The Grateful Burden
I was at a gay resort in Douglas, Michigan where I was staying for a needed escape. I was surrounded by a happy crowd of mostly men who became somewhat like a family for the weekend. There was a scruffy couple from Los Angeles, a super cute New Yorker who danced like a god, and a few locals who could tell you about the property and its history. Many of us came from Chicago since we’re only a hop, skip and sashay away. The weekend was sold out and the complex is not a big place. Actually, it’s not even medium. In fact the small campus and its single pool is a big part of its regional charm. Men flock to this Midwestern hideout mostly in the summer because it’s a sure bet that the time, money, and energy will be well spent. Besides every stay comes with a few guarantees: music, dancing, and cocktails. Of course there are also the fashions which pop, twerk and gyrate from the smorgasbord of silhouettes filling the outdoor dance floor. And no afternoon tea dance is complete without that one brave man wearing only a tiny, little thong. He was there too. Come as you are and dance as you please is the unspoken agreement we all made with one another other, completely echoed by the atmosphere and the very reason that such a place even exists.
As the DJ pumped out tunes I lifted my arms while wildly shaking my chest. I wildly shook my hips, my legs, my everythings. Then for no clear reason or cause, a wildly swelling forge of tears behind my eyes. I pulled myself off the dance floor, sequestered somewhere quiet and asked myself, “Travis, what’s going on?” I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sad but I definitely wasn’t happy. Whatever the complexity of that moment, I felt gripped by something so harsh and so bitter, but I equally relished in something succulent and saccharine. I felt pangs of sizeable sorrow and within the same breath what I felt was radiance and peace. It was around 2AM. I came to strangely miss things that haven’t happened, and oddly, I somehow pined for moments having occurred lifetimes ago.
My retelling sounds psychedelic. It sounds like madness, at the very least like a person high on drugs or with too many drinks in his bloodstream, but that wasn’t the case. Those might be reasonable explanations prompting the jolt of mania that came to head that morning on the dance floor— but that just wasn’t it. If I could physically describe it, for a very brief second what I experienced was like the most satisfying hug that comforted me profoundly, but all the while a thing both sharp and mangled pinched my arms and throat. As I felt happiness it was coupled with something sad, and as I felt sadness, I easily drifted back into happy things. It was a brief spell of maybe three minutes but in the thick of it, I was confronted by anything I ever knew, or loved, or lost, or believed, or wanted, or dreamed: my family, my car, my career, my health, my relationships, my sex life, my debit card, my running shoes. Nothing made any sense— it was a mysterious hodgepodge of hot and cold racked with entire eons of my life history. It was a powerful wave of feeling that made me understand… I feel changed. I am changed. 2020 changed me, and not in any subtle or dismissible way. I feel how big the impact everything has had— specifically, on me…
I became unemployed. My grandmother died. I helped friends navigate complex situations with relationships, one of whom I saw spiral so fast that when he said “suicide,” I worried for days. I endured a snowy winter. People in my support circle also moved away. Life has a very unapologetic way of knocking and telling us to come outside and play. And to emphasize, the past several months of media hasn’t helped; people dying in the streets hasn’t helped; the isolation, the Zooming, the masking, the sanitizing… hasn’t helped. Through all of that, something already very hard became harder. The result? There are things that I just don’t recognize any more and the world is riddled with turbulence and opposition. While I have felt brutally neglected continuously dodging harm, I have been showered with compassionate, healing love. For longer than I realized I have felt tossed and churned like the plastic bag we’ve all seen dashing about on an expressway. To survive, on some level I simply went numb.
This is what prompted the getaway. Aware that my day-to-day left me with very little to look forward to or to experience, what I needed was a remedy to shake off the mundane and peel away what felt like drudgery. “Good job, Travis. You needed to try something new,” I told myself as I began to check out of my accommodations. My brief two-night stay ended, and I began the drive back to Chicago. The route isn’t particularly scenic or even pretty for that matter, but it felt good to be on an open road as the dangling clouds hung to keep the grey morning light stretched and thin. My iPod shuffled to a song that I hadn’t heard in a while, which I enjoyed and sang along. I sipped from my water bottle and snacked on a handful of almonds here and there. Then, just as sudden as the night before— a something wonderful and horrible began knocking at my heart’s door. This time less arresting but still powerful and present. I took a breath, batted away a surprising group of tears and asked myself again, “Travis, what is it, what’s going on?” But this time, pieces of an answer…
Do you ever miss something but if you try to describe it it obscures? The more you say of it, in fact, the more it erodes, extincting itself and its precociousness apart from you. In some way, words begin to erase its meaning. No matter how precise or how accurate they are— somehow the safest place these things, or moments or feelings can only ever live is softly inside of you, as a bond made sacred between you and a power ripe with mystery. Maybe it was the fragrance of the sunlight at dusk one day years ago and how the light folded into your eyes. Maybe it was the way someone kept an important promise. Or maybe a tiny insect crawled across a window sill and its little journey quelled your doubt and disappointment. You were alone or maybe you stood beside hundreds of people. While what you remember is now scattered, its pieces are treasure and unable to ever be replaced, only felt— you long for all of them again. They are things that do not live in words, but only through the perfect language spoken by a thankful heart. You are broken that they are no more, but entirely whole that once ago, they were. Where have they gone and which is more— the finding, or the loss; the moment, or its memory? These thoughts rattled my mind and echoed inside of me the night I danced wildly and as the open road guided me home. What was the something before it all became fragile… what were the things that came before the fleeting? I miss them— yet, for a grateful reason unknown, the burden that remains feels so beautiful and sweet.
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[Photo: originally color @dinoreichmuth]
