(i’m not your)broadway baby.

He used to call me his broadway baby and I didn’t like the way that sounded. Because the alliteration annoyed me and also, I was only doing a Broadway tour, mind you, and I didn’t want to pretend otherwise.

He wrote me a half of a song once. Half of a song. That about sums it up because he never did finish it. Also, the words “broadway baby” were in the chorus. I would suggest a change, something that sounded a little less cliche, perhaps, but it was his song. Or rather, his half of a song.

He recently told me that he found a box of cards that people had written to me, stashed away in some corner of the house he still lives in. He asked me if I wanted those cards. I remembered that I am me, that I love words, that a card is a special and dear thing, so I said, “Um, yeah.” And then he told me that he would make sure there were no cards in the box from him.  There was a pause in the conversation then, with that last phrase, “cards…from him…” hanging in the air between us. “I know I wasn’t very good at giving you cards,” he finally said. And then I laughed. I burst out into laughter like he was Jim Gaffigan, a standup comic that actually makes me laugh, because not many do.

And he listened to my laughter and amended his remark to, “I know I wasn’t very good at giving you cards, among other things.”

And all I could do was agree.

Because no, he wasn’t very good at giving me cards, but that is maybe close to the bottom of a very long list of things he wasn’t very good at when it came to me.

And he never did finish that song.

And now I no longer want him to.