The Sheila Variations

Brawn

It's hard for me to picture him as sick. It's hard for me to picture him fragile, weak, even though there were always elements of his body that seemed patched together, Frankenstein-esque. This was a man who had been battered to a pulp, shattered, and left for dead on the side of the street. This was a man who had had to be put back together, who had to learn to walk again at age 20. But he had come back. This was all before I met him, but that body - the body he had before the disaster - haunted me. It hovered around him like a ghost, in my eyes, a what-might-have-been.

M. had been an athlete. And he was still a big physical guy with a certain amount of grace. I watched him play basketball once with his friends. He was beautiful. In action, he was always beautiful. He hated it when I got sad about the accident that pre-dated me. He was quite forbidding about it, and got impatient with me, so we rarely talked about it; I could never get my tone right. My impression of M. was one of physical swagger, brawn, fearless macho gestures, not a hesitant bone in his body. There was an awkwardness there, too. Alongside the strange grace. The awkwardness always telegraphed to me, from the first moment I met him, a certain level of honesty. M. was unconcerned with being "cool", and so that often led to bumbling foolishness, or fits and starts of movement - he'd try to help me into a chair, get awkward about it, and end up tripping over the carpet - that kind of thing, or odd moments when he would start to say something, stop himself, and shake his head at his own silliness. Honesty. He exuded it. No manipulation. Never concerned with how he came across.

Many people disliked him. He could be obnoxious. He was perpetually cranky. He didn't make it easy to like him, he had no social graces, and could be very blunt. He wasn't always polite. He drank way too much. He was a major Woman Magnet. Women just loooooved this guy, and a lot of women found this suspicious, and disliked him, thinking of him as a dog, or a user. I am not saying my impression of him was the correct one. Everyone is going to have different responses to things and people - and who am I to say that mine is the right one? But all I know is what I know. There was something in M. that fit perfectly with me. It was purely pheromonal. And I don't mean that in a sexual way, or at least not just in a sexual way, because we certainly had a lusty combustability together that was rare, in my experience. I mean pheromonal in a body chemistry kind of way - a ... personality mesh kind of way - even before we had had a conversation, I could sense it. This pheromonal thing is something I really believe in, mainly from my experience with M.

I met him before I really met him. Which is odd enough, in and of itself. And - he had tried to hit on me in that first meeting. But I was being hit on by someone else, so nothing happened with M. This all came back to me much later, when stuff started happening with him.

Months later - I saw him again (I was in the audience, he was onstage), and I remembered having met him - but it was as though I was seeing him for the first time. He staggered onstage, and I felt a surge of heat - a small inner explosion of drive and purpose: "He is for you. He is for you." This is inexplicable and it sounds rather silly when you write it out, like you're talking about finding your soulmate or something - or something new agey, meeting eyes "cross a crowded room" - but I'm trying to talk on a chemical level here. It was all quite practical, when you get right down to it. Something in me needed him. This was not just lust, although it was certainly part of it, I ached to touch that man. It was barely pleasant. But like I said, my response to him was not just about lust. It wasn't recognition either, or love at first sight, or being smitten, or any of that. It was something else. It was like seeing what you've been longing for - physically, not emotionally - a drink of water, a breath of air, a glimpse of sun - and knowing that you had to have it, and that you must have it. It was somehow necessary. A low-level survival instinct kicked into place, and I saw in him something that I needed. There was nothing intellectual about this, or considered. I was thirsty, and he represented water.

The whole sensation was almost embarrassing to me at the time, I remember confessing kind of shamefacedly to Jackie, my friend, "I think he's my guy. I feel really weird about this." I didn't even know this person. I've never had such a visceral response to someone in my life. He's not classically good-looking or anything like that. In his own words, "I have a lumpy head and my eyes freak people out." But the effect on me had to do with something deeper, or higher - either one. A level of awareness that said to me: "See that stranger up there? The one with the black hair and the pale skin? He's what you need. Trust me on this one."

I am making this sound like a love story. I never really thought of it that way, as it was happening, although I did eventually love him. But this is how I remember meeting him. This is how I can describe what it was like to feel the impact of his physical presence land in my consciousness. I saw him and there was a THUD inside.

My instincts were so scarily right on in terms of M. and who he ended up being to me over the years, that I still sometimes shiver at the thought of how close the whole thing came to not happening. My vague sense that I "needed" him ... for what I had no idea ... was so prescient and correct (in retrospect) that I still don't think about it head-on all that much, it's too weird. What was it I sensed? How on earth was I so right? It can make me feel like God a bit, too. Because I did nothing with the surge I had felt. I did not make the first move, or initiate a conversation, or slip him my phone number after the show. I just sat back, and waited. On some level I was clearing the deck for him, I see that now. But I did nothing with that information. It was just a mental shift. How he picked up on that I will never know - but that's what I mean when I say there was a mystery at the heart of this thing. Pheromonal.

I ended up being in a bar where he was later that night, after his show, and we had a minor interaction at the bar, waiting for drinks - and there was a spark between us. It was such a big spark that I couldn't deal with it and turned and walked away. Mid-sentence, people. Leaving him sitting there, mouth open, still trying to talk to me. I was that weird at this point. My need was so intense that I felt out of control with him. How do you say to a total stranger: "I look at you and I feel like I'm in the desert and you are a tall glass of water." Yup. CUCKOO. Better just to stay quiet and see what he would do next. He was onto me. He had to feel it too. How did this happen? The "surge" had happened when he first came onstage - I was in the dark in the audience - he was doing his thing up there ... but now here we were, and this awkward courtship dance began. I felt like I had created this entire thing, could he actually be hitting on me? After I just had this totally personal experience watching him perform? Something he knew nothing about? Is he hitting on me right now? I had somehow summoned him. But it was too intense, and I couldn't hold up my end of the conversation at all, so instead of saying, "Nice to meet you - why don't you come join our table?" or perpetuating the conversation, or ending it gracefully, "Great show tonight ... see you later" ... instead of any of those socially acceptable options, I clammed up completely, and then turned abruptly and walked away from him, back to my friends. I needed to re-group before we went in for the next round. And he was the type of man who loved a challenge. Maybe because it was never difficult for him to get women, I don't know. Or maybe he felt a pheromone-surge with me, too. I believe it's the second one, naturally. If it had only been lust - then the rest of the relationship would not have unfolded as it did. Something else was going on. I walked away. He told me later (years later) how much he loved how I did that. "I was in the middle of saying something - and you had on those gloves - and that hat - I had no idea who you were - but I was talking and I had you - you were right there - listening - and then BOOM you vanished. No warning. What the hell? Where did she go?" I said, "I was freaked out that you were hitting on me." as though that excused my bizarre behavior.

He was not put off by me fleeing - or by what would have seemed to an unobservant person as my blatant rejection of him. He knew me walking away from him didn't mean what it looked like it meant. It meant, actually, the exact opposite. He was kind of a genius that way. So he took some time to re-group, get his act together, and then come in for a second try. It was all very tactical.

I sat with my good friends at a high table, all of us perched on bar stools, sharing a pitcher of beer, having a great time. But the surge was stronger inside me now. Alarming. Because he had noticed me. The pursuit had started, whether I was ready or not. I had never before gotten what I wanted in this kind of situation. Never so clearly and so easily. I hadn't had to do a thing. And somehow ... somehow ... I knew he would handle it. I just had to sit back and wait. He'd figure out a way. There was no grasping for it, on my end, no maneuvering. It was quite strange, unique in my experience. I felt, at the very same moment, fluttery and weak-kneed, and also tremendously powerful. I knew it was just a matter of time. This was not a game with me, or a coy "let him come to me" thing. I was truly flipping out. I couldn't even talk to him. It felt too revealing. I couldn't flirt. That would be ridiculous. We were already way beyond flirty banter. Something else had jump-started.

Sometimes surge-pheromonal moments like the one I experienced are WAY wrong. Because they're based on unreliable hormones. Or they're coming out of a desire to see what you want to see. You project. "I want that person over there ... so therefore he MUST be nice, and smart, and all that ... because I need him to be." And when reality shows up - and the object of your desire ends up not being interested in you at all - or a dullard, or a braggart or misogynistic, or whatever the turnoff is - it can be a baffling hurtful experience. Inside, you're thinking: But ... but ... my instincts ... my instincts were so strong! How could they have been so OFF?

9 times out of 10 I've had that experience. Haven't we all?

But this case - with him - was the exception. My instincts about him ended up being 100% correct. My instincts were based on almost no information, except what I sensed, and he ended up being pretty much beyond my wildest dreams. People who knew him - and knew me - were often completely confused by the two of us together. How does THAT work? There was a mystery at the heart of it - and there is a mystery there still, which is probably evident in how I write about it. The beginning of this thing was awkward - really exciting, but everything remained unspoken. We were just weirdly drawn to each other. But I was in a volatile stage in my personal development when I met him. I was guarded and yet completely uninhibited at the same time. I gave mixed signals. I didn't mean to, but I did.

The evening went on and my friends and I were whooping it up and eventually he joined us. He wasn't invited to join us, but he just walked over, and stood at the end of the table, opposite from me, like an awkward hovering Macy's Day float. He had nothing to say, or to add. Looking back on it, I laugh, thinking of how he could tolerate such a situation. I sure as hell couldn't do it. Like I said before, he was completely unconcerned with coming off as "cool" (which is the main reason why he was so successful with women, I might add). If he wanted something he went for it, even if he had to stand at the end of a table full of chattering beer-drinking girls, waiting to be noticed, waiting for an "in", wondering how the hell he was going to start up a conversation with me - when I was there surrounded by a huge crowd. My friend Jackie was at his end of the table - and he somehow intuited that she was the one to go to. The other people at the table were more acquaintances, people I knew in a kind of superficial way, but Jackie was (and is) an old dear friend. He somehow picked her out - again, he had a brilliance with subtext and he just knew what was going on underneath ("THAT'S the friend I need to talk to ...") - and he leaned over and started whispering to her. I saw this from my end of the table. And I knew what was happening. Here it was. He's making his move. Only not to me. Which, who can blame him. He had tried to talk to me and I had walked away in the middle of a conversation. Let's try to get to her through Jackie now. I heard him say to her, "I really like your friend Sheila but I think I just scared her." Jackie, being a wonderful friend, said something back to him, reassuring (of course I asked her for a play by play of the entire conversation later) - I had told her about the "surge-pheromone" thing after the show, even though it was embarrassing. So when there the object of my desire was - whispering into her ear about how he was afraid he had scared me away - she knew just what to do. I still laugh remembering this whole interaction. She said something along the lines of, "Oh, you need to get her phone number - she's so cool - but maybe a little bit shy or whatever -" He hesitated. The big galumphy guy hesitated. I had multiple levels of consciousness going on at this moment from my end of the table. I was pretending to listen to someone talk to me. Nodding, pretending, but all I could see was the tete a tete going on over there ... knowing it was about me ... straining my ears to hear what was happening. Jackie said to him, "Do you want me to give you her phone number?" He, still trying to keep it all private, he was hunched in towards Jackie, not making a big deal out of the interaction, took out his little notebook from his pocket. And that's when I heard Jackie say the first 3 digits of my phone number, and that's when I got involved.

Now I was safe. I knew I was wanted ... so I could leap in. The water's fine. I called over at him, "Did you ask her for my phone number?" He was busted. He looked at me with the strangest expression - almost a wince. I would get to know that wince really well. It was his acknowledgement of: "wow, I feel totally awkward right now." He was not a smooth operator. And yet he was this big handsome crazy sexy dude. An odd combination. So he winced at me, busted, and waited to see what would happen next.

Now I took the lead. I gestured, "Come over here right now." He obeyed and he was already laughing as he came over to my end. He loved being busted, it seemed, it struck him as funny, and he was totally enjoying the theatre of the moment, and his role as "awkward dude trying to get a girl's phone number". He got to my side and stood there, and then we were kind of dead in the water. We were completely inarticulate. We just stood there, not saying a word to each other. I am laughing out loud right now. Like I said, this so might not have happened between us, because we were both so incompetent - we had nothing to say to each other. It was just that there was this pheromone thing. That might just be lust. But it feels like something more. And dum dee dum, what do you say to someone when that is going on? If we had followed our impulses in that moment, we would have attacked each other like mating cheetahs, and it would have been completely normal.

We also were being watched by the rest of the table, which was so awkward. The conversation had stopped amongst the group, and everyone was drinking their beer, and just watching what would happen next between the two of us at the end of the table. He still had his notebook out, and more than anything in the world I wanted to take it from him, and flip through it, seeing what he wrote in there. Who is this person? What's his last name? What's his deal? Where does he live? How old is he? What would he write in that notebook? I knew nothing about him. He just stood there, hovering again, like a Macy's Day float. We were sort of looking at each other, but mostly not. I finally said, "You don't have to ask my friend for my phone number. I'll totally give you my number." Not in a scolding way - more in a humorous way. I took his notebook from him, my fingers itching to tear through its pages and see what he wrote in there, took the pen out of his fingers and started to write my number down in his notebook. If I had done what I felt like doing, I would have started jumping up and down in triumph. I had created this. I had summoned him. I said to myself, in the dark of the theatere - "He's it." and here he was, with no effort on my part. I had summoned him.

As I wrote down my number, he suddenly leaned over and kissed my cheek. And Jackie, deeply engrossed in watching us, screamed from her end of the table. The kiss jolted me completely. I didn't see it coming, and jerked my head back, looking at him. Who was this strange man? He was a bulldozer on stage - fearless - but there was something really gentle about how he was dealing with me, like I was a wild animal ... He handled me with care, in his awkward way. Who is he? He wasn't sorry he kissed me. He was just looking at me, straight on. I didn't even know his last name.

He said, simply, "I couldn't help it. Your eyes are ... " He didn't go on. I could sense the audience at the end of the table just watching this entire interaction. I gave him back the notebook, with my number in it. I cut to the chase. Finally. "I'm going out of town for a couple of days. I leave on Wednesday." He said, "I'll call you before then." "You better." "I will."

And he did.

Believe it or not, I was still completely shocked when I heard his voice on my answering machine a couple of days later. I nearly fell over. He called? This is happening? He called? I was already well on my way to being jaded. Nobody calls. They never call. But he did.

We always had between us the strangest mix of total relaxation and bizarre restlessness. This was still going on the last time I saw him, which was a couple of years ago. We never "settled in" with each other. There was comfort and trust there, from very early on, but we also never knew what the other person would do next, our interactions sparked, at all times. He was in town, teaching, and gave me a call. We met up at an improv bar in Manhattan, and there were lots of his old friends and colleagues there - all of them are now famous - and he is a little bit famous too, at least in that world - and some of them remembered me from those long-ago days in Chicago. They sort of blinked twice when they saw me, like, "Oh! Yeah! I remember you!" There were long stretches where I sat there next to him, as he and his friends bantered, talked, laughed - I had no part in the conversation, because I'm not in their world. I was there to see him. I sat next to him, and - just like the old days - I had this crinkly oddly pleasant mixture of contentment and nervous energy. I felt awkward. I watched basketball on the TV, drank, and enjoyed being in his presence again. He included me. He introduced me to everybody - "You remember Sheila maybe?" But I wondered, sometimes nervously, Am I a fifth wheel here? Am I the dreaded "hovering chick"? What do his friends think of me? Do they think I'm pathetic? This kind of thing was a constant with us. It never went away. And somehow it didn't get exhausting because there was this trust between us. What we had was indefinable - and nobody could understand it - but it made sense to us, and the entire thing took on a very ridiculous quality at times.

I would get overwhelmed when I was with him. It made me feel awkward and exposed, how fascinating I found him. What if he thought I was weird, or obsessive? This wasn't about being madly in love. It was about information, and a chemical reaction. And so I would protect myself by behaving like a lunatic. When I read Nancy Lemann's novel The Fiery Pantheon I came across the following paragraph and had to laugh - because I so recognize the two of us in this, and it's so specific:

It is always remarkable when someone sees your soul to a better degree than you see it yourself. You could count the people who see your soul on one hand. Others might know you but they would forget; their knowledge of you was like a weak and undisciplined thing. But that wasn't so with him. He didn't forget. It stuck in his mind. He had seen a kindred soul. He had seen it long ago. She only saw it now. But she was stricken with it. Suddenly she had identified him. There was the man she loved. As a result, she proceeded dementedly to behave as if the opposite were true.

I wasn't in love with him, not in the traditional way anyway - but when I was with him - I was with a kindred soul. And instead of sinking into it and accepting it, I would "dementedly ... behave as if the opposite were true." Mitchell would bust me on it. Ann Marie would bust me on it. I was hopeless. Thank God he put up with me.

For example - every Monday night I would go see Pat McCurdy play at Lounge Ax. When I say "every Monday night" I mean even when I was deathly ill with the flu, even if I was jetlagged ... My main social life revolved around Pat shows on Monday nights. I lived in Chicago for 4 years. Drop in on Lounge Ax on any given Monday night during that 4 year period - you would have seen me there. So if M. wanted to find me, he knew where to go. There were long long periods when I didn't see him at all. Months would go by. Occasionally haiku fits would be thrown. But we always started it up again. And sometimes M. would just show up at Lounge Ax on Monday nights, knowing I would be there, and he would wait for me at the bar.

Now here's the thing: I was never "over" him. I never got used to him. I was always just a tiny bit flipped out about him. I could chalk this up to pheromones as well, but I also think that there was something in our relationship that was so insistently casual (not indifferent - not indifferent), it depended on both of us being chill - it wouldn't work if it got too serious, it just flat out would not work, and we both knew that. All of this sounds rather rational to me, but the way it would manifest would be in increasingly bizarre behavior. M. would show up at Lounge Ax for one purpose and one purpose only: to see me. And someone would pass me the news - M's here. So it's safe, right? He's there to see me. What's the risk? But instead of running out to greet him and pull him to my side - I would play it cool (play WHAT cool?), and basically ignore him for half an hour. We all still laugh about this because it was so rude and so immature. Ann Marie said to me once, when I was blatantly ignoring him, "What is happening right now? You are acting so weird." Mitchell would roll his eyes and say, "Sheila. He's here for you." Finally, I would calm down enough inside - to go over and say Hi to him. I do not defend myself. I know I am weird. Socially dysfunctional. But here's the deal. Here is the perfect thing. Here is why my instinct about him on that very first night, when I didn't even know his last name, was so creepily on target. One night, M. was sitting at the bar at Lounge Ax, and I was standing off in the distance, talking to Ann or somebody - and Mitchell, to pick up my slack, went over to talk to M. Mitchell said, "Hey, M, how are you?" M. said calmly, "Doin' good. I'm just waiting for Sheila to stop ignoring me. She should be over in about half an hour." His instinct about me was always right. How can I explain. How can I explain the feeling of never being misunderstood - even when your behavior is prickly and seemingly antagonistic? M. never punished me for my weirdness, he never even brought it up! And I never punished him for his weirdness (because I haven't even expressed how weird this guy could be). M. somehow intuited that I needed time to just grasp the fact that he was there for me ... and I couldn't do it in his presence, I needed privacy ... and as insane as that is, and as annoying as it would be to a normal person - M. just waited it out. "Should be another 20 minutes - she'll be ready to deal with me." We were two nuts. But it made sense. And when Mitchell told me what M. had said - and I realized how OFF I had been in my own assessment of those moments when M. showed up ... that M. KNEW about my nerves, my hesitance, my need to "re-group" whenever I saw him ... I was a bit gob-smacked. I had no idea. After I knew that M. knew, that he knew I was purposefully ignoring him, and not just blithely oblivious to his presence ... I stopped behaving like such a jackass, and was able to greet him like a normal human being who had been raised right. But M. never melded with me. I was not him. He was not me. I had my own crap to go through that had nothing to do with him, and he took none of it personally. That's just Sheila, going through whatever she has to go through. She'll come back. I'll just be over here while I wait.

How could I have been so lucky.

Watching him play pool was like a symphony. I was addicted to him. Addicted to sitting back and watching him move around. The way he leaned across the table, cigarette dangling, his certainty with the pool cue, his unselfconsciousness ... I get glimpses of him still in my mind's eye, and that's how I see him. The bandana he'd wear around his head, the ubiquitous cigarette, the T-shirt, the jeans. He was such a guy.

He moved kind of funny, but that worked for him onstage. He said to me once, "I don't know what it is, but when I walk across a stage people start laughing." My impression of him was always one of strapping strength, strength used sensitively and well - not violently - but he was strong. He was like a bulldog. The way he walked. The bowlegged big John Wayne walk. The freedom he had with the rest of his body - onstage and off - He was a powerhouse.

On our third date - which was absolutely nuts - he invited me to a terrifying pool hall - and his car ended up being towed and I had to lend him a ton of cash to get the car out of hock - it was a marathon night, and we still really didn't know each other. We didn't warm up to each other right away. We circled each other warily. Magnetic forcefields pulling us in, but we didn't succumb right away. On that night, I sat on the sidelines again, watching him play pool. We had had our first kiss (besides the one on my cheek, I mean). We had kissed on our second date, I think. And by "kiss" I mean "raving makeout session". On our date at the pool hall, we did not refer back to the making out of the week before, we did not mention it, there was no sense of ownership between us - meaning: me owning him, him owning me - even though it was obvious we were together. But the memory of the clutch we had been in for hours the week before, his hands on my face, my neck, the way he was when he got suddenly aggressive, pushing in on me, holding me still ... boy knew how to take charge, I can tell you that ... hovered around us like an afterimage that night the pool hall. It was there between us, even though we were seemingly autonomous, you know, just "chillin'" ... drinking beers and shooting the shit. So we stood beside each other in this horrible pool hall and ... basically didn't even speak to one another. I met a good friend of his - I was the "hovering chick" - I sat back and drank him in, downloading all of his behavior into my head, watching everything. He was so loud and so crazy and such a good pool player that the shyness between us was startling. (Especially because we had already kissed so hard that my mouth was swollen the next day at my temp job. Like: can you even reference back to it, kids? Can you admit that it happened? Apparently not.) There was a reticence in him, contradictory to his aggressive (yet strangely subtle) mating tactics. His weird little hesitations before speaking. He would wince. Wince before telling me a story, letting me in. I loved that wince. And at some point, during this night of which I speak- he suddenly looked at me, took me in - all of me - my whole persona - and rambled the following monologue at me, which came out of nowhere (or so it seemed to). The monologue was incongrous with his tough-guy look which cannot be overstated. Jeans, T-shirt, bandana, cigarettes, big hands, big feet, a swagger to him, a cockiness in his demeanor. But suddenly - with no lead-in that I can remember he started saying (wincing the whole time), "I really like what you're about. Or I'm getting to see what you're about and I like it. A lot of people ... no. A lot of girls have problems with me. You know, for whatever reason. But you don't seem to have a problem with me."

Weird. The power of this connection. This was our third date. But that feeling was there from the start.

And I absolutely cannot explain it. I only can say that it was so.

Years later, this was a couple of years ago, he and I sat in a bar in Hoboken. He was teaching in the area and had called me. I hadn't seen him in a couple of years. He lived in Chicago - or maybe Los Angeles - and we had both moved on. But God. What it was to see him. We sat at the bar and talked for hours. So much. There had never been a regular friendship between us, like: "Hey, how was your day?" We never could do that with each other. The pheromone thing was too weird and too strong. But that night, sitting there with him, drinking him in ... for the first time, believe it or not, I realized the level of this friendship. Or I realized it in a deeper way. There had been times when I wondered what I actually meant to him. And there were times when I would get embarrassed about my "thing" with him, and be self-deprecating about it to friends. "Oh, whatever ... we're insane together ..." But there, in that quiet dark bar in Hoboken, 10 years after first meeting him that night at the improv club, I "got it". My connection with him is unique. Not possible to replicate it. He is my friend. My true true friend. He told me what was going on with him. We talked about September 11. He asked about my writing.

And we reminisced. This was something he and I had never done. Even over all of the years. So we sat there and talked about what we remembered, and our first impressions of each other ... I asked him, "What was your first impression of me?" And in that weird psychic way that I always had with him, I knew what his answer would be. He said, without a moment's thought: "Gloves." I burst into laughter. He had been obsessed with those gloves at the time, but who knew that that detail would travel through the years. He also said, in a tone of fond remembrance, "I also remember coming to get you at Pat shows, and how you would ignore me." Like ... this was a good memory for him. We reminisced about the window. And my fever and the candles. We laughed hysterically. "Remember ..." "Member all those haikus?" "Oh fuck, the haikus." On and on. We reveled in how WEIRD we both were and how this whole thing made sense to nobody but us.

Hoboken was quiet and still when the bar closed. I walked him over to his car. He had parked illegally. Some things never change. That was one of the most comforting things about us together. Some things never change. He knew where to find me. Always. And I knew where to find him. If I needed him. And he would pull up outside of my house, and park illegally, and then try to crawl through my window. Because he missed me. I'd wake up and see this crazy-haired maniac heaving himself over my sill at 4 am. It became expected. As we crossed the street to his car, he reached out and put his arm around me - in that way that he has - hard to explain if you didn't know him. There was always something vital about his body language - it was always a source of energy for me - how he moved, how he yanked me over to him in this fond crushing embrace - my arms pinned to my side, unable to hug him back - and he grabbed me to him on the dark Hoboken streets. No speech between us. Just crossing, on the diagonal, no cars coming - his bow-legged stomping walk, hard to keep up with or predict ... the salt of the earth awkwardness as familiar to me now as the air I breathe. There it was again. I wish he would live forever.

He said to me once, "Sheila, you could write a novel about what happened during the last 5 minutes."

I forget nothing. Obviously.

But neither does he. (Gloves.) "Others might know you but they would forget; their knowledge of you was like a weak and undisciplined thing. But that wasn't so with him. He didn't forget. It stuck in his mind."

I found out about him a couple weeks ago from a mutual friend.

The images come. Flashcards. His strength - so potent because he rarely used it - and strange gait and how he would jam the car into 4th gear or light a cigarette or even just walk across the street. How he had a kind of stagger to his walk. How he sat on the bar stool. How he would pull me to him as he walked along. How he would sit back and watch and wait. How he opened the car door and heaved himself into the seat. How he kissed.

His loping grace when shooting hoops.

The wince in his eyes.

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