​You are 23 years old. You are sitting across from a man in San Francisco, while drinking cappuccino. He is drinking espresso. 

No, he is drinking cappuccino, too, or at least coffee with milk. He was not a black coffee man—that much I do remember. 

You are living on carrot cake and cappuccino. You haven’t had a drink in about five months, so you crave sugar constantly and were told to eat it, which you do with abandon (but lose weight anyway, which matters to you, even though you claim it doesn’t). He is talking to you about God, how he really believed that if you had the faith of a mustard seed, you could move mountains. 

I am staring into his beautiful blue eyes, believing everything he says and wishing I believed in anything as strongly as he did. The café is suffused with late afternoon, orange light refracted from the incoming fog landing on the table-

No, you added that! You don’t really remember light on the table. That’s from photos you have of other cafes on Haight Street and you’ve added it in—just now.

How do you know?

I know. Also ‘suffused’??

I hate you.

You don’t remember light on the table. You know it was late afternoon, because it had to be because you always met him at that meeting that started around 4 or 5pm and you always spoke afterwards, because his girlfriend didn’t get back from her job at the futon place until around 8pm–

Yeah, but what matters is-

Here is what you do remember. You do remember that there were overhead fans, but not whether it was warm enough or not for them to be running. It was probably around April, maybe May. It was most likely sunny, as you lived there during a three-year drought. There was most likely in this café (whose name you have forgotten and which has probably by now been turned into yet another up-market pseudo-vintage over-priced boutique) as there was all up and down upper Haight Street a vague, yet noticeable smell of patchouli oil and pot. There were cakes, including the carrot cake, which had a white frosting with carrot-like decorations on top, in the glass case at the counter. There were better coffee shops along the road, but this one always had enough seats, and long rows of tables, which is why everyone went there after the meeting.

And flies.

Were there, or are you guessing?

I could swear I remember flies, I think.

But remember what Harold Pinter said?

What?

That any memory over 20 years old is fiction.

Oh my God. Is it that long?

Longer.

That’s scary.

Yes, it does scare you, because you think you should be over it by now. It’s been so long. You met him over 20 years ago-

Somewhere between lower and upper Haight Street, that I do remember, I remember it vividly-

Yes, because you saw him standing there, at that meeting, he was leaning on a pillar—you can see it like a photograph, and you might be pretending he had that cap on-

But he did—I remember it!

But it could be because later on—almost a year later—you took all those photos of him with that cap on, so you could be remembering those photos.

Oh, God, those photos. They make me cry, even the memory of them.

Yes. And you said to yourself-

Right. I thought, Don’t go near him. You’ll fall in love with him and he’ll break your heart.

That was your very first thought.

Yes.
​
​Your very first one?

Well, yeah, after finding him insanely attractive.

Finding him?

Well, feeling that attraction.

So you had a feeling before the thought?

Perhaps, or perhaps at the same time. I can’t remember. But I do remember that thought, it haunted me for years-

Until it came true.

Right, until it came true, and then the ghost became real.

And you were free.

Free?

Yes.

In a way—yes. But perhaps I made it happen?

Do you really think so?

I’m not sure.

But like a moth to a flame-

I went over and talked to him.

Babbled.

Right, I went over and babbled at him, like a scared girl at a seventh grade dance, except that when I was in seventh grade I never would have had the guts to go over and talk to him in the first place, but I had only been sober for a few weeks.

If that-

Yes, and I was completely insane. I was terrified and fearless at the same time. I was two people at once and one of them had never existed before and she went over and talked to him. God knows what I said.

Or she said?

Whatever. The fact is I don’t know, OK?

But you do remember-

He smiled at me like I was a cherished but slightly naïve younger sister and mock-punched me on the arm and said, laughing gently: Keep coming back.

Was that after he learned how long you had been around?

Probably, but I can’t remember.

He said: Keep coming back?

Yes.

So you did.

Yes. I did.

Because of him?

Maybe. But I was also scared shitless, and She was guiding me around. Like I had no will of my own. She does that sometimes, carries me through things.

Still?

Sometimes.

When did She first show up?

I can’t remember, but She’s the one who brought me to the first meeting, the one I went to after that terrible morning.

Or night.

Or night, it’s true, I can’t remember, the room seemed so dark, but it was always dark, it was the dark small room of the house, the kind of room I always found myself living in. Why? I don’t know. Afraid of the light, identifying with cockroaches, not sure. But I was alone in this small room sitting on a piece of foam on the floor pretending to be a mattress with some kind of tapestry pretending to be a bedspread, the whole tiny room reeking of cigarette smoke, though I wouldn’t have noticed because I smoked all the time. And I probably had a drink, but it might have been morning coffee, and it was late autumn, October, and I was sweating, a fear sweat.

​You made up the sweat part.

And then the one moment you found anything like the level of cool you felt they had, you became terrified.

Probably, but who cares? I was looking around and realized I didn’t care about anything anymore. There were my notebooks scattered around with increasingly distressed handwriting in them with exhortations to myself to change, bad poetry in my typewriter, a little bottle of glitter I used to make my typed letters seem sexy, dirty clothes on the floor, a record and cassette player and books scattered around. I can’t even remember what I was reading. 

Women Who Love Too Much.

Oh, no, please don’t say that!

But it’s true.

OK, fine, but I hid that book behind other books because I could not believe I was reading it. One of those dreadful self-help books that riveted me in the same way other people’s gossip magazines did, except worse—this had been sent by my mother. My mother who was newly clean and sober and telling me to go to those meetings for people whose relatives have had drinking problems.
And you thought: fuck off.

Yeah, that’s it. I thought, Fuck Off. It’s bad enough I had to live with you and your stupid fucking drinking my whole life and now, now you’re going to tell me where to go.

Fuck off.

Yeah, Fuck Off… But She was there, and She made me read that stupid book and made me see part of myself in it and it made me sick-

But you had just had another stupid affair that hadn’t worked and had slept again with yet another person you didn’t want to, and would have been date-raped if you didn’t have psychotic amounts of strength when threatened, and you had run out of all your cute little strategies for coping–

And worse, even worse, drinking didn’t do a goddamn thing to take away the pain anymore. I just felt lonely, beyond lonely. I didn’t have a clue I had a problem with drinking. I thought alcohol and cigarettes were my only friends. But this morning I felt dead inside, like a rusty metal shell housing nothing.

Yes, I did. I saw others I thought were in this state, especially that college friend-

The one who had everything, the one who was gorgeous, pale white skin, jet black hair, wore a cape, was the son of a famous politician, had amazing talent as an artist and spoke in sexy monosyllables you thought were cryptically brilliant. You had such a crush on him.

Yes, I did, but even more than that, I wanted to be him. I hated being ‘the girl’. I always, always wanted to be that guy. Not that guy’s idiotic fucking girlfriend. No, no, that’s not it either, I wanted both to be him and be his idiotic fucking girlfriend. I wanted to be attractive like those idiotic fucking girlfriends all were, but I wanted his freedom. 

But now he’s dead.

Yes, cirrhosis of the liver, age 42.

His Daddy couldn’t save him. 

No, no one could. Or the beautiful girl from high school. The one who was just like him, even though she was a girl.

Dead, age 36. Drug overdose. Her Daddy bailed her out to death. These were your heroes.

Yes, they were. I really wanted to be them. 

And did you want to have their Daddies too?

Probably, yes. You’re just here to torture me, right?

And then the one moment you found anything like the level of cool you felt they had, you became terrified.

Yes.

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Julia Lee Barclay-Morton is an award-winning writer and director, whose prose and plays have been produced and published internationally. Her play Shit was chosen for IATI 2018 play development program. Publications include Ohio Edit, Prentice-Hall, Burning House Press, TL;DR, Stockholm Review, and NYTE. When in London (2003-11), she founded Apocryphal Theatre and was awarded a full fellowship to complete her PhD at the University of Northampton, UK. She coaches, edits, and leads workshops for writers in NYC.
T: @wilhelminapitfa
IG: @julialeebarclayauthor
Blog: Julialeebarclay.blogspot.com

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