Michael and I sat up on my roof for a couple of hours on the late afternoon-early evening of Sept. 10. The sky was what I call a “Ghostbusters sky”: smudgy, charcoal grey, heavy and low, dramatic. Smudgy almost-black clouds overlapping each other, pressing up against each other. The buildings of our fragile beautiful skyline came out in stark relief against that black sky. Occasionally, a stray red gleam of sunset would break out from behind the clouds to the west (behind us), and then, suddenly, the buildings of Manhattan would GLOW. But only for a moment. The spire of the Empire State Building would blaze into a golden-white paper cut-out, the Chrysler Building beaming, and then, as the clouds closed up again, the gleam would subside, back to the shadowy building shapes of late afternoon.
We were surrounded by butterflies. Big orange butterflies, soaring in the wind, not even having to flap their wings, just taking off, hang-gliding, but then flap flap flap flap pumping it up a notch, chasing each other. At one point Michael and I literally had two orange butterflies hovering over our heads. Were they like the little angel and devil who sit on your shoulder at the same time, whispering contradictory demands? At first we thought there was only ONE butterfly, we kept seeing him, and he certainly seemed to get around: first he was here, now there. Then we realized there was a whole PHALANX of them. Not really watching over us, no, they were too self-absorbed for that (and who can blame them? Have you ever heard of an altruistic butterfly?) … but it did seem like they hovered around our heads protectively. Taking shifts. “Okay … you go off and hang-glide for a while … I got these two … no, no, you go … have fun! I got this.”
We had been walking around all day. Breakfast at a diner in Hoboken (we HAD to go to a diner, for old times’ sake). We talked our heads off (jazzed on caffeine), then we walked around Hoboken for a couple hours. We went into the second-hand bookstore. We talked. Michael so enjoyed the overcast sky and the cool wind, coming, as he does, from living in LA. He had been so excited that the forecast was “overcast”. We went to Barnes and Noble. There were a couple of hysterical moments involving a certain Pulitzer Prize winning author with whom I have a checkered past, which Michael knows about. Michael, looking at the book, said, bluntly, “I will NEVER buy this book.” So protective.
After that we walked to Frank Sinatra Park, near the spot where I watched the buildings fall and the air filled with screams, and sat on the low wall for an hour or so, the Hudson slate-grey and choppy, the buildings of Manhattan in shadow, the clouds marching down from the north, heavy and low and portentous. The skyline doesn’t look right. It never will. There is a hole in the ground but more haunting is the hole in the sky.
We talked about cults. They came up a couple times. Michael finally asked, “So why are you fascinated by Scientologyy?” I said, “Oh God. How much time do you have?” Turns out, he had a LOT of time, as a matter of fact, and he egged me on. “So tell me more. What else do you know?” This was like blood to a vampire.
He talked about how he had been trapped next to Scientology member on the plane, and how the dude had a stack of Hubman books in his lap AND Hubman’s lecture tapes playing on his iPod. Seriously. The guy started up talking to Michael, and he had seemed so nice, and so interested in Michael, and then, of course, came the recruitment moment and Michael was like: Fuck YOU. The emotional blackmail – the “bait and switch” – is so offensive. We talked and talked about brainwashing and cult recruitment and Patty Hearst and the strain of power-worship going through all cults.
Meanwhile, there’s a cool breeze, sailboats careen by, teeny little whitecaps slapping up against the dock, the sky is low and black, but still: no rain. I had forgotten (sort of) how easy it is to talk with and be with Michael.
We walked the length of Hoboken again, talking about libertarians (“I have noticed that the magic community has a lot of libertarians, for some reason,” said Michael), Christopher Hitchens, and the 9/11 myth dummy-dumbs, we talked about Katrina and politics and elections. I don’t think we ever talked about politics when we were dating. It was all books and movies and actors and our emotions.
I couldn’t face walking back up the cliff to where I lived – the steep incline, and we had been walking for hours already – so I called a cab. Somehow, as we were waiting for the cab, we started talking about our relationship, that took place 5 billion years ago. I brought up our whole crossing the street arguments. We always used to have these mini-showdowns when we would cross the street, because Michael would always charge across the street just as the light turned yellow, regardless of whether or not cars were coming. I would always just wait for the light to turn red. This drove him batshit.
Hilariously: as we walked around in Hoboken, I silently noticed that this dynamic was still going on. Yellow light. Michael would start across. I would hesitate, looking down the street, and then follow. I had to smile to myself. I love continuity of any kind. We were young when we dated, or much younger than we are now, but there is something eternal in both of us. I do not know why I doubt that. Perhaps because I am alone and with my thoughts too much. People who live with the same person, day in, day out, probably have a much better grasp on how some people never change, how the same things keep coming up.
I don’t mean “better grasp” at all. I need to re-think how I’m wording this because I actually think MY way is better. Maybe people who deal with someone else’s same-ness on an everyday basis get frustrated by it, or annoyed, because they’re over it, they’re used to it, same-ness is not evidence of something eternal and beautifully unchanging, it’s ANNOYING. But to me? The fact that this whole silent “how to cross the street” battle is STILL going on, even with the intervening years, even with not seeing each other in so long made me smile, made me feel like there was a silver thread of connection between us now and us then. There’s a sense of being confronted with something eternal, and this is a huge comfort to me. Things change, people grow, move on, move apart. Every day is a little loss, things must be grieved, small and large, you must always be letting go, every day a process of letting go.
Naturally I have a terrible time with this. I have lost a lot. It’s hard for me to let go. But our silent traffic-light moments, our silent different ways of handling crossing the street, is forever. If we see each other when we’re in our 70s, it would be the same damn thing, except maybe we both would be walking with canes. I think my consciousness comes from the fact that I do not have continuity in my life on an everyday basis. I relish those moments and they are intense. I am intense. Michael was never put off by my intensity, and he still isn’t. He goes right into it. He asks about it. He asks for more information. Maybe because he’s the same way.
I said, “Remember the whole crossing the street thing we used to have?” He thought a second and then just BURST into laughter.
What used to happen when we were dating was that Michael would call me on it. He was a hot-blooded young rebellious guy and he hated that I would hesitate. So he would yell at me. Literally: YELL. And I would yell back to him across the street, pointing at the approaching car that was 1.2 miles away, as evidence of why I wasn’t crossing. We were both howling at the memory of the two of us, young and fiery, standing on random empty corners in Ithaca New York, yelling at each other. To him at the time it was a symbol: it said a LOT about me (according to him): If I crossed the street the way HE did then I would have a breakthrough as an actress, a writer, a woman. Michael was just guffawing as I reminded him of this. “So I was basically bullying you to be a better person?” “Yes.” “Jesus.” We were laughing, I said, “Yeah but have you noticed how that shit is still going on? I mean, you’re not YELLING AT ME anymore but it’s still the same thing when we cross the street.”
We eventually got home. The light was low and heavy and my apartment cozy and late-afternoon-ish. He hadn’t been up to the roof yet, and I wanted him to see the view. He took his New York Times and I took my Cymbeline script and we went up to hang out on the roof. Of course we didn’t end up reading, just talking, and laughing, and sometimes just silently staring across at the glowing/shadowing skyline. The slow march of clouds. The hole in the sky. The butterfly army watching over us.
He said, “So what else. Besides crossing the street. What else do you remember?”
So we talked about what we remembered.
Later:
I lay in bed memorizing my lines. He sat in the chair reading The New York Times “cover to cover”.
Sometimes we talked. Mostly we didn’t. We were wrapped up in our own private activities. But we shared space. I don’t share space. I am always alone. It was so nice to have him there.
Night fell outside. We ordered dinner. We ate at my kitchen table.
Then we talked for hours and hours, late late into the night.
The black Ghostbuster sky was still there, I imagine. The black clouds continued marching by overhead, in their smudgy procession, but they blended into the general blackness of night now, imperceptible. My lamps glowed, soft, golden and homey.
Talking. Late into the night.
2026 thoughts:
I am a little bit amazed at how I used to write on here. This is wild to me. Of course I remember the day and Michael’s visit. A couple days after I wrote a bunch of quotes from our five-day long conversation: Snippets. No Context.
I lived in a one-room apartment, with a kitchen that was basically a narrow corridor in which I squeezed a table. The main room was big enough for my bed, a small bookcase, this low squishy chair that was kinda just a big pillow, and a desk. Michael came to visit and stayed with me. In the one room. Michael and I dated years before. The relationship was brief but strangely important to both of us and we are friends to this day. I thanked him in the acknowledgements section of my Guillermo del Toro Frankenstein book. We remain, to this day, “fans” of one another and we keep an eye on each other. I mean, you aren’t interviewed together on a cable access show in Ithaca, New York, and then just never speak to each other again.
Back then, he lived in Los Angeles, I lived in a building perched on top of a cliff in Weehawken (you can see the end of my street in the opening credits sequence of The Sopranos, right when he comes out of the tunnel).
My apartment was incredibly cheap but the views were spectacular. I would sit on the roof and watch the colors change. I lived in that one tiny room from 2003 to 2009, some of the most awful years of my life. I don’t remember much of it. And 2009 to 2012 was even worse, but at least my apartment was bigger. I started this blog in 2002, and it gave me an outlet. Michael came to New York for a week and stayed with me in my one tiny room. I remember the visit as being very soft and tender, familiarity and sparks, the intellectual stimulation we found with each other. We talked for five days straight.
He’s one of my forever people. He asked me to marry him, maybe six years before this original post in 2006. I think I was a year out of grad school when he proposed. We hadn’t been in contact at all – three years maybe?, and suddenly, there he was proposing on my answering machine. He talked about John Cassavetes movies (one of our bonds), and how he was at a John Cassavetes retrospective by himself and he kept thinking I should be there, and why wasn’t I there with him. (Because you live in Los Angeles and I live in New York? Basically he was missing me terribly. But remember, we hadn’t spoken in three years. There was no social media.) Then he popped the question. “Call me back with your answer.” Click. The funniest thing – but it makes sense to me – is I said yes. I called him back and left a message on his answering machine: “Hey, I got your message. Here’s my answer: Yes. Call me back.”
Why is my life like this.
Why would I say yes when I hadn’t seen him in three years? It seemed like a no-brainer to me. If he was going to a John Cassavetes movie, and missing me the whole time … I mean, what else do I need to know. He hasn’t changed. I hadn’t had any luck in the whole traditional “we dated, fell in love, moved in together” scenario, so I totally understood why he would do what he did. We were good friends. When we were dating: It wasn’t some sweeping love affair, but we got along great, we fought a lot but we fought well and made up, we had the same interests, we valued the same things, we had similar senses of humor, we loved going dancing (he was a great dancer), we had physical chemistry, we also liked just sitting around reading quietly. We liked each other. We cared about each other. We also believed in each others’ dreams! I mean, come on, what more do you need? People fall wildly in love, get married, and a couple years later the honeymoon phase wears off and they realize they don’t even LIKE each other. We have at least that part down pat!
We got together in Chicago to discuss marriage. We sat in a diner. It was freezing rain outside, and we talked pros and cons. We talked about going to Vegas or City Hall. Then he took back his proposal. Reluctantly. The conversation was very chaotic. Not rancorous, just … “wtf” all around. He said, “I didn’t think you’d say yes!” “Oh for God’s sake, what are you even DOING!!” “I DO want to though! I was missing you SO BAD. Maybe we can come back to it later?” “Michael, are you kidding me with this bullshit.” “You really like me that much to say Yes?” “Well, not anymore.” “No, seriously, you do?” “We get along great. I don’t know, seems like there are worse reasons to marry.” So romantic. Snapping back and forth across the table at the diner.
This was my SECOND marriage proposal by the way. There would be one more. Michael’s is the only one I said “yes” to. After talking about all of the problems with us getting married, when we hadn’t seen each other in 3 years and weren’t even dating (I reiterate: why is my life like this), we walked back to Mitchell’s apartment through the freezing cold, and lay on the couch together, fully clothed, all tangled up, watching television, not speaking. Mitchell, who knew the whole story, and loved Michael, came in from the cold, looked at us on the couch and said, “You two are ridiculous.” Michael called out, “Mitchell, tell us what to do!” Mitchell said, unwrapping his winter scarf, taking off his coat, totally over it, “You two need to spend the rest of your lives together, I mean what more do you want me to say?”
Well, we didn’t. I wasn’t heartbroken or anything when he took back his proposal. The whole thing was so random. It’s definitely a road not taken though. I wonder how it would have worked out. (Or not.) I still think the two of us had as good a chance as any. But we’re there for each other to this day. We keep track of each other. We cheer each other on from afar. I didn’t have much space in the acknowledgements section of my Frankenstein book. But I knew from the jump, even before I wrote the thing, that Michael had to be in there.
From the archives archive
The first post on my blog (2002)
Wisconsin Idyll in Funny Hats with Rocket Launchers (2011)
I Was Told I Would Get Wings (2004)
My Situational Crush (2006)
Chicago: The Cold Extreme (2004)
A Sea-Level Kind of Girl (2006)
There Was Already Something a Little Off… (2003)
“Go Ask Sheila.” (2010)
How We Talked (2011)
