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