Till It's Too Dark to See

It's hard to write about the people I love. How to possibly put them to words? I gave it my best shot here. Dear reader, I'd like to introduce you to my friend Greg.

I wrote the first draft of this piece last year after moving back to western Mass to be with Tana while she finished her MSW. Sharing it now, with Greg’s blessing, a little stocking stuffer for my buddy, and for you.

My friend Greg was slicing an onion the other night and took off the tip of his thumb. 1/16th of an inch, he told me. He’s a carpenter, so he would know. It’s not the first time he’s lost a part of himself to a blade. He cut off the ends of two (different) fingers with a tablesaw a few years ago. This time, however, with the onion, was the first time his recently estranged fingerflesh ended up in his mouth. Because, he kept cooking while his girlfriend, Erica, hurried to get bandages. Before she could wrap up his bloody thumb he dumped the onions into the frying pan with the mushrooms. It was ramen that night. Never get between a man and his ramen. It wasn’t till the end of dinner that he thought, you know, this particular mushroom seems a bit tough, a bit gummy, and sure enough, he was eating himself. Quickly, he removed the morsel from his mouth and pretended to flick it at Erica, who yelled at him and almost threw up. 

We met this afternoon to play tennis in the early winter cold on the courts of the local high school. His thumb was quite bloody beneath the bandage, and soon his blood spotted all six tennis balls. We played on.

Greg is injured not infrequently. The cost of working with your body, at speed. He was a farmer for years and years, and now a carpenter and a woodworker. He moves fast, doesn’t like to waste time, never lingers without a carefully meditated reason or else he gets starts to get uncomfortable. Whatever he does, he likes to do it well. He likes to make hanging wall cabinets and floor-to-ceiling shelves and kitchen islands that make you wonder just what the hell you’ve been doing with your life. He likes to beat you in tennis, again and again. And Greg’s good at getting what he likes, but the thing is, Greg’s also an idiot, so he also gets these injuries.

This past summer, we were camping on an island off the coast of Maine with the guys and Greg hurt himself pretty bad. It was actually kind of awesome. I mean, it was terrible, but it brought us all together in the way that only crises sometimes can. 

We’ve been going to this island every summer for the last seven or eight years. We paddle out into the Atlantic on kayaks, weaving in between islands, under the eagles, among the seals. I always lose track of where we are in the maze of craggy, piney coastline. Greg knows the way, though, always. Greg does not lose track. When we finally get there, to the island, we pitch our tents and then settle in to do nothing for the next three days. Doing nothing means: stacking big rocks into wobbly pillars and seeing who can knock them over first by throwing smaller rocks at them. It means watching the tide come slowly in and go slowly out. It means slipping naked over the slimy low-tide bladderwrack and into the cold water, sunbathing dry on the stone. Sometimes it means huddling together under the big tarp when a storm blows through. 

Typically we do a silent day. No verbal languages allowed. I love the silent day. I am relieved of having to make any sense. Don’t have to deal with all the mental stories that language opens up in the mind. It all sloughs away into Being. The silence keeps me in the body, and the body is ancient, is animal, and so, too, we become by the sea. 

We were in the silence together the day Greg hurt himself. He had been trying to lift a tremendously large rock up onto a boulder the size of a lobsterboat, because he’s an idiot. He didn’t need words to communicate what happened. The wordless sounds made it clear. The look on his face. He gasped his way up to the grassy bed where we always pitch our tents, laid down on his back with his knees in the air, put an arm over his face, and cried like a boss.

Keep in mind Greg is a 40-year old man with a chin that could probably cut off the tip of your thumb. Hands thick and calloused, arms shredded from hard labor. You wouldn’t want to mess with this guy. He’s the guy who does the dirty work, kills the chickens at the neighborhood chicken slaughter, mills the wood for your new barn. He’s the man who builds your tiny house, the intimidating new friend who confronted you on your 28th birthday on a mountaintop at night. “Why don’t I trust you?” he said under the moon, out of the blue, and you, after a split-second assessment of your character, said, “I don’t know,” and a few days later he came back around and told you he talked to his therapist about it and it didn’t have anything to do with you, sorry about that, you’re good. He is wickedly, deviously, almost frighteningly hilarious. He’s a closet genius. He can work you over with the saber of his intellect and never draw blood. When he does draw blood, he takes it square in the chest and apologizes. He’s one of the bravest men I know. 

We all gathered around him and he brought us back into language. “I don’t want this, guys,” he said, his calves shaking in shock like revved engines. “I’m scared.” 

I’ve seen men do many things that some would never believe us capable of, but still, I had never seen a man speak so honestly, real-time, about an acute injury he was in the midst of experiencing. Not pretending. Just letting himself be as vulnerable as it was, and speaking it out, saying the things that we all think but never say when it’s our turn to go down: “This is vulnerable, guys. I don’t like this. I don’t want this.” That’s mastery right there. In their ignorance, the uninitiated would call it “being a pussy” (but it turns out being a pussy isn’t what we might’ve thought it is either, btw).

Who isn’t trying to stack some foolishly heavy rock inside ourselves, throwing out the back of our soul in an effort to do some impossible, unnecessary thing? Surely most of us. But who among us is brave enough to weep with the pain of it, to lay down and shake and speak out the words that would otherwise dam us up, let ourselves be held. Which he let us do. We laid our hands on his chest, massaged his legs, gathered around our man like he was the fire and it was a cold winter night.

Eventually, he started going in and out of laughter and I knew we’d be okay then, knew we’d get him back somehow even though we were several miles away from the mainland. We all stayed around him for a couple hours, made him lunch, tucked him in, told him he ruined our trip, told him we’d leave him for dead, told him he was an old man anyway and we’d already been expecting that this would be his last visit to the island, Greg’s final hurrah. Pete didn’t leave his side for the rest of the day.

I haven’t beaten Greg in tennis this year, but finally I drew blood today, won a set off him in a tiebreaker. We met at the net, bumped fists, and he asked if I wanted to play another set. I said maybe, you think we’ll have enough time before it gets dark? and he put on a face that said, I don’t know, as if he didn’t care that much whether or not we kept playing, but I could see behind that face, saw the ebullient boy inside him who I know well, who wants to play until it’s so dark you can’t see the blood on the ball anymore, wants to stack rocks till the body gives out, and then I said sure, let’s go for it. We walked over to the fence for a quick water break.

“Hey,” he said suddenly, put a hand on my chest and gave it a quick rub for a second before pulling away, “I just have to say, I have a story about you,” and I knew we were approaching a why-don’t-I-trust-you moment, so I braced myself, but tried to stay open, because I know this is one of the ways that Greg loves me, gives me himself, his truth, says what it is that’s actually going on for him, brave bastard, takes it square in the chest. He’s so tall I had to tilt my head back a bit to look up at him, to meet him in the eyes at the edge of wherever he was taking us like a freak sergeant in the army of truth and love.

“I have a story that you don’t actually want to be here, like, you’re just doing me a favor or something.” 

I was the first person he called when he cut off his fingertips with the tablesaw. I was living in Brattleboro at that point, an hour away from the old neighborhood, and I missed the call. Tamara caught him, with Pete close behind. Then I moved even farther away, to Maine. I knew it hurt Greg because he’s judicious with his love like he is with his money, doesn’t just give it out, so when he does open up and love he loves hard and loving like that hurts pretty bad sometimes, especially when the currents of life take you apart for whatever reason. I felt it, too. I was afraid we wouldn’t get through the change, afraid I’d lose him, but then I met Tana, who lives in the old neighborhood. She has one more year in social work school, so I moved back to be with her. When I told Greg I was returning, over tea in the tiny house he built for Erica, he wept, a spontaneous bursting, the same way it happened when he found that barred owl on the side of the road, still warm, perfectly intact and gorgeous and dead, and held the owl in his hands, and suddenly he’s crying, just looking into the starless night eyes of that owl. Like I said, the guy loves hard. So, Greg and I started playing tennis again. Finding our way back to each other. Seeing if we still had it. We did. Except I hadn’t played in a while so he could spank me now. But not this time. This time, the tiebreaker was mine.

I thanked him for telling me and said I wouldn’t be there if I didn’t want to be. Told him tennis with Greg was quickly becoming my favorite thing about being back in the Valley, besides Tana. We played another set. He beat me. I hated it, but it was so good.

I think all I’m trying to say is, I don’t want Greg to die. I don’t mean to oversimplify or sentimentalize, but it’s true, I want to play tennis with him till we can’t see the ball anymore, into the night, all the way through till the next morning, round and round the sun forever. I know we don’t have forever, so I hope to go first I guess. I mean, I don’t want to die, certainly not anytime soon, but it would be hard to grieve Greg if he goes first, is what I mean. Hard on the body. Those sobs would hurt, like, physically hurt, in the abdomen, the ribs. It’s like that, with him, for me. 

My friends haven’t started to die. I don’t know what that’s like. Just don’t know that part of the love yet. This part is the part when we play tennis. When we paddle out to the island. When we can still lift heavy rocks and throw our backs out. I like this part. I’ll take the other parts, too, though, as they come, whatever they might be. Play the whole match all the way through, every set, every game, every point. Maybe it’s midday, maybe it’s dusk. There’s no way to know, but night is surely falling, and I’m gonna slam, with Greg, as long as I can still see the ball.