Tommy

This is a bedtime story.  For you, not for me.  Unfortunately, I don't foresee a bedtime today.  My brain won't let me and my eyeballs will hate me for it tomorrow. I have a run with Back On My Feet tomorrow...today? at 5:30am, and I'm so happy.  I'm so excited.  But I can't sleep. Ugh, and I wonder why I get C's.

I have been in bed for over an hour. Total sensory deprivation: blackout curtains drawn, earplugs in, fan set to that very meticulous vortex spin that creates just the appropriate amount of white noise.  No cigar. 

And both wonderfully and disappointingly, for whatever impulse received and conjured and spat back out by my hippocampus, I thought of Tommy.  It was like a wash of grainy picture montage as I rolled to the left, to the right, onto my stomach, repositioned the pillow.  Before I could even process or finalize that feeling you get of tightness in your chest, into your throat, like your body manifesting a very real and very visceral response to remembered sadness. Before my brain can recall that this memory, this impression, is not entirely melancholy.

And it's not.  For the impatient that have read too much into the preface already, it does seem sad.  It's sad on a superficial level because, like most of us who have had the experience of losing someone we care for before their "epidemiological" expiration date, the life expectancy outlined so carefully by insurance companies and the WHO, someone I appreciated, someone I looked up to, somebody I cared for left me before I got to say goodbye.  Beyond salutations.  I had words to say.  I had thank you's to say. I was mad, albeit petty, and I had other things to say. So yes, that is sad. 

For a long time, apart from little anecdotes told (even hesitantly) to close friends, I was very particular about what I shared about Tommy, and how.  I was reluctant because our relationship-and I mean that which is both inclusive and inevitably exclusive of romantic involvement-was defined and dissipated (as most long distance friendships to fade to acquaintanceship do) over a short duration of time.  10 months.  I felt unwarranted in sharing an intimate and personal side of Tommy because so many others had the opportunity, the blessing of knowing him much longer.
Even when I went to Tommy's memorial service, I ducked out fairly quickly.  I drove 7 hours from San Francisco to Clairemont, CA.  And I had a biochem test and I had to eat and I couldn't.  I just could only drive.
But who was I to talk of Tommy, how he shaped much of my path to where I was, when he was gone, and he probably never knew himself.  He didn't; I made sure not to tell him.  That was too scary-to ascribe so much influence to a person and have them be aware of it.  To tell somebody that they are shaping you to be a better person.  At that point, to be a better doctor....even though I was sure I would never get there.

And perhaps it scares me a little because, it wasn't so much being with Tommy-in whatever sense of the word at any given time-that was so remarkable. It was more or less learning things about myself, about the good of others, about the potential for good, that was very enlightening to me. It was very unusual, and it was very promising.  And it was refreshing. I met someone who cared to change the world at it's most marginalized level, with the most overlooked people.  And I knew they were out there-the do-gooders, the eager-willed, the humanitarian poster children.  But here was one, so normal, so happy, who embodied something so naturally without expectation of recognition or applause that is so highly esteemed in a world where we freely and indiscriminately Acknowledge Everything With a Formal Certificate And/Or Prize.  To Tommy, that was not the point.

And tonight, while this memory that is keeping me awake at 1:43AM and its relevance to the testimony of his character are actually not all that evident, it is nonetheless on my mind.  And even my poor, perfectly spinning fan and blackout curtains can't get it out.  So, like most things, I'll write about it.  It's nothing that special, maybe not to you, maybe not even to me, seeing as I forget about it.  Realizing I forget about it is actually what makes me more sad.  Before I ramble any longer, cue memory:

We're at Trader Joes in Irvine.
V:"What are you buying?"
T:"I don't know. We'll see what's in the cart.  We need cheese."
I recall him picking out a bunch of cheese-like huge hunks-and an Aladdin/poor-man-style baguette.  It was sourdough.  So at least he had good taste in carbohydrates.
V:"This is dinner?  We don't need like....food-food?"
T: "It will be!  So impatient."
The rest of the conversation is blurry, I can't recall more without it being inaccurate.  Tommy had the world's oldest truck ever; if I recall, it was an uncle's?  An aunt's?  you always knew which ancient truck was his because 1)it was seriously made out of what felt like cast iron and 2)there was a dried rose on the dashboard.  I never asked about the rose because I was afraid of the backstory.

We drive to my apartment.  I do remember texting at least one or two roommates something analogous to "unusually hot medical student coming over to make dinner.  Don't freak out.  He's nice.  Too nice. We're taking over the kitchen."  I probably also said a million prayers in my head to not mess this up. God, I promise I will definitely try to never sin again if you let this go well.  I WILL OWE YOU.  He's one of the normal ones so don't freak him out the first time he comes over.

I remember he was slicing one of the million blocks of cheese. I remember he definitely broke my knife in half.  I remember that even after he left, our household still used that handle-less knife for at least another 3 or 4 months.

I remember we watched a movie entirely in Spanish called Rec, which had been adapted to some naturally awful English variation.  People quarantined in an apartment building, zombie-esque, yada yada.  
T: "You're the horror movie aficionado so you've probably seen this."
V: "Actually I haven't."
I had.
T: "Good.  We have to watch it on my laptop, which is like 11x13 inches."

That laptop looked like it had gone to Iraq and back, but I didn't care.  As anyone on a first date with someone way out of their league knows, it is never, ever, ever about the movie.  We could be watching amoebas asexually divide for all I care.

I remember thinking, Damnit.  I should have cleaned the bathroom. WHY DID YOU NOT CLEAN THE BATHROOM.
I also distinctly remember that unusually tense divide of space and palpable tension of said space between his hand and my hand and being like, no, too soon.  TOO NORMAL.  There must be something wrong with him. He is a serial killer.  There is no way.

But no, no serial killer.  No secret Madonna complex or five children. Just Tommy.
When my roommate and her boyfriend returned almost serendipitously as the movie credits were rolling, I walked Tommy out.  I actually really didn't want to walk Tommy out.  But I mean, it's really hard to look like you're an adult with big-girl priorities and big girl dreams when you share an 11 by 10 foot room with your best friend and more often than not, her boyfriend.  Yea, date was over.

So I walk him out, hoping he wasn't put off by everything that reeked of juvenile naivete in my room.  It's very hard and very weird to date people that are in a position you actively seek, a career you want so badly that it affects your personality and your lifestyle.  Sometimes, unfortunaely, it creates an unintentional dynamic of pity or envy, exploitation or a creepy sense of idolization.  But not with Tommy.  Yea, it was Tommy the medical student, the human rights activist, the unusually fluent Spanish speaker with Blonde hair and an "I love SF T-shirt."  But I only saw Tommy.

And I'm at his car and he says goodbye and he says, I'll see you this week?  But it's more of a statement and less of a question and already I can't speak English because I'm freaking out but playing it cool but probably look like I'm having an MI.  And I say, yea, I'd like that.  And remember when my internal monologue just hours before said, "Don't ruin it Veronica.  Don't be a creepy nube." Well, naturally, this story wouldn't be good unless I ruined it.  Because as Tommy-the-eerily-perfect leans in for a kiss I say: "You can't.  I taste like sourdough.  I literally taste like sourdough bread.  You don't want that."

....what. the. hell. Veronica.

And like I said, this wouldn't be a good story unless everything I did in self-demise to create a perfectly terrible ending wasn't overshadowed by an even better one.

With a loaf of bread in his hand, half demolished from our cheese-baked-tapas thing, he takes a bite out in the parking lot.
T: "Ok," crumbs flailing from the corner of his mouth, classic Tommy grin in full-coy-manifest, "Now we match."

.............................................................................................................................................................
It's 2:13AM.  Dude, I really need to sleep.  I think now, I can.  So if you made it to the end, congratulations, hopefully you didn't die of stale boredom.  But that is the story of my Sourdough first kiss with Tommy.  It isn't the hallmark of anything, it wasn't a milestone by any means, but today, tonight, it is what woke me up.  I'm tired, but I am happy it did.

Goodnight.