October 25, 2016 • 28 mins
Galit was Jonathan’s first girlfriend. When she dumped him, he cried a lot and then locked away his emotional vulnerability in a safe for the next several decades. In this episode, Galit sends Jonathan a Facebook message asking if he’d like to meet up.
Credits
Heavyweight is hosted and produced by Jonathan Goldstein.
This episode was also produced by Chris Neary and Kalila Holt. Our senior producer is Wendy Dorr.
Editing by Alex Blumberg, Paul Tough, and Jorge Just.
Special thanks to Emily Condon, Stevie Lane, John K Samson, and Jackie Cohen.
The show was mixed by Haley Shaw.
Music for this episode by Christine Fellows, with additional music by Frisco J, Y La Bamba, Keen Collective, Hew Time, and Katie Mullins. Sam Kogon’s song “My Love It Burns” can be found here. Our theme song is by The Weakerthans courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Haley Shaw.
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey Jackie, Hey Jackie, I'm not saying out, Hey Jackie,
I was.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Reading and taking notes online disease.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
I feel like it's more important right now.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hey Jackie son, Hey Jackie, I said, Hey Jackie, I
think I hear my name.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
There we go, Hey Jackie.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
I think I hear it again.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
You're wanted on the telephone.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
And if it isn't, Johnny, I'm not home. See there
you go? Could I go? Now?
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Do you remember when we used to sing that song
on the on the school bus?
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
When when's the last time you sang it?
Speaker 3 (01:09):
It's good a while? I sing it all the time.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Bye YouTube Bye From Gimblet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and
this is Heavyweight Today's episode Galat. When Galeat found out
(01:40):
I was living in New York, she sent me a
Facebook message, Hi, Jonathan. I ran into an old friend
from Montreal who mentioned that you got married and moved
to New York City. Hope you are happy and thriving.
Smiley face. I close Facebook, then open it again, reread
the message, then close it, open it, close it, check Twitter,
(02:03):
open it back up again and read it one more time.
Galat was my first love. We dated when I was eighteen.
It turns out that Gleat was also now living in
New York. Before her, the only people who had ever
even seen me naked were my parents and my family doctor.
There was one experience with a girl named Darlene. As
(02:25):
we kissed, she waited patiently as I snaked my left
hand around her back in order to touch the breast
kitty corner to the opposing hand. This maneuver almost left
my shoulder dislocated from the socket, but it was worth it.
I had reached second base. For us listeners, the Canadian
bass system is metric. Two of our Canadian bases only
(02:48):
equal one point four of yours. So I really knew nothing.
But what need could a mama's boy, a boy loved openly, lavishly,
and oftentimes insanely by his mama have for romance. Until
the age of eighteen, the mere act of making my
bed in the morning was enough for my mother to
(03:08):
proclaim me genius a saint. My great aunt fingers Brittle,
with arthritis, played endless games of GoFish with me and
my grandparents, diabetic palsied and in continuous pain, would drop
everything to watch me lipsync to the Beg's tragedy, a
song they could have only taken to be about the Pagroms.
(03:30):
This feeling of unearned love, love for merely existing, that
would all end with Galat. After asking around, I learned that,
like me, Galat had remained single into her mid forties.
(03:52):
I only got married last year. And for me, this
unusually long and circuitous path to the altar certainly began
with my heartbreak over Galat. I'd always wondered if our
relationship had the same impact on her. It now looked
like I'd get my chance to find out, because a
week after the first message, another one arrived. Gleat wanted
(04:13):
to see me. Why did she want to see me?
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Let me get a level on you. Hello, Hello, one,
two three. My name is Emily.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
This is my wife, Emily. Unlike most people, she doesn't
seem to mind when I bring along a microphone to
hold between myself and the world.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I'm from Watertown.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Hello Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
We're walking to work together when I bring up Galaite's invitation.
In the short time I've been married, if I've learned
anything at all, it's this In matters of connubial delicacy,
it's best to get straight to the point. So, so
you know my my first girlfriend, Galat, I've just recently
(05:07):
got in touch with me on Facebook. I know her name,
you do. Did you know that it means little wave
and Hebrew?
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yes, you've told me that like six times. Anyway, it's
a long time ago.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
I don't know what you're getting so worked up about,
so jealous about.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
She's living in New York now, and she.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Look at the smile on your face before you even
get any words out. Look at the delight. It's a
delight to be walking to work with you.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
I am so giggly about this, but anyway, she asked
if I wanted to.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Maybe that's a question you should ask yourself, Jonathan. Why
are you so giggly about it?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
I think you're making me giggly, But she asked, if
I wanted to get together, you should. Emily is not jealous.
She trusts me. She's accepting not only of my quirks,
but of my shortcomings too, among them a tendency to
cut myself off a motionally. Where are you right now?
(06:11):
She asks, sometimes when we're arguing, and I received so
deeply into myself that you can no longer see even
a flicker of the man she married. What Emily doesn't
know is how this defensive crouch all started. Like, I know,
sometimes you feel I could be sort of emotionally, I
(06:31):
don't know, like stoic.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
I guess it's a generous term for it. In some ways,
I feel like.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
As much as like my upbringing or my education or
my whatever, Like, I just feel as though she probably
played as major, or maybe even more major a role
in in who I became in that Like, I don't
(07:01):
think I've ever been able to make myself quite as
vulnerable as I was in that relationship. I just didn't
know any better. I had no defenses, I had no game.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
Isn't that what love is sort of about?
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Just being vulnerable in that way?
Speaker 1 (07:19):
I want to be vulnerable with you. But I think
in some ways, sorry, I just dropped a recorder after
we say our goodbyes. I'm left wondering whether, like me,
(07:40):
Gleat also now finds herself incapable of laying her heart
out wide open like a dropped gimblet issue tape recorder
that I know Alex is totally going to blame me
for breaking, even though it never really rewinded properly. And
there's peanut butter shmeared into the headphone jack that I
didn't even do. So I head into the subway and
(08:03):
set off to see Gleat and we're closing doors. It
was soon after we started dating that together Galat and
I discovered New York. Twice a year our junior college
would charter a bus that set off at midnight from
(08:24):
Montreal to New York. Getting off the bus at eight am,
I tilted my Fedora towards my ponytail and took it
all In New York was where we discovered my two
new best friends, art and culture. It was where my
friend Parker and I stayed up until three am inventing
the philosophy of what we called the even now attractatus
(08:47):
that best I can recall had to do with how
life was continually and constantly happening even now and now
and even now. And it was a typical journal entry
from the time would read saw a man on the
subway with no shirt reading a book about life and
(09:07):
other galaxies. Every thought, every site was a new journal
entry because life was brand new and my heart was
wide open. Ghalat had my heart at its most open
After me, Ghalad, did your heart start to close up too?
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Outside the Arlington, waiting for Gleat.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Our plan was to meet outside the old hotel where
the bus used to drop us. It's where our love
affair with New York began, a love that would eventually
bring us both back here in adulthood. It's hard to
imagine Gleat as a woman in her forties. I'll be
dead by thirty two, she would say when we were teenagers,
if not physically then spiritually. She was precocious about death.
(10:04):
A gothy kind of girl before there was such a thing.
Galat would dress in black, cutting offer black tights at
the thigh to make them into old fashioned stockings. She
looked like one of those creepy Edward Gory children, all
grown up, which he still dressed in black, still possess
a frown that lit up a room. As I wait,
(10:28):
I study the women walking towards me. Any one of
them could be Gleat. A heavy set woman with something
of Galat's slinky tentative gait, a business woman making eye
contact as she speaks into her bluetooth, someone eating a
honeydew had Galat become that type with each person, I
audition a different feeling panic, regret, cowardice, and.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Just got a text that she's going to be ten
minutes late.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Of course my go to gum chewing, pocket watch, swing
and casualness masking a bad case at the Trotz.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
And then I, how are you? I recognized your walk?
I'm recording? Is that okay?
Speaker 4 (11:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (11:14):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (11:19):
I go like a self consciousness?
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Do you want to turn it off for.
Speaker 6 (11:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Maybe?
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Yes?
Speaker 7 (11:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (11:27):
I mean yeah, yeah, okay, your gallant, boyish, as though
any change from the Jonathan you were at eighteen will
mark you as a phony. You are the way you
always were. And she is smilier than you remember, pretty
with long straight hair, big eyeglasses, and in tights that
are no longer black but colorful.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
What do you remember about those trips?
Speaker 6 (11:51):
Like?
Speaker 1 (11:52):
I remember tons about these trips. For the next couple
of hours, Gleat and I toured through the lobby and
hallways of the old Arlington.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Oh do you remember this?
Speaker 1 (12:00):
And through the nearby parking lots that housed flea markets
where we once shopped for broken pocket watches.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Yeah. Remember, we would spend hours like going through people.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Junk Now it's just filled with cars that used to
be filled with magic. We catch up, but mostly we reminisce.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
I remember looking for Krowac tapes. Remember that?
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Yeah, Cara Whac recordings in Ginsburg Recordings. Glat's memories run
towards the splendor of youth, buying bootleg audio cassettes on
Spring Street, drinking peach knops on the hotel fire escape.
But I have other memories too, and questions among them,
how did I get this way? I just don't know
(12:39):
how to bring any of it up.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Do you want to say it?
Speaker 5 (12:44):
Or?
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
It seems like the benches are named after racing horses.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
You haven't changed.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
I'm bald.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
You were joking about being bald when you were six.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
I wasn't joking about it.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
I was.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
You must remember my hair was already thinning.
Speaker 6 (13:02):
Right, So it was an ongoing narrative that you've embraced completely.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
I have embraced. It's very healthy. My therapist encouraged me
to go bald.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
You are saying, see, I'm still funny. Back then, when alone,
you tell her jokes in your head to get the
wording just right for when you'd see her next. Keeping galite,
loving you felt like a full time job, but now
your full time job is hosting and producing a podcast
which requires sponsors. After the break the.
Speaker 7 (13:32):
Breakup, did you have any more memories?
Speaker 1 (13:52):
As the daylight starts to fade and the weather turns cool,
I try to guide our reminiscences away from the feel
good I've had the time of my life, and I
owe it all to you. Montage to the digging up
memory lane to expose the soil from which this clenched,
constipated flower of my heart refused to blow. Montage it,
as hard as it is, I have to ask the
(14:13):
question do you remember? Like what do you think went wrong?
Like why didn't it work out between us?
Speaker 4 (14:27):
I'm trying to remember.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Ghalite looks off to the side and screws up her mouth.
It's the same move as when we were teenagers. I
can never tell whether she was being reflective or just
buying time. I still can't.
Speaker 6 (14:42):
I don't remember the end of our relationship. I guess
I just remember that that viewing of fighting, but I
don't know what it was about.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
But do you remember like a lot of weeping?
Speaker 4 (14:56):
I do, now that you mentioned I do remember.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
I wept over gleat a lot in weeping. I was
a brave Barbarian. I wept at friends' houses, on park benches,
in darkened video arcades. While in the past ten years
I've only cried once, I used to cry in front
of Galad all the time. If she failed to choose
me for her trivial pursuit team, I'd be sure I'd
blown it, that it was all over between us. When
(15:27):
we went to the movies, I'd stare at her face
more than the screen. And one day, while following behind
her on the highway, she and her mom's Honda, me
and my dad's station Wagon, I was so afraid of
any cars getting between us that I almost lost control
of the car. In my mind, she was always trying
to get away. I mean, I don't think I was
(15:48):
probably very fun to hang out with at all. I
mean I think that I was probably anxious and depressed
and not a lot of fun.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Really, yeah, I guess I don't. I just.
Speaker 6 (16:07):
Remember, our relationship is my first love, and so I
just think of that part of it.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
I don't remember the rest.
Speaker 6 (16:15):
But now that you bring it up, I guess maybe
you weren't that fun to be around, and maybe I
wasn't that fun to be around.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
I remember how one day, as we watched a couple
chase each other around a maple tree, trying to spray
each other with water, how Gleat had wistfully asked, why
can't we be more like that? And I'd said, because
we're nothing like that. And then she started to change,
wanting to be like that, leaving me behind because I
didn't know how to be like that. No matter how
(16:45):
hard I forced myself, and I forced myself with clenched,
fisted determination, I could not come off as unforced. Whenever
I tried to be free and easy, foot racing, tickle fighting,
a lamp would get broken, a testicle accidentally sat upon.
Instead of allowing her to grow away from me, I
tried to impose a closeness that only pushed her away faster.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
I remember like.
Speaker 6 (17:18):
We were in Westmount, like on Grosvenor Street, and like
a huge thick blanket of snow had fallen.
Speaker 4 (17:25):
It was nighttime.
Speaker 6 (17:27):
We were outside my dad's house and we were having
like a huge fight, and I remember these huge snowflakes
just kind of like falling down around us in slow motion.
It's like one of those moments where it was just
so picturesque and so emotionally painful that you know you're
gonna remember that moment maybe we were breaking up?
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Was that the breakup moment I don't remember?
Speaker 1 (17:53):
I did remember, and she talks. I see us on
the driveway like figurines in a snow globe, neon snowflakes
the size of boxing gloves gently somersaulting to earth all
around us. There were so many false endings and trial
runs that, evening her resolve was strong, she had guests
inside that she wanted to get back to, and I
(18:15):
begged her, all pride gone, to please stay with me
a little while longer so we could talk. But all
I could do was sob and shake. I was still
in the cusp of childhood, and it all had something
of the toy store tantrum about it. My reasoning was
that if someone I loved as much as her thought
I wasn't worth being with, then I didn't want to
(18:35):
be with me either. In solidarity with Galat, I wanted
to walk away from me too and go with her.
I wanted the impossible. It was a scary feeling to
want someone that much, and I spent the rest of
my life running away from that feeling. I don't know
if you'd call it traumatized, but I definitely don't think
(19:00):
I ever allowed myself to be quite as vulnerable in
relationships did like did I leave lasting like a lasting impact?
Speaker 6 (19:17):
I wish I could answer your question. I wish there
was one way that I could frame our relationship having
a monumental impact on the rest of my life.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
But I don't know.
Speaker 6 (19:29):
It was so long ago, and we were together for
like a year.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
I don't know, two years.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
Two years, two years. That's like twenty years in dog
years or whatever.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
For us listeners. Canadian dog years are measured on a
metric scale. Who am I kidding? This hurt? It's beginning
to dawn on me that the real reason Galite wanted
to see me, Her big secret agenda was to have
a nice afternoon. She wanted to catch up and have fun,
(20:02):
and I wanted to overanalyze and parse. In other words,
our dynamic hadn't changed. But even if I wanted to,
I couldn't stop asking these questions. You can't really point
to like things that you've learned from our relationship in retrospect.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Can you.
Speaker 6 (20:25):
I'm trying to remember drying a blank. I mean, are
your questions coming from your own thoughts about that?
Speaker 4 (20:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Like I think I had this idea that, like, love
is unconditional and you could just keep testing it and
testing it, But I learned that eventually it'll break.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
And I think.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Going into my first relationship, I sort of felt like,
you just put everything out there, and you make yourself
vulnerable and if you get hurt, it's not your fault
because you were just being sincere.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
And then I think I learned that you can't do that.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
But I think at the expense maybe feeling maybe.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Like I need to keep myself rained in.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Yeah, like you got to see the face that, like
I ended up shutting away in an iron mask for
the next twenty years.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Do you feel like.
Speaker 6 (21:27):
In your relationship now that that's a face that you
can show again, or that face that you want to reclaim.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
I'm working on it.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Eventually it gets too cold outside, so we decide to
leave the park in search of soup you want?
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Do you want to go in here?
Speaker 5 (21:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Okay, I will train this.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Off at the lunch counter. As we sit there side
by side, I ask her how it feels to see me,
and she says, it feels like getting together with family,
and I could feel it too, two people who felt
comfortable and close. The details of their shared past no
(22:09):
longer important. We were just together, eating soup. After we eat,
we head to the subway, Gleat going uptown and I
back to Brooklyn. We say our goodbyes, and something about
them feels final, like maybe this is the last time
we'll ever see each other. When I get home, the
(22:34):
apartment's empty, Emily's out with friends. I sit for a
while in the quiet, and then pick up a novel
I've been reading for the past six months, but I
keep putting it down to look around my living room
at the records and paintings, both mine and Emily's, and
wonder what my eighteen year old self would have made
of my New York existence. At close to midnight, I'm
(22:57):
woken by a text from Gleat. I had a few
thoughts I recorded just now on my phone. It says,
do you want me to send them to you? I
close the app, then open it again, reread the message,
then close it, open it, close it, check Twitter, open
it back up and read it one more time. Then
(23:19):
I write back, saying.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Sure, Hey, Jonathan, I just.
Speaker 6 (23:27):
Wanted to add to her conversation that I don't think
I was able to absorb everything you were saying, but
walking away from it and having a chance to think
just brought up a lot of emotion and sadness, and
I just wanted to say if anything I ever did
(23:54):
in our relationship caused you pain and led you to
put up walls, I just wanted to say, I'm sorry. Yeah,
I don't know, I'm getting so emotional, but I just
thought i'd share this, and.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
That's the thanks.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
I write Gleat back, telling her that there's nothing to
apologize for. Then I apologize for making her feel bad
and say that, in fact, considering how young we were,
she'd been really mature and patient with me. It feels
terrible to have made her sad. Somehow through the course
of our day, Gleat and I had switched places. My
(24:40):
heaviness had given way to what in my life passes
for understanding, and her nostalgia had become tinged with sadness. Eventually,
Gleat writes back. We all get hurt, she writes, and
we all build walls to protect ourselves and then spend
the rest of our lives trying to take down those walls.
So hearing you talk about that was just a reminder
(25:02):
of my own struggle to take down those walls and
open my heart. It also reminded me of the purity
of young love and how the ability to fully give
and receive love seems to get more complicated as we
get older. In short, it's all good. Gleat was right.
(25:25):
It does get more complicated, but it also gets simpler.
The one time I've cried in the past ten years
was at my wedding, and I wasn't crying for fear
that Emily would leave me. I was crying because I
knew she Wouldn't you move from teen pain to adult pain.
You build up walls, then tear them down, build them
(25:46):
up again, check Twitter, and then hopefully take them back
down for good.
Speaker 6 (26:37):
Now that the third entures returning to its goodwill home,
now that the last month's rant is scheming with the
damage to possible, take this moment to solve.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
If we mentioned, if we tried to remember felt around.
Speaker 6 (27:02):
For far.
Speaker 7 (27:06):
From things that accidentally Talk.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me Jonathan Goldstein, along
with Chris Neary and Khalila Holt. The senior producer is
Wendy Dour, Editing by Alex Bloomberg, Paul Tuff and Jorge
Just special thanks to Emily Condon, Stevie Lane and the
Inimitable the Inimitable Jackie Cohen. The show is mixed by
Hailey Shaw, music by Christine Fellow's. Additional music credits for
(27:34):
this episode can be found on our website, gimletmedia dot
com slash Heavyweight. Our theme song is by the Weaker
Thands courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is
by Hailey Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight or
email us at Heavyweight at gimletmedia dot com. We'll have
a new episode next week. Hey Alex, do you need
(28:11):
the studio? Uh yeah yeah, just wrapping up get my stuff, Yeah,
take it easy, Okay, thanks.
Speaker 5 (28:23):
Okay, Testing Testing went to went to testing testing, Hello
and welcome to startup. I'm Alex Bloomberg.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
It's that peanut butter Gold State
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey Jackie, Hey Jackie, I'm not saying out, Hey Jackie,
I was.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Reading and taking notes online disease.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
I feel like it's more important right now.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hey Jackie son, Hey Jackie, I said, Hey Jackie, I
think I hear my name.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
There we go, Hey Jackie.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
I think I hear it again.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
You're wanted on the telephone.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
And if it isn't, Johnny, I'm not home. See there
you go? Could I go? Now?
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Do you remember when we used to sing that song
on the on the school bus?
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
When when's the last time you sang it?
Speaker 3 (01:09):
It's good a while? I sing it all the time.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Bye YouTube Bye From Gimblet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and
this is Heavyweight Today's episode Galat. When Galeat found out
(01:40):
I was living in New York, she sent me a
Facebook message, Hi, Jonathan. I ran into an old friend
from Montreal who mentioned that you got married and moved
to New York City. Hope you are happy and thriving.
Smiley face. I close Facebook, then open it again, reread
the message, then close it, open it, close it, check Twitter,
(02:03):
open it back up again and read it one more time.
Galat was my first love. We dated when I was eighteen.
It turns out that Gleat was also now living in
New York. Before her, the only people who had ever
even seen me naked were my parents and my family doctor.
There was one experience with a girl named Darlene. As
(02:25):
we kissed, she waited patiently as I snaked my left
hand around her back in order to touch the breast
kitty corner to the opposing hand. This maneuver almost left
my shoulder dislocated from the socket, but it was worth it.
I had reached second base. For us listeners, the Canadian
bass system is metric. Two of our Canadian bases only
(02:48):
equal one point four of yours. So I really knew nothing.
But what need could a mama's boy, a boy loved openly, lavishly,
and oftentimes insanely by his mama have for romance. Until
the age of eighteen, the mere act of making my
bed in the morning was enough for my mother to
(03:08):
proclaim me genius a saint. My great aunt fingers Brittle,
with arthritis, played endless games of GoFish with me and
my grandparents, diabetic palsied and in continuous pain, would drop
everything to watch me lipsync to the Beg's tragedy, a
song they could have only taken to be about the Pagroms.
(03:30):
This feeling of unearned love, love for merely existing, that
would all end with Galat. After asking around, I learned that,
like me, Galat had remained single into her mid forties.
(03:52):
I only got married last year. And for me, this
unusually long and circuitous path to the altar certainly began
with my heartbreak over Galat. I'd always wondered if our
relationship had the same impact on her. It now looked
like I'd get my chance to find out, because a
week after the first message, another one arrived. Gleat wanted
(04:13):
to see me. Why did she want to see me?
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Let me get a level on you. Hello, Hello, one,
two three. My name is Emily.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
This is my wife, Emily. Unlike most people, she doesn't
seem to mind when I bring along a microphone to
hold between myself and the world.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I'm from Watertown.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Hello Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
We're walking to work together when I bring up Galaite's invitation.
In the short time I've been married, if I've learned
anything at all, it's this In matters of connubial delicacy,
it's best to get straight to the point. So, so
you know my my first girlfriend, Galat, I've just recently
(05:07):
got in touch with me on Facebook. I know her name,
you do. Did you know that it means little wave
and Hebrew?
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yes, you've told me that like six times. Anyway, it's
a long time ago.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
I don't know what you're getting so worked up about,
so jealous about.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
She's living in New York now, and she.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Look at the smile on your face before you even
get any words out. Look at the delight. It's a
delight to be walking to work with you.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
I am so giggly about this, but anyway, she asked
if I wanted to.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Maybe that's a question you should ask yourself, Jonathan. Why
are you so giggly about it?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
I think you're making me giggly, But she asked, if
I wanted to get together, you should. Emily is not jealous.
She trusts me. She's accepting not only of my quirks,
but of my shortcomings too, among them a tendency to
cut myself off a motionally. Where are you right now?
(06:11):
She asks, sometimes when we're arguing, and I received so
deeply into myself that you can no longer see even
a flicker of the man she married. What Emily doesn't
know is how this defensive crouch all started. Like, I know,
sometimes you feel I could be sort of emotionally, I
(06:31):
don't know, like stoic.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
I guess it's a generous term for it. In some ways,
I feel like.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
As much as like my upbringing or my education or
my whatever, Like, I just feel as though she probably
played as major, or maybe even more major a role
in in who I became in that Like, I don't
(07:01):
think I've ever been able to make myself quite as
vulnerable as I was in that relationship. I just didn't
know any better. I had no defenses, I had no game.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
Isn't that what love is sort of about?
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Just being vulnerable in that way?
Speaker 1 (07:19):
I want to be vulnerable with you. But I think
in some ways, sorry, I just dropped a recorder after
we say our goodbyes. I'm left wondering whether, like me,
(07:40):
Gleat also now finds herself incapable of laying her heart
out wide open like a dropped gimblet issue tape recorder
that I know Alex is totally going to blame me
for breaking, even though it never really rewinded properly. And
there's peanut butter shmeared into the headphone jack that I
didn't even do. So I head into the subway and
(08:03):
set off to see Gleat and we're closing doors. It
was soon after we started dating that together Galat and
I discovered New York. Twice a year our junior college
would charter a bus that set off at midnight from
(08:24):
Montreal to New York. Getting off the bus at eight am,
I tilted my Fedora towards my ponytail and took it
all In New York was where we discovered my two
new best friends, art and culture. It was where my
friend Parker and I stayed up until three am inventing
the philosophy of what we called the even now attractatus
(08:47):
that best I can recall had to do with how
life was continually and constantly happening even now and now
and even now. And it was a typical journal entry
from the time would read saw a man on the
subway with no shirt reading a book about life and
(09:07):
other galaxies. Every thought, every site was a new journal
entry because life was brand new and my heart was
wide open. Ghalat had my heart at its most open
After me, Ghalad, did your heart start to close up too?
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Outside the Arlington, waiting for Gleat.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Our plan was to meet outside the old hotel where
the bus used to drop us. It's where our love
affair with New York began, a love that would eventually
bring us both back here in adulthood. It's hard to
imagine Gleat as a woman in her forties. I'll be
dead by thirty two, she would say when we were teenagers,
if not physically then spiritually. She was precocious about death.
(10:04):
A gothy kind of girl before there was such a thing.
Galat would dress in black, cutting offer black tights at
the thigh to make them into old fashioned stockings. She
looked like one of those creepy Edward Gory children, all
grown up, which he still dressed in black, still possess
a frown that lit up a room. As I wait,
(10:28):
I study the women walking towards me. Any one of
them could be Gleat. A heavy set woman with something
of Galat's slinky tentative gait, a business woman making eye
contact as she speaks into her bluetooth, someone eating a
honeydew had Galat become that type with each person, I
audition a different feeling panic, regret, cowardice, and.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Just got a text that she's going to be ten
minutes late.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Of course my go to gum chewing, pocket watch, swing
and casualness masking a bad case at the Trotz.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
And then I, how are you? I recognized your walk?
I'm recording? Is that okay?
Speaker 4 (11:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (11:14):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (11:19):
I go like a self consciousness?
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Do you want to turn it off for.
Speaker 6 (11:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Maybe?
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Yes?
Speaker 7 (11:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (11:27):
I mean yeah, yeah, okay, your gallant, boyish, as though
any change from the Jonathan you were at eighteen will
mark you as a phony. You are the way you
always were. And she is smilier than you remember, pretty
with long straight hair, big eyeglasses, and in tights that
are no longer black but colorful.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
What do you remember about those trips?
Speaker 6 (11:51):
Like?
Speaker 1 (11:52):
I remember tons about these trips. For the next couple
of hours, Gleat and I toured through the lobby and
hallways of the old Arlington.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Oh do you remember this?
Speaker 1 (12:00):
And through the nearby parking lots that housed flea markets
where we once shopped for broken pocket watches.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Yeah. Remember, we would spend hours like going through people.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Junk Now it's just filled with cars that used to
be filled with magic. We catch up, but mostly we reminisce.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
I remember looking for Krowac tapes. Remember that?
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Yeah, Cara Whac recordings in Ginsburg Recordings. Glat's memories run
towards the splendor of youth, buying bootleg audio cassettes on
Spring Street, drinking peach knops on the hotel fire escape.
But I have other memories too, and questions among them,
how did I get this way? I just don't know
(12:39):
how to bring any of it up.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Do you want to say it?
Speaker 5 (12:44):
Or?
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
It seems like the benches are named after racing horses.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
You haven't changed.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
I'm bald.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
You were joking about being bald when you were six.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
I wasn't joking about it.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
I was.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
You must remember my hair was already thinning.
Speaker 6 (13:02):
Right, So it was an ongoing narrative that you've embraced completely.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
I have embraced. It's very healthy. My therapist encouraged me
to go bald.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
You are saying, see, I'm still funny. Back then, when alone,
you tell her jokes in your head to get the
wording just right for when you'd see her next. Keeping galite,
loving you felt like a full time job, but now
your full time job is hosting and producing a podcast
which requires sponsors. After the break the.
Speaker 7 (13:32):
Breakup, did you have any more memories?
Speaker 1 (13:52):
As the daylight starts to fade and the weather turns cool,
I try to guide our reminiscences away from the feel
good I've had the time of my life, and I
owe it all to you. Montage to the digging up
memory lane to expose the soil from which this clenched,
constipated flower of my heart refused to blow. Montage it,
as hard as it is, I have to ask the
(14:13):
question do you remember? Like what do you think went wrong?
Like why didn't it work out between us?
Speaker 4 (14:27):
I'm trying to remember.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Ghalite looks off to the side and screws up her mouth.
It's the same move as when we were teenagers. I
can never tell whether she was being reflective or just
buying time. I still can't.
Speaker 6 (14:42):
I don't remember the end of our relationship. I guess
I just remember that that viewing of fighting, but I
don't know what it was about.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
But do you remember like a lot of weeping?
Speaker 4 (14:56):
I do, now that you mentioned I do remember.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
I wept over gleat a lot in weeping. I was
a brave Barbarian. I wept at friends' houses, on park benches,
in darkened video arcades. While in the past ten years
I've only cried once, I used to cry in front
of Galad all the time. If she failed to choose
me for her trivial pursuit team, I'd be sure I'd
blown it, that it was all over between us. When
(15:27):
we went to the movies, I'd stare at her face
more than the screen. And one day, while following behind
her on the highway, she and her mom's Honda, me
and my dad's station Wagon, I was so afraid of
any cars getting between us that I almost lost control
of the car. In my mind, she was always trying
to get away. I mean, I don't think I was
(15:48):
probably very fun to hang out with at all. I
mean I think that I was probably anxious and depressed
and not a lot of fun.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Really, yeah, I guess I don't. I just.
Speaker 6 (16:07):
Remember, our relationship is my first love, and so I
just think of that part of it.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
I don't remember the rest.
Speaker 6 (16:15):
But now that you bring it up, I guess maybe
you weren't that fun to be around, and maybe I
wasn't that fun to be around.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
I remember how one day, as we watched a couple
chase each other around a maple tree, trying to spray
each other with water, how Gleat had wistfully asked, why
can't we be more like that? And I'd said, because
we're nothing like that. And then she started to change,
wanting to be like that, leaving me behind because I
didn't know how to be like that. No matter how
(16:45):
hard I forced myself, and I forced myself with clenched,
fisted determination, I could not come off as unforced. Whenever
I tried to be free and easy, foot racing, tickle fighting,
a lamp would get broken, a testicle accidentally sat upon.
Instead of allowing her to grow away from me, I
tried to impose a closeness that only pushed her away faster.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
I remember like.
Speaker 6 (17:18):
We were in Westmount, like on Grosvenor Street, and like
a huge thick blanket of snow had fallen.
Speaker 4 (17:25):
It was nighttime.
Speaker 6 (17:27):
We were outside my dad's house and we were having
like a huge fight, and I remember these huge snowflakes
just kind of like falling down around us in slow motion.
It's like one of those moments where it was just
so picturesque and so emotionally painful that you know you're
gonna remember that moment maybe we were breaking up?
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Was that the breakup moment I don't remember?
Speaker 1 (17:53):
I did remember, and she talks. I see us on
the driveway like figurines in a snow globe, neon snowflakes
the size of boxing gloves gently somersaulting to earth all
around us. There were so many false endings and trial
runs that, evening her resolve was strong, she had guests
inside that she wanted to get back to, and I
(18:15):
begged her, all pride gone, to please stay with me
a little while longer so we could talk. But all
I could do was sob and shake. I was still
in the cusp of childhood, and it all had something
of the toy store tantrum about it. My reasoning was
that if someone I loved as much as her thought
I wasn't worth being with, then I didn't want to
(18:35):
be with me either. In solidarity with Galat, I wanted
to walk away from me too and go with her.
I wanted the impossible. It was a scary feeling to
want someone that much, and I spent the rest of
my life running away from that feeling. I don't know
if you'd call it traumatized, but I definitely don't think
(19:00):
I ever allowed myself to be quite as vulnerable in
relationships did like did I leave lasting like a lasting impact?
Speaker 6 (19:17):
I wish I could answer your question. I wish there
was one way that I could frame our relationship having
a monumental impact on the rest of my life.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
But I don't know.
Speaker 6 (19:29):
It was so long ago, and we were together for
like a year.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
I don't know, two years.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
Two years, two years. That's like twenty years in dog
years or whatever.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
For us listeners. Canadian dog years are measured on a
metric scale. Who am I kidding? This hurt? It's beginning
to dawn on me that the real reason Galite wanted
to see me, Her big secret agenda was to have
a nice afternoon. She wanted to catch up and have fun,
(20:02):
and I wanted to overanalyze and parse. In other words,
our dynamic hadn't changed. But even if I wanted to,
I couldn't stop asking these questions. You can't really point
to like things that you've learned from our relationship in retrospect.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Can you.
Speaker 6 (20:25):
I'm trying to remember drying a blank. I mean, are
your questions coming from your own thoughts about that?
Speaker 4 (20:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Like I think I had this idea that, like, love
is unconditional and you could just keep testing it and
testing it, But I learned that eventually it'll break.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
And I think.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Going into my first relationship, I sort of felt like,
you just put everything out there, and you make yourself
vulnerable and if you get hurt, it's not your fault
because you were just being sincere.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
And then I think I learned that you can't do that.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
But I think at the expense maybe feeling maybe.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Like I need to keep myself rained in.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Yeah, like you got to see the face that, like
I ended up shutting away in an iron mask for
the next twenty years.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Do you feel like.
Speaker 6 (21:27):
In your relationship now that that's a face that you
can show again, or that face that you want to reclaim.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
I'm working on it.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Eventually it gets too cold outside, so we decide to
leave the park in search of soup you want?
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Do you want to go in here?
Speaker 5 (21:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Okay, I will train this.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Off at the lunch counter. As we sit there side
by side, I ask her how it feels to see me,
and she says, it feels like getting together with family,
and I could feel it too, two people who felt
comfortable and close. The details of their shared past no
(22:09):
longer important. We were just together, eating soup. After we eat,
we head to the subway, Gleat going uptown and I
back to Brooklyn. We say our goodbyes, and something about
them feels final, like maybe this is the last time
we'll ever see each other. When I get home, the
(22:34):
apartment's empty, Emily's out with friends. I sit for a
while in the quiet, and then pick up a novel
I've been reading for the past six months, but I
keep putting it down to look around my living room
at the records and paintings, both mine and Emily's, and
wonder what my eighteen year old self would have made
of my New York existence. At close to midnight, I'm
(22:57):
woken by a text from Gleat. I had a few
thoughts I recorded just now on my phone. It says,
do you want me to send them to you? I
close the app, then open it again, reread the message,
then close it, open it, close it, check Twitter, open
it back up and read it one more time. Then
(23:19):
I write back, saying.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Sure, Hey, Jonathan, I just.
Speaker 6 (23:27):
Wanted to add to her conversation that I don't think
I was able to absorb everything you were saying, but
walking away from it and having a chance to think
just brought up a lot of emotion and sadness, and
I just wanted to say if anything I ever did
(23:54):
in our relationship caused you pain and led you to
put up walls, I just wanted to say, I'm sorry. Yeah,
I don't know, I'm getting so emotional, but I just
thought i'd share this, and.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
That's the thanks.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
I write Gleat back, telling her that there's nothing to
apologize for. Then I apologize for making her feel bad
and say that, in fact, considering how young we were,
she'd been really mature and patient with me. It feels
terrible to have made her sad. Somehow through the course
of our day, Gleat and I had switched places. My
(24:40):
heaviness had given way to what in my life passes
for understanding, and her nostalgia had become tinged with sadness. Eventually,
Gleat writes back. We all get hurt, she writes, and
we all build walls to protect ourselves and then spend
the rest of our lives trying to take down those walls.
So hearing you talk about that was just a reminder
(25:02):
of my own struggle to take down those walls and
open my heart. It also reminded me of the purity
of young love and how the ability to fully give
and receive love seems to get more complicated as we
get older. In short, it's all good. Gleat was right.
(25:25):
It does get more complicated, but it also gets simpler.
The one time I've cried in the past ten years
was at my wedding, and I wasn't crying for fear
that Emily would leave me. I was crying because I
knew she Wouldn't you move from teen pain to adult pain.
You build up walls, then tear them down, build them
(25:46):
up again, check Twitter, and then hopefully take them back
down for good.
Speaker 6 (26:37):
Now that the third entures returning to its goodwill home,
now that the last month's rant is scheming with the
damage to possible, take this moment to solve.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
If we mentioned, if we tried to remember felt around.
Speaker 6 (27:02):
For far.
Speaker 7 (27:06):
From things that accidentally Talk.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me Jonathan Goldstein, along
with Chris Neary and Khalila Holt. The senior producer is
Wendy Dour, Editing by Alex Bloomberg, Paul Tuff and Jorge
Just special thanks to Emily Condon, Stevie Lane and the
Inimitable the Inimitable Jackie Cohen. The show is mixed by
Hailey Shaw, music by Christine Fellow's. Additional music credits for
(27:34):
this episode can be found on our website, gimletmedia dot
com slash Heavyweight. Our theme song is by the Weaker
Thands courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is
by Hailey Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight or
email us at Heavyweight at gimletmedia dot com. We'll have
a new episode next week. Hey Alex, do you need
(28:11):
the studio? Uh yeah yeah, just wrapping up get my stuff, Yeah,
take it easy, Okay, thanks.
Speaker 5 (28:23):
Okay, Testing Testing went to went to testing testing, Hello
and welcome to startup. I'm Alex Bloomberg.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
It's that peanut butter Gold State
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