#3 Invisible

#3 Invisible

I sit across from you at my favorite bar, each of us sitting in a wicker armchair in a dark room with occasional yellow spotlights and monotonous house music, realizing that my favorite bar is the rooftop patio on the other side of this glass we’re next to. It’s being rained on, and while I’d be happy to sit there under a tiny umbrella in the cold with other appreciators out there, you choose a seat in this closure and I relent without telling you I’m relenting.

I haven’t seen you in six months. Last time I saw you, we’d gone for a walk down the hill from a busy hip district where we had steak sandwiches smothered in avocados and vinaigrette and we had held hands across the table while waiting them to come. We played with stories of your adolescence seeking celebrity cooch shots and why the workout we just had didn’t finish exactly the way we wanted.

We shared a beer, because we weren’t adolescent enough to each have our own, and when our plates of steak sandwiches brimming with salads and shoestring fries came, I saved my fries while you ate every single one of yours first, clearing prime real estate on that white plate to decorate with the juices of that drippy sandwich once you picked it up.

After this indulgence, you walked me down this hill, along a waterfront with your arm around my shoulders and mine around your waist. We paused on a stone bench facing the harbor and you took closeup pictures of my face. Proportions unflattering, fine lines between my nose and my cheeks, my eyes widely fighting a squint at the afternoon sun. You said it’s your favorite, and I thought that things would really go my way if that’s your favorite photo of me.

You walked me the rest of the way to the subway station, we lowered our face masks, hugged, kissed, said goodbye. You walked away and didn’t look back.

I left the country in two days later. We’ll keep talking, we said. If all goes according to plan, I’ll be gone for a month then back in this country and in quarantine for two weeks, then I can see you after that, we thought.

We did keep talking. Almost every day.

Sometimes deep. We did self-reflection writing exercises and shared them.

You heard me out after a family fight.

You asked me what I would want if I were in a relationship with you.

I told you.

And you didn’t have an answer to your own question.

We kept talking. Deliberating.

Then you talked about seeing someone. Then I talked about seeing someone.

We kept talking. Warmly.

I extend my stay out of the country. Family matters. Then personal health matters.

We still talked.

Then not so warmly. More perfunctorily.

I didn’t understand.

When I returned to the country, I told you that I didn’t understand. I was in quarantine then.

You defended yourself and told me you felt it was unfair that I was upset.

You left the country as planned. You texted me and asked if I was still upset. Our dynamic has changed, you said.

Yes, it had.

I hurt. I pulled in and away further. Protecting myself.

I didn’t contact you for a month.

Then we did.

While you’re in quarantine, we spoke through the computer screen. You told me how much you treasured the connection we had and that this friendship was real and there for me when I was ready to receive it.

It moved me. On Thanksgiving Day, I delivered soup to your quarantine hotel and it did reach you in your room.

Finally, today, you’re free to meet, weeks after your release from weeks-long quarantine.

First in a café, then into this dark bar. Then you decide to skip your scheduled jiujitsu practice to hang out with me more. “You wanted to hang out,” you say.

Here we are. You talk about your readings on Buddhism and musings of its similarity to your own Christian faith. You talk about your sustainability projects and your lukewarm connection with one of them right now and the lukewarm people who have feigned interest in helping you. You talk about the lack of opportunity in Hong Kong. You talk about not knowing if you’ll stay in Hong Kong, if you’ll find work you like in Hong Kong, if you’ll find a partner in Hong Kong.

A partner, that’s a big one, you say, leaning forward in deliberation, looking at the table in front of you.

“Why are you here?” I say.

“What do you mean, why are you here?” you ask.

“Why are you here? Why are you in Hong Kong if that’s how you feel?” I feel myself become more demanding.

You say work is here. I say you don’t have to do it if you don’t like it.

We talk about sustainability opportunities. I show you a profile of someone I recently met whose firm invests in sustainability projects in developing economies in Asia.

I’m denying the bottoming-out pit in my abdomen. I’m sitting up straight facing you, long hair draped over my shoulders.

I sip my wine, I eat a nugget of fried chicken from the white plate between us.

I feel them blending together in my stomach. First stirring, then pulsing, then pulverizing.

We get the bill. I use the bathroom. We descend into the rainy night for a moment before tunneling through the bright subway station and into the train car. One stop in, we hug goodbye.

“See you…” you pause “soon” with an upward inflection that tells me you do not know what you want to say.

I leave the train to change lines to go home. I walk into the stairwell and fold over.

Floods of tears colder than the night, nausea buckling me in half. Eventually, I stand up straight and go into the next train.

I go home soaked from rain, outside and inside.

I get into bed.

I have a fever.

I see no one for days.

I return to the bar a week later and sit at my favorite patio alone in the open, outside on the roof, clearly seeing the tile housing estate snake through the mountains across the harbor.

What was it that you wanted to tell me one week ago that made you skip your practice and stay there with me in unremarkable darkness?

—

This is chain link #3 from ‘Don’t Break the Chain’ — a master writing course with Cole Schafer. Today’s assignment — write about a time you felt invisible. Then there was an instruction to do something different for the last 2–3 sentences.