“Every man I loved is dead. Every man I have ever loved died on me.”
This is what Morgan’s mother said to me, the first time that I met her.
The first time I met Morgan’s mother, she took us out to dinner – me, Morgan, and Caroline, that is – at a trendy Mexican restaurant. The restaurant was in Midtown or The Gulch or 21 South, or some other peripheral Nashville sub city, the type where everything was expensive and every pedestrian was, embarrassingly, either dressed dully in a modern cowboy hat to assert their Southerness or dressed saliently in bright colored patterns to assert their queerness.
When I lived in Nashville, it seemed that the wealthy traditionalists (the cowboys) and alternative progressives (the queers) were constantly at war with each other, trapped in a passive stalemate over a battle for the culture. It was a quiet affair; I never witnessed discrimination in either direction, or even a bitter remark in passing, but contention was in the air. You could see it in the clothing, as I mentioned before, and you could see it in the buildings as well: you would pass the display window of a Texan boot store, and then the glittered curtains of a drag bar, and then a fried chicken restaurant. Tennessee was a cultural war state.
The real battle, of course, was already a lost cause. Poor black folks had been pushed out of their homes, to the edges of the city, over the course of the decade prior. You could also see this effect in the buildings: you would drive past a row of modern boot stores and drag bars for about ten minutes, and then suddenly you would find yourself among a row of barred gas stations, dingy liquor stores, and crumbling brick shacks. The queers and the cowboys were eating Nashville alive, street by street, and spitting the poor people out on the other side of city lines.
I suppose the reason that the queers and the cowboys were so outwardly civil towards each other, despite being at war for the culture, was that they were aware of their unspoken alliance. They were united in the fact that they had recently fought on the same side and won, and in their efforts to erase gentrification from Nashville’s oral history. Behind closed doors, the queers spoke often of their victimhood, of feeling like imposters in a Southern city where they should not have to feel like imposters, and the cowboys lamented often over their powerlessness to stop the queers. (I presented myself as an impartial observer in Nashville, and both types felt comfortable sharing their qualms with me). But nobody talked about gentrification.
Our dinner with Morgan’s mother took place in one of these conquests, a sub city of rubble where the queers had erected health food stores and where the cowboys had erected line dancing joints, and one of these groups had also put together a trendy and culturally ambiguous Mexican restaurant. Curiously, there was an ice cream store attached to the Mexican restaurant, on the other side of a glass door, and Morgan’s mother took us there too, after we’d finished dining at the Mexican restaurant.
I’m not sure where we were exactly when Morgan’s mother told me that every man she ever loved had died. Maybe it was at the Mexican restaurant. — but, upon reflection, the dialogue most likely took place at the ice cream store. This wasn’t the kind of conversation that was appropriate for dinner; it was certainly more suitable for dessert. It is also possible that we had this conversation somewhere else entirely.
Or was it Caroline’s mother who had taken us to the Mexican restaurant, and not Morgan’s? Was the ice cream store really attached to the Mexican restaurant, or are they two distinct places that have, over time, fused in my memory? I left Nashville when I was nineteen, and my recollections of the place seem to have mangled and burned, melded and combined, my memories malleable as metals under heat and bendable as beams of light. I wish I could recall more details surrounding this conversation with Morgan’s mother, so that you could imagine the scene yourself, but I’m afraid they would be inaccurate.
In any case, I do remember the conversation itself.
“Every man I ever loved has died,” she said to me, through the gasps of a theatrical sigh. I don’t recall why Morgan’s mother was saying this to me, and I can’t imagine what I could have possibly done to welcome or warrant the onset of this conversation, but it happened nonetheless. I was actually happy, believe it or not, that Morgan’s mother had decided to disclose this fact to me. I am a morbid person, in a lot of ways, and these sorts of conversations never fail to awaken a perverted whisper of curiosity in me.
In high school, my friend Natalie once told me about her great aunt who had four children. All four of Natalie’s great aunt’s children died in freak accidents before they reached adulthood. (Or maybe one died from SIDS?) But I only remember the details of the death that was most gruesome and least plausible: a young girl – Natalie’s cousin once removed, I suppose – who was swinging on a swing set at a playground, swung so high that the swing flipped in midair. This caused the girl herself to tumble in midair, and somehow the girl’s jacket zipper slit her throat on the way down. She either bled to death or choked to death on her own blood. I love that story. I have half a mind to call Natalie right now, just so that she can tell it to me again.
I also remember my high school boyfriend Ray telling me, as we sat together on the bus ride back from junior prom, about his friend Garrett. Garrett’s younger brother drowned in a hot tub when he was a toddler. And even a decade later, Ray told me, the whole family was still reeling from guilt: it was the negligence of Garrett and his parents, who were all present on the premises of the drowning, that allowed the toddler to drown. “That’s why Garrett’s so fucked up,” Ray told me, as we sat on the prom bus holding hands, despite the fact that I had never met Garrett and had no reason to suspect, previously, that he was fucked up in the first place.
The point being that I love listening to stories, and I particularly love listening to morbid stories. So when Morgan’s mother told me that everyone she had ever loved had died, I was all ears. I egged her on, really. “All of them? What do you mean? What happened?”
I should tell you now, for the sake of context, that Caroline was not present for this conversation, for whatever reason, and that Morgan was present but not present. Morgan had a ubiquitous tendency to roll her eyes around the room and drift away into another mental space, a world that no one but Morgan was privy to. She did this so often that we had a name for it: we called it “Morgan’s World.” She’d often miss entire conversations, while she was off in Morgan’s World ruminating about other things, and Caroline and I would have to make salient hand motions and call her name repeatedly to snap her out of her stupor, and then we’d have to repeat the whole conversation all over again.
So it was me and Morgan, on the receiving end of Morgan’s mother’s story, but Morgan was drifting in and out of focus, floating to and from reality while Morgan’s mother spoke, and so at times it felt sort of like a private conversation between me and Morgan’s mother. I got the sense that Morgan had heard this monologue many times before, because sometimes she would nod her head along to the sound of her mother’s voice, as the story was being told, although her eyes remained glossed over and her demeanor distant throughout its duration. Morgan also laughed a few times at things her mother said, unexpectedly, although it was not a particularly humorous story at all.
“Every man I ever loved died in my care,” Morgan’s mother said.
It started in Virginia. Coincidentally, Morgan’s mother was from the same county in Northern Virginia where I was born and raised. So when Morgan’s mother told me that her first boyfriend had died in Old Town Alexandria, I was pleasantly surprised to realize that, of all the places in the country that Morgan’s mother’s first boyfriend could have died, it was one that I was actually familiar with. “Oh, I’ve been there many times,” I probably said.
“Oh, you have?” she must have said. She asked me whether I remembered how slight the buildings were, how the old brick buildings leaned into each other so closely that they nearly kissed, to form these very narrow cobblestone alleyways.
“Yes,” I must have said, “the buildings are beautiful. Very romantic.”
They used to go to Old Town, Morgan’s mother told me, on Saturday nights. She was dating a boy from her high school, and they used to get drunk with their friends and climb the old buildings in Old Town Alexandria and jump from rooftop to rooftop on Saturday nights. One night, though, her drunk boyfriend failed to make the jump, and he fell between two buildings and hit the cobblestone below and died. I don’t know whether his bones were crushed or whether he bled to death.
Her next boyfriend died in a motorcycle accident. The details of that death escape me now. All I can tell you about it is that, although Morgan’s mother did not provide any description of his physical appearance, I reflexively imagined him as a handsome young greaser who always wore leather jackets and blue jeans. I suppose that is the kind of young man that I imagine commonly dies in motorcycle accidents.
Her third boyfriend didn’t actually die, as it turns out. Morgan’s mother dated him for many years in college. They were very happy together, and Morgan’s mother loved and trusted him. This is what she told me, at least. But, upon departing the states for a semester abroad in Europe, she left her apartment in his care, and when she returned her entire apartment was empty and her car was gone. Her boyfriend had sold all of her belongings: her furniture, her television, her jewelry, her mattress, and her car. (Maybe her clothes and kitchen appliances, too. When she told me this part, I imagined her turning the key to an apartment completely stark white and baldly empty.)
She came to find out that her boyfriend was a severe drug addict (cocaine, I think), and that he had sold all of her possessions for drug money. He was, apparently, a drug addict for the entirety of their relationship. She was informed of this unpleasant truth by his parents. His parents were mobsters – this she had always known – and as it so happened, they were fair and principled mobsters. When they discovered that their son had robbed his unsuspecting girlfriend of her belongings, they called her up and explained to her that he was a ruthless drug addict, and they paid her back for everything. In fact, they overpaid her. They handed her a very, very large wad of cash. She profited financially, in the end, but she lost her boyfriend. She did not ever see him or hear from him again.
Or did he die, too? Maybe he had a heart attack, shortly after the incident. Maybe that’s what Morgan’s mother had told me.
Her first husband, Morgan’s father, died of cancer when Morgan was three. I don’t know what kind of cancer it was.
“Every man I ever loved, just died,” Morgan’s mother said. She was cursed, she told me.
She did remarry, after Morgan’s father died, to Morgan’s stepfather. He did not die, not that I know of; he was at least alive when Morgan was my friend, when Morgan’s mother told me this story. But Morgan’s mother did not mention him. I think she did not mention him because he wasn’t relevant to the narrative, perhaps because she never loved him. They are divorced now.
“All of ‘em. Dead.”
That was what Morgan’s mother told me, the first time that I met her. I only met her once or twice after that. There was one weekend when my mother happened to be in Nashville at the same time that Morgan’s mother was in Nashville, and we all got together. It was Morgan’s mother’s idea. She was the kind of woman that liked to meet other people’s mothers. My mother is not that kind of woman – she has a very tight circle of friends and is perpetually disinclined to the prospect of making new friends – but she agreed to it anyways. The four of us went for a walk somewhere, probably on the concrete pathways that snaked throughout campus, and I split off with Morgan for a while, allowing our mothers to lag behind and establish some sort of maternal rapport between themselves.
Afterwards, my mother looked relieved to be out of Morgan’s mother’s company. It was clear that she did not like Morgan’s mother, although I do not know why. I would call my mother up and ask her, just out of curiosity, but she wouldn’t remember. If I called her right now and said, “Why didn’t you like Morgan’s mother?” she would say, “Who’s Morgan?” My mother’s memory is even worse than mine, if you can believe it. If my memories are bendable like light in a prism, my mother’s memories are ephemeral like sparks under a skidding car tire. They vanish almost as quickly as they are born.
Maybe my mother did not like Morgan’s mother because maybe Morgan’s mother had made conversation, on their little walk together, by talking extensively about her dead lovers. My mother would be easily turned off by that sort of dialogue, for she does not share my taste for morbidity.
Last Thanksgiving I sliced my finger open while I was washing a large kitchen knife at the sink in my apartment, and blood started to spray out of the gash in my finger. I did not realize, at first, how deeply I had cut my finger, because I did not feel any pain. I tried to rinse the blood off under the faucet, thinking that it would congeal quite quickly and that the whole affair would conclude as promptly as it had begun. But the sink water turned dark red, and the bleeding would not stop. Moments later, when the suspicion arose in my consciousness that I might bleed dry on my own kitchen tile and, thus, meet an untimely death by means of a menial household chore, I called my mother and said, “I cut my finger open and I don’t know what to do.” My mother began asking me questions: How had I cut it? With what? How deeply? But as she spoke her words turned to static in my ears, and I collapsed on the kitchen floor.
I recovered quickly, and I was fine after that. But my mother, it turns out, nearly collapsed herself just from hearing me say, through the phone, “There’s blood everywhere, mom.” Sometimes now, just to test her squeamishness, I try to show her the scar on my finger, and she screams and turns away. She has no stomach for grotesque or morbid things.
So maybe that’s what happened. Maybe Morgan’s mother said to my mother, “Every man I loved is dead,” and maybe that is why my mother did not like Morgan’s mother.
None of my mother’s boyfriends died, but they all cheated on her. Everyone has their own little idiosyncrasies like that.
One of my little idiosyncrasies, I’ve noticed, is my ability to listen impartially. I have listened to liberals and conservatives; I have listened to laments of grief and celebrations of life; I have listened to Jewish prayers and Christian proclamations of faith and atheistic skepticisms; I have listened to the children of billionaires complain of their discontentedness, and I have listened to homeless people do the same. I have listened to queers and cowboys.
I was, it seemed, the only true civilian in Nashville’s cultural war. I listened to passionate rants on both sides, and I was astonished to discover that neither faction had anything to say about gentrification. I often felt as though I was the only person capable of acknowledging the war for what it was: it was 1864! It was English colonists fighting Spanish colonists over indigenous land! It was a sham!
Call me crazy, but I miss Nashville for that very reason. I like being a neutral listener. I like listening to stories. They don’t tell good stories, in the city where I live now. Here, people talk a lot about dogs, and about working out, and about getting drunk. They talk about politics, sometimes, but they’re all on the same side, and that sort of redundancy does little for me.
I’m thinking about moving back to Nashville. I’d like to parachute myself straight into the warzone. I’d like to listen to the queers and cowboys, and Morgan’s mother, once again.
— Kel Connely was born and raised in Northern Virginia. She has since lived in Middle Tennessee, coastal North Carolina, and Southern California. She enjoys writing about the mundane.