June 27th: Sidekick
This made me chuckle:
Mostly it made me chuckle because it made me think of Mallrats: "How do you know he's not my sidekick??"
Tom and I used to say this line to each other all the time. Partly because Mallrats was our default 2am movie -- I can't even tell you how many times poured ourselves another drink and sat down on the couch to start this movie when everyone else had either gone home or gone to bed. And also? There was an unspoken mythos that one of us was the other's sidekick -- depending on the context might shift who played which role. We never really seemed to care too much who was who, as long as we were showing up and leaving together.
The Good Old Days, if you will.
It was one of the reasons my relationship with him worked so effortlessly for so long -- there was no ego in our dynamic. We just genuinely enjoyed each other's company and made an effort to be part of each other's lives. We were balanced in our affection for each other (or so I always thought) and so it wasn't like one of us wanted something out of the relationship that the other didn't. We just worked.
We were each other's sidekicks.
But at some point along the way, we stopped watching Mallrats. Come to think of it, it was after he and Kat broke up and she took her TV with her. Tom never owned a TV when I knew him -- so unless we were going to watch the movie on his laptop (which I guess we never did), we weren't going to watch it anymore.
We didn't stop drinking late night, though, when the universe conspired to spin our nights together. Instead of watching Mallrats, he'd play music on his record player and we'd dissect the tunes. We'd stare in the blank eyes of the large ceramic persian cat he'd inherited from his grandmother and we'd wade into the deep waters of shit we'd never tell anyone else.
But by then, he wasn't always still my sidekick, nor was I his. We were something else. Something more precarious, less certain. We lost our collective sense of humor somewhere along the way and we never really got it back.
I was thinking about this the other day, randomly, as I was walking through the streets of Cleveland Heights, some 630-odd miles away from Somerville, when Tom's voice popped into my head. "You can never tell when I'm kidding," he said in the same way a kid who'd maybe just overshared how he felt about something and was maybe a bit embarrassed by it. You can never tell when I'm kidding, he said.
I wish I could remember a specific example of what he'd said and how I'd reacted that would prompt this "you can never tell when I'm kidding" response -- one doesn't immediately come to mind -- but it was usually in a moment where he seemed to want to make me think I was just some gullible idiot. Truth be told, that could be true. I want to believe that people are honest -- but someone like Tom? He was an exceptionally good liar. So there could have been times that he tried to pull one over on me just to test the fences, so to speak - velociraptor-style. Like, let me see if she'll believe this, just to see if I call him on his bullshit. And if I didn't, he assumed (correctly or not) that I was, as I mentioned, a gullible idiot.
Tom knew I wasn't a gullible idiot, though. And every time he told me I couldn't tell when he was kidding, I saw right through it. Distract, distract, distract. Try to sew in seeds of doubt. Trouble was, I knew him far too well to buy into it. Even if he got away with a lie or two, I always saw him for exactly who he was.
Nothing on earth made him more uncomfortable than that.
I think often about the afternoon he and I got together at Precinct to air some shit out after he atom-bombed me after the May 1st Incident. Tom had, very drunkenly, told me he was in love with me and had been for a long time but wasn't yet ready to be with me...while also working very hard to get me to sleep with him...and even though I rebuffed his advances, he somehow "misremembered" what happened and, a few days later, dropped an email in my inbox that changed our entire trajectory. In that email, he took all of his actions and assigned them to me. He was writing, in fact, to inform me that even though I was in love with him (AND EVERYONE KNEW IT), he needed to let me know it wasn't ever going to happen with us.
I was absolutely furious with him. I was so hurt. I was so embarrassed by the implication that he'd been talking with "our friends" about my alleged (unreturned) romantic feelings for him. And honestly just so confused about how we'd gone from him confessing his love for me to him practically blaming me for having (unreturned) feelings for him.
It was going to be a hard conversation to have, no matter what. Like, how do you even sit down with someone after giving them such whiplash to talk about what went down? Clearly, neither of us really knew how to handle it....and I can't say we handled it well.
What I most remember about that get together was him trying to pep talk me into liking his girlfriend-at-the-time (who did not care for me, nor I her), and he'd let his pitch crescendo with, "She's actually a lot like me!" -- as if this would be the thing that would make me soften about her.
I offered a hard smile. "Honestly?" I began. "If I'd known what you were really like when I first met you, I would have never gotten so involved with you."
Tom deflated on the barstool next to me. I hated that I'd made him sad. But I meant every word.
But the reality was I had gotten involved with him. I loved him, for fuck's sake. He was my best friend, the most important relationship in my life, a rock, a pillar, a foundation. Tom meant everything to me -- and I had no regrets about that. We'd already gone way beyond a point where I could unlove him or unlearn him.
That sure didn't meant I wanted another one of him in my life. Plus, I didn't think his assessment of his then-girlfriend was correct. She was weird and she was cold and she was awkward and she was unfriendly. She didn't have charisma or charm. She was an MIT-nerd and she was on her own path, much like Tom was, but otherwise? The comparison ran dry.
He said that because he thought it might endear me to her. Maybe it was one of those little lies he tries to sneak past me, only it backfired when it forced the confession out of me that saying she was like him wasn't actually a compliment.
Maybe it was after that when he started to tell me I couldn't tell when he was kidding.
I think over the decade or so I spent with Tom there were probably lots of ways I hurt him that, at the time, I didn't know hurt him. Moments like this one, saying that I wouldn't have chosen to get so close to him if I'd really understood who he was -- I think that really hurt him. I think I could be really hard on him and pretty harsh. I didn't hold back -- I was direct, I was clear, I used precise language. Tom lived for vaguary and hyperbole and anything he could readily explain away.
You can never tell when I'm kidding, he'd want to be able to say.
I wasn't like that. I never lied to him. I looked him in the eye when I spoke to him, even when what I had to say was really hard to say. He wanted to hide our tough conversations behind computer screens, limiting us to the back and forth of email while all I wanted was to sit with him and talk. I was ready to talk.
He wasn't.
We couldn't move forward if we got stalled out at this impasse. So we couldn't move forward. Now it's ten years in the future and his voice still pops into my head, challenging that maybe I never knew him at all.
Tommy, many things in this life -- in our combined life -- could be true. Almost all things could be true. But one thing you'll never convince me of is that I didn't know you.
I knew you and I loved you anyway and nothing made you more uncomfortable.
Because I know you so well, I understand that, too. But here's the thing. I don't believe I came into your life to make you comfortable, nor did you come into my life to make me comfortable. In fact, we came into each other's lives to challenge each other to be the best versions of ourselves that we could be. Even when I left you, it was in pursuit of that challenge -- I evolved and I learned and I grew because of you.
Thank you for being such a persistent teacher.
Before you could slip into that role, though, we had to have those years where we were in perfect balance -- where we were each other's sidekicks, living life according to our own rules and our own methods and our own norms. I loved creating our world. I miss it, a lot. I had to pop the bubble on it in order to break away, but for the time it existed, it served me incredibly well.
Nothing stays golden forever, Ponyboy.
Everything ebbs and flows.
I've gone through the stages of grief -- denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance -- and through each stage, I have framed and reframed our time together. I have looked at what I learned along the way. And I can easily see how massively important it's been for me to go through the process of understanding myself through the lens of us. I have learned so much through understanding how you went about loving me -- and me loving you. It wasn't perfect, it was often messy, and, in the end, it shattered me so completely my only choice was to rebuild myself from the ground up.
Going through this rebuild was so, so difficult, yes. But I did it. I proved to myself that it's true: the only way out is through. And I made it through. It took bravery, it took strength, it took commitment, it took joy, it took hope, it took faith. It took every ounce courage I had. And you know what? I did it.
Maybe I'm my own sidekick after all.
I'll never be one to condone abusive behavior or manipulation and I'm not here to excuse or explain away any of the tougher aspects of what went down between Tom and me. But I also recognize what I gained from the experience. And I also freely admit that I am capable of loving him, anyway.
That's because I already knew exactly who he was and what he was capable of -- and because of that, I figured out exactly who I am and what I am capable of, too. Some doors can't be opened with a light tap -- some doors require a bit of brute force and effort in order to break through. One way or another, some doors we just have to walk through.
I walked through.
It's been a long time since I watched Mallrats. It's been a long time since I hung out drunk at 2am with my best friend. It's been a long time since I cared enough about someone to be brutally honest with them. It's been a long time since I've needed to flex that particular muscle.
All I know is that now, I have made it through so much darkness only to step out into the light and feel relieved how much love remains intact. That love is the ingredient that sustains us. And that learning that fact just may be the secret of life.
I won't tell, though, there's really no point in trying to convince someone of this unless they've already discovered it for themselves. Even if I tried, I might have to default back to what my old friend used to say: You can never tell when I'm kidding.
Except with me, my smile always gives it away.