By Maxfield Francis Goldman
In the end there was nothing worth staying for. I left LA on bad terms. I’d burnt bridges, accrued social debts, and alienated myself from whoever tried to comfort me whilst grieving. I was a drunken arsonist, scorning those once dear to me when six feet deep in liquor. I had some girls for comfort. None of them knew about each other, until they did. I had some friends, until I told them to fuck off. All this accumulated into LA becoming one big hell after Laruen died.
I lived in a small apartment. It was in the old spanish style and decorated with movie posters from a lost Hollywood. I moved there after college to be a screenwriter. I did that. Or, I tried that. I wrote a screenplay about an all female death metal band struggling to make a decision about whether to sell out or not when offered a record deal that mandated them a makeover. Lauren was cast as the lead singer.
The movie did okay. It led to other conversations about other scripts that I’d promised to make. Scripts I tried to write and failed to finish. Meanwhile, Lauren auditioned for overdubbed car commercials and background gigs for b-rate reality shows. She was cast as ASIAN WOMAN ON CELL PHONE 1. Implying there was another Asian woman talking on a cell phone in the background as some spray-tanned wop monologues about his troubled dating life.
It was at an afterparty for the show where Lauren’s heart stopped. Bad blow. A Grand Mal seizure. There are videos readily accessible on behalf of the audience’s presumption she was faking it for attention. Apparently there were a handful of celebrities at the party. A-grades like Bradley Cooper who were featured briefly on the show making sardonic commentary upon the stars’ attempts to find love in an admittedly disembodied LA. I have only watched one once. That was more than enough. And so came the months of grief, and thus passed my life as I’d known it. No longer did I think about movies, writing, art.
I sold off most of my possessions. I booked a plane ticket to New York without plans of where to go upon arrival. I knew nothing of how I’d live. All I knew was I wanted out.
This brings me to now, the morning of my move. In LAX with a backpack filled with nearly meaningless memorabilia of my 20’s, and a suitcase filled with clothes, unseasonably light, considering my wintery destination.
In front of me there’s a family of four arguing about who’s gonna sit in the aisle seats, who’s gonna be in the middle, who’s gonna be the ‘pariah’ left to share a coupled row with a stranger. The kids argue with severity. The father looks indifferent, the mother too. The son and daughter force their way to agreement that they will both sit in the aisle seats. I feel vaguely relieved that at least some people get what they want in this world. Or at least know where they belong.
For a moment I have direction. The tall security guard rushes me forward in line and tells me to have my passport ready. I pull it from my pocket, hold it in my hand as I move up. My ticket is scanned and I file forward in a bureaucratic and soulless fashion.
On the plane I sit alone. Normally I would be happy about this, but today it fills me with a particular dread. The prospect of leg room does not particularly suffice for the comfort another soul could bring right now
I consider the superficiality of my being. I have nothing: no great work to show for my thirty odd years on earth. No deep connection with family. No friends. No depth. I have managed to live lightly. Skimming seconds until they turn to days. I watch LA grow distant below me. The morning sun is sepia. The interiority of my plane is gray.
I unlock my phone to put on music. The plane drops violently in altitude. A baby starts crying. I drop my phone on the ground and it slides to the row behind me. The drop feels like getting punched in the gut. I stare down at my shoes as our bird takes its thrashing. I’m wearing black monk straps. I suddenly realize how unfashionable, ugly, and untimely my choice in footwear is.The plane shakes. I feel a tap on my shoulder, the man in row behind me speaks in a calm, high voice, says “this yours?” and hands me my phone.
The plane begins to drop in steps as if drunkenly stumbling down a flight of stairs. I attempt prayer. I yearn for the grace of stable religiosity. My bladder threatens to scream and my stomach hums baritone. I yelp at the sound of a huge tin trash can getting kicked. A dip in elevation. A flicker in light. A lack of control. I feel the closing of an imminent future. My bladder folds. Passengers scream. The overhead compartments throw up Rimowa. Film photos of me on a seesaw. The feeling of saltwater in my eyes. The smell of spring rain. The innocent nausea of a merry-go-round. The first memory of a hand tucked in mine. The blackness of sleep.
Everything grew alright by seconds spent away from daylight. It was silent, not like sleep but rather the soft erosion of sense following shock. It was the feeling of being weightlessly held. A gentle suggestion of guided continuance. Something like hope.
“Are you alright?” the man says to me as I come to, opening my eyes and staring at his face. It’s pale. Bearded thickly. He has a long, thin nose, and rimless glasses. Two long curls spurting out of his temples.
“I think I might be dead,” I say to him. He is standing in the aisle, leaning in to eye level. He smells of a faint menthol.
“My boy, you only fainted, you are alive and well.” His w possesses a slight v. “vwell,” he says. I stare into the faint blue of his eyes, and ask as a child appeals to anything above him “will you sit next to me . . . I am scared . . . I am scared I am going to die . . .I am scared I am going to die and I have nothing.”
He laughs, I scooch over and he slides into the seat beside me. Takes my hand and looks me in the eye. “You are wrong, you have everything. You have me. You have your hands, you have your eyes, your ears, your nose and your hair. Tell me—do you believe in God?”
“I don’t know.” I say grabbing his hand back. “I don’t ever think about it.”
He looks deeper. “Wvell, do you think about yourself?”
“Yes. Almost exclusively.”
“Well then you think about God.It’s banal. Everyone says it. But In Judaism, God is Ein Sof. Infinite. Meaning you, that that, is you too. Meaning God makes up all that surrounds us— given the belief that God is the origin of all existence. To really think about anything, to not only think about God, but to know him as well as man can, to be close to him.”
“I have no clue what that means. I’m not smart anymore. And I think I pissed my pants.”
“Tzimtzum. The contraction of God’s infinite light to allow the creation of the universe. It left space for God to be everywhere. The withdrawal of God leaves space for your mind. For all of us to be, and to be singular. Thus we take his place as the embodied gods of everything around us.”
“Everything around us?”
He smiles big “Everything. Everything like the clouds. Everything like grass. Everything like ants. God went far away to somewhere we can’t understand to allow everything to be its own divinity.”
“I have God too?”
“You couldn’t not have God if you tried.”
“I’ve tried.”
The Flight mellows. The stewardess serves drinks. We both take gin. I tell him my mother was Jewish. He says he could tell. I ask how and he says it’s something you just come to know. I take another Gin and fall asleep on Levi’s shoulder. In my dream I wear converse and a big felt hat. I’m dancing with men in long black coats singing in a language I don’t know. I have children. They aren’t there but I know I have them. A wife too. Her face is a feeling I have in my heart and not an image.
I awake upon dissension, carrying the dream like a lungful of breath. Heart pounding. Perspiring, right there beside Levi. Our declination is smooth, the bright city below draws close like clouds. Wind. Inside me Levi claims is everything: Lauren is alive. My friends are a part of it too, my family, my everything.
As the plane touches down, people begin to cheer. I feel second-hand embarrassment. I am them too. They are me. I follow Levi down the aisle. Out of the plane and into the airport. JFK is busy. I begin to lose him in the crowd. I follow the tail of his greatcoat through peripheral glances split between traveling bodies. I stay on him, into baggage claim, where he is received by a group of men dressed just like him. They take him warmly.
I think of yelling his name. And then I don’t. I watch him exit the building. He minimizes into a black fleck as he draws deeper into the mouthlike opening of the short term parking lot. I know he doesn’t look back because what he wanted has already happened. I want what he wants. To bring me close to something real. Something we will continue to share foreverlong. This empty space God once breathed life into, the freedom of blank paper. White walls, Fluorescent light. Freedom to be the same but entirely different.
A young woman comes up to me and asks “do you know which carousell has the bags from LAX?”
“I don’t.” And as I say that, they start to fall from the shoot onto the black conveyor belt.
“It’s alright.” she says, “I see it, it’s just starting to begin.”
And as I watch the bags circle around, I think to myself, it’s just starting to begin.
Maxfield Francis Goldman is a 22-year-old author from Upstate New York.