My boyfriend rarely takes his clothes out of the dryer.
Once a week I find our dryer stuffed with a tangled mess of sea foam green hospital scrubs and the rest of his wardrobe: five Carhart shirts in varying shades of the earth, four pairs of pants stretched from age, eight sets of boxers that questionably all have holes in them, and one homely pair of gold and purple basketball shorts that fall past his knees and eat any remnant of his figure.
“You left your clothes in the dryer”, I drone on like the steady drip of a leaky faucet.
On December 3rd, 2021, I met Auston at a Christmas party. He wore a cranberry red and fluorescent green yarn-accented Christmas sweater like the rest of the party-goers but stood still in comparison to the wave of the unstable-drunken bodies and the passing of knock-off solo cups and peppermint-flavored whip cream. His sweater’s cranberry streak of color stood still against the blur of motion. Lured by his stillness and then held by his presence, my eyes were drawn to him.
That moment remains crystallized. The past and future converged, funneling my vision, taking refuge in only what was in front of me.
Timid. That was always the word I would use to describe myself in social settings. But not at this moment. A sense of ease filled me with honey, pulling me off the porch steps where I stood to introduce myself to him.
He didn’t make a great first impression.
I complimented his mustache which reminded me of a charming silent actor in a 1920s screenplay.
He retorted indifferently with a laugh I barely caught between voices drowning out other voices and music that hung heavy in the breezeless midnight air.
Whatever timidness I lost, he found. He avoided eye contact and let a layer of disinterest separate us. I followed his eyes as he observed the drunken chaos around him, only for them to return to meet mine for a second before looking away again. He was so handsome. He was so distant.
I shouldn’t have asked for his phone number. Just a few hours earlier I was plotting out a cross-country move. In a month I would be in Oregon scoping out a potential future home. A long relationship of mine had recently come to an end. My heart’s contradictions - the plead for connection and the desire for autonomy and adventure - had since let others down. But intense desire dismissed these inklings of logic. Resettling into timidness, I asked anyway. A surprised, almost goofy look overtook his face. Our demeanors danced out of rhythm. He typed his number into my phone with a smile on his face.
In our first clunky moments, there was a sense of “rightness” so potent I couldn’t refuse it. I knew nothing about him, yet I knew everything I needed to know. It was clarity and bewilderment. A dead end and a new beginning. My toes, always hugged tightly by wool socks and greasy kip leather boots, felt like they were peaking out over a rocky outcropping. My romanticized dream of traveling westward drew me away from the edge, but I was tantalized by the freefall beneath my feet. The boundless unknown. The chance of pure love.
I jumped with a certainty I can only describe as primal.
What was not known to me at that moment was that not too many months from that crisp December evening tinted pumpkin orange from the hue of bonfire, is that this stranger would be someone I couldn’t fathom my life without.
Pure. That’s the first word that comes to mind when I think about Auston. And not in the inexperienced, not yet marked by life type of way. Quite the opposite. His pureness is a mark of his untouchable authenticity.
As if he has never seen pain, his kindness has a softness I have only seen in the sun as it warms the eastern side of a mountain golden. In the way we trust the ground beneath our feet to hold us, he is trustworthy all the same. His love; it never wavers. His curiosity; it never runs dry. He cares for the hearts of everyone around him with the same tenderness he cares for the fragile hearts he operates on every day. His soul is old, never seduced by the temptations of the galactic interweb. He does all he does with dignity. He is as courageous as he is honest, as strong as he is vulnerable. His gratitude runs as deep and spirals as far and wide as cinnamon and emerald Sequoias. He is the best man I know.
There are rare people who walk this earth with a grace so ethereal I can merely marvel at their existence. People who have been scorched by life’s indecencies, who have touched the barren emptiness of loss, who choose to restructure their spirit and live with a lightness that will ripple long past their time on earth.
Auston is one of those people. And I am terrible at telling him such things.
He is horrible at taking his clothes out of the dryer and I am terrible at telling him why I love him.
I want to blame my writer’s brain where words ceaselessly drift from my headspace to paper and back again. I admire life from behind the windows of my mind. I have always been this way - more articulate on paper than verbally. I’ve romanticized how I can preserve the written word like a mason jar of muddled huckleberries. Sweetness that outlasts time.
But my written word does not replace the spoken one. Love asks me to surrender to my vulnerabilities. Love invites me not to hide emotion behind meticulously crafted letters and notes. Love holds my hand as I stumble through my words and less-than-elegant spoken thoughts.
Love will do the same for you.
If you are as fortunate as me to have an Auston in your life, go tell them why you love them. And only after that can you say, “You left your clothes in the dryer”.
This concludes week two of Write of Passage and I am so profoundly thankful for the community of writers that surrounds me.
Last week my essay To mother or not to mother received an outpouring of love I am still at a loss for words over the heartfelt responses that filled my comments. I was reminded with each note of the reason why I write. For each of you who took the time to share a piece of your story, I am grateful for you.
This piece came to life with the help of
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I was gripped by how lucidly you painted the Christmas Party scene. It's was 100% preserved huckleberries in a mason jar. Felt like a resolution of social nuance that's rarely written. Makes we want to be more deliberate in capturing the subtleties of my interactions with people. But also +1 to the need and challenge to be as expressive in real-time words! Well done, keep it up!
This read like a movie trailer, and I am absolutely captivated. Wow. I love your words. I swear you get better with every essay.