Chapter Text
“So, Allen, how have you been holding up?” Edie inquires, her well groomed finger tapping on her teacup to provide the room with its only rhythm when life has been dulled since Lucien’s passing, when I have been alone in the apartment.
It’s been a month since Lucien willingly stepped in front of an automobile and was thus killed by it, and my grief of earlier times, where I scorned the universe and for David Kammerer in both of their actions that led to this, has now lapsed into a different sort of grief that perhaps wouldn’t be considered grief any longer, where I remember Lucien as a pleasant figure in my life, which he was until the hazy lense of mourning was slid overtop of him for as long as it took for me to move on, and all that remains now is appreciation for a watershed idol in my life.
But no matter how forcefully I try to convince myself that I have preserved Lucien the way he would’ve wanted to be preserved in the minds of his friends, there are still drabbles of melancholy that originate from the fact that he has not been here for over four weeks and will never be back to see me die with him, and I might as well be alone forever, because although so many people will tell you that there is always someone else, no one on this entire planet can compare to the extraordinary Lucien Carr, and even if someone could compare, I would reject them still, because to accept someone more beautiful than Lucien (which may or may not be impossible, depending on if I find this person) would be to deface his spot of prominence and all of its intensity to favor someone who simply does not offer the same things as Lucien when you consider how intricate each and every human being is. Many people will also tell me that Lucien would’ve wanted me to move on and find happiness in a life that should not be left remote and unexplored, and that may be true, but the answer lies in whether or not I can dig myself out of his indelible legacy to make room for another person, and I’m just not sure I’m prepared for that.
So I’ll wash my face in stale water and still feel the sensation of his fingers upon my cheeks, and it’s not like I really desire to let go of it anyway, because it reminds me that he is ever present, even in death, that he is the fondling of the curtains against the window as I pound at the keys of my computer to produce something not nearly as beautiful as him in a world where he does not exist anyway, at least not now that he tripped accidentally and was met with the misfortune of his landing spot being a black hole in which he was spaghettified and mutilated yet held hostage forever, and because he’s in this black hole, he isn’t here with me, even if I expect him to be right around the corner choking on nicotine and thinking it’s the most hilarious thing in the world, but he’s not, and he won’t be ever again, because I saw his casket lowered into the dirt, and I saw his cold dead hands, and I saw everything that I shouldn’t have seen but needed to have seen in order to carry on with my life and explore it like Lucien would’ve ordered me to.
Nevertheless, I can’t carry on with my life, because I’m still in this godforsaken apartment that’s smelling less and less like the citrus aroma of Lucien Carr and more and more like the sweat and ramen noodle concoction of Allen Ginsberg, and I have no intentions of leaving. Edie would have to fucking drag me out of this place for me to exit permanently anytime soon, because there’s something comforting about this place. To leave it (or worse, to see it sold) would be torture, as there would be new owners who know nothing about what transpired here, the late night philosophy, the incessant clicking of Lucien’s typewriter that I’ve preserved right where he deserted it by the window in the living room, the solace we found solely in each other that I refuse to let be broken, especially not by intruders, but Edie is persistent about getting me out of here.
“You could move back in with Jack and me, you know,” Edie offers, but I stop her before I get caught up in the same impulsivity of change that occurred when I first met Lucien, a man who was struck down by that impulsivity and serves as a reminder that I should be careful first and foremost.
“I’m not going anywhere, but thanks for the proposal.”
One side of Edie’s crimson lacquered mouth droops, disappointed with my decision in the most motherly of ways. “Allen, it isn’t healthy to dwell in things that will never appear again.”
Stirred up enough by the fragments of grief that remain to sit in my soul and now stirred up even further by Edie’s intervention into my personal business, I snap, “It isn’t healthy to question a volatile mess either, but you’re doing it anyway.”
My comment was far too harsh to be directed at a woman who has done nothing but figure out ways to improve my quality of living, and I debate apologizing to her before the cruelty drills too far into her heart, but she fires back before I can do so, though she was nevertheless damaged by my callous words. “You’re going to end up like Lucien if you continue to act like this.”
That comment was even harsher than my own, driving a battering ram into my stomach to expel every trace of oxygen from the past and the present and the future, stealing away everything I need to sustain myself. Edie wasn’t referring to how beautiful Lucien was, how that beauty emanated from him more than anything emanated from anybody, which I wouldn’t mind being paired to. Rather, she was referring to how Lucien couldn’t fucking stay alive when it wasn’t even his fault, both in David Kammerer’s return and in the mental state that ensued. If a human could choose the extent of their health, mental illnesses would not exist because no one would opt for them, and Lucien wouldn’t have been thrown into a pit as deep as the one he was actually thrown into.
Lucien was aware that he held the power to change the world, and he planned on utilizing it to do just that, except his life was snipped short by forces he could not control, and that was the end of him. These iniquities taped a gag to his mouth to burn his protests away, to silence all that he could enact in a world where his enactments are imperatively needed, to make sure that Lucien Carr was nothing more than a victim among thousands, a nameless statistic. This was involuntary in its fullest sense. Lucien would never willingly choose this route, and that’s why Edie’s derogatory remark is something I cannot tolerate, especially not from a woman whose demeanor would usually prohibit this kind of slandering, and I cannot allow her to get away without realizing that this is unacceptable.
I slant my body towards her as my teacup shifts unwittingly to accommodate it so as to pack more spite into only a few words, because spite is what I need to remind this woman that Lucien was so much more than actions he could not influence. “You don’t know shit about Lucien.”
Edie clatters her teacup in her saucer to signify that she has finished her drink, and with these closing affairs she finds it best to agree. “Well I suppose that’s true.” With one last despondent glance at me, as if she pities me for being this level of a mess, a level that I wouldn’t have contemplated until she shoved her disapproval straight into my face, and brashly so, Edie rises from her chair, disregards the action of draining her teacup of every drop like I do, and departs from the apartment, rendering me once again alone.
I decide, now that I’m broaching topics previously uncharted while I was in a state of such fragility but have been cracked by my outburst with Edie, that I should finally read some of the comments that were left on the Metaphysicist, a blog that I have abandoned in my haste to map the complexities of life with a man that is currently dead, so it seems like a fitting time to return to it, but I’m not yet certain whether or not I’ll carry on with my article writing, as I have been too enlightened by a brief period of metaphysics to ever resign myself to something as mundane as journalism.
Most of the comments are people politely (and sometimes not so politely) requesting that I update my blog, or asking where the hell I’ve gone while they’ve been checking my blog every day for new content like the knowledge hungry frauds that they are, but there’s one that differs from the rest, one with which I will conclude my article writing business if I elect to do so. “Which writer has most shaped who you are as a writer?”
Learning from other writers remains to be a controversial topic to me, because writing is all about the outward expression of the soul, not the outward expression of the soul warped by someone else’s outward expression of the soul, but there’s no denying that I’ve learned a lot from Lucien Carr, and I would not trade that for anything, not my ego, not my literary virginity undisturbed by other writers, not my success, not any of it.
So I rush to my computer, a passion igniting itself from its previous heap upon the ground where the rest of the shards lie, and I begin to write the purest answer I can form, no restrictions, no thoughts, just the essence of what Lucien has taught me to do.
Imagine a writer, not so different from yourself, living eternally in the basement of their best friend’s house. Yes, this may seem like a tale of pity and a lack of success, because that writer is twenty-three years old and doesn’t have a job besides gathering the various papers strewn about the driveway and occasionally on the front stoop, but there’s something beautiful in that writer’s head that should be kept in the basement of a married couple’s home, and that writer is hoping to explore it.