Music – 3

I like how the song toys with the listener, and teases a false climax multiple times. I like his vocal range on this one too, and think he sings this with both a sincere commitment but also a lighthearted attitude.

Poetry – 4

“I know you only hurt yourself out of spite / I guess you’d rather be a martyr tonight”

Change – 2

There are two kinds of moments on this song, and it alternated between them. Intense, and mellow. I like the ratio of the two.

Insight – 4

This is the song that made me come up with this category of score.

Good – 4

I like this song a lot, easily one of my favorites. Although, I don’t think I’d include it in a list of ‘must-listens’ for Billy Joel. I just think it resonates with me.

And once more – 

He asks me why you’re still on my mind.

We reach your apartment door, through a complicated maze of hallways and mirrors. Between the time we entered the building and the time we made it to your front door, I’ve lost track of what floor we are on, having gone up and down so many flights of steps. The walls are adorned with mirrors, hung at various heights and angles, all unique. 

“Where did these come from?” I ask you. 

You say you hung them up so you could see people coming down the hallway. But you haven’t used the hallway in a while, because of your injured knee.

“What’s the staff for?” 

It was one of the first things I said to you, amused by the six foot tall wooden staff that you carried. 

Maybe it was the first thing I said, now that I think about it. That was only six hours ago.

“I injured my knee six months ago.”

“How?”

You won’t tell me. You won’t answer many of my questions. 

We finally reach your apartment door. The trip made me feel like Alice. I wonder about whether I’ll be able to get out. The thought is intrusive, so I do my best to dismiss it. You rush in ahead of me to tidy up some loose items and turn on the lights. Your ceiling is unusually low and it makes you appear even taller than in the outside world, where you were already towering over me. 

The apartment is carpeted. The furniture is heavily worn. The walls, either through time or paint, are the dark beige color that old New York apartments tend to be. Your couch and its cushions slump, as though thirty people had been sitting on it for a full year right up until the moment we walked through the door. I look around as you make your way around the apartment, turning on lamps and picking up loose items. I’m too on edge to sit down, not out of anxiety so much as excitement. You open the back door and show me your backyard, but it’s night and pitch black out and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to even be looking at. You tell me there’s a rose garden out there and I say I’ll take your word for it. 

In my dream last night you wouldn’t make eye contact with me. You intentionally kept walking awkwardly ahead of me, so I couldn’t catch your eye. You talked on the phone, so I couldn’t call out to you. I walked around your apartment. It was twice as big as the only time I had seen it. In the dream I assumed you had renovated, or hidden parts of it from me.

In my dream you had a roommate. 

I said to him, “Why is he avoiding me? Who is he on the phone with?” 

“He’s talking to his wife. He’s always talking to his wife. Who did you think he was always on the phone with?” 

I told him I hadn’t known you long enough to have ever seen you on the phone. He looked at me, confused, implying that if that was the case, then I didn’t know you at all. 

I felt enlightened.

A wife, of course. 

Finally a reason for why you stopped seeing me. 

In the dream I follow you into another part of the apartment, and the room where we had made love was gone, replaced by a massive library. It was filled with young people who all appeared similar in age and demographic to me. I start a conversation with a group of them, and they inform me that they are old friends of yours, that you had spent lots of time with all of them. I wonder why I didn’t qualify for this treatment. 

I wake up from the dream, never getting to see your face. 

“It is so incredible that we met.”

“Too bad this is the only time we will ever see each other,” I joked, although at the time I felt that that was a certainty. I had become pessimistic in recent months. 

“I would never allow such a thing to pass. This is the beginning of a very long journey.”

You were certain when you spoke, as someone who prided himself on being able to foresee the future.  

Two days later, you called and said we couldn’t see each other again. You said you couldn’t tell me why. I said okay. After you hung up, I texted you:

“And in our collective predictions – I was correct when I said we’d never see each other again.” 

It delivered. You never replied. A month later I found out you had blocked me. 

I remember you sitting on the slumping couch, staring at your laptop. The only light in the room was the abhorrent blue of the screen on your face. I sheepishly came over to you from the bedroom where I had tried to fall asleep. 

“Can’t sleep?”

“No, I’m too excited. Do you mind if I sit with you?”

“Not at all. I’m just getting some work done.”

This was an ambiguous statement to me since your job didn’t seem to have any labor associated with it. I wondered what it was you could possibly be doing. You told me your job gave you the apartment, and none of this stuff was yours. I doubted it. I sat next to you and sleepily watched you respond to emails. It felt like a moment to share with a spouse of several decades, not a moment between two strangers who had met earlier that day. I rested my head on your shoulder and listened to you typing on your keyboard. I dozed leaning on you and I had no idea that months later I would still have dreams about you. I would still be calling you, repeatedly, desperately hoping you will answer the phone. 

The only time I do see you, by total accident on the street, I will hide behind a pillar, unable to breathe, both wanting to be caught by you, but also knowing it could only ever be devastating. 

At the end of another dream, I storm back into the apartment to confront you. To beg you. To see you. Your friends have built a makeshift wall to keep me from you. I say I left my bag back there in an attempt to sneak in. They fetch it and toss it to me, shutting the door. I break down in tears, walking away quickly so they don’t see me crying. 

I wake up still longing for you. 

I call you again.

It’s meaningless since you blocked my number three days after we met. 

I keep hoping you’ll change your mind and unblock me. 

“What do you imagine will happen if he answers?”

You: “Hello?”

Me: “Oh. Hi. Uhhh, I didn’t expect you to answer.”

I can’t picture anything else, since the phone doesn’t even ring. It goes straight to voicemail, the option to leave a message I know you’ll never even hear.

I can call you from another number, but what would be the point?

You: “Hello.”

Me: “Hi. It’s me.”

And then you hang up. 

Or you ask why I’m calling.

“Why are you calling?”

I don’t know if you’d say that. I sit on the bench where we first sat together and stare at the place we met. I don’t know what you’d say. Why am I calling? What do I want? 

I walk from the bench to the park where you said we were destined to meet. 

I want you to change your mind. 

I walk north on Sixth Avenue, the way we walked together. 

I want to get to know you. 

I reach the park where we kissed. 

I want to grow tired of you. To learn your flaws. I want you to stop being a person that is only in my mind. Flawless, smart, handsome.

I want you to finally be real. 

I sit outside your building. I want to let you go. 

I try calling again. It goes straight to voicemail. I call out your name in a dream. You don’t turn around. I get up from the steps and walk to my date. 

I have a new scar on my knee. I was wearing stockings. I tripped on the street and fell knee first onto the curb. The stockings ripped and blood started gushing out and covering my leg. The couple making out only a couple feet from where I fell had to stop in order to ask if I was okay. It was nice to know I’d exist from this moment onward as this funny memory for them. My leg still bleeding I said “yes I’m okay thank you” and hobbled down the street to buy bandaids. Weeks later I was still picking at the scab, sitting outside of work baking in the sun. We were on our lunch break, and my friends and I sat on chairs we pulled outside the warehouse to watch cars drive by. Killing time I guess. My friends asked me to stop picking at it. It wasn’t good for me to keep picking at it. 

Walking north on sixth avenue, I pick at the scab. I tear it off. This is painful and brings tears to my eyes. That night I dreamed of the shattered knee, of the blood on the curb. My therapist tells me to stop picking at the scab. Why do you keep picking at it? I want to reach for it and have it not be there. I want to have made different decisions the day I fell. I want for it to have already healed.