I spent this morning debating whether I should move on to Michael or tell the story of how I almost became a Canadian Hare Krishna because of Bill. Now that I see it written out, the choice is clear.
Picture it: Toronto, 1992. For weeks, I had planned to drive up the east coast and visit my friends in New York and other northern states, perhaps ending up at Niagara Falls for some solitary contemplation. I had carefully arranged the excursion to coincide with a time that Bill was busy. Our relationship was troubled, and I did not want to compound the agony by spending a week in the car together. To my extreme displeasure, after I announced my departure date, Bill decided he was now available to join me. Oh joy, I thought.
Bill's presence forced me to change my plans. Instead of a leisurely drive in the northeast, we decided to go to Canada, first spending a couple of days in Niagara Falls and then several days at a Toronto bed and breakfast recommended by a friend of his. From the first, my boyfriend's schizophrenia triggered loud, irrational arguments followed immediately by periods of calm and affection. As the trip progressed, those intervals of calm and affection became briefer and further apart. One day we were shrieking outside a shopping mall when we were confronted by one of the cutest men I had ever seen. He wore baggy clothes, his hair was cropped close to his head, and he offered us a free vegetarian cookbook.
"No," Bill said, walking away, but I stood transfixed. The stranger radiated peace, and his eyes seemed to bore deep into my soul. "Come on, David!" my crazy boyfriend yelled from a hundred feet away.
"You don't have to go with him," said the man softly. "You can come back with me."
In all of my twenty years, I had never wanted anything as much as I wanted to go wherever this man led. I felt as if I were melting into the ground at his feet.
"David!" screamed Bill.
The spell broke. All at once, a million nagging thoughts shot into my brain: finishing college, my family and friends, having to give Bill my car so he could get home . . . . The reality of my life came crashing back, and I stumbled away.
Driving back to Baltimore, I played some music to help ease the journey. Music that did not meet with Bill's highbrow approval. "Enough of this crap," he growled, jamming his finger into the button that ejected the tape. I raised an eyebrow. Static from the radio filled the car, an endless, roaring crackle that consumed every other sound and thought. I surrendered to it. For some time, possibly hours, neither of us made a move, until he finally reached over in a huff and turned off the radio, plunging us into silence.
Two weeks later, I broke up with him.
