Anecdotes (II)

She left the two concert tickets we had booked in my mailbox, so I went to sit by the harbor with a bottle of sparkling grape juice and waited for the night to pass. Whenever I sit by the sea with a bottle, I have the terrible urge to throw it into the water before anybody can see it--which is impossible in Hong Kong, not even at 4am when passers-by haunt the streets in this town. 

My good friend Luke and I threw bottles into the sea at dawn when I was 15. Luke grew up in the club scene in Paris; he was already a man when he moved back to Hong Kong at 19. White shirts, hair gel that had the scent of watermelon and a scar on his upper arm. Back in those days we listened to a lot of Bob Marley, watched stupid Japanese reality shows and talked about his family. He did most of the story-telling. When I was quiet for long enough, he told me I should learn to explain myself to people. I think I must have given him a blank look, as I used to do when my best friends told me what I needed to hear. Another time he squinted his eyes and said, 'Just ask. I've never said No to you.' 

Half a life later, I still haven't learned to ask. If I ever explain myself, it would never be when the story is drawing to a close. My friend L.D. did what I might have done in her shoe--it takes strength to walk off in silence. She should do what made her happier, even if happiness sometimes means unhappiness. Whenever people fade away from my life--or when I have a premonition of that happening even if they are unaware--I try to think of how life used to be before they existed for me. What a vast, empty space life really is, when you retreat to its limits. 

***

One thing most of my friends don't know about me: I'm a fan of Ted Hughes. A poem for tonight, from Birthday Letters:

Drawing

Drawing calmed you. Your poker infernal pen

Was like a branding iron. Objects

Suffered into their new presence, tortured

Into final position. As you drew

I felt released, calm. Time opened

When you drew the market at Benidorm.

I sat near you, scribbling something.

Hours burned away. The stall-keepers

Kept coming to see you had them properly.

We sat on those steps, in our rope-soles,

And were happy. Our tourist novelty

Had worn off, we knew our own ways

Through the town's runs. We were familiar

Foreign objects. When he'd sold his bananas

The banana seller gave us a solo

Violin performance on his banana stalk.

Everybody crowded to praise your drawing.

You drew doggedly on, arresting details,

Till you had the whole scene imprisoned.

Here it is. You rescued it forever

Our otherwise lost morning. Your patience,

Your lip-gnawing scowl, got the portrait

Of a market-place that still slept

In the Middle Ages. Just before

It woke and disappeared

Under the screams of a million summer migrants

And the cliff of dazzling hotels. As your hand

Went under Heptonstall to be held

By endless darkness. While my pen travels on

Only two hundred miles from your hand,

Holding this memory of your red, white-spotted bandanna,

Your shorts, your short-sleeved jumper--

One of the thirty I lugged around Europe--

And your long brown legs, propping your pad,

And the contemplative calm

I drank from your concentrated quiet,

In this contemplative calm

Now I drink from your stillness that neither

Of us can disturb or escape.