Love Letter (Funny, Love Letter)
The problem is a long one. The problem was this: at the beginning of the school year, I was alone, and you, and the rest of the crew, were still working in the mountains, without me. The problem is this: even after those last couple weeks of the summer, you all still remain far away from me, dispersing to your respective hometowns across the Northeast. The problem will be this: you graduate halfway through the year and then are moving to Finland, even farther away. The problem will be this: even though we’ll both return to the mountains again next summer, we’ll leave again at the end of the summer.
We were in the same place, and now we’re not. The problem is this: we were not planning on continuing dating past the summer, but we couldn’t help calling each other.
At the beginning of the school year, I couldn’t write about anything but the summer working in the mountains, or anything but how I missed you. But I was too close to it all, and it never came out right. It came out like this: love love, trying too hard to express how good it all was. I never felt like I did justice to the point. But the point is easy to see, I think. I think it’s easy to see even now.
I wrote in a story for a writers’ workshop once, “Reggie says,” and another writer knew I was in love. They asked, “What is Reggie’s relation to you? He’s come up a lot.”
This is something that writers know, I guess: that when you write another person’s words as a way to tell a thought, it is because they were on your mind. It is because when you speak, I keep the words in my head accidentally. This is how you’re sticking with me, I guess.
We met in the summer, when we worked, and lived, and slept together; up on the Mountain during the weeks, down in the valley on weekends. We traded control of the speaker, traded suggestions of what song to sing next on the porch. You fermented a ginger bug with lemons I squeezed in the kitchen, and I laughed at you when it exploded over you the next weekend (It was funny: like a geyser, straight up in the air, it exploded). I made empanadas for brunch and taught you how to fold them. You made all-day pork shoulder and we all ate and got rip-roaring drunk. The next morning, I dragged you out of your tent— the tent I’d moved into— at 6am to put out the recycling, because it only came once a month, early in the morning, and we missed it the month before. We did it loudly, out of spite. Banging plastic bins and jangling bottles so everyone else could hear us being responsible and martyr-ish from the comfort of their tents.
“Fight or flight?” Everyone on the crew asked. Well I took a plane here to the mountains, didn’t I? It’s the participation in society that makes you complicit. The danger is that you start fighting and forget that you were fighting. Its so hard to keep your mind clear in the bogs of capitalism: school, and work, and jobs, and achievement, and money, and marriage, and health care, and how do you stop trying to do everything perfectly, and how do you stop trying to impress people, and how do you ever measure your worth if you stop being perfect? Is there some level of value between perfect and nothing? —But No. Back to the question: My answer is freeze, freeze, freeze. Absolutely. Until I can get my slow brain to reconcile my quick terrors.
In the car, you pointed out everything you saw, always watching. It was the first thing I noticed about you. I never mention it, and you’ve never noticed it of yourself. Another thing of yours: repeating the punchlines you think are funny. (Funny, very funny).
God, I would love to hear what you see right now; love to hear what’s funny.
No, I mean, GOD— being of the clouds who watches us separate— I would love to hear what you see of this. Of us.
We didn’t tell anyone all summer that we were together. Not out of shame, but out of awkwardness. At night, at the end of the work day for the first couple weeks, we all sat on the porch playing music and reading, and writing, and drinking tea. Slowly, people trickled off to bed. We staggered our exits. Usually, I retired first. Sometime later, you followed. Our tents were in the same direction— the only two on the opposite side of the main building to everyone else’s— tucked back in the shadow of the trees at night, indistinguishable. You arrived at the tent entrance, a rustling in the dark. I always made you fix the blankets. I laid there in the dark, alone, every night, and waited for you to show up and organize them. This baffled you in your funny, irritable way. We got a little obvious with our closeness later on, but we all carried on like we were something unspoken.
Still, this New Years, when we were all back in New Hampshire together for a holiday reunion, Kyle asked me if I had anything going on romantically. (Funny, do I have anything going on romantically). We’d been sharing a room and sitting really close all week. I couldn’t tell if Kyle was just trying to get me to say it out loud, or if he was really so oblivious.
I find it difficult to describe to strangers why you’re so lovely. I don’t tell people some of the things you do or say, because, out of context, they seem coarse and forceful. That’s why I talk to Hattie about you, and not my sisters, not my friends. It’s hard to show how contagiously funny and likable you are. Hard to describe your abrasive, belligerent, constant humor, especially to my sisters, who hold inoffensiveness at even higher value than I do. Hattie worked with us, and she knows your ways. I do not have to explain you to her— or justify myself in love.
The last time I tried to write about you, I tried to start at the beginning, and write in a line. But my mind kept grabbing at the end of all this, like a grape vine tendril, wrapping around, and around, and around. So how is it, that I can’t forget the present for the past or the past for the present? And you go around, and around, and around.
When I do speak of you, I never use your name. I always say, “my friend”. To say “my boyfriend” sounds too gross, intimate, and strange. Too much like a doll in love; too much like a highschooler in a teen movie. I say it like this:
In class, a professor asks, “What is the best Halloween costume you saw?”
I relate a story you told me on the phone, “My friend wore a sweater and a hat, and whenever someone asked him what he was, he told them to guess. Then, no matter what, he would respond, ‘Yes! You’re the first person who’s gotten it tonight.’ It took about half an hour before people started overhearing him across the room and catching on.” The professor and students were impressed and amused, just like I had been. I was pleased to have shown them that part of you. Another time, in a story, I interview you. But I change your name, so the professor doesn’t notice this is the second story I’ve written about you.
When I ask you how you would describe yourself to a stranger, you say, “Presently in the Finnish Army.” (Funny, presently in the Finnish Army). We text now, because it’s true: you are “presently in the Finnish Army”. But no matter how funny it is, your present is always seven hours off of mine. You’re worlds away, and less frequent than before. But somehow, it is still kind of the same. You tell me that exclamation points are only used by women, because the idea happened to cross your mind, and you think it’s funny to say such things. I use exclamation points excessively after that. You say you love theme, and I send you Brandenburg Concerto No. 2. You say, “No, ‘row-row-row-your-boat’ kind of theme.” You send me the children’s round,
“Pizza Boogie”; “Its a banger,” you say. I text, “You said you liked theme, Brandenburg is riddled with theme— it’s the best theme I know.”
“I hate theme. I love rounds.” I can hear your stubborn voice in my head.
I myself admit to liking theme— not just repeating or overlapping— changing too.
You tell me that when you first met me, at the beginning of our summer work in the mountains, you liked what you saw. You drove me to Walmart— the only place in town— to pick up groceries, since I didn’t have a car with me. I was wary of taking things from you. I’d seen you be brash. I thought, I’d better be careful with this one, or the summer will be very unpleasant. You all, on the crew, were my biggest fear: a work crew of mostly strange men, out in the woods, doing hard labor. Hattie and I were the only women on crew. I was terrified that I would hate you all. That you would be assholes, sexist, obnoxious. Terrified on the plane. Terrified on the bus. Terrified arriving at 10:30 at night at a gas station, waiting to be picked up by you all. And you, specifically, were not overly friendly— made a point of being reluctant to do me the favor. I didn’t like having to ask for anything so overtly from strangers. I realize now, your reluctance was a careful statement. (Funny, to remember such fear, now that I miss you all.)
I have always been afraid of heights: I stood on the outcropping of a rock face, looking down into the water that I just watched you jump into. And then the others, they jumped too. And you climbed up again. And there I was, squinting my eyes, and knowing that I had done this before, but that every time, I must do it again. Prove myself to my pounding heart. Nothing as insignificant as a height, looking out over water, could stop me from getting myself to fall down with the rest of you. Before you jumped the third time— all of a sudden, and as quick as I could— I was ready to jump. A brief moment of falling. I kicked my legs like scissors— like I’d learned as a lifeguard— to slow the plummet as my toes touched the surface. The water was cold. And my lungs caught with the breath still in them. I was freezing as a I swam to the side, as I treaded water. My legs turned numb. I’m fine. (Funny, I’m fine.) Just like I knew I’d be, I’m fine.
Emma Brinks is a Dutch Argentine American who loves yerba mate tea, river swimming, and hand-me-downs. She is currently a senior studying Horticulture and Writing at Michigan State University. In the future, she would like to have a sheep.