Failing to Fall

What I have described occurred perhaps once every two or three months. I would much rather let it be over with and hope it won't happen again, but I know that I am not a strong person and that I very much miss those times when I was me and that was enough. Even so, on the days when I was not falling I rarely thought of it–a particular sky, the movement of a breeze, a conjunction of word and feeling might give me a spasm of what I might call completeness, and I would pass into that other life for an instant or two–but for the most part I existed and made myself satisfied with that.

The alteration began at the taxi stance when I arrived one morning and found there were no cabs there, I would have to wait.

'We're out of luck.'

The voice was calm, soft, really very pleasant.

'I said we're out of luck. Odd for this time of day.'

'Yes.'

'I believe I've seen you here before.'

'That's possible.'

'I mean at this rank. I wait at this rank quite often because of what I do. It's my rank.'

'Well, I suppose it's mine, too. If it's anybody's.'

I am not normally this ill-tempered, but I was too far into my journey to focus on anything else and I never like speaking to people I don't know–it makes me feel stupid. I end up discussing the weather when the weather is all around us and both I and whoever the stranger might be must surely have noticed it. We would be better off asking each other if our faces are still there. Against my nature and my better judgement and possibly because this was the only way that Fate could have arranged it, I turned to the stranger and asked with a little ironic twist I was rather proud of, 'What is it that you do?'

'I beg your pardon?'

'You said you were here often because of what you do. I wondered what that was.'

'I see. What I do.' The smile was fully there now. 'I make love.'

'What?'

'That's what I do. I don't mean that's what I'm paid my wages for. I mean that's the most important thing I do. My vocation.'

I wanted to leave then–this was obviously not the kind of person I would usually speak to, not even the kind who was capable of small talk. I couldn't go, though. It was that word– vocation–I knew exactly what that meant. For a breath or two I was aware that both of us were falling together, passing and repassing, nudging briefly as we soared down our particular trajectories. I had never before met somebody so like me. There was no need for words, but my companion spoke in any case.

'I've offended you.'

'No, no.'

'Surprised you then. I only mentioned it because . . . well, because I thought we had similar reasons for being here. A fling, an affair, a fuck. I'm in the right area.'

This was all delivered with a beery smirk and of course, I was alone again at once, spiralling off in a way that no one seemed able to understand. No one knew. I wanted to explain the way things were for me. What I did wasn't about sex, wasn't about running amok and dangerous diseases, perversion, sweat. At that time, I could only have said that the only way not to feel squeezed all the time was to set off on my little journeys to someone close whenever I needed to, no matter what. I needed to be able to fall, to meet sometimes in a way that other people didn't, to be outside the average shape of the day. Now that sounds like a whim, an eccentricity, but it was the heart of my life and here was a total stranger quietly stamping all over it.

I wish I had pointed that out, instead of just saying, 'No, not the same area.'

'You can tell me, it's all right. We aren't the only ones, by any means. I know the type.'

'Uh-huh.'

'No, you don't see what I mean. We aren't the only ones who come here to catch taxis to do . . . things in that area. I know the look. You do, too, if you think about it. You know how it feels. You think that doesn't show?'

I didn't want to hear this. It was like watching my own reflection wink and walk away without me.

'I think something shows.'

'Naturally it shows. When I first realized–what we were all doing–when I looked at the taxis, smiling and creeping along . . . well, even now I can hardly keep from laughing.'

The people around me had stopped being together and the day looked the way it normally did. Nothing was special. There was a metallic feeling about where my liver would be and, more than anything, I felt angry.

'No, it's not like that.'

'Like what, exactly?'

'Like the way you make it sound–as if we all just ran about doing all that we liked. No one can do that. There are consequences, diseases, people are dying of that.'

'Pleasure isn't fatal. I've been in the same relationship for more than a decade now, we simply happen to be unconventional. I thought I'd made myself clear–this is a part of me and what I am and nobody else's hysteria will stop me from being who I am. We are careful because we care and we are happy. You have any objections to that?'

'No, no, I'm sorry.'

'Do you really not know what it's like when you want to make that call–to see him, to see her, whoever is important for you? Are you saying you'd just give it up if somebody told you to?' There was an ugly little pause. 'Surely you do that? You do call?'

'No.'

'Really?'

'I don't make calls, I just answer them.'