It started with a tragic old shirt. We’d spent the afternoon unearthing boxes from the depths of our closets, and now once-forgotten artifacts were strewn across the floor. Sentimental junk, mostly. Outdated textbooks and birthday cards, stacks of clothing so old the fabric felt stiff and stale. The intention was to declutter our apartment before the motivation faded, then donate the casualties. It didn’t take long for us to realize that nothing held any real value. Most of the belongings were Simon’s, things he never bothered to unpack when he moved in eight months ago.
He made a strange choking sound when he came across the shirt. He shot up from the floor and held it in front of himself, delight all over his face, before changing into it.
“Look!” he said, standing before me with his arms outstretched.
It looked like a cheap concert tee, a tired shade of black with cracks through the print resembling veins. Tiny holes had formed along the neckline, and the cotton stretched snugly against his body. Wrinkles distorted the monochromatic face printed on the front, but the woman was easily recognizable with her Cleopatra eye makeup and the hornets’ nest of hair piled atop her head.
“I didn’t know you were such an Amy Winehouse fan,” I said from my cross-legged position on the floor. “Did you get that at one of her shows?”
His smile weakened momentarily as he shook his head. “She never made it here, but this used to be my favourite shirt.” He turned to the mirror, and he looked pleased with himself as he described the time he threw up in the corner of a karaoke bar while partway through a drunken rendition of “Rehab.” His boyfriend at the time had to clean the filth from his lips. “His name was Evan, and he was so good to me.” Simon laughed at the end of the story, and I smiled even though it disgusted me. He had a way of making light of things that struck me as sad.
I’d hoped we’d be compatible roommates when he moved in. We were both single guys in our thirties who were connected by a mutual friend. He was full of life those first few weeks, telling half-funny jokes and insisting that we design meal plans together that were healthier than my usual fare of ramen and canned soup. He’d play me songs on an old guitar, most of which he’d written himself, and his voice would struggle through the higher notes. I found him a little odd, perhaps mildly pathetic, but he was kind and earnest in a way that was endearing.
Lately, though, he’d become withdrawn, retreating inside of himself like a snail in its shell. I couldn’t blame him. The entire city had turned quiet as people confined themselves indoors, afraid of an invisible threat that nobody seemed to understand. Everyone dealt with the isolation differently. Simon’s technique involved staring out the window while bundled up in sweaters and blankets as though the layers would protect him. He’d become increasingly distant, and so I proposed that we distract ourselves with productivity, leading to the piles of things scattered across the floor. I was glad to see him brighten by the discovery of the old shirt, beaming at his own reflection.
I asked him about when he got the shirt. “Thirteen years ago,” he said as if he couldn’t quite believe it. I did the math in my head—it would have been 2007, when he must have been no older than twenty. Images of my life back then flashed through my mind. Exams, lectures, my mother waiting for me at the arrivals terminal at Christmas break, her eyes lit up with relief and happiness.
That night we opened a bottle of gin and mixed it with whatever we had in the fridge, mostly kombucha and La Croix. Amy serenaded us in a loop from my Bluetooth speaker as we drank until our words slurred.
“Did you know she was booed off the stage in Birmingham during one of her first tours?” Simon’s brown eyes were wide and alert before his eyelids crinkled as he laughed. “She just cussed them all out, told them to go to hell! What a legend.” He mixed another drink that was almost entirely gin and started singing along to “Back to Black.” I joined in although I didn’t know the lyrics, but his voice was louder than mine anyway. “We only said goodbye with words,” he belted out against the incessant piano keys and cymbals. “I died a hundred times …”
Later that night, after we’d retired to our separate rooms, I heard my door creak open before I felt the warmth of Simon’s body in my bed. “What are you doing?” I asked.
He smelled like gin and peppermint mouthwash when he whispered his response. “I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
We hadn’t crossed this line before. I was never tempted to, even though I’ll admit that I liked the sound of his voice and how his eyebrows furrowed when he was concentrating. I wanted to push him away, to tell him this wouldn’t be wise. Perhaps it was the gin or the fact that I hadn’t been touched by another man in months, but I let his hands and lips fumble along my skin.
The sound of the blender woke me up the next morning. I rolled over to see I was alone in my bed, though I could still smell Simon on the sheets.
“Good morning,” he said with a shy smile when I stepped into the kitchen. The speaker played Amy singing a song I didn’t recognize, and Simon was wearing the old shirt. He handed me a pint glass filled with purple sludge. “Blueberry, banana, oat milk, with a packet of Emergen-C for the hangover.” I thanked him, and he hesitated before leaning in to kiss me on the cheek. I think he might have sensed my muscles tensing up. It crossed my mind to put up a wall, to tell him that the previous night was a mistake, but I was too lazy or ambivalent or both. It was easier to accept his clumsy attempts at affection.
He climbed into my bed uninvited a few nights later. I was tired, but I soon found myself hungry for the taste of his skin, or not specifically his but of skin in general, skin that wasn’t my own. He gave me what I needed, so what would be the point of feigning resistance? We were no longer too young and too proud. Afterwards, we straightened the sheets and lay side by side. I was already drifting to sleep, but Simon wanted to talk. His voice was low and gentle, an intimate tone that was different from how he usually sounded.
He told me about the time he first moved to the city from a rural town four hours north. It was an autumn I still remembered even though it was over a decade ago. The city was battered by windstorms so severe that enormous old-growth trees were uprooted from the earth. Landslides contaminated the reservoirs, so for weeks everyone had to boil their tap water.
“Who moves to a new city in the dead of winter,” he said with a quiet laugh, “in the middle of a typhoon?” I wanted to say that it was neither winter nor a typhoon, but I resisted. “I had second thoughts when I arrived. I spent Christmas couch surfing before I found a place to rent. I got the keys on New Year’s Day, 2007. I’m glad I stuck it out, otherwise I wouldn’t have met Evan. It ended up being the best year of my life.”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I asked him why he moved to begin with. He shrugged and said, “The same reason as everyone else.” I couldn’t tell if he was being evasive or if he assumed I understood him better. I didn’t grow up in a place like his hometown; I’d never spent Christmas on a couch or started a life in a new city, alone. It was a funny feeling I felt then, envy and pity not quite mixing nicely together.
A few days later I found him hooking up a DVD player to the TV. I didn’t understand what it was at first, this heavy box of aluminum. “I saw an ad online,” he said excitedly, “and the guy was giving it away for free. There’s no remote, but he said it still works.” I asked him why on earth we would need such an antique, and he said he wanted to re-watch LOST. He must have seen the bemused look on my face because he explained he owned the box set on DVD.
I started to tell him how much easier it’d be to stream since the entire series was available through an app on our TV, but I stopped myself. He looked so eager. “Can I watch it with you?” I asked, and he smiled.
Simon owned only seasons three and four, so that’s where we started. The machine made a purring sound as it swallowed the disc, and he cheered when the menu appeared on screen. Fragments of the full expanse of the series unburied themselves from my memory as the episode played—Claire crying out for her baby, a sequence of numbers beneath a hatch, Penny’s boat. Simon couldn’t stop voicing commentary throughout the episode. “I used to watch this with Evan. He had all these crazy theories about how it would end. He turned out to be mostly right.” A dull, sad quality had crept into his eyes, and I found myself questioning its authenticity, wondering if it were real or part of the performance.
Another week passed, and Simon lost his job at a travel agency down the street. His side hustle of performing on weekends had stopped abruptly a while ago when bars and theatres were forced to close. I encouraged him to look into temp work delivering food on his bike or stocking shelves, but he seemed uninterested despite having barely enough money to cover the next month’s rent.
Instead, he would confine himself in his room during the day while I worked at the kitchen table with my laptop, then he’d emerge at dinner time, eager for a beer and loud music. Often he’d be wearing the old shirt, and the music he’d play would rotate between Amy Winehouse and Fall Out Boy and Death Cab for Cutie. He’d become both needier and more distant, his cries for affection more pronounced yet anchorless. One evening I went for a walk without inviting him, and I returned to find him on the couch watching the next episode of LOST without me.
“I didn’t think you’d care,” he said without a glance in my direction.
The shower became my sanctuary, a place where I could lock the door and drown out the world in steam and spray. I’d let the water rain over my head, blur my vision until I was blind. I couldn’t tell if I was feeling smothered because of Simon, or the news, or the guilt and fear I felt for my mother who lived in a nursing home.
Liquid also became Simon’s mode of escape. He began to fix cocktails like blended Bellinis and vodka Red Bulls, things he used to drink when he was younger, then pair them with the music he’d blast on my speaker. An old Arcade Fire song was playing when I suggested we listen to something more current.
Simon flashed me a dismissive look, then said, “Don’t you miss it? 2007 was the last good year.” I reminded him that the world was run by warmongers back then, that it was a brutal time whose obsession with excess led to financial collapse. He made a scoffing sound before taking a long swallow from the glass in his hand. “Like I said, the last good year.”
He crept into my bed that night, and it occurred to me how it had come to feel like a transaction. He gave me what I needed—the skin, the sweat, the release—but he came for what followed. He pulled my arms around his body, wearing me like a cloak, and spoke about the dreams he’d had in a world that no longer existed. The time he opened for an up-and-coming band who considered taking him on the road with them (it didn’t work out). The backpacking trip to South America he and Evan had spent months organizing (they didn’t end up going). These plans were made and abandoned over a decade ago, but Simon spoke of them as if they still held promise.
His proudest accomplishment, perhaps the only thing he’d seen through to its end, was escaping his small town and moving to the city, though I never discovered what he was escaping from. He spoke of the move as if he expected it to solve all of his problems. I didn’t blame him for hoping to find more open doors than dead ends. I’ve had my share of disappointments myself. As I listened to his soft voice in the stillness of my bedroom, it became clear that he was clinging to this past triumph. The city had once been part of a grander plan, but now the city alone would have to suffice. It was the only thing left.
I found him scrolling through messages on an old cell phone the next evening, a black Motorola the size of a Snickers bar. It had been buried in a box of his things. The battery charger still worked, and soon he was able to tap into an archive of thirteen-year-old messages and photos. His eyes appeared vacant as they stared at the screen.
“This isn’t healthy,” I said, snatching the phone from his hands.
He leapt to his feet and attempted to grab it, but my reflexes were too quick. He looked agitated, demanding that I give it back.
“You can’t just escape into the past.”
“It’s so easy for you,” he said, suddenly still, “to stand there and feel sorry for me.” It caught me off guard, these words that sounded like both an accusation and a confession. I began to respond, a defensive instinct, but there was nothing for me to say. I waited for Simon to tell me more, to explain what happened to Evan and their plans and everything else that was supposed to be. He just stood there, staring at me, with no intention of justifying himself, and I realized he was waiting for an explanation of my own.
I placed the phone into his palm and wrapped my arms around his body. He held me tightly, his chest against mine and his lips beside my ear. I felt the calm return to him as his heartbeat slowed and his breath became steady. The clock ticked away the seconds, and we stood there for a while, in a room in a city, until we felt safe again.