On previous visits to visit Paul, my longtime buddy, I had always come on my own. This time I brought along Jane, a mutual friend, for support. I told myself at the time I didn't really need her, though the truth is I probably wouldn't have come alone. I needed someone with whom I could share the expected pain of my visit. Paul resides—or, more accurately, is indefinitely parked—in an assisted living facility only 20 minutes or so away from where I live, so it is easy for Jane and me to visit him. His room is at the very back of the building, in its euphemistically titled "memory unit": locked, of course, so when I visit I have to find someone to let me in and out. Mostly he just sits and stares into space, as time, velvety and suffocating, slows down around him. I did once find him snuggled up with a woman whom I suppose is also a resident. They looked content together. Perhaps on this visit he will make a move on my attractive friend, who is just a few years younger than he. That might relieve some of the tedium of the visit. But no, today he just sits and talks, although it is hard to say about exactly what, and he barely glances at Jane. He must be slipping even further away, I think to myself, this is not the Paul I used to know, who would shine and flirt whenever a woman with at least a modicum of attractiveness passed by. Women fluttered around him, and he was quite generous with his affections. He went through several wives, one of whom was his patient. He was handsome by most conventional masculine standards, and quite the athlete.
Paul used to tell me that back in the day he ran wild and raised all sorts of hell. To support himself he sold drugs out of his trailer, which he nicknamed "The Church of the Mobile Jesus." Later he trained as a counselor and hung out his shingle. He was reputed by our mutual friends to be a very effective therapist, particularly with angry and rebellious adolescent boys, who perhaps recognized a kindred spirit. We'd go running together, even if I couldn't begin to keep up with him. But just hanging out with him in the locker room as we cooled down made me feel special, alive. The stories he idly told on himself there just added to his mystique. I never quite knew quite what to believe, although I tended to take them on faith.
Whatever did he see in me? I never asked him, for fear I might puncture our bubble of presence, of immediacy. While I'll never really know, the simplest answer is he enjoyed my attention and admiration, or at least fascination. Or it had something to do with our contrasting careers: he was a clinician with a thriving practice who saw and respected me as an academic. Perhaps I sealed, or God forbid purchased, our friendship by including him as a co-author on some of the papers I published relating to studies we conducted together. "When are we going to write another one," he would say. "Dick hard."
Well no, my friend, sorry, they were actually dick soft, published by bottom-feeding journals desperate for copy. But I am as flattered as I am embarrassed that you still held on to some of our reprints, so many decades later. I just would hate to think, however briefly, our friendship was cemented by joint publications. That would have been tawdry and transactional.
I loved him dearly. Do I still? I hope so, but there really isn't much of him left to love. He is confined to a wheelchair, eats with his fingers, smells bad, and wears filthy, food-stained clothes. When Jane and I show up, he immediately recognizes I was someone he might once have known and is, perhaps, still close to. I give him a hug and kiss his stubbly face. He hardly responds to Jane at all, and this visit is not a long one. Our conversation, at his direction, wanders from one incomprehensible topic to another. Jane and I try to keep our chat oriented toward present reality. It's such a beautiful day, we say, look at the flowers, aren't these chairs comfortable?
Time for my friend and me to go. Jim has to use the bathroom, assisted by one of his facility's surprisingly cheerful and cordial staff. "C'mon, Jim, let's get you cleaned up and presentable for your next guests." We get up to leave, and in parting Paul abruptly says to me, "I love you so much, I wish I was gay." Now, while he may have said that to all the guys, I'll take what I can get and be grateful. Grateful for this spark of humor that flashed between us, grateful to have had such a friend as he, grateful I have just fulfilled my obligation to him and can now go back to my life. I wonder when I will visit him again, or if I will desert him like just about everyone else, including his latest wife. All except his son and daughter-in-law, who are at least dutiful, but they have their own family and lives to live.
Jane says "goodbye," and Paul doesn't seem to notice. I don't think I'll ask her to accompany me again. What would be the point?
Paul, please know how much I have always envied the spontaneity and joy with which you moved through your life: your quick and easy friendships, your romances, the risks you took, and the rules you broke. The latter not without consequences, at least regarding your failed marriages. My life has proceeded along a much more stable track. My wife of 50 years and change sits beside me, threading a needle so I can sew on a button. What we have has a name: domestic married bliss.
While Paul and I have lived very different lives, on different trajectories, our tracks may well converge in the not very distant future. I sense my own impending decrepitude: unpredictable bladder, shuffling and unsteady gait, failing hearing, difficulties putting names to faces. Maybe I'll be fortunate, and we'll end up parked in the same ward. What bizarre, delightful conversations we will have then, unmoored from any constraints of reality. In the meantime, while I'll try to keep showing up to visit you, please don't count on me. It is fortunate, I think, you are no longer in a position to keep score of our friendship—who owes who what, whose turn it is—but then, I doubt you ever did.
