Soft Breathing In the Night

A St. Louis Story of the 1970s - Night Thoughts

I lie still in bed, listening for the sound of his soft breathing in the night. The fact that he’s no longer here – hasn’t been here for weeks already – hasn’t fully sunk in, especially when I wake at 2 AM from a fitful sleep that I only fell into sometime after midnight. Hearing him at night had become one of the comforts (one of the few); the silence that remains, now that he’s gone, leaves me grasping at the void.

I asked him why, when he announced that he was going. He mouthed the usual tripe: need space; things change; moving on; no one else. But really it doesn’t matter why. What matters is that he left – and that I’m left alone, left with the void, with silent nights in no way holy. It’s almost as though he died, and left me alone to grieve – and to find a way to keep living if I can.

I roll over onto my side, away from the half of the bed that had been his for a while – not the forever that I’d planned on –  if hope can be called a plan. That half of the bed has been empty before, or filled sometimes by men we both knew wouldn’t be staying long. I learned over years not to expect too much, put too much hope in those short-term occupants, most looking for a bed only for a night, a bed where the breathing was not soft and comforting.

Once in a while they would still be here in the morning. Some even returned for other nights, but I learned long ago not to count on hearing their soft breathing for long. With most, I didn’t even want to, but with him – oh, I’d longed to hear his soft night breathing forever; to lie there beside him in the dark listening, hearing; to wake up before him and look over at his man-boy face as his eyelids fluttered in sleep; to watch his chest rise and fall gently, the patch of hair between his pecs almost too tempting for me not to reach out and run my fingers through it. With him, those moments in the half dawn were almost the best.

I sit up on the edge of the bed and look out the window at the sleeping city. So far above the street – 17 floors – I hardly hear the traffic noise from down below – what little there is at 2 AM. There’ll be even less at 3. By 5, with the new day beginning, there’ll be more, enough, I hope, to fill the silent emptiness that he used to fill just by being here. Those are the hardest hours, the ones from midnight to 7, the ones I now have to try to fill alone.

I do try, without much success. The hours pass, but calling them full is an egregious misuse of the word. I know that turning on the light will make things worse.  Then I can’t even pretend that the bed is full; there’s no avoiding its emptiness in the light. Everywhere I look I see memories of him. On the sofa, where we snuggled, fondled, kissed; at the breakfast table, where we sipped our morning coffee; in the bathroom, where his toothbrush still fills its place in the rack. And especially in the mirror, where I still almost see him, his chin still resting on my shoulder as we look into each other’s eyes in the reflection. A magic mirror that manages to keep his image so long after he’s gone. Though in the daylight I don’t see it; only in the half-light of night.

I shut my eyes and run my hand over my chest, my stomach, my butt, pretending it’s his hand. I wet my lips with my tongue, pretending they’re his tongue, his lips. I know that sometime – maybe soon, maybe not – I’ll stop pretending, will have to to move on, will have to or go crazy, but that’s still some time ahead. For a little while more I’ll keep pretending, because that’s all I have to keep me from going crazy now, especially at 2 AM, as I lie alone in bed, very still, listening for his soft breathing in the night.