258 - Two Hundred Fifty Eight

Breaker Whiskey

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

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I could really use your dits and dashes right now, Birdie. I could really use anyone to talk to. Harry and I—well, all that growth and warming up and being more vulnerable…I guess I was lulled into a false sense of calm, because things finally…I didn’t think we had more to say to each other, but I guess we did.

It was you…it was you saying “our date”. Can you believe that? All of this time, everything that’s happened, and it was a little jealousy over a person I question is real half the time that finally tipped Harry over. And, you know, I’d been suspecting that she was jealous of you but…Jesus.

When I told her about your message, I guess—well, I was happy! I am happy, I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to say. But she—she read something into it because she asked me if I’m in love with you. Which is just…

Don’t take this the wrong way, Birdie, but that’s absurd to me. I’m grateful for you—more than I think I can ever fully express—and I hope that I’ve brought…well, something to what sounds like your fairly complicated existence, but I don’t know you. Not really. I know that you’re caring, and regretful, and scared—I know enough to consider you a friend and to want to really get to know you and cement that friendship. But I don’t know you like I…

I don’t know all the different kinds of laughs you have—the one when you’re being polite, when you think someone is being stupid, when you actually find something hilarious but don’t want to admit it, when you’re embarrassed or flattered, and the one that’s just genuine joy. I don’t know if you have any scars or birthmarks or that you broke your arm falling off a bike when you were eleven and haven’t ever really ridden a bike since. I don’t know the names of your parents or if you have siblings, or what you would spend your perfect day doing.

And it’s not just…the minutiae, it’s…I wouldn’t recognize you in a crowd. I can listen to any song and not have it remind me of you. I can wake up and not have you be the first thing on my mind.

I didn’t—I didn’t say all that, but I told Harry she was crazy, which, well, was the wrong thing to say because she…she blew up at me. She said that she’s felt this before, that she knows what it’s like to be on the outside when I’m on the inside with someone. That that’s what it’s always like with—

I know—I know that you can’t ever really know what someone is experiencing. How a person sees the same events that you’re both going through. But I’d—I’d really had no idea that Harry felt so left out all the time. That my friendship with the guys put her on the outs. That the easy way I had of being with everyone we ever met—with Sissy and K and Francis and Sylvie—how the way that I liked everyone and everyone liked me felt like she was always standing in front of a locked door. And that I was doing that now, that Birdie is my person and that Harry just gets the scraps of both.

I…well, it put some things into context I guess. She’s selfish, possessive, resentful of the fact that she had to share me with all of New York and now she has to share me with the world. She hates the fact that I spent all that time not talking to her and then started telling every inner thought and private secret to anyone who could listen. She’s jealous of you and she’s jealous of my radio.

And I’m not—that’s not me calling her selfish or possessive or any of that. That’s how she put it. Her exact words. And what does she want me to do with that? I—I didn’t say anything. I just walked away and came back up here. After all, it’s her turn to be the one left holding the emotional bag.

I know she’s listening right now. I know she’s gone down to the little visitor center and turned on her radio because I know she knows that the first thing I’d do is get on here and talk to you. Talk to the void.

Except it was never the void, was it? All this time, I left to find people, to hope I’d have someone else to talk to, and I was just talking right to Harry all the while. And that’s the real truth of it. So I might as well talk straight to her right now.

Sometimes I was so happy that we were the only two people in the entire universe. And then you told me what you did and I found myself wishing that I’d drive out into the world and find it full of people and then come back home to tell you and you…wouldn’t be there anymore. And I’d realize that it had all been some weird illusion, or dream, or nervous breakdown and that the whole time I’d been holed up with you, the world kept turning and it was you that wasn’t there. That you were somewhere else entirely, somewhere I’d never be able to reach. Somewhere beyond my control. I’d fantasize that I didn’t have to look for you anymore, because that’s what I was always doing.

Back in New York, back in the world, I would look for you in every room. Any party I ever went to, any museum, it didn’t matter if you weren’t supposed to be there, if you weren’t invited, any time I went into a new place, I’d turn and hope you’d be there. Every time you weren’t was a tiny heartbreak and every time you were was even worse. And there would be a tiny, pinprick moment when I’d just get to look at you, take you in, see you out of the context of us—laughing at someone else’s joke, rolling your eyes at an art critic, sneaking another piece of cake…it would be a split second where I’d get to observe you exactly as you are without me and then it’d be over because you’d somehow know I was there and you’d look over and we’d lock eyes and then…then nothing. You would look away, or I would, and eventually we’d wander into each other’s orbits, but you never came straight to me.

And then we lived together—we lived in the same house for six years, each other’s only company and I was still looking for you. I would still relish every moment that I was in a room without you realizing I was there and every time you’d eventually notice and you wouldn’t…you might say something, maybe, but you wouldn’t look back for long. You wouldn’t chase me. You never chased me. Not until now.

And that’s the grand irony of all of this, isn’t it? I kept looking for you and the moment I left, the moment I stopped looking, you started. And try as I might, I was never really speaking to anyone but you. Even when I talked to Birdie or Fox or was just trying to speak to anyone—anyone who could hear, it was…I was always just trying to talk to you. I spent months hoping it was you, that we’d be able to say through morse code what we never could say out loud.

And now you tell me it isn’t enough? That you still want more of me, that you want all of me, leaving nothing left for anyone else and I—I can’t do that. The part of me that can forgive you—however small it might be at times—that’s the part of me that wants to talk to anyone who would listen. That wants to like everyone she meets. That has wanted to be in the world. You can’t take that part of me away and still have…me. I can’t just be made up of the parts that you shaped. There has to be more of me, because I don’t think you’d want me otherwise.

I stand by what I said almost eighteen months ago—we can’t move forward if you keep caging us in. I’m going to keep moving forward and I’m not going to look back to see if you’re following.

I loved you, Harry. I did. I still lo—

But I can’t keep looking for you. It’s your turn.

[a door opens behind Whiskey]

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