A Man Named Gray

or: what you shouldn't do for love

I have events coming up! More will be announced in the coming weeks for the release of The Sapling Cage.

August 10, Arlington, VA: I will be signing books at the New Voices New Rooms conference. This is an event for booksellers and other industry professionals.

August 24, Pittsburgh, PA: There will be a Penumbra City live play event and dance party at Community Forge. This is a fundraiser for Congo, Sudan, and Gaza. Pie is available.

September 14, Ithaca, NY: I will be presenting at Buffalo Street Books at 5pm.

September 21, Online: I will be presenting alongside Lane Smith for a virtual event with Charis Books.

September 23, Brooklyn, NY: I will be one of the presenters at the Patchwork Literary Salon.

September 24, Beacon, NY: The official release date of The Sapling Cage, I’ll be at Binnacle Books

September 25, Philadelphia, PA: Wooden Shoe Books

September 26, Charlottesville, VA: The Beautiful Idea

September 28, Baltimore, MD: Baltimore Book Festival

September 29, Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Book Festival

The following piece originally appeared on my now-defunct blog in 2019. I had some sleep paralysis dreams last night, so I figured I’d post about one of the people I know who has plotted to kill me.

A Man Named Gray

There are, presumably, a lot of men named Gray. This is a story about one of them. His name doesn’t really have any particular metaphorical importance. He’s not subdued or subtle or medium or in-between or anything good you’d want out of a man with a name like Gray. Instead, he’s a combination of tragic and awful. Usually I go through a lot of work to anonymize people when I write memoir, but I don’t think I’m going to bother this time. I’m a little salty, even ten and fifteen years on. The reasons will become apparent.

I first met Gray because I was nineteen, living in Portland, Oregon, and dating someone named Heather. Heather isn’t her real name, because she’s a sweetheart and there’s no reason not to anonymize her. Heather was a few years older than me, and if I recall correctly, Gray was a few years older still. Heather and Gray were primary partners. I was Heather’s side relationship, more or less.

I first met Gray because I heard my doorbell ring and I went downstairs and answered the door and some bike jock was standing there. I didn’t recognize him, so I assumed he was there for one of my roommates.

“Are you Magpie?” he asked, ominously. Everything that man did in his entire life was ominous, I think.

“Yeah.”

“I’m Gray.”

I was excited to meet my metamour, but it seemed a bit odd for him to show up unannounced. “What’s up?” I asked.

“We need to talk.”

See, that’s like, that man’s ominous catchphrase. “We need to talk.”

So we went on a walk, Gray and I. He kept trying to convince me that we were enemies. That we needed to fight. That I needed to break up with Heather. For my own part, I was nineteen and full of revolutionary fervor. I tried to convince him that we were both anarchists, that our real enemy was the state and capitalism. That neither of us owned Heather, and that I certainly wasn’t going to break up with her just because her jealous partner told me to.

I didn’t convince him, I don’t think, but I didn’t fight him either. He went home, and I went home, and I continued to date Heather and avoid Gray.

---

Heather and I didn’t last forever, or even all that long. The chemistry was wrong, and I was in the wrong part of healing from trauma, and we faded into friends and then acquaintances. I skipped town, as was my style at the time. A year or two later, I was back and I went and hung out with Heather. Gray and her had broken up a year prior. “You have to see this,” she said, and led me into her basement. She opened a cardboard box and pulled out a stained glass window.

The window was a portrait of Heather and Gray. The words “we still love one another” captioned it. It wasn’t a tiny window, either—it was probably two or three feet tall. I’ve never made stained glass, but this piece clearly took a lot of time.

“Gray gave me this on our anniversary, a year after we’d broken up.”

So at this point in the story I want to do two things. First of all, I want to assure you that I am not telling a story in which Gray goes on to do anything worse to Heather. I haven’t kept up with Heather, but nothing specifically horrid has happened, to my knowledge. Secondly, I want to acknowledge that this is a strange story to tell from my own point of view. I’m not the most harmed party, because I was never in a relationship with that man. Still, this whole thing looms large in my mind, a strange parable of the depths of human experience.

“That’s fucked up,” I said to Heather when I saw the window.

“Yeah. It is.”