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writing assignment #256, attempt 2

Day two of four days of the 4 x 4 writing assignment. The words for today: velvet, breathe, understand, distance. And the numbers: 13, 3900, 1965, 39, which, in my system, come to I Chronicles 12:39:

"The men spent three days there with David, eating and drinking, for their brethren had supplied provisions for them."

In response to her question, I told her that in Catholic theology, the bread and wine are treated as the literal body and blood of Jesus. “And, thus,” I said, “the priest can’t spill any wine or leave anything behind—drink him altogether or not at all.” We were sitting outside a Walgreens on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. That weekend, there was to be a mass mass, a stadium full of people taking the body and blood. “So,” I said, “it’s probably safe to say that whoever is in charge of projecting the number of wine bottles will be off by at least a few cases, and if he’s gonna err, it’s gonna be too many. Which means that the priests are gonna have to finish off the rest, which means there’s gonna be a football field full of ripped priests.” “I love that you went to seminary,” she said.

These are the kind of moments that, however slight or silly, made me feel

needed—I could answer her questions “with just the right words,” as she always said. But I was always guessing, always afraid of the wrong words. I never knew what she really needed. Almost every letter, every phone conversation, every sidewalk talk, she would say “I feel like I can’t breathe” and ask me to tell her a story, or something she didn’t know. So I was always guessing, always hoping I would say something nourishing, something to make her heart glad, but never knowing for sure, always playing respiratory roulette. We were so needy. She never understood what I needed, either: just a sign, a word, to assure me that everything, or just anything, was real. She didn’t understand why it was so important to me that she be with me around my friends, around people who did know what I needed. I didn’t understand how her boyfriend didn’t care that I flew to California to see her, nor how she could love us both. She didn’t understand the short distance between love and emotional suicide.

Ultimately, I think now, it was the historical distance that broke us. She grew up surrounded—friends, family, church, west coast culture—and short of breath. I didn’t. I grew up with humidity and introspection. I had family around, family who loved me, but I was in my own world. I ate breakfast alone, packed a brown bag lunch, looked out the window on the bus. I’m pretty sure I sat with people in the cafeteria, but I don’t remember anyone but me. She needed room to breathe; I needed room to love. She needed answers, and I needed questions.

In 12th grade, I sat in the auditorium listening to Rachel Fischer butcher “Black Velvet.” I had just given my vice-presidential nomination speech, which amounted to needing something for my college applications, and class VP would look pretty good. Despite that non-election, I went to college, where I met a bunch of people and Jesus—people who knew what I needed. After that, I moved to St. Louis to attend seminary. Then I moved again, to Spokane, Washington. I’m back in St. Louis for the summer, back with my friends, the ones who fix me taco salad and pass me bread and wine. Several of my friends are married, and when they look beyond themselves and see others in need, recognize that more than the two of them exist, I begin to understand what it means to be married. That love implies looking in in order to look out. On some nights, we eat so much together that I can barely breathe, but I would tell you that that’s the moment that I, too, can finally breathe. I might tell you a joke about a stadium mass, or tell you the story of 350,000 men sitting with King David for three days, eating fig cakes and drinking wine, getting ripped and loving it, “for their brethren had supplied provisions for them.”