J

He watched "Autumn in New York" seven times in a row this one time.
When I asked him why he kept watching it over and over again, he said,
"I was hoping the ending would change." Jason believed in God. And he
believed in reincarnation. He thought that I had been a Russian
ballerina in another life, and that I had escaped the communist regime,
only to be tracked down and killed on American soil. Jason had a vivid
imagination. He loved Shakespeare's sonnets. Sonnet 116 was his
favourite. "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds". He
quoted it every time he broke up with one of his many girlfriends. He
quoted it a lot.

He hated death and he was a vegetarian. He stopped eating meat because
of a guilty conscience. He hated cruelty to animals. He hated war. He
was almost the perfect human being. But he was a chain smoker. And
practically lived on coffee. And everyone loved him.

We always had breakfast in a little diner right next to my house. He'd
have coffee and about half a pack of lights. I'd have orange juice. And
he'd make fun of me cause I was trying to be healthy. And I'd tell him
that he was going to die of lung cancer. He wouldn't talk to me for at
least 10 minutes when I said that. So I just stopped saying it. And I
even had the occasional cigarette. We talked about politics. We fought
about the Arab-Israeli conflict. He said that they should just find a
way to "share" and I told him that you can't tell heads of state to
"share" as if they were five year olds arguing over a toy car. We
talked about love. We both agreed that each person had a soul mate, it
was just a matter of being able to find each other. He said that your
soul mate was someone who had lived in the same soul as you in another
life. I never understood what he meant by that and I never asked him to
explain. We talked about poetry. We argued about what Sylvia Plath's
poems meant and never reached a conclusion.

Jason and I had our traditions. We would read a poem each over the
phone before we went to sleep. I dedicated one or two of my poems to
Jason. He thanked me when I did that and I told him he was stupid to
thank me. Sometimes we wrote poetry together. Jason said we were the
Wordsworth and Shelley of the 21st century. I liked it when he said
that. Each night, he dreamed of the poem that I had read to him. I
tried to read poems that he would like to dream of, but he caught on.
He told me to stop being selective. Told me to read everything I wrote.
Just like he did. I could never deny Jason anything he asked of me. We
had other traditions. Every Sunday we would go down to the lake, jump
in with all our clothes on and have a huge water fight. Sometimes we'd
decide to swim out to the middle of the lake. And then I'd do my
mermaid dive that he loved. And we'd sit at the bottom of the lake for
as long as we could hold our breath. We could never stay down there too
long because Jason smoked so much. Then we'd swim back, lie on the
grass, in the sun waiting for our clothes to dry. Every Sunday we went
home wrinkled.

Jason had a bad temper. So he tried meditation as a way of relaxing,
of calming down. It didn't work. His mind always wandered. I told him
he should just count from one to ten each time he felt he was getting
pissed off. But he usually remembered to count to ten only after he'd
lost his temper. I didn't mind when Jason lost his temper with me,
cause then I knew that he considered me a good friend. Not everyone saw
Jason's temper. Only people close to him. Jason and I were close.

Jason was my best friend. He knew everything about me. He's the only
one I ever told about my first kiss with Mark Atkins. It was horrible.
He knew I'd gotten my period for the first time before my mother knew.
He knew that I was going to leave home as soon as I had enough money,
go to New York or Seattle or something and live off of my writing. I
wanted him to come with me, but he said the city life wasn't for him.
He didn't laugh at me when I told him about my dreams. And Jason told
me almost everything about him. There was this one time he went out
with Anna and he didn't tell me. He thought I'd get jealous cause she
and I were friends. And he was right. But I still think he should have
told me. Instead I had to hear it from Anna. I cried for three hours
straight that day. But then he apologized. And he told me that Anna
wasn't really all that much fun. And I felt better. So he laughed at
me, called me a child, and raced me to the diner. He made me feel
better about myself.

Jason once told me that in his next life, he wanted to stay the same
person. He liked life as Jason McCole. But he told me that according to
the rules of reincarnation it didn't work that way. He said that if he
was lucky he'd wind up an ant, although it was more likely he'd be an
ameba. He also said he wouldn't mind being a pen. I laughed when he
said that. But when he explained why he wanted to be a pen, the laugh
got stuck in my throat, and it hurt so much I started to cry. Jason
always told me that I cry too much. It turned out Jason wanted to come
back not just as any pen, but as my pen. So that I'd take him with me
everywhere I'd go and he'd stay one of the most important things in my
life. I told him that he'd always be important to me. But he didn't say
anything in response, just asked the waitress for another coffee. Every
time I remember that I don't know if I should smile or burst into
tears.

His laugh was beautiful. And I loved to hear it. It was pure. Not
everything about Jason was pure. His laughter was. We lost Jason on the
second of June. It was a Monday. It's been a week now. Sometimes I
pretend to talk to him on the phone, and read him my latest poems. Most
of my poems these days are about him anyway. I went down to the lake
yesterday. Sat at the bottom of the lake. I stayed down there a lot
longer than we used to. Part of me wanted to stay down there forever,
but it wasn't the same without him. I think I cried. I'm not too sure
though, cause of all the water. Then I swam back and lay on the grass.
It wasn't sunny yesterday so I ended up walking home damp. I argued
with Jason in my mind the whole way home. I was telling him that he
should have been more careful crossing the street, and he was telling
me that he wasn't a child. He knew how to cross the street, and the guy
was speeding the wrong way down a one-way street. It wasn't his fault.
I kept asking him if he'd looked both ways before he crossed the
street. And he kept asking me if I thought he was 6 years old. So I
apologized, told him I'd talk to him any which way he wanted as long as
he'd stay. As long as he'd go back one week and look both ways before
he crossed the street. As long as he wouldn't leave me. He promised
he'd try. I haven't heard from him yet.