"I Wake Up and You're Not by My Side..."
I said before that I was looking forward to coming to Philadelphia because it was here that I traveled in 1992 to see Blane's grave a month after he died. One of my colleagues asked me today if it was sad being here, and it's not. It was odd coming up the escalator in the train station because it looks just like it did then. But after that realization, I had to get to my hotel and then to the other hotel for our first interview. After today's round, I walked back towards my hotel but took a side trip to Rittenhouse Square.

I have to admit that there's some guilt to spending a lot of time talking publicly about the man I remember as my first partner when I have another one alive and well in my life, one who has been with me for well over a decade. I know this guilt is not unusual for men who have lost lovers to AIDS because I have talked to them about it. I imagine it's not unusual for anyone who loses a lover and then finds someone else.

I realized tonight, though, that the guilt is two-pronged. First, there is guilt because I am giving time and mental energy to "another man." Da Man is going to tell me later that I am being ridiculous for thinking this. We've had that conversation before. The second is new to me, at least consciously. I feel guilt because I moved so far along without him. I was so young then, practically a child, at least compared to the adult I am today. I did not even have a BA then. Now, I have a PhD. That's a lot of time right there, and it's been years since I earned that. Stupid, I know. It's not like I've forgotten him, but fourteen years is a long time.

Before I made this trip, I thought of Rittenhouse Square and remembered two main things. The first was the diner I mentioned in that earlier entry linked to above. It was where I remembered. I also remembered one particularly huge building, Rittenhouse Square Apartments or something like that, and it was still there, too. I have a vague recollection of the direction it would take to reach the bed and breakfast where I stayed that time, but I didn't feel like wandering to find it.

I sat on one of the benches for a bit, pulled out the iPod shuffle, and that the song I was listening to was the one right after "Silent Morning" by Noel, a song that always reminds me of the late 80s/early 90s when a lot of alternative music--or at least the music I was hearing--was freestyle. I admit that I felt a hole in the pit of my stomach while sitting there listening to that. I thought maybe I felt that way because it had been a while since lunch, but I knew that wasn't it. Hunger doesn't feel like that. Sadness, guilt, mourning that can never truly end, fear--those can feel like that.

Sometimes, going to an academic conference is not academic at all.
- posted by Nels @ 10:34 PM | | | Link |