I was a California boy in New York when I thought maybe I’d be okay without you. But you were everywhere. Of course, she was never you. You were still in California—a state I have been trying to flee since almost six months ago when you said, “it’s not you, it’s me,”—but she was always you.

I first saw you on the fifth floor of 53rd Street at the Museum of Modern Art while I was examining Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh. You took a place next to me amongst the crowd and just stood for awhile. I’d finally found a way away from you, and there you were. I mean, she wasn’t you. But god, was she you.

You smelled like you—lilac and vanilla and a touch of sandalwood. Your long, brunette hair was down and straightened in the way that I loved. Your sun-kissed, porcelain complexion mentioned that you loved the outdoors, but also enjoyed reading a book for hours at a time in a café you frequented. You were wearing a maroon blouse suitable for the spring, and slightly-distressed jeans with roses where the inner pocket fabric showed clung to your legs like I used to when we fell asleep at night. I experienced a measurable amount of social anxiety at your approach, wondering how I could possibly come up with something interesting enough to say to buy your attention. But it was you who said something first:

“I think it’s bullshit.”

“Huh?” Suffice to say, you’d surprised me.

“I think it’s bullshit.” Your voice was sonorous and smooth, as if you were harmonizing with yourself when you spoke.

“What’s bullshit?”

“Why?” You asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“Why.” You said it as a statement that time.

“I don’t understand...”

“Me neither,” you said it as if you were agreeing with me.

I was puzzled, but you piqued my curiosity. “Sorry, I think I’m a little slow today...”

“No, it’s fine,” you replied, “I’m a little fast and forward, I’m told.”

That’s when I realized she wasn’t you. You were never very fast or forward. You were always quite reserved and shy. You would never have approached a stranger looking peacefully at a painting in a museum. You would have minded your own business, content with experiencing the same thing separately from the person next to you. That’s not to say that you were antisocial or unapproaching. It’s just that you preferred not to initiate social contact when you could. She was definitely not you.

“Why do people give a shit?” She asked me.

“About Starry Night?” I asked her.

“No, about the inparty bickering omnipresent within the Democratic National Committee,” she replied sarcastically, “Yes about fucking Starry Night.”

“Umm…”

“Come here.”

She pulled me—a complete stranger—by the arm around the corner to the other side of the gallery wall, where hung a painting of a man wearing a yellow overcoat, holding what I thought was a lily—I was never good at recognizing flowers. The placard read Opus 217. Against the Enamel of a Background Rhythmic with Beats and Angles, Tones, and Tints, Portrait of M. Félix Fénéon in 1890 by Paul Signac. Nobody was looking at this painting but her and me.

Upon close inspection, I could see that it was a stipple painting—hundreds of thousands of colored dots, meticulously placed by the artist to create a recognizable image. In contrast to Starry Night’s iconic, short brushstrokes, the stipples seemed to be a daunting, painstaking task to accomplish. There were easily at least three or four times as many colors as Starry Night had, and they were all working in expert harmony to express the profile portrait of a man. I imagined that it must have taken quite some time to create. It was beautiful, and nobody was looking at it but her and me.

“Arguably, I think this is at least as interesting as Starry Night,” she contended, “So why is it that people are so drawn to the other side?”

“They probably just want to see the famous painting for themselves. That’s why I was looking at it.”

“Yeah, I get that. But why? Do you think people flock to Starry Night because they’re supposed to? Because they were told that they should like it? Do they like it because it’s familiar? Come here.”

She pulled me by the arm again, leading me back to Starry Night’s side of the gallery wall, and nodded at some tourists posing for a photograph in front of the painting. They regrouped to assess the photo, decided they wanted to retake it, repositioned themselves with bigger smiles and double peace-signs, and reassessed the photo. Satisfied, they walked out of the gallery.

“Why do you think they’re doing that?” She said.

“I guess because they want to remember having seen it?”

“Why don’t they just take a picture of the painting, then? Better yet, why don’t they just look at the painting with their eyeballs and remember it that way? It’s not like Starry Night is hard to find online. Why did they have to be in the picture with it?”

“You sound like an old cynic, you know that?”

“My point is,” she didn’t break stride in her rant, “that I feel like people have stopped experiencing things because they want to experience and remember them, and have started to experience things because they want to share that they’ve experienced them.” I peeked out of the gallery to see what the tourists were up to. They were sitting on a bench in front of some other gorgeous paintings, but apparently saw something more interesting on their phones.

I remembered how you used to share so little of what you did. You used to do amazing things and never tell anyone you did them. On the rare occasion you did share something, it was typically fairly understated, and I felt that it did a disservice to whatever incredible thing it was that you’d accomplished. In that moment, I think I realized that it was because you weren’t sharing to show people you’d done it; you were sharing for self-posterity. All of the sudden, she was you again. And I think I loved her.

“I’m sorry, what was your name?” I asked you.

***

It was 1:30 AM when I would see you again. It had been many hours since we’d parted ways at MoMA, but there you were again. I mean, she wasn’t you, and she wasn’t her, but she was definitely you. You were still in California—an entire country between us—and still, there you were.

I had taken the late-night 2 train downtown to the Christopher Street station with a friend of mine. He had never seen live jazz before, and I had heard about a basement jazz club in Greenwich Village that I felt would be the perfect introduction to the scene. We paid the doorman the $20 cover fee for the set, and pulled up two seats at the bar. The place was cramped and lively, primarily stocked with young faces around our age. If you’d tried to turn too fast, you’d end up in the lap of another patron. I ordered an Islay scotch, neat. My friend ordered one of the house cocktails.

It was a small jazz combo of five: a pianist, an upright bass, a drummer, a tenor sax, and a trumpet player. The pianist announced that they would open the night with Seven Steps to Heaven, by Miles Davis. She introduced the band. The drummer counted them off, and they were in full swing. I explained to my friend how jazz combos typically worked and how they were making it up most of the time. I told him how there was a foundation for the song, and how each player would take a turn improvising a solo over the top of the foundation. I told him that the fun part about jazz was how unpredictable it could be—about how no one knew what they were doing until they did it. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

In the middle of my explanation, I saw you standing near the front of the tiny venue holding a clear cocktail with a single cherry stem floating in it amongst the ice. You were maybe five feet away from me, mouthing along to the unison sections of the song. Of course, there were no words, but I could read your lips as they bopped along to the rhythm of the quintet. Your hair was curled, your lashes were long, and you had draped a flirty dress politely from your shoulders.

As the band played, I watched as you refreshed your drink, walked to different parts of the venue, and struck up conversation with different members of the bar staff. You must have been a regular, here. You always were a creature of habit—I mean, the you that was in California; I didn’t know the you that kept catching me staring.

“You should go talk to her,” my friend said to me after also catching me looking everywhere but the band.

“No, that’s okay,” I replied, “I’ll never love her more than I do right now.”

“What are you talking about? You don’t even know her.”

“I know.” But I knew you.

The night went on and the band finished their set around 2:30. The pianist announced that it would be open jam session, with one stipulation:

“You can’t play instrument, you don’t play instrument.”

New players jumped onto the stage and discussed what chart they were going to play. The horns tuned to the piano, and the drummer adjusted his kit. At this point, the bouncer had stopped taking admissions, and I noticed you were chatting with some of the band members from the previous set. The new combo settled on who would take first liberty and began their song. I didn’t recognize the chart, but you did. You bobbed your head and scatted along as the waitress brought you another drink. You danced a bit in place. It was beautiful. You caught me staring again. This time, you smiled.

It was around 3:30 AM when the band stopped playing. The bar announced that it was last call, and I looked around for you. You had left without a word. At that moment, I was reminded that she wasn’t you.

You had left me with a bunch of words. Words like “best friend” and “comfortable” and “someone else.” Words that have haunted me in the six months that you’ve been gone. And now, you were gone again—I mean she was gone, and she wasn’t you. I breathed a sigh of relief, sadness, and longing.

I missed her. And I missed you.

***

It was the late afternoon of the next day when I saw you for the third time. This time, it wasn’t you, and it wasn’t her, and it definitely wasn’t her. But it was so you. I had gone to watch a musical we’d talked about seeing together. You were every member of the cast and you were every person in the audience and you were every song that was sang. I could not stop seeing you wherever I looked. And when I closed my eyes during the intermission, there you were.

And when Shoshana Bean sang the climactic song—where her character, Jenna, had hit her lowest point in the musical, struggling with losing her sense of self and rueing the circumstances that led her to where she was—I rued the fact that I cried at “She Used To Be Mine” for all the wrong reasons I should have cried at it.

And when I’d finished crying, I realized that I couldn’t stop coloring you into the pictures of my life where you shouldn’t have been. I had stopped seeing the world for what it was and I had started seeing the world for what I wanted it to be—and I wanted it to be you.

At the curtain call, we gave the cast a standing ovation that I initiated. You would never have initiated a standing ovation and would not have felt comfortable with me initiating a standing ovation. You were always content with blending in with the wallpaper whereas I often sought the spotlight. I remembered that that used to drive you crazy. You used to lament that I loved to perform, yet you loved to watch performers. Who is it that you thought you were watching? Did you not believe that they were like me? Or did you not believe that I was like them?

Maybe, just maybe, I had painted you to be something I had expected you to be. Maybe I loved you because you were familiar. Maybe I loved you because I felt that I was supposed to. Maybe the reason I saw you in places that weren’t you was because I was looking for you all the time. Maybe they were never you. And maybe I was upset with myself for finding you there when I shouldn’t have been searching in the first place. Maybe I was ready to appreciate the other side of the gallery wall.

I looked around and I noticed that I was in a room full of strangers, joyfully clapping alongside a sea of unfamiliarity, and for the first time, during that weekend in New York, I was a California boy that knew I would be okay without you.