After disco. Before AIDS. There was Joe.
Joe wasn’t a model though he could have been. Northern Italian, he looked more Austria than Mafia but most took him for an Indian. I met him at a U2 gig down at Toad’s Place in New Haven. Didn’t see much of the show. Too many tequila shots during the warm-up band had given me the spins. I stumbled to the toilet but only made it as far as the coat pile in back where I swanned onto the leather mountain.
“Hey, you okay?”
I mumble-grumbled something as the three of him sat next to me, coat pile shifting like a bag of puppies.
“Here, drink this,” he said and held something cool to my mouth. The glass against my cheek comforted like cold bathroom tiles.
“bleurblahmumblugh,” I said which roughly translated into—fuck off, I’m going to piss myself.
He laughed, lifted me in his big, strong arms and carried me into the bathroom.
Waited in line despite sharp looks from safety-pinned faces; put me on the toilet; let me do my business, then carried me out again. Somewhere in a fog, I heard my roommate,
Lisa, tell him to sling me into her El Camino and something wet, I assumed lips, smacking my cheek.
I woke, alone in my own bed, a piece of paper drool-plastered to my face. I peeled it off. Stared at the number on it for a minute or ten but couldn’t, for the life of me, remember who the fuck Joe was.
Lisa had the afternoon shift at Denny’s and was in the kitchen making coffee. I shoveled a glass out of the pile in the sink, gave it a quick rinse and drank as much water as I could. I sat at the Formica table my uncle had dug out of his garage when Lisa and I moved here— our first apartment out of high school. “Did we meet someone named Joe last night?” I said, pawing the ashtray for any butts long enough to light.
She laughed and fanned herself with a Bud Light coaster. “You did, you lucky bitch.”
She stared at the paper in my hand. “If you don’t want him, I’ll take him.”
Two seconds away from handing her the number with Lisa’s eyes lit up like the fourth of July, I remembered I had the day off with nothing better to do. So, I picked up the phone instead.
“Hope he’s not an asshole,” Lisa said as she headed to work.
Joe lived two towns up the coast in West Haven. Within an hour, he was knocking at the door. We went for fried clams at Stowe’s, then walked to the end of the pier. It was high tide and dark water spanked the pilings.
“Let’s jump in,” I said.
He sniffed. “The water’s no good.”
“We swim in Milford. All the time.” True, but years ago. Before Jacey Miller jumped off
Woodmont Pier into shallow water and broke her neck on a sand bar.
“West Haven isn’t Milford. All the shit from New Haven runs down here.”
I thought of Jacey in her wheelchair; the baby bib she wore to catch the drool. How she begged people to kill her. Still, you can’t be afraid of living because of someone else’s bad luck. I elbowed him in the side. “Chicken shit.”
He laughed. “Yeah.”
We went to a gig at Brothers Three, an Italian restaurant that made side-money after hours as a punk club. I drank water this time and sweat it out in puddles. We slammed against each other all heat and smoke and slippy-sloppy skin and for the first time, I actually wanted to fuck instead of just doing it for the guy. He took me home and we made out in his Dodge Challenger. I squirmed all over the front seat but he refused to come up to my apartment.
“Let’s wait,” he said. “I like you.”
Next day, he picked me up at Denny’s after my shift.
“I hate this uniform,” I said as I changed in the back seat. “I should have stayed in college.”
“College teaches you nothing,” he said.
I laughed. “And waitressing does?”
He watched me struggle with my buttons. “It teaches you to want something better.”
As I pulled my smock over my head, I thought of middle-aged Mary, skin greyer than her hair. How life had run out of her somewhere on a graveyard shift. “Or to give up,” I said, sitting there in my bra and panties.
Our eyes met in the rear-view mirror. Neither of us looked away.
After that, we were together every day. Mostly, we went to gigs. It was 1981 and the sounds came hard and fast. Joe loved turning me onto new bands and we’d drive into the city whenever we could to catch the big acts. It was exciting to be alive and living and I was falling hard for the big man at my side but nothing between us changed until the New Order gig at the Ukrainian Ballroom.
It was the first time they’d toured following the death of Ian Curtis and the renaming of the band from Joy Division. The crowd was silent, the band in a cloud of smoke, building slow to Everything’s Gone Green. Bernard Summers started singing and it was all heartbreak. Something made me look up at Joe. Shadows play tricks but there was no mistaking the solitary tear running from his eye like the Indian in the Keep America Beautiful commercial.
I touched his face and he hesitated before turning. My eyes were all—what is it, Joe?
But I said nothing, just held his hand and let the music do its thing.
It was somewhere between late and early when we drove home and I-95 was clear except for sporadic truckers. Head on his shoulder, I watched the lights and listened to the slow tide of Joe’s breathing.
“Do you know how Ian Curtis died?” he said out of nowhere.
“Killed himself, didn’t he?”
“They say he stood on a massive block of ice with a rope tied around his neck. When the ice melted enough, he hanged.”
I shuddered. “That’s some commitment.”
“I guess he’d had enough.”
“Enough of what?” Curtis had epilepsy, but millions of people managed it without killing themselves.
“Enough of the same old shit.”
Joe reached into the glove compartment and pulled out one of the mixed tapes he loved making. He shoved it in the cassette player and Joy Division filled the night.
He stopped at the next rest stop, cut the engine and the lights. Trucks rumbled past on the interstate but the rest stop was deserted. He kept his hands on the steering wheel until Disorder’s throbbing chords began. He shifted then. Looked at me like he was lost and only I could save him. Slid his big hand with its long fingers through my hair. Cupped my head and pulled me in. Mumbled something against my throat, my chest, my stomach. Slid my clothes off and himself inside.
“I love you, Joe,” I whispered too quiet for him to hear.
But he knew. He knew.
#
Joe drove a truck for his old man. I’d never been in the cab of a truck and thought it would be fun to tag along for the day.
“It’s not very comfortable,” he said, trying to dissuade me and he was right but I didn’t care. I was nineteen and could bend my long legs at odd angles so shoveled them under the bulbous dash without complaint.
He put a tape in the player, then the truck in gear.
“Who’s this?” I said, turning it up, the sound all echoes and angst.
“The Teardrop Explodes. They’re from Liverpool.”
“Like the Beatles,” I said.
“Nothing like them.”
“Just like the city is nothing like the state.” I said, snow flurries splattering on the window like tiny bombs. When you grew up in Connecticut, New York always meant the city. Upstate was just an extension of New England and in winter that meant dead things and snow.
It was a long drive and my legs were cramped by the time we passed security at the gate and drove down the long, manicured drive to the hospital. I wanted nothing more than to stretch my legs while Joe unloaded the delivery.
“Don’t get out of the truck,” he said as he backed into the loading bay. He wore sunglasses against the snow glare so I couldn’t read if he was serious or not.
I looked around. There was nothing but a bunch of Christmas trees festooned with snow. “Come on, my legs are killing me.”
“Don’t. It’s dangerous.”
I laughed.
“I mean it, Sarah. Don’t let appearances fool you. This is a high security, mental hospital.
“Aren’t they locked up?”
“The most dangerous are but still, stay in the truck.”
I could hear him talking to some fellas and unloading, but after a while everything went quiet. Snow began to pile on the windscreen and the cab went coffin-like. I stared at the door handle. Was reminded of the time I was six and the babysitter told me not to open the front door because her puppy would run into traffic and get killed. How I knew what would happen but twisted the doorknob anyway and the dog bolted—the screeching brakes, the thump. The poor thing crawling back up the stairs at my feet.
They had to shoot it.
I looked around. There was no one or nothing and I had to piss. I put my hand on the door handle.
A face appeared at the window.
I screamed bloody murder but it didn’t go away, just grinned. It could have been a woman but the mad hair and Invasion of the Body Snatcher eyes made it hard to tell—her pupils were tiny as a pinprick and just as sharp.
She jangled the handle. Pulled as I struggled to hold it closed. I was losing ground and starting to panic when Joe and a few other fellas pulled her away, kicking and cackling like a witch.
“Christ, that was scary,” I said as Joe climbed into the cab and locked the doors. I lit a cigarette with trembling hands. “Her eyes. What the fuck was wrong with her eyes, Joe?”
“It’s the drugs,” he said.
“Drugs? What kind of drugs do that to your eyes?”
“The strongest ones.” He lowered his sunglasses and turned to me. It was only for a second but that’s all it took. The ink of his pupils had constricted to a black hole.
“What did you do, Joe?”
He wouldn’t answer. Not until we stopped at a truck stop just over the state line. We sat across from each other in the diner. He flipped the levers of the table-top jukebox while we waited for my food and Joe’s coffee. “Nothing but shit,” he said.
I stared at him. Waited.
“I’m a heroin addict,” he said like telling me the time of day.
“What?”
“Heroin. I take heroin.”
Heroin was only something in the movies. “I don’t believe you.”
He looked around, shrugged off his leather and rolled up his sleeve. “See these?” He pointed at some red, angry looking dots that I’d always thought were infected mosquito or flea bites. “That’s where I stick the needle in.”
I rubbed my finger over the angry holes, willing them to vanish. The waitress came over with the coffee pot. Joe jerked away and rolled down his sleeves.
“How long?” I said once the waitress left. Working at a truck stop, she’d probably seen everything there was to see and had taken no notice of Joe.
“Not long, I tried it for the first time a few weeks ago.”
“Stop.”
“I can’t.” His hands twitched as he lit a cigarette. He wouldn’t look at me. “I don’t want to.”
The diner shrunk and stilled. “Why? What’s it like?”
His eyes went all far-away. “It’s the best feeling in the world. Better than sex. Better than anything.”
I winced at that. “I want to try it.”
He looked at me then. Stared me straight in the eye. “No.”
“Why not? If it’s the best feeling ever…let me see what it’s like. Just once.” But it was more than that. It was jealousy pure and simple.
“Not even once.”
“But...”
“No.” He slammed his hand on the table right next to mine. A few of the truckers looked over but as long as he wasn’t beating me, they were going to mind their own business.
His fingers crawled over, took mine in his. “I love you, Sarah.” The words came slow as if each one brought him closer to a trapdoor. “Promise me one thing.”
My heart paused while my mind raced. I wanted to go to a club, dance like a lunatic then fuck him clean. “Anything,” I said.
“You’ll never try it.”
I took his hand. Stilled it. Nodded.
#
It was a long winter. Joe and I still saw each other but not every day. He had excuses but I knew the score. By spring, he had stopped working and spent most of his time in the darkness of his parents’ basement or in New Haven with some junkie friends. If junkies ever had friends. It wasn’t long before he started borrowing money.
I gave it to him. I’d give him whatever he wanted. “Just do one thing for me,” I said.
He peered at me over the top of an old, wool blanket. It stank. He stank. He nodded.
“Come away with me. We’ll go to Rhode Island. Book into a motel. Get you clean. I know you don’t want to…live…like this.”
He looked away. “I can’t.”
Can’t or won’t? I crouched next to him. Stroked his greasy stubble. Coaxed his chin towards me. “Do you love me, Joe?”
“I love it more.”
That hurt. I couldn’t understand and looking at him—shivering under the blanket, eyes glazed, cheekbones sharp as granite and just as grey—I didn’t want to. I wouldn’t give up on him though. It took some time but I finally convinced him. It was then I knew he really loved me—when he would at least try to be right for me.
“Leave the stuff behind.”
He nodded. “It’s okay, I’ve nothing left, anyways.”
Two or three days was all it would take. We found a cheap motel off I-95 and crawled into bed. Cool Hand Luke was on the television with Paul Newman shoveling boiled eggs into his mouth. I held Joe in my arms and tried to stop his shivering.
“I’m gonna be sick,” he said.
I helped him to the toilet just like he’d helped me the night we’d met. Put my cool hand on his hot neck. Wiped his ass when he couldn’t hold his hand still enough to do it himself.
“I gotta go back,” he said when I got him into bed again.
“Not yet. The worst is over. If you made it this far, you’ll make it all the way.”
We didn’t even make it the night.
I drove while Joe curled up into himself next to me. “Hurry, Sarah, hurry.” The words drooled from his mouth while he sweat and shook. I went as fast as I could but it wasn’t fast enough. He started shouting, mumbling things I couldn’t understand.
“Joe, you’re scaring me.”
He started laughing, crazy like. “You don’t know what scared is and I hope you never will.”
I dropped him at a friend’s house in New Haven. The door opened and swallowed Joe whole.
#
A month later, the lease on our apartment was up. When Lisa said she was moving back in with her folks to save money, I knew it was time to move on. I needed to get away. Far away. California sounded good.
I hadn’t seen Joe since that night in Rhode Island. I tried calling him a few times but he never answered. I tried one last time. Still, no answer. This time, I left a message. Told him I was leaving and when.
I didn’t expect to see him at the train station but there he was, sitting on the bench, waiting. He looked good. Skinny but good. I ran to him, threw my arms around his neck. Kissed him quick, then slow.
He kissed me back. Wrapped me in his arms and squeezed. Hope pulled me away from him.
“Come with me,” I said.
He smiled. “I can’t.”
“Please.” Tears ran down both our faces. “Please, Joe.”
He handed me a box wrapped in green paper and kissed me one last time before walking away.
I ran after him, grabbed his once strong arm, now thin and brittle like a broken promise. “I’ll stay. We’ll get a place together, you and me. I’ll take care of you.”
He put his hand on my cheek and smiled. “Get on that train, Sarah. Get far away from here and me. Live a life for both of us.”
I watched him go. He got in his car but didn’t start it. He sat, hands clutching the steering wheel and stared at me until the train whistle called. I walked backwards towards the platform, mouthing, please the whole way.
The pain in his eyes was plain as his addiction. He knew. Knew I wouldn’t get on that train. He started the car and drove off, giving me no choice but to go on without him.
It was just over three days to California and I didn’t stop crying until the second. It was then I felt strong enough to open the box. In it was a mixed tape labelled Dark Wave with songs from every gig we’d ever gone to. I stuck it in my Sony Walkman and pressed play.
“I love you, Sarah,” was the only thing I heard.
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