“When Harry Met Sally” met Kenny

“When Harry Met Sally” Met Me

Sometimes I really drag myself down deep into it. I don’t know what I’m thinking, to be honest. I’m thinking I can handle it. Maybe I’m thinking “I can remember a piece of her without dealing with the consequences of that reminiscence,” I don’t know.
Tonight’s disaster was “When Harry Met Sally,” my first viewing of the beloved classic. It was beautiful to me…until the point I realized that I am not Harry and she is not Sally. I can’t (and don’t want to) rebound and rebound and rebound when I feel lonely the way my non-Muslim colleagues do–the way Harry does–to stay afloat while I mature into a whole person over 12 years and 3 months. I’d love to say more about the ramifications of the western recovery model (or at least how it is perceived and communicated), perhpaps in my next post.
And at any rate, whether or not I’ve matured at any point, I can’t just run up to this girl who was my best friend in the world and say “these are all your beauties, this is love from the sincerest part of my heart, this is me casting aside my characteristic shrillness to show you a maturing man, some much needed softness, some grace…” like Harry does at the end, after their roller-coaster of love and abuse and character-development and regret.
And I fear she is not Sally. Even if I knew what to say (and even if she would listen to me), I fear she wouldn’t say “I hate you, I hate you…I love you,” like Sally. I fear she’d say “stop being creepy,” or “why are you doing this to me?” or something similarly realistic and reasonable. Like the song says: It’s hard to argue when you won’t stop making sense/But my tongue still misbehaves, and keeps digging my own grave.
I can’t argue against, “But this isn’t the movies.” Is it really easier just to try again with someone new? Is it better? I can’t do that so easily, personally. But as we all know, it takes two to tango–two willing to stick it out through the tough times. It takes two willing to lend high levels of trust, even before the borrower has had enough time to make a full credit report. It takes two willing to see things through for six months, a year, longer–to see where the relationship is really at. And try as I might to hope and dream and love enough to kindle something, I’m only one person. One terribly inexperienced, lovelorn, overly idealistic person. And as one person: even when I tell myself I’m learning, I’m maturing, I’m softening, how can I be sure?

That’s “When Harry Met Sally” met Real Life.

“When Harry Met Sally” Met Kenny

When I get hit the hardest–when the bottom drops out of my stomach, these are the times when I feel incredibly alone in the world. As Sheikh Hamza notes in “17 Benefits of Tribulation,” this is one of the best times to realize my complete reliance on Allah. It is during these times, usually murbling* quietly to myself, when I most sincerely and reliantly ask Him for help. “Oh Allah, let me find the good in this. Oh Allah help me…” When you’re at the bottom, eloquence is no matter. There are only vague directions, geographically and emotionally. In these moments I am grasping desperately at “good”, reaching for “better.” “Oh Allah help me do right, help me feel right.”
And then I wander.
And every time, Allah sends me consolation. Three times in two weeks, I have called out completely, lost. Each time Allah has answered me directly, and twice that answer was Kenny. May Allah continue to console me and educate me, and may these experiences permeate my action and my thought.

Right now, Kenny is carefully carving out the whip-cream covered sections of these coffee cakes I got him. He’s sitting sideways on his chair, resting the cast of his mending right arm first on the chair-back, then over the chair back, then forward onto the table. He winces each time in pain and each time he is unhappy with his move. He will continue to readjust his cast over the course of the meal, and each time a wave of pain will travel visibly across his chest and up into his face where his eyes close and he swishes the pain around, burning, in his mouth before swallowing it and returning to his food. The first time I saw the pain move across him, I thought his molars were giving him trouble as he chewed–in some kind of double-team with the arm-pain.

“Kenny is not looking well,” I’m thinking. “How old did he say he was last time, 58?” All the teeth from the front of his mouth are missing, both the top and bottom. It would not surprise me if the man’s mouth felt like it was on fire. How many dull-throbbing pains shoot through this man’s body with every bite and every movement?

“Hurrrts,” says Kenny, lifting his heavy right arm an inch.
“I’m really sorry,” I reply glumly.

Kenny shrugs. His hearing is not so good and his speech is slurred–some combination of his toothless mouth and the various tribulations of his life or of his mind. As a result Kenny often avoids speaking and sends forth clearer communication by way of gestures.

“Homelennn,” Kenny says, pointing to himself emphatically.
“I remember, Kenny” I say.

Kenny opens his eyes wide at the mention of his name.

“Iss youu!”
“You remember,” I respond, smiling.
I was truly worried that he and I might have to start anew every time.

Kenny looks at me expectantly, having not heard me.

“YOU REMEMBER,” I repeat, leaning towards his left ear. He always leans in with his left ear, so I end up leaning towards it when I raise my voice, which always feels a little silly since I’m already raising my voice.

Kenny closes his eyes and smiles, “Sommm peoplearrrnicetome. Thanksss”
“Hey, you’re a nice guy too, Kenny…YOU’RE A NICE GUY, KENNY”

Kenny hears me the second time. He frowns deeply and swats heavily in the air at the notion, enunciating a growly “ehhh.”
And then wears what seems like the curls of a brief smile, before he turns his attention to the second coffee cake. I resist the urge to ask him to finish the bulk of the first one before carving away at the whipped cream of the second. Eating is more difficult for him than I had predicted. His stabs at the plate are haphazard. Kenny is obviously not a lefty.

I resist the urge to cut up his food for him. Despite myself, I don’t want to be just some tourist in his life who lays down the red carpet for ten minutes and then disappears. I want to try to be friendly without being condescending or even menial. “But whether it’s ten minutes or two hours,” I lament, “I will have to disappear from here when it’s time for Kenny to take to his alleyway and for me to venture back across the river to my warm bed…”
I push the book of ‘Rumi’s Ecstatic Poetry’ further away from me on the bench. I was through one poem, shedding one tear when I noticed Kenny beside me this night, almost the same way I noticed him last time. His sweatshirt and pants look new, donated perhaps, sometime this week, but they don’t look as heavy as his coat and sweatpants were last time.

“Collld out.” Kenny spits a piece of whip-cream spittle onto my pant-leg. I consider myself patient for not caring too much. And then consider myself an ass for considering myself patient.
“Will you have your blanket today?”

Kenny sleeps in an alley off Newbury where his blanket is stashed. He explains that maybe someone took it–that tonight is going to be cold without it. I ask if he knows where he can get a new one and he shrugs, “Maybe the-vannn, the pinnneeestreetvannn.”

Kenny is now staring at the exposed leg of a 20-something in a miniskirt, one table down from me. I could not help noticing, when I first came in, that from my standing position near the cafe-area-entrance she didn’t appear to be wearing a bottom at all–just legs emerging from beneath a table.

“Niccccce” he hiss-slurs as he puts his gaze half-way back to me. With some considerable concentration I have kept my gaze on his coffee cake.

This is awful. It hurts for him to eat, but I know he is hungry. I saw how he ate last time when it was pasta, when the spoon fit more easily around each bite, when each bite landed more softly on his palate, and he could fill himself. This time, however, the kitchen was closed and the only food left was dry coffee cake, sitting abandoned in a glass bowl behind the counter.

“I’m homelennn,” comes the familiar refrain. “ButIget through it OK,” Kenny adds with a growl as the phlegm vibrates in his throat. “I get by.” The phlegm works its way up and drops out of Kenny’s mouth as he takes his next bite.

“You-havean aparnmenn,” Kenny remembers from our last conversation. He holds up up two fingers from beneath the sleeve that covers his cast, “withnn two-other guysss.” I know Kenny wants me to invite him to spend the night somewhere warm.
My heart sinks a little bit. I am a tourist. This is just education. I am not doing anything for anyone here. I get up to return my book of poetry back to it’s shelf adjacent to the cafe area. It gives me a chance to wipe my face and clear the few tears that were starting.

I’m not still crying about myself. Right? I don’t think so.

Right?

I come back to the table and sit, leaning close to Kenny’s ear, “How long ’til the cast comes off?”

“Week,” he puts up one finger on his left hand, “Onnnne week,” and he waves his heavy right arm, wincing.
Kenny struggles to replace his arm on each of his three nearby perches in succession. I suddenly realize that he cannot easily put his arm on the table, the most obvious perch, because of the angle of his chair to the table; he has to hunch over and bend his wrist awkwardly to keep his arm from slipping off. I reach out and move his chair to the table. He looks surprised, but not taken aback, at my intrusive help. He winces at the move and I wince at my idiocy. I then reach out and rotate the table towards his arm–a much easier reorientation.

Kenny finishes most of the two coffee cakes, to my delight. The waitresses have quietly ushered everyone else out of the cafe, as it’s now ten past midnight. The waitress stands a few feet away, willing me to look at her.

“Kenny, we’ve got to go.”
Kenny doesn’t hear me. I stand up and Kenny looks around. I offer Kenny my arm and realize, looking down, how incredibly thin his legs are. Jeans don’t mask that the same way sweatpants do. Kenny stumbles as he rises, but rights himself and releases my arm. I get a whiff of alcohol.
Last time, Kenny had communicated in a few words how his habit dominated his life. If tonight is like that night, his plan now will be to sleep as much as he can until dawn and then wait thereafter for the liquor stores to open.
At least this time he didn’t sneak any swigs during the meal.

Outside, Kenny’s gait is more evident: legs-akimbo-waddle with a limp. Somehow the leg motions look strong, really strong. I can almost see the shape of his calves in his new jeans. But something about his walk that I can’t quite pinpoint is seriously messed up and he’s going about a step every three seconds. He takes a pint of vodka out of his sweatshirt pocket and then looks at me. He puts it back away, grinning broadly. I wonder if this is for my benefit or if he has temporarily conquered a demon in a meaningful way. In any case it’s better than sneaking swigs inside the cafe. He certainly wasn’t ashamed to drink in front of me last time.

“Are you going to be alright Kenny?”
“Sss colldd!”

I ask passing police officers about shelter. They suggest I try the church at the end of Newbury, they might at least have some supplies.

“KENNY. I’M GOING TO LOOK FOR A BLANKET. I’LL BE RIGHT BACK.” He nods and then smiles when he spies the hidden landing down beside Condom World. The lamp shining onto the landing looks warm enough to sleep under, I suspect. He moves on a few steps to investigate the next below-street-level landing as I take off.

A few of the jocks heckle my running. A block later, a gaggle of girls gives me a cat-call. “Newbury is longer than I remembered,” I think. Halfway through the run, I realize that I’m doing it again. I’m running this tremendous distance grasping at straws, feeling useful and heroic and when I come back, it won’t even matter. Even if I can somehow manage to find a blanket, he won’t be where I left him. Won’t be where I’m planning on finding him, no matter how much I’m hoping or trying to make this work. Incidentally, I’ve spent my whole life doing this without realizing it, most famously (and most recently), ending in heartbreak. This is not an intelligent solution. If I had learned some patience over the last few months I would have paused to think this through instead of brute-forcing it. Perhaps I am getting a little bit better…at least my idiocy occurred to me.
Anyway, I’m almost there. I’d better keep running.

“Excuse me, do you know if there’s anyone inside?” I ask a homeless woman camped out in the entrance of the church. It seems like she’s pretty comfortable, huddled under two layers of sweatshirts and a sleeping bag. When she sits up, I notice she is reading a novel by flashlight. She lights a cigarette while I ring the church doorbell.

“Nope, no one in there. Whaddaya want?” she asks. Her almost conversational tone is a welcome change of pace from Kenny’s slurring.

“Is there someone in there who can give me a blanket or something for a homeless guy down the street–it got very cold tonight.”

“Pine Street Van comes by at about, oh…” she checks her watch, hot pink strap with a white face, “about 12:15,” she remarks.
“And they give out blankets?”
“Yup.”
“Ok thanks.”

I run back to see if I can wish Kenny well for the evening, thankful that, worst-case, he can probably get a blanket from the van–that I now realize he referred to during dinner. But Kenny is not down on the Condom World landing. Or down in any of the nearby landings. I must have taken 10 minutes running. Worthless. I wonder where he’ll end up tonight.

Kenny’s words echo through my head “I get through it ok.”

My eyes feel puffy. I decide to head for the T. I get through it ok… What I am going through in my heart…is extremely selfish. I tell myself that I can’t help it. I feel down and I let it take me over. I day dream. I proper dream…
This is ridiculous. There are people out there who are actually struggling. And through it all they are practically optimistic through their pain, physical and otherwise. With the cold and the hunger and the compulsion to drink plaguing them, and God knows what else. They are wondering what to do about surviving the night at a stage in life where I want to be reflecting on what Ivy’s my kids went to and whether my spouse might like some surprise jewelry for our anniversary. God save me and this bifurcated society from ourselves…from each other…

I hop on the T and join a host of well-fed and well-boozed Red Sox fans on their late return home. I close my eyes and slip into when Harry Met Sally. The world of people with business suits and steady jobs and marble counter-tops. I think: “If Allah blesses me with another relationship, inshaAllah once I can feel the trust is there alongside the love, I am going to say: ‘I don’t care how much we have, we have so so much. It’s not cliche: we have (inshaAllah) health, sustenance, we have Allah in our hearts and we have each other.’ And then I’m going to say, ‘And anything you want that I can work for, I will be so happy to be able to give you.’” And then my closed eyes flooded. Alhamdulilah.

*Murbling: Mumbling and burbling**

**Burbling: Bumbling and tearing