When He Goes Elsewhere

     I woke up one morning to find the left side of my queen-sized bed had been vacated. I was usually the first to wake, so I had no other choice but to be alarmed. When I went out into the kitchen, half asleep, I found him doing our dishes from the night before. He looked sad cleaning off the remains of his evening craft. His delicate food, I remember, always involved many sauces resulting in little mountains of stubborn crusts. I turned on the t.v. and made coffee. Anthony Bourdain had died while we were asleep. They were talking about it on the news.

    Later on, we went to my neighbor's loft for dinner. I cannot recall what she had made but I can recall something else: a question and an answer. The girl next to me at the dinner table had asked him, "How is your Summer going?" to which he responded, with exasperation, "What kind of question is that?" I squeezed his thigh.

    Mortified, we walked 32 steps back to mine at the end of the night. I expressed how his arrogance was losing its intellectual charm. By the time we reached the top of my 56 stairs, I could sense he had no intention of sleeping over. This was not out of the ordinary but I could tell it was something. I unlaced my shoes at the door while he stood watching over me. Tugging my ankle boot off required some balancing practice yet he offered no shoulder. His tall dark body stood there like a monolith. "So where are you going now?" I whispered. "Elsewhere." he muttered.

    I nestled into bed unbothered. The relationship at the point was secure. 'Elsewhere.' I thought this was so romantically ethereal. 'Elsewhere' could mean so many things. I tried to visualize in my head what 'elsewhere' meant to him. Where was he going? I want to go there. Or maybe I don't? Elsewhere is so private, so transient. So brutal. So soft. I remember thinking so deeply about where 'elsewhere' was for him. What 'elsewhere' looked like to him. It was so comforting. I did not care where he was. I knew exactly where he was; he was elsewhere. I fell into a deep sleep.

    The next morning I asked many people what they thought 'elsewhere' meant. The women I asked assumed it meant 'a place to think' or 'a place to be alone' while the men interpreted it as 'to be somewhere else'. I could not rely on either assumption. I let it be without much interpretation. I still spent many hours pondering what his elsewhere looked like. I wondered if our elsewheres were similar. I wondered if everyone's elsewheres reflected reality. 

    Two weeks later I found myself at the Chinese restaurant with his friends. The lazy susan spun effortlessly as his friends updated one another about their weekends. They talked about Anthony Bourdain's passing. They talked about wine. I zoned out. I lost track of the conversation and focused on the dim sum. It was only when the word 'elsewhere' was said did my ears perk up. 

       I enquired where 'elsewhere' was. What did that mean? "Where is elsewhere? What does that mean?" I was internally disrupted in a way that felt as though I had been awoken from an eternal sleep and everyone had left me behind.

"It's in Bushwick. It's just like, a massive venue." 

I was disappointed. I thought he had traversed elsewhere, searching, but instead he had gone to the club without me.