The Silence

The night we met I had decided that I would go to a bar by myself for the first time. I don’t know if I was going with the intention to meet someone, or If I wanted to prove to myself that I was bold enough to sit at a bar counter unaccompanied. I was 21 years old and life was exciting and new, but I wasn’t very sure of myself. However, I have always had a fascination for people who sit at bars by themselves. I’m drawn to them while out with friends. It drives me mad trying to think about what they may be experiencing in their minds, just drinking and staring into space while people erupt in conversation all around them? Are they waiting to be welcomed into a conversation? Or do they not want to be bothered? I have respect for the comfortability they must have in being alone. I have never been comfortable being alone. I need to fill the air around me with music, or YouTube videos or company, anything to drown out my thoughts. Because of this I wanted to see if I could exist in public but do so silently.

I left my Washington Heights apartment and headed to Le Cheille on 181^st street. It’s an old Irish pub on a street lined with restaurants and cafes. When I opened the door, I found myself in a narrow bar room with 4 wooden tables aligning the windows on the left side and the bar on the right. It was all dark wood with old style shutters on the windows which were lined with baskets holding yellow and purple flowers. Despite its charming appearance, the place smelled of spilled tequila, but it also ruminated with beautiful memories that weren’t my own.

I walked to the end of the bar, closest to the wall, farthest from the door. My go-to safe corner of any establishment. The bartender was a tall, bearded Irishman. I would later learn that his name was Joey. I ordered a pint of lager and settled into my seat. I had brought a book with me in case I found myself lost with what to do. I tried reading but felt a little silly doing so. I felt like people might think I was a fraud, trying to look smart by reading a book at the bar. In all honesty, I was hoping that maybe it would be a conversation starter, it was no coincidence that the novel I chose was Game of Thrones, which at the time was one of the biggest media phenomenons ever. And it did work, at some point a gentleman next to me began asking me questions about it and we shared a light-hearted, flirtatious exchange.

During our conversation I looked through a window that opened up to the dining room on the other side of the bar. There was a tall man, possibly in his 30’s picking up drinks from Joey through the window. We made eye contact briefly, or more so he was staring at me and I happened to look up. There was a strange look in his eye that I couldn’t quite point, but it was a small fleeting thing. Eventually I excused myself from the conversation with cute bar man to meet up with my best friend Adam at another place downtown. At the time he was in between depression medications and was new to New York City. He was having a hard time finding his footing. We talked about how he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life and how he was fearful of wasting time. I listened to him and offered him advice, trying to convince him that just by living in New York City he was accomplishing a goal that many are not able to. After a while I told him about this cute little Irish pub that I had gone to earlier that day and convinced him to check it out. He obliged and we hailed a cab to take us back uptown to Le Cheille.

This time the bar was filled with people and there was energy bouncing off the walls as people drank to lose their inhibitions. Adam and I shared our own moment of excitement, so happy that we had found such a magical place close to our apartment that we were hoping to become regulars at. We managed to grab two seats together at the bar counter and continued our conversation. Somehow as if seamlessly out conversation merged with the two young men who were seated beside us. Immediately I recognized the man closest to me as the man I had seen earlier through the window behind the bar. Almost immediately it felt like we were drawn to one another. We talked for hours. Long after Adam had left to go home. Long after his friend who sat beside him left. In fact, we talked until 2 am, if you can believe it. Until the bar had finished its last call. I learned that his name was Victor, that he was from Venezuela and that he was 28 years old. He had escaped his country and all of its troubles to live in New York City, where he worked as a server to support himself and his family back home. And he learned quite a lot about me.

I found myself unloading so much information about myself that I usually keep very close to my heart. Granted, it could have been the fault of the multiple gin and tonics but that’s besides the point. We talked about my family and he seemed to hang on every word I said. Even when I began to mention my dad and our rocky relationship. “Damn, yeah that must be hard. I feel like in America people aren’t as close and affectionate with one another as they are in Venezuela.” He talked about his family who he hadn’t seen for several years. “The most beautiful woman in the entire world is my sister” he told me. He also had a keen way of talking about people as if he wasn’t one. “Humans are stupid”, was one of his catch phrases.

Victor was funny in a way that a wholesome cartoon character can be funny. Very animated and jovial. He had a round face with puffy cheeks that softened his features and a pair of trusting brown eyes. After the bar closed he suggested we go to another spot, a karaoke bar. I obliged because I didn’t want to stop talking to him. We went to this incredibly strange spot with an array of misfit characters and at a certain point I was at a limit of alcohol consumption. I found myself reaching for him through the crowd and told him that I needed to go home. Once we went outside, he suggested we go back to his apartment, I was highly apprehensive about this so I made sure to tell him I would go, but with purely innocent intentions. “I promise I’m not going to do anything, you don’t know me. I just want to hang out” he assured me. We ended up in his small bedroom in the apartment building that just happened to be across the street from my own. And I took innocent intentions in the most literal way imaginable because we ended up watching the scene from Inside Out where the pink elephant named BeeBo dies helping Joy get out of the pit of forgotten memories and literally sobbing on his bed over it.

Our relationship started pretty much immediately. For many months I was adamant on keeping a friendship with him and nothing more. But I couldn’t help but notice how safe he made me feel, and how I wanted to be around him all of the time. He had made it clear from the beginning that he liked me and one day I decided I felt the same. I wrote him a handwritten letter and snuck it in his jacket pocket while we were hanging out. He left my room and I figured he would find it and read it when he got home, but a few minutes later my door opened. I guess he had found it just as he was about to leave and read it in my hallway. He came over to me and gave me a huge hug, tears streaming down his face and he said, “We are going to fall in love.”

Soon after that our relationship began, and it was so much fun. I was 21 and full of energy and life and the desire to go out and experience the city. We danced together and ate food on my bedroom floor at 3 am. I became friends with his friends, and he became friends with mine and we all partied together. He was always around for a good time, and we spent many nights together at Le Cheille, sharing a drink and talking about life, our deepest fears, our biggest regrets and our hopes for the future. He would emphasize the importance of our meeting constantly. He would always say, “I promised myself I would never feel like this with another person again. And then I found you.”

He also said something once that haunted me throughout our time together. We were in his bedroom cuddling and laughing when suddenly his demeanor changed and he said, “This is going to be so painful.” Instantly we both cried. I think he knew then that there was no way the relationship would work.

I soon found out that the only times he and I could experience this euphoric connection had to involve alcohol. I would gently suggest we take morning walks in the park together, or that we grab lunch early in the afternoon. I was still a student back then and so I couldn’t afford to be much of a night owl, but I still made time for us when I was able. Unfortunately, that all too often involved late nights out drinking. I would beg him, “Please can you take me out on a date every once in a while, or at least make the effort to buy me flowers!” and he would respond, “I am never going to be that person Alyssa. If you don’t accept me as I actually am then you do not love me!”

Eventually I found myself feeling very empty and alone. I would beg for quality time away from the party scene, but my wants were never taken seriously. I have a habit of sticking around long after I should. I struggle sometimes to know my worth. I knew the relationship wasn’t working, and yet I stuck it out for so long.  Plus, Victor was older than me. He seemed to have it all figured out for himself. He would use our age gap as a way to discredit my wants and desires, calling me naïve for asking him to put in effort. To Victor, asking for effort was the same as changing him as a person.  The attempts I made to pull him away from the bar were usually greeted with at the easiest times disdain and at the worst anger. His sweet words slowly turned to heated remarks and he had a habit of leaving me feeling abandoned. He would storm out and march to the bar whenever I tried to communicate with him. He would run away to be with his friends at Le Cheile and would stay out until 3 am almost daily.

I was young and naïve, and I didn’t realize until too late that I was dating an alcoholic. The nights that I didn’t want to drink because I had class the next day, well, I spent those alone. I spent a lot of nights alone, wondering why I wasn’t good enough. Why I couldn’t fulfill him the way that the night life could. I craved romance, and day dates and dreaming up a future together. But he was never able to do that. I was so frustrated after a while that I did and said things that I’m not proud of. Eventually his love for alcohol led him into some drunken nights where he would get a little too comfortable with other women. He would always tell me about it at 6 am while I was getting ready for class. He never fully cheated on me, but he danced with other women, or kissed them while blacked out. He would say, “I’m telling you about it so you know I’m not going behind your back.” I am an open-minded person so I let it slide a lot of the time.

The biggest injury he caused me was falling in love with someone else while we were together. His best friend, a woman whom he worked with, that loved the night life as much as he did. At the end I was fighting tooth and nail for us, but he had already emotionally moved on to her. A few months after we broke up, I found out that two weeks after our breakup he began a relationship with her. The night I found out about her I knew it the moment I saw him. The fire in his eyes that he had for me was completely dim. He was entirely over it, just a few months after.

We had met to grab drinks at a bar and catch up, when I asked him about her after seeing her name pop up on his phone. “Are you dating Alana now?” I asked with a grin on my face, not thinking that he would respond, “yes”. I cried and demanded he get me a cab home. We took the cab together and he was apologizing and said, “Alyssa you’re someone I want to have in my life forever. I want to be friends for the rest of my life. I want to go to each other’s weddings. Do you know how serious that is?” I didn’t answer. He then said in a quiet and pained voice, “I don’t want to lose you.” “You’ll be fine.” I responded. I never saw him again.

For some reason I grieved the relationship pretty heavily. I think I actually convinced myself that that’s what I deserved in life and I didn’t have a chance at anything better. Which couldn’t be farther from the truth. I don’t know why I decided to tell this story. It’s not something that I think about often. I guess I just wanted to share a more recent story, one that greatly shaped the woman I am today. One who can love and be hurt but still accept responsibility for my own actions. But mostly, one who is slowly but surely, learning her worth and learning how to be still in silence.