Dying in Boston
I Need Antibiotics, Please.
At this moment, an old Chevy Suburban is rolling down Arlington Street in Boston, Massachusetts. It sits high on mud tires, equipped with a safari basket and push bar, more fit for convoying in a warlord’s retinue than chugging doggedly through a city square. I’m in the backseat, face sunken, gaunt like a wooden mask, peering out its tinted windows. I cannot speak, my words slur from infection. But my mind is clear, and I begin to think.
And so I think, over the screaming of this raging, pus-leaking hole they cut in my back, how much happier you must’ve been coming to Boston. How much nicer and how much better this was for you.
I think about how we had to make our bones instead in that old shithole of a city. Molded-up dorms, tinderbox apartments, crackheads, winos, and drunk college kids breaking into cars. You saw more of it than me, all those shifts at the EMS station. Yeah, George Street could be alright with the theatre and cafes. Even Easton Avenue could be fine with all the gyro and karaoke bars. But Boston is far and away better. It takes that old city of ours and shoots it in the stomach and dumps it in the mud.
How much happier you must’ve been here. The little funny, quirky shops, the Trader Joe’s lifestyles, all the biking, all the parks, all the nature, Acadia only a morning drive away. You must’ve been in heaven. Maybe except for the price, but even for your frugal, Irish-catholic self, it was a small one to pay comparatively. You found your spot.
And you know, you took me out back and shot me too, all that time ago, in that old city of ours. I mean, we’d been on the death spiral awhile there, no doubt; trading shots, dueling each other on false breakups. You shot and missed, I shot and missed, and finally, you got your aim and got me good. It was for the best. I needed to be put down. I wasn’t any good by the end. But I still loved you, and that was where I really bled, catching that falling knife of blame on the stumble out, that’s what did me in, truly. I shouldered it all.
Oh, and it was a strange acceptance that you found love again up here. With how beautiful everyone was on the park trails, I would too. No shortage of my type up here, I’ll say. If I moved here alone, I wouldn’t be alone for very long either, hardy har har.
But speaking from fondness, I hope you found someone who indulged your nighttime walks now that there was somewhere to go, someone who matched your camping and hiking, your philosophical debates, your seriousness of future and family. I wasn’t the man for that when it mattered. It’s alright. And the memories are prettier I bet, fresher, more alive, the ones you made up here. The air smells fresher up here, the whole city’s prettier. I don’t gamble, but I bet those memories are prettier than the ones you made with me.
We spent the whole day biking through Cambridge. Last night we clubbed until 1 in the morning. My incision is surely infected. I fought the fever off already, popping tylenol like tic tacs but my friends are joking I have “immediate-onset dementia.” I am slurring and stuttering, it is taking a lot of effort to talk. A little shop called Mike and Patty’s kept me steady in the morning and then a refresher from Tasty Burger in the afternoon, but now after a long bike tour of Harvard Square, I’ve been rendered simple and kaput.
I made them stop at a bike shop in Cambridge earlier, and I walked outta the place with a 10-minute demo of an E-bike. And I ran it down a few blocks of Massachusettes Ave, trying to figure out how the thing even worked. And I glimmered someone with a familiar purple backpack and a purpose, pumping legs in the opposite bike lane. Of course, I turned around and tried to find out. But through traffic and turns, I lost them.
Funny I still chase your ghost, even though you’ve been dead for a while now. How red Honda Fits still draw my eye on the highways, how seeing tall, athletic people with chin-length brown hair makes me turn, man or woman. Why? I’m laughing to myself. It doesn’t make sense anymore. Our love died well before you did. I didn’t even know you were dead until you were cold in the ground. I guess in the end, I realize now that my last act of love was letting you go so easy, not convincing you to stick it out. I’m sure you were much happier up here doing you than would’ve ever been stuck on a farm doing me. At least I let you go to be happy for the time you had left.
Goodbye Boston. Goodbye You.
I really need some antibiotics, this is not a joke.
