Love, Loss and Moving to New York City
Late last night as I sat in anticipation of my first ever Facetime interview, a wave of anxiety washed over me in awe of the monumental historical times we have found ourselves in. Also, should I have put on makeup? Or done my hair? Fuck it. I pressed the call button on my phone and a moment later I saw my friend John’s pale bearded face with a big ear to ear smile. “Hi neighbor!” he exclaimed. “Hello!”. We waved into our tiny phone screens relieved to see another human face.
I am immediately struck with how intimate this is. Though John, a longtime neighbor of mine, and I are close, I have never seen his apartment or bedroom or what he looks like in his pajamas. I have never seen him look vulnerable. I have never seen him look unsure or scared.
A moment passes and our initial excitedness fizzles down as our smiles turn to heavy sighs and a moment of silence. We look at each other through this little light and weigh the heaviness of the task. 90 days. Don’t get sick. Don’t get anyone else sick. Shelter in place. He shifts slightly in his chair as if to prepare himself for the conversation to come. His tension comes from more than just not wanting to get the virus, John is among the many immune compromised with asthma and chronic bronchitis.
His eyes shoot down to his hands to conceal his thinly veiled anxiety and sadness. “Before we start, I want you to know I’m an open book. Ask me anything.”. I look down at my list of obvious and subjective questions. 1-How has the pandemic affected you? 2-What’s your biggest fear? 3-What do you miss the most? This is not the story of this man’s life. And two weeks of virtual lockdown does not get us any closer to being able to deal and understand the long term effects of this. I pivot.
“How did you end up in New York, what brought you here?” John looks at me and smiles, relieved. He looks down and chuckles to himself. “It’s actually a really fucked up story, it’s the first time my life was turned upside down, you’re going to love it.”
Nine years ago in January of 2011 I was hired by RecMe Studios as a junior music producer for an international artist collaboration platform that had launched only a few months before. I was 28 and I finally was starting to get my shit together. Then I met Claire, a vivacious young artist by way of the whimsical, dark and delicate illustrated depictions of deep sea creatures and their marriage to extraterrestrials. She felt certain they had the same origin story, that they had come from the stars but somewhere along the great lines of the unknown history of evolution, they were separated. One was left to float along the cosmos and the other, condemned to swim the depths of the great oceans of the world.
Needless to say I was immediately smitten. The following months we exchanged work notes that turned to cute memes that led us to an eventual modern day online relationship. Claire was sweet, thoughtful and incredibly talented. We shared our lives with each other. Though I hadn’t met her in person, I knew her. I was closer to her then anyone in my immediate circle and she was only one click, one phone call away. I was in love. I believed she was too.
A week before Thanksgiving a group of us closest to Claire received an email revealing she had been diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), a rare type of cancer of the blood and bone marrow with the survival rating of 27.4% after 5 years. We rallied behind her and all flew out together to spend Thanksgiving with her in North Carolina where she lived at the time. I’ll never forget how I felt, I wasn’t nervous or scared but totally ready to meet my partner. To hold her and just take care of her.
Claire didn’t drink but at one point, on Thanksgiving day, when we were all just drunk enough, she brought out a pair of clippers and we took turns shaving off her long beautiful walnut colored hair.
That weekend was a blur, like a scene from a movie and all you remember is one song that punctuates it. Filled with too much food, wine and so much laughter. Claire didn’t drink but at one point, on Thanksgiving day, when we were all just drunk enough, she brought out a pair of clippers and we took turns shaving off her long beautiful walnut colored hair. It was this stunning act of trust and intimacy to this day I have not since felt. We left the following Tuesday closer than ever.
January 1, 2012 we spoke on the phone for two hours and by the end of it it was decided that we would move to New York together where we could find the best medical treatment and I could take close care of her. Together we could beat this. She had family living in Pennsylvania so we decided to meet there at her family home to connect and put together a plan. It was an emotional conversation. She offered to pay for my plane ticket out and I accepted knowing I’d need every penny, and some borrowed from my father, to make the final move to New York. It was all set.
I arrived two hours early for my 1:45pm flight out east. I was so excited! I just remember feeling like I’m a man now. This is what it means to step into yourself in service of something bigger. But that didn’t happen. It slowly fell apart beginning with my ticket, which was cancelled, by Claire’s ex husband who she still had a shared credit card with. She assured me it was a big misunderstanding, that he was in the army and received some account alerts and said it was fraud so they cancelled the whole thing. And I believed her, one-hundred percent.
That should have been my first and only red flag, but I blew right past it.
That should have been my first and only red flag, but I blew right past it. I flew into action and bought a very expensive last minute ticket with much of what I had put away, leaving later that day. We were still on schedule for her to pick me up at the train station in Philly. It took all of six hours for my life to unravel. By the time I had landed my executive producer had emailed me that he and the RecMe Studios legal team had discovered, contacted and filed a suit against her for misrepresentation, fraud and forgery. The artwork was actually made by an older woman, named Betty, in North Carolina where Claire had volunteered at a home for the elderly.
They had also discovered in their inquiries that she was in fact not ill with AML, but had a mental disorder commonly known as Factitious Disorder they thought I should know about. I just remember calling her over and over, so much that I had to crouch around a random plug in the Amtrak station because my phone was nearly dead. The phone rang and rang. Still believing she would meet me at the station, and having nowhere else to go, I carried on.
I bought a $58 one way ticket and never looked back.
I waited for over two hours. Calling and waiting and eventually giving in to the sinking pit in my stomach. She’s not coming. I was in a daze. I was hungry and it was January on the east coast in a city I had never been to with no connections, a suitcase full of clothes, my guitar and $250 to my name. The only person I did know was a friend from high school living in New York. I bought a $58 one way ticket and never looked back.
To this day I have not heard from her, she has deleted all social media and changed her email and phone number. It is still the longest and most emotional day of my life by far. I lived on my friends couch for two months before I moved in where I live now. I don’t regret for a minute the choices I made. It put me here. I love New York.
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