Ella

I watched him lounge on the bed in his 6th floor studio apartment overlooking Houston Street in the Lower East Side. The room was cast in a dimly lit, ambient pink glow, draping the space in warm hues and deep shadows. Surrounding his bed were stacks of books, a record player, and a typewriter. 

I had entered the apartment at the invitation of a mutual friend. We exchanged introductions and I plopped myself down on the other end of his bed at his offer to make myself at home. The mutual friend soon after left the apartment to answer a phone call, leaving us alone. 

At first glance, the word that came to my mind to describe him was “precious.”

I was immediately intrigued, seeing someone who was a combination of many things. Physically, Ella was thin and lanky, with an aesthetic that seemed made for gracing runways in Paris or Billboards on the street beneath us. Ella’s angular, delicate face was framed by strong eyebrows. His eyes were large and dark, cloaked by long eyelashes. He had the straight nose of a Greek God, and soft lips.  His blonde highlighted hair fell into bangs half way down his forehead, was short on the sides, and grew longer in the back, calling to mind some combination of Kristen Stewart and David Bowie. 

Ella was a combination of beauty and masculinity, pride and sadness all in one take. With perhaps too much eagerness, I asked him to tell me his story.

He looked down, and then looked up, meeting my eyes. 

“I was brought here by a man. He pays for me to live here.”

He paused, and his eyes again lowered. Seconds passed. He swallowed, and then looked up at me again, saying, “It isn’t what I want to be doing.”

I instinctively reached over and grabbed his hand. “You are so valuable,” I said. I didn’t even know why I said it, and as I said them, was immediately worried that they might land in a way that felt condescending or trite or bland.

We looked at each other for a while. He then smiled, and said graciously, “Thank you.”

Ella then seemed to shake off something heavy and his shoulders became lighter. He continued on in his story. I learned about his dreams, his pursuit of a bachelors degree, his love for his family, and many other things. 

He quoted Aristotle. He debated politics.

While we spoke, he reached for a stack of books next to his bed and pulled out a well-worn hard copy of The Odyssey, and turned to a page, asking me to read it. It was a passage that started with the line, “Tell me about a complicated man.” It was a story about a man who attempts to find his way home through a perilous journey, a man who experiences many twists and turns, and a man who commits foolish acts. It is a story about loneliness and survival. I read the lines, and meditated upon them.

As our conversation continued, Ella pulled out another book, Liquid Life by Zygmunt Bauman. The book was about the idea that we all live a life that is internally liquid, unable to stay on course, as liquid-modern society cannot keep its shape for long. The main point was that our liquid life is precarious, lived under conditions of constant uncertainty.

Ella in turn objserved me, asked me thoughtful questions, and spoke about what he saw as my qualities. He was clearly skilled at reading people, had the capacity to manipulate, and possessed a generosity of spirit.

He offered me a fresh sheet of paper, gestured towards his typewriter, and encouraged me to type something, anything out. My hands found the keys, and with it, a memory of the first time I learned how to type on a similar machine that had been set up in my parents bathroom as the only spare space available within our small home in rural Georgia. While finding the keys, I was also reminded of using my fingers to create language on the piano. On the typewriter, I learned how to find letters with my fingers to express my thoughts in words. On the piano, I’d found notes to express them in sounds. In both instances, I was fumbling to form my own thinking, searching for the right composition of notes and letters to articulate something that felt true to who I was.

In that pink-cast room in the Lower East Side, after a few test runs where I messed up several sheets of paper, I finally was able to successfully type out a line from my favorite poem. I looked up at Ella in appreciation. He leaned over to read what I had written, leaned back, and smiled. 

Soon after, our mutual friend rejoined and we continued our discourse. I began feeling sleepy, but didn’t want the time to end. Just before I left, Ella opened his computer and found a song on YouTube that he wanted me to hear. It was from the Opera, Tristan and Isolde. It was a piece about desire, the meaning of it, its origins, its universality, and its urging towards transcendence.