179 - One Hundred Seventy Nine

Breaker Whiskey

[TRANSCRIPT]

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What do you mean it’s not him? I was so certain—I mean, of course I knew there was a possibility that it was someone else, just wearing the same cologne, but why would Harry leave, why would the back door be broken? Why would my flight or fight instinct have kicked in so hard the moment I felt his presence in the house?

I guess I’ll—

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Well, I guess I shouldn’t say what I’m thinking, what I’m planning on here. I guess I should just do it. Because on the off chance you’re lying to me, I don’t want to give—

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Fuck, Harry, where are you?

Please, let me know that you’re okay. Somehow. Send up a flare or go back to the house or—

Actually, don’t do either of those. And I can’t tell you where I am, not on a public channel. I’m not sure you can even hear this. If you do have a radio, maybe you can hear this but not respond, or not broadcast far enough to reach me. I just have to hope that’s the case.

You know that place that we went once in the spring of…’71? ’72? I can’t remember, they all blur together after a certain point. But that day stands out shining gold from all the rest. It was a really good day. The first crop of strawberries had come early, and you made shortcake and you let me drive us all the way to…well, to that town we picked up bottles of champagne in, which I’m not going to say the name of because then we found that place, where we had the picnic. Strawberry shortcake and champagne for lunch…we got a little drunk. Just tipsy really, on the champagne and the perfect sunny day we had, unseasonably warm.

And we didn’t argue for a whole afternoon. Well, that’s not true, we argued about everything, but it was…they were arguments that didn’t matter. You tried to convince me that Rothko is one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century and I told you I just didn’t get it. You got so red in the face—because of the sun, because of the champagne, because of how impassioned you were describing his style to me, explaining what was so revolutionary about it. I tried to poke holes in it all, telling you it was just big blocks of color, that all his stuff looked like someone trying to decide what color to paint their living room and gave up halfway through. (laughs) You hated that. But anytime I said anything particularly offensive to you, you would push on my shoulder with your palm and the more we had to drink, the more you let your hand linger, tracing your fingertips down my bare arm whenever you pulled back.

So I couldn't exactly tell you the truth—that I like Rothko. That I didn’t agree with a word I was saying. That maybe I did, at one point in time, but you’d been telling me about his art for so long that I’d started to see it differently, that I’d gone to an exhibit of his art once without you, just to try and understand what you saw, try and understand you. That I had your voice in my head the whole time, pointing out everything special in the paintings and that that made me love him. That the way you see art, the way you see the world, made me love a lot of things.

If I’d told you that, you would’ve stopped pushing me. So instead I pulled your pigtails like we were kids on the playground. And you pulled right back, teasing me about my music taste, saying you could take the girl out of the country but you couldn’t take the country out of the girl. And I know you’ve never liked that kind of stuff, but you still got me to recite all the lyrics to “I’m so Lonesome I Could Cry” and then you made me sing them, even though you know I’ve got a shit voice and you leaned your head on my shoulder as I sang and I think…I think you liked the song. I think you liked something.

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Meet me there. In that place where we had that picnic. In the hour before the sun sets. On Friday. That will hopefully give you enough time to get there from…wherever the hell you are.

Just…come find me.

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