
I hear River chuckle.
“What’s up, plant? What’s going through that mind of yours?,” he says. His legs are pushed against his chest, his face resting on his arm.
“Plant…” I roll my eyes at the familiar name. I want to talk my thoughts, yet when I try panic hits me like a punch on the stomach. “I don’t know, I… Just let me think for a second.”
Scrap that. Know this – I’ve had fun. I hope to have loved and have hurt with you, whomever you are, listening to this now. Thank you for the kind words that helped me, the hard words that steered me, and the noises that made me long for change. For those eyes you come across that are thirsty for it all, for infectious smiles. I’ve felt forever alive through the dreams and adventures I’ve experienced in and with you, whomever you might be, and through those that only ever lived in my mind.
“God, why is this so hard!,” I say looking for an out.
River seems distracted. Right when I realise the moment to speak my mind is gone, is when I crave it back. I wonder how many more times this has to happen for me to grow some balls. I mutter something under my breath that River laughs at.
“You have to get out of that head of yours, woman,” he says.
“Ugh.” I sigh, defeated, waiting for him to crack a joke.
“I love you, plant,” he says, smiling ever so slightly. Before I have time to fully feel the warmth of his words, he gets up and extends his arm out. “Come on, let’s go explore.”
***
I slide my foot under my backside, trying to hold a comfortable position whilst hunched over the chest of drawers in our room. Past the window, everything is black. The words look back at me: halves, bits, to do, dreams. A generic you. I dip in and out of Carolina (my roommate) and River’s bickering.
“I’m telling you River, life does not work this way,” she says sucking on the tip of a cigarette.
“Sush. I’m trying to concentrate,” I say, but watching them, cross-legged on the bed and arguing about the most banal subjects, makes here feel like home.
I guess what I’d like to say is that, even though I’m dying, I’m not going anywhere. I’ve loved and I’ve tried to welcome love. That has to stick. I’m in the streets we’ve walked through together, the places we’ve laughed and cried in, the emotions we’ve learned to make space for. There. Those places were alive since the moment we stepped on them, for there lays a piece of our story. Whether mine is over or not, it doesn’t matter. Even as I fade, a story will always be there, waiting to be remembered. What a nice thought, isn’t it?
I rock my pen back and forth over my ear, staring at that question mark.
“Look at this one…” I hear River say. “What are you doing, plant?”
Carolina stops mid sentence and joins his giggles. “Look at this woman,” she says.
I turn around when I feel a piece of wooly clothing hit my head. “Oh my god, will you stop.”
I find both of them staring at me from the bed with their backs against the wall, Carolina squinting her eyes like she’s gauging weather she should stop it or pursue the game.
“Here,” she says holding her hand out with a half finished cigarette.
I take the opportunity to jump on the bed and wait to be distracted. “Come on, don’t stop on my account,” I say when both of them look at me from a different side of the bed. “I’ll moderate. Let the bickering continue.”
An hour later, River keeps staring at the ceiling with a lazy smirk as Carolina’s mouth opens and closes with steady snores, mimicking the rhythm to which I stroke her forearm. That’s my cue. I tiptoe around the room, grabbing my piece of paper and a half smoked pack of Camel Blue’s and step outside. I light a cigarette.
“Yuck, you two are going to die from all that smoking,” River whispers behind me.
“Hey,” I say.
I guess it’s easier to be frank at night.
“Come, I want to tell you something.”
He sits down on the door ledge and snakes his arm around mine, bringing himself closer to me.
“What is it?,” he says.
I’ve written my eulogy, I want to say. Just like you, I have enough substance.
But instead I say: “I’m really happy that you came to visit.”
I blow a puff of smoke out and look at him looking at me, just like he does – catching my eyes in his, pretending that we’re thinking the same, almost in awe… Always so briefly.
Before I have time to take it in, he kisses my cheek and slowly rests his head on my shoulder, almost as if he wanted to distract me from thinking about it.
A week later, he would be gone.
***
I don’t think it was ever very clear to me that I had been in love with him until the day that I wasn’t. On a Tuesday, sitting on the bus on my way home, looking at his name on my phone screen, my fingers ready to start scribbling about my day when I realised that I didn’t feel the need to. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to. So I dropped it on my lap…